Summary

The Battle of Culloden (Gaelic: Blàr Chùil Lodair), fought on April 16, 1746 near Inverness in the Scottish Highlands, saw the supporters of Charles Edward Stuart, known as the "Young Pretender" (also known as "Bonnie Prince Charlie"), finally defeated by Loyalist forces commanded by the Duke of Cumberland, son of King George II, who was nicknamed "Billy the Butcher" because of the heinousness of the repression carried out against the Jacobites.

That of Culloden was the last pitched battle fought in Great Britain: despite being in the midst of the modern age, the Scots used concepts and strategies on the field dating back to the Middle Ages, which up to that point had always been successful against the English infantry, but which failed because of the numerical and fire superiority of the Hanoverian troops, thus leading to a total defeat for the Scots.

After the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the ousting of the last Catholic king, hopes for a Jacobite restoration to the throne of the three "kingdoms" had not yet waned in Britain, and indeed were increasingly regaining strength as the years went by, especially in Ireland and Scotland, where the territorial seizures made by William of Orange in favor of the Protestants had aroused strong ill-feeling on the part of the Catholics. Hopes for the Jacobites seemed to rise again in 1744, when the cause of the House of Stuart gained the political and military support of the King of France, Louis XV. The latter in fact looked favorably on the British throne on one of his candidates, and a Catholic one at that. In February of that year, ten thousand French soldiers were assembled at Dunkirk: the French plan was to ferry them to the southern coast of Essex, and then advance from there to the British capital. Representing the Stuarts was Prince Charles Edward of Wales, eldest son of James Edward Stuart and grandson of the last Stuart ruler of the "three kingdoms," James II.

However, French plans to invade England were scuppered by bad weather conditions, which led to the almost total destruction of the French fleet. With this opportunity also evaporated, James Edward, the "Old Pretender," lost all influence in the games of European politics; his plans passed to his son Charles Edward, who from then on took the nickname "Young Pretender" in European political salons and the appellation "Handsome Prince Charles" (Bonnie Prince Charlie) in aristocratic and pro-Jacobite ones.

In 1745 Charles Edward was appointed regent by his father, and on July 16 he began a new expedition. Together with a small number of acquaintances and equipped with a small amount of arms and ammunition, he headed for Scotland aboard the frigate Du Teillay, commanded by Antony Walsh, a well-known privateer. The light frigate was escorted by the Elizabeth, a French third-class vessel; aboard the latter ship was a group of volunteers, meager in number and quality of equipment. The enterprise began in an unfortunate way: the Elizabeth, badly damaged in a collision with the English vessel Lyon that occurred west of the Irish coast, was forced to turn back toward Brest, taking with her the soldiers and provisions intended to support the Scottish uprising.

Charles Edward, aboard the Du Teillay, nevertheless managed to reach the Hebrides, evading the naval blockade operated by the British, and from here he was able to reach the Scottish mainland, on July 25, exactly at the roadstead of Loch nan Uamh, near Arisaig. From here Bel Charles began to summon the Highland Clans. On August 9, at Glenfinnan, Charles Edward had the Stuart standard raised, proclaiming himself regent in his father's name. On August 16, hostilities were opened. At Highbridge a small group of Jacobites led by Sir Tìr nan drìs attacked two companies of English infantry, capturing their captain. Thus began the "Forty-five."

The "Forty-Five"

Initially, the army assembled by Charles Edward consisted of just 1,200 men, divided more or less equally between members of the Cameron clan under the command of Sir Lochiel and members of the MacDonald clan under the orders of Keppoch. This small force grew larger as it advanced into the eastern Highlands as far as Badenonoch; ironically, Charles Edward's army was traveling along those very roads that had been built by the British during the earlier Jacobite insurrection of 1715 with the aim of facilitating control of the region by making troop movements faster. The English army led by Sir John Cope, sent hastily against the rebel expedition, proceeded in the direction of Inverness, thus opening the way for Charles Edward to Edinburgh.

In Perth he joined the army of Pretender Lord George Murray, who would later prove a valiant commander. Meanwhile, on September 17, Prince Charles entered Edinburgh, settling at Holyrood Palace, the former residence of the Stuarts; the city's garrison was entrenched in the castle. Cope tried to counter Charles: having reached Aberdeen, his army embarked for Dunbar and then advanced toward Edinburgh. At dawn on September 21, at Prestonpans, Cope's dragoons were confronted with the spectacle of the Highlanders' massed charge through the thick mist " amid the wild war cries of the Highlands and the wail of bagpipes." The English army was routed and routed in just ten minutes, and Cope had to face a court martial.

Having finally seized Scotland, Charles Edward could devote himself to his ultimate goal, reaching London: his army marched to the capital on November 1, crowning his advance with the occupation of Carlisle on November 16, Manchester on the 28th, and Derby on December 4. However, not everything went according to Charles's plans, who had sharp disagreements with Lord Murray: aid from the English Jacobites was more inconsistent than expected and arrived late, and about 1,000 Highlanders deserted, returning to their homeland. In addition to these internal problems, the Pretender faced three loyalist armies, which, under the command of the Duke of Cumberland, son of King George II, who had succeeded Field Marshal Wade as commander-in-chief, were gathering to encircle the Jacobites. Prince Charles then decided to retreat, although London was now only 127 miles away and the city, as Horace Walpole himself reports in his famous epistolary, was in great disquiet over the news circulating about a large French army embarked on the coast of Calais and already en route across the English Channel, and of numerous Jacobite reinforcements arriving from Wales and the counties of England itself.

Showing little strategic and political acumen, instead of marching swiftly to occupy London, Charles Edward preferred to turn back to Scotland, entering Glasgow on Christmas Day, even though the city was now hostile to him. Even the city of Stirling only begrudgingly let him in, although the government officials remained locked up in the castle. Fortune, however, still seemed to be in Prince Charles' favor. Lady Anne MacKintosh, whose husband, head of the clan of the same name, served in the government troops, secretly sent him 400 men, earning him the nickname "Colonel Anne" from the Jacobites. Finally, the long-awaited French aid also arrived. On January 17, 1746, at Falkirk, the Jacobites defeated Lt. Gen. Henry Hawley's army. On February 1, the Highland army forded across the Forth to head north.

Although his secretary, John Williams O'Sullivan, insisted on resuming the southward advance, Prince Charles preferred to listen to Lord Murray, who suggested the opposite strategy, and established his headquarters in Inverness, where he stayed for seven weeks to winter. In the meantime, however, his situation was worsening, for with the advance of the Duke of Cumberland's army, which had settled in Aberdeen, many Scottish chieftains had begun to abandon him, while economic aid sent from France was neutralized by the English. The Duke of Cumberland, together with numerous German allies from Hanover and Hesse, left Aberdeen on April 8, heading for Nairn. On April 14, the Jacobite army prepared for the clash, deploying the next day on the Drumossie Heath.

Although the Jacobite army was deployed, April 15, 1746, ended without fighting because the British army had celebrated their commander's birthday with an extra distribution of brandy and remained in their camp to celebrate. The rebel army did not take advantage of this opportunity because their commanders had not yet reached agreement on the choice of a suitable battlefield. While in fact O'Sullivan and Prince Charles argued that the moorland was good terrain for their troops, Lord Murray objected (and the facts would prove him right), that such a battlefield would sap the feared charges of the Highlanders, instead allowing the British to make the most of the firepower of musketeers and artillery.

These discussions lasted all day, while the Jacobite troops remained lined up motionless, prey to cold and hunger. Late at night, an attack on the British camp was ordered, but was repulsed.

Demoralized, hungry and bewildered by their commanders' absurd handling of the situation, the Jacobite soldiers retreated, without having a chance to rest during the night. Some, exhausted, threw themselves sleepily along the road and were surprised and massacred by pickets of British soldiers.

At dawn on April 16, Charles Edward deployed his troops; his entire army consisted of just over 5,000 men, including the two battalions of the French army's Jacobite regiments, the Écossais Royaux and the Brigade Irlandaise, and a few hundred poorly armed cavalrymen. Artillery counted only thirteen old light field guns of French origin. The Highlanders arranged themselves in clan order forming two lines, while Lord Kilmarnock's weak cavalry and Franco-Irish troops stood in reserve. On the other side of the battlefield deployed the Duke of Cumberland's fifteen excellently trained regiments of line infantry, including three Scots from clans loyal to the Hanoverians, and two regiments of dragoons.

The British army under Lord Cumberland's orders was deployed in three lines: the first two (commanded by the Earl of Albemarle and Major General John Huske, respectively) consisted of six battalions, while the third, held as a reserve, consisted of three battalions under the orders of Sir John Morduant. The sides were protected by cavalry, while artillery, far more powerful than that available to the Jacobite army, was deployed in the spaces between battalions. Finally, on the left side of the deployment were positioned three battalions of Scots loyal to the House of Hanover, who made up the Argyll militia; the latter were, according to English plans, to encircle the rebel army, taking it from the side. Most of the information about the disposition of the Duke of Cumberland's army is obtained, in addition to military dispatches, from the two letters that the then Major James Wolfe wrote the day after the battle.

The clash was opened, around 10 a.m., by fire from the small Jacobite guns, rendered ineffective by the excessive distance and inexperience of the artillerymen. Although the swampy terrain had diminished the power of the enemy artillery, while waiting for the order to attack, the long line of tartans still suffered very substantial losses and morale began to plummet. However, Prince Charles waited as long as an hour before giving the signal to attack because, being far from the front line, he did not realize how many casualties the British artillery was making in his ranks. When the rebels finally decided to attack, moreover, the MacDonalds refused to carry out the order, enraged at being placed on the army's left flank while ignoring their traditional position on the right flank. This insubordination meant that only part of the Jacobite forces actually took part in the battle.

The clans of the Chattan Confederacy were the first to charge at the wild cry of the Highlanders, but the marshy terrain before them forced them to converge to the right, thus going to bar the way for the other regiments of Highlanders and pushing them further and further toward the stone wall. Despite the great havoc created by this accidental maneuver, the Jacobites continued to advance intrepidly. The army they faced, however, in addition to being numerically superior, was substantially different from those against whom the Jacobites had scored several victories: the army of Lord Cumberland consisted of the elite units of the English army, whose members were genuine veterans who had taken part, in some cases, in the battles of Dettingen and Fontenoy in Europe. Having thus come within a stone's throw of the British lines, the Highlanders were hit by musketry discharges and machine-gun fire from artillery. Nevertheless, a large number of Jacobites reached the enemy lines, and for the first time in a long time a battle was decided by hand-to-hand confrontation between Highlanders armed with sword and shield and English redcoats with muskets and bayonets set. In the savage melee that followed, particularly with the 4th Line Regiment, the Jacobite charge was halted and the few rebels who managed to penetrate the enemy's first line were mowed down by fire from the second.

While the attack was still in progress, a portion of the British troops had climbed over the stone wall and the Argyll militia, led by Lord Campbell, advanced, taking the Jacobite flank. Now confident of victory, the British finally pushed back the few surviving rebels and exterminated the wounded. Lord Mark Kerr's dragoons under the orders of General Hawley charged the fleeing troops, carrying out a veritable massacre. Prince Charles Edward fortunately escaped death and capture, managing to escape together with a small escort. To cover his escape, French and Irish regiments immolated themselves.

In just one hour the Duke of Cumberland had achieved a crushing victory. About 1,250 Jacobites lay dead on the battlefield, as many were more or less seriously wounded, and 558 prisoners had been taken. The British had lost about fifty men, most from Barrell's and Munro's regiments; the wounded numbered 259.

The disastrous outcome of the battle finally ended both the Stuart plans to regain the English throne and the Scottish dream of becoming independent from England once again. The total extermination of the wounded ordered on his soldiers resulted in the Duke of Cumberland being nicknamed "Billy the Butcher" by the Scots. Some high-ranking prisoners were taken to Inverness to be tried and executed, while three rebel lords were sent to London.

Charles Edward fled the battlefield and spent another five months as a fugitive in Scotland, with a £30,000 bounty on his head. Aided by a Scottish noblewoman, Flora MacDonald, shortly thereafter, Handsome Charles adventurously left Scottish soil disguised as a woman to take shelter in France.

Immediately after the battle, Cumberland went to Inverness with his saber still covered in blood, as a symbolic gesture and warning. The following day, the massacre went on. The Duke emptied the prisons of English prisoners and ordered them to be filled with Jacobite prisoners. A number of those arrested were taken to England to be tried for high treason. A series of trials took place in Berwick-upon-Tweed, York, and London, and many Jacobites were held captive for some time in pontoons on the Thames and in Tilbury Fort, where they were tortured and left to die. Executions were conducted at a ratio of one to twenty. In all, 3,470 Jacobites and other supporters were taken prisoner at Culloden, of whom 120 were sentenced to death and 88 died in the prisons; 936 were deported to the colonies and 222 exiled. While many were later released, the fate of nearly 700 remained unknown. In the same way that he carried out summary justice on Jacobite prisoners, Cumberland was also inflexible toward his own men, having 36 British deserters shot. The repression carried out, however, was not very different in heinousness from that operated by James II at the time of the Monmouth Rebellion, with Judge Jeffreys' bloody assizes.

Unlike the Scottish rebels, the pickets of Irish soldiers in the French army were granted a formal surrender and given honorable treatment, even allowing them a return to France: they were considered regular soldiers of a foreign nation, subject to the normal code of war. Jacobite prisoners, on the other hand, seen as traitors, were treated accordingly.

The repression of government troops against the Jacobites and their sympathizers continued in the following months. The British also took several measures to permanently subjugate Scotland, annihilating its customs and traditions: Scots were forbidden to wear kilts or play bagpipes, with the sole exception of regiments recruited into the English army; this set of laws, called the Act of Proscription, was supplemented by the Tenures Abolition Act, which decreed the end of the feudal bond of military service, and the Heritable Jurisdictions Act, which abolished the virtual authority chiefs had over their clans. The new ecclesiastical provisions aimed to proscribe the main religious denomination of the Jacobites, Episcopalianism. Scottish cultural roots were also severely tested by the English, who opposed the use of Gaelic and the recitation of ancient Scottish literary works.

Following the battle Händel wrote the oratorio Judas Maccabeus in honor of the Duke of Cumberland, with the celebrated aria "See how the conquering hero comes."

Before the Duke of Cumberland took command of the British army, King George II's troops were assembled at Newcastle-upon-Tyne under the orders of Field Marshal George Wade. On October 15, 1745, the hymn God Save the King in honor of King George was officially published for the first time in The Gentleman's Magazine. The sixth and final stanza, removed in the late 20th century when the anthem was officially adopted as the national anthem, contained the following words:

A remnant of a tribal society now doomed, the clan (from the Gaelic clann, "family," "son") represented the pivotal social structure of the Scottish Highlands. It was composed of families who considered themselves descended from the same ancestors and often bore the same surname. The chieftain, who held the title of lord, had possession of all the lands on which members of his clan lived; these, in return for the right to cultivate them, were required to follow him to war. Each clan was distinguished by a particular color scheme, in typical Celtic geometric patterns, called tartan, which was worn on kilts, plaids, and other clothing. The Jacobite army that fought at Culloden included men from: Clan Stuart (Stewart of Appin), Clan Donnachaidh, Clan MacDonald of Keppoch, Clan MacDonnell of Glengarry, Clan MacDonald of Clanranald, Clan Mackinnon, Clan Cameron, Clan Gordon, Clan Fraser, Clan MacGregor, Clan MacLean, Clan MacLeod, Clan MacIntyre, Clan Ogilvy, Clan Chisholm, Clan MacLaren, Clan MacLea, Clan MacBain, Clan MacLachlan, Clan Macnaghten, and Clan Chattan (confederation consisting of: Clan Davidson, Clan MacGillivray, Clan Macpherson, Clan MacKintosh, Clan MacDuff, and Clan Farquharson).

The Jacobite Army

Prince Charles Edward's Highlanders were totally unable to execute on the battlefield the complicated infantry maneuvers imposed by the eighteenth-century drill. They knew only one tactic, used in the clan clashes over land or livestock ownership that had involved the Highlands for centuries: the savage charge to a furious melee in which the physical strength and courage of individuals decided the outcome of the encounter. During the "Forty-Five," this way of fighting proved effective as long as the Highlanders faced the small and untrained English county militia, but it failed utterly at Culloden, where the Duke of Cumberland's army, large in number and made up of regular veteran regiments, halted their momentum with deadly musket fire.

However, the Jacobite army could also count on numerous veterans of the European wars, both embedded within the regular clan militias as veterans (Scotland, especially the northern one, had been supplying soldiers to the British army for more than a century, and all the more so after the Act of Union), and, above all, in the small (and minoritaire at that juncture) regular Scottish and Irish formations of the Spanish and French armies. Soldiers of the "royal Scottish regiment" (Règiment écossais royaux) and the French Irish brigade (re-infused with some elements of the Spanish Irish regiments) constituted a small but relatively well-trained and robust reserve for the Jacobite army, capable of fighting according to eighteenth-century drill standards (and particularly according to French regulations).

The British Army

The regular regiments that the Duke of Cumberland commanded at Culloden found their origin in the military reforms of Oliver Cromwell and his New Model Army operated during the English Civil War, whose organization and traditional scarlet red color of uniforms they retained. The rigid eighteenth-century drill, however, was inherited from King William III's long wars on the Continent. Trained to fight by battalion in long ranks three ranks deep, British soldiers relied on the precise fire of their muskets, the effectiveness of which was determined by iron training, and the deadly impact of bayonets in hand-to-hand combat. Beginning in the early eighteenth century one company of each battalion was given the name grenadiers. It consisted of the bravest and most robustly built soldiers (no less than six feet tall) armed, in addition to the musket and bayonet, with a few fuse grenades to be thrown by hand, which, however, soon fell into disuse. As a distinguishing mark, grenadiers wore a mitre instead of the normal tricorn hat, an element that made them look like true giants.

Order of battle

The following is the order of battle of the two armies, with relative losses.

Sources

1. Battle of Culloden
2. Battaglia di Culloden
3. ^ Colonel John William Sullivan wrote, "All was confused ... such a chiefe of a tribe had sixty men, another thiry, another twenty, more or lesse; they would not mix nor seperat, & wou'd have double officers, yt is two Captns & two Lts, to each Compagny, strong or weak ... but by little, were brought into a certain regulation".[25]
4. ^ A Highland Jacobite officer wrote: "We were likewise forbid in the attack to make use of firearms, but only of sword, dirk and bayonet, to cutt the tent strings, and pull down the poles, and where observed a swelling or bulge in the falen tent, there to strick and push vigorously".[43]
5. ^ An unknown British Army corporal's description of the charge into the government's left wing: "When we saw them coming towards us in great Haste and Fury, we fired at about 50 Yards Distance, which made Hundreds fall; notwithstanding which, they were so numerous, that they still advanced, and were almost upon us before we had loaden again. We immediately gave them another full Fire and the Front Rank charged their Bayonets Breast high, and the Center and Rear Ranks kept up a continual Firing, which, in half an Hour's Time, routed their whole Army. Only Barrel's Regiment and ours was engaged, the Rebels designing to break or flank us but our Fire was so hot, most of us having discharged nine Shot each, that they were disappointed".
6. ^ Cumberland wrote: "A captain and fifty foot to march directly and visit all the cottages in the neighbourhood of the field of battle, and search for rebels. The officers and men will take notice that the public orders of the rebels yesterday was to give us no quarter".[74]
7. ^ Out of 27 officers of the English "Manchester Regiment", one died in prison; one was acquitted; one was pardoned, two were released for giving evidence, four escaped, two were banished, three were transported and eleven were executed. The sergeants of the regiment suffered worse, with seven out of ten hanged. At least seven privates were executed, some no doubt died in prison, and most of the rest were transported to the colonies.[76]
8. ^ Vale a dire Inghilterra, Scozia e Irlanda.
9. ^ Una 64 cannoni. Per "terza classe" si intendono vascelli di linea tra 64 ed 80 cannoni.
10. ^ Cit. in: Brander, Michael. Scottish and Border Battles and Battles. New York, Random House, 1988.
11. ISBN 9789463594257
12. Erickson: Bonnie Prince Charlie, W. Morrow, New York, 1989 S. 152f.
13. Pittock: Culloden, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2016 S. 26.
14. Fortescue: A History Of The British Army Bnd II., Macmillan, London, 1910 S. 133ff.
15. Charteris: William Augustus, duke of Cumberland, E. Arnold, London, 1913 S. 224., S. 240., S. 246.