The Battle of Culloden - The Jacobites

Ill-starred are the brave did no vision foreboding,

Tell you that fate had forsaken your cause,

Yet were you destined to die at Culloden,

No victory crown nor your fall with applause.

The Jacobite army, though it contained a Regiment of Irishmen and Scots serving with the French and a few lowlanders romantic or foolish enough to follow Prince Charlie, was essentially an army of Highland clansmen. As such it was the last feudal gathering to take the field in the history of Britain. To the English officers of Cumberland's staff they must have seemed like the Zulus or Apaches in later wars; admired for their courage, feared for their skill in battle and despised for the primitive nature of their society.

The clan was a group of men with a common surname and, in theory at least, connected by ties of blood. The chief was their master and bore both the name and the purest blood of this extended family's common progenitor.They grew up in a harsh enviroment that geology had formed untold millenia before their birth, when the great icesheets had carved out the Highland glens and bequeathed them a land of great defensive potential and little economic possibility. As the ice retreated most of the topsoil went with it, that remaining thin and poor. Simple animal husbandry was the only possible way to scratch a living from the land and the people became herders of hardy black cattle and goats. The thieving of these beasts was regarded as a noble profession for the clansmen to follow and the stories of martial glory and honour satisfied or discharged that were the stuff of the bards and storytellers' tales often had their genesis in the theft of livestock or other movables from neighbouring clans.

The chief had absolute power over his men, the power of 'pit and gallows', and there was no appeal against his judgement. Though by the 18th century the chief may have been educated at a university in Scotland or France, have spoken French, Latin and English as well as his native Gaelic, drunk claret at his table, it was his ability to protect his 'children' and lead them in battle that were the measure of the man. A chief's rent roll was calculated not in coin but in the number of broadswords that would follow him into battle. Already this system was an anachronism and only the difficulty of penetrating their Highland fastnesses had allowed it to go on for so long. Some of the chiefs had been lucky or prescient enough to sniff the direction of the prevailing wind and had hitched their banners to the government's flagstaff, most notably the Cambell Dukes of Argyll. Even today the Duke of Argyll is the foremost of Scotland's peers.

Duncan Forbes, the Lord President of the Council, who looked on his Highland neighbours with a condescension greatly softened by sympathy, once concluded that all the clans raised in a single body could have fielded over 32,000 broadswords; a daunting prospect for any government to face. Prince Charles never had more than 10,000 at any time during the '45 rising and usually he only had 4,000 or 5,000. The prospect of a united armies of the clans was, however, something that could never be. Like all tribal societies, ancient feuds, current jealousies and a tradition of perpetual strife made a mockery of any pretensions to unity.

On the morning of the 16th April 1746, as Cumberland's army advanced, the Jacobites had just returned from an abortive attempt at a surprise attack on the government camp at Nairn. They were cold and tired, none having slept the previous night. And they were hungry, the chaotic supply system of Prince Charles' army having left their rations back in Inverness. They were still a formidable foe. Sinewy, fast and strong they had spent their lives chasing deer, stealing cattle or fighting in the constant internecine feuds that bedevilled their race. Many had not wished to come out in rebellion but the common man had no right of refusal to a chief's command. Any that had been slow to respond to the call to arms would have had the roofs of their cottages burned by the chief. They wore the great plaid, a long sheet of woven wool wrapped around their thighs in the fashion of a skirt, and held at the shoulder by a brooch or pin. They carried basket-hilted broadswords that could cleave a limb from the body or a skull to the neck. With a round targe, or shield, covered in bullhide they could sweep away a bayonet and leave its red-coated holder open to the downward thrusts of their swords. The wealthier men carried silver embroidered pistols, the poorer great Lochaber axes to hew the life from their enemies. All carried dirks, the vicious Highland dagger that could gut a man foolish enough to let it get close. They had one tactic - the charge. A wild flurry of screaming men in headlong attack, it must have been terrible indeed to stand against, but it could be used only one time. Once it was released there was no recalling it and when its force was spent it could not be mounted again.

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