Published in Scotland Magazine Issue 12 on 19/1/2004.

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A bloody end to an uprising

Culloden stands out as a defining moment in Scottish history. James Irvine Robertson looks back

There have been far bloodier battlefields than the nondescript stretch of moorland a few miles east of Inverness called Culloden.

But stand there amid the flapping banners from where the Highlanders began their final charge towards the immaculate lines of redcoats and even the most hard-boiled is affected by the atmosphere of melancholy and wasted heroism.

Not only brave men died there, but one of the richest and most ancient cultures of Europe.

The Rising of 1745 came about when Bonnie Prince Charlie, grandson of the last Stuart king of Great Britain, landed in the western Highlands in July to raise an army to reclaim what he saw as his rightful throne.

About half the clans joined him because their honour demanded it. Their forbears had been fighting for his family, off and on, for a century. But to most Scots Charles and his alarming, tartan-clad savages were anachronisms.

The Industrial Revolution was stirring; the foundations of parliamentary democracy were being forged and the concept of returning to an absolute, Catholic monarchy was absurd.

Charles’s army came within 150 miles of the capital before the authorities organised themselves to counter it.

Prince Charles’s cousin, the Duke of Cumberland, son of King George II and an experienced general, was given overall command of some 10 times the number of troops as the rebels. The ultimate result was never in doubt but not until the 16th April 1746 did the redcoats finally confront the rebels in the last battle t.....

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By James Irvine Robertson

Section : Scottish History

Page number : 20