For educational purposes
On 16 April 1746, on Drummossie Moor overlooking Inverness, a well supplied Hanoverian army led by the Duke of Cumberland annihilated the much smaller army of Lord John Murray and the leader he mistrusted, Prince Charles Edward Stuart.
It was Bonnie Prince Charlie's final assault on the English, and the bloodiest of all the Jacobite battles. It was also the last battle fought on
On 16 April 1746, on Drummossie Moor overlooking Inverness, a well supplied Hanoverian army led by the Duke of Cumberland annihilated the much smaller army of Lord John Murray and the leader he mistrusted, Prince Charles Edward Stuart.
It was Bonnie Prince Charlie's final assault on the English, and the bloodiest of all the Jacobite battles. It was also the last battle fought on
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00:00You
00:30This
00:48flat and featureless moorland is the site of the last battle to be fought on British
00:53soil. It was here that the Scottish clans made their last desperate charge.
01:05Battered by a storm of shot from the government cannons, they waited for the army to advance.
01:13When it finally came, they had to charge across an exposed plain, devoid of cover or shelter,
01:20in order to reach the lines of well-drilled regular soldiers waiting to receive them.
01:34Not surprisingly, the Battle of Culloden ended in a brutal defeat for the Highlanders. Today
01:42the moor is their grave. It is also the last resting place of the Jacobite cause for which
01:48they fought.
01:54The Jacobites were the supporters of the deposed King James II, who was a Catholic and who
02:01lost the throne of Great Britain for that reason in 1688.
02:07James tried to revive his fortunes in 1689 in Scotland and in 1690 in Ireland, but essentially
02:15the Protestant forces were too strong and so he was forced into France to live as a
02:21pensioner of the King of France.
02:24James's son, also called James, then made a number of attempts to regain the throne,
02:30increasingly relying upon the Scots and particularly the Catholic Highland clans to do the work
02:36for him. 1708 his proposed landing actually failed to transpire, but in 1715 James came
02:44ashore after the main battle of the campaign had been fought at Sheriffmuir, too late to
02:49influence the events. Nonetheless he tried again in 1719 with Spanish help and that failed
02:55at the Battle of Glenshiel.
03:00In 1743 Britain and France became embroiled in yet another major war and despite all their
03:08previous experiences, the exiled supporters of the House of Stuart had long been planning
03:14another rising.
03:20James, the son of James II, was entirely dependent on the French King for his maintenance because
03:26he had no claims to England at all, his father having been expelled. And his son, the young
03:32pretender, was Charles Edward Stuart and essentially Charles Edward was a debonair young chevalier
03:40as he was known and it was thought that he might get more support than the rather elderly
03:45and ailing James.
03:48The French agreed to help.
03:56In 1719 James had been thwarted by a terrible storm which wrecked the Spanish fleet gathered
04:03to support the Stuart rising in 1719.
04:07In 1744 when a French fleet is assembled exactly the same thing happens. The French fleet is
04:14wrecked in a huge storm. I think that alone would have been enough to tell anyone that
04:18the odds are certainly stacked against you. But probably because Prince Charles is so
04:22young, he's only 25, he's still got all the rashness of youth, he thinks it's enough merely
04:28to make the attempt and despite all the evidence to the contrary he feels that the public will
04:33rally to his banner.
04:42Landing with only seven companions at Arras Aig on the west coast of Scotland, the Prince
04:48did not give the appearance of a man about to lead a triumphant crusade. The clan chiefs
04:57had agreed to support a rising in the belief that they would be assisting an invasion by
05:02French regular troops.
05:05The Jacobites throughout their exiled monarchy always required major foreign intervention
05:13to enable them to support a successful rising because of the critical military mass needed
05:22to defeat what was in effect an 18th century superpower, Great Britain.
05:28French military intervention was absolutely essential if the rebellion of 1745 was to
05:35have any chance of success whatsoever. I think the Highland chiefs were aware of that and
05:40Charles Edward Stuart himself probably knew that.
05:52Here at Glenfinnan, on the 19th of August 1745, his standard was raised more in hope
05:59than expectation. At first it seemed that none would come, but eventually the sound
06:07of the pipes floated down the glen.
06:22Much against their better judgement, Cameron of Lochiel and the MacDonalds of Glengarry,
06:28Kepoch and Clanrunald brought in their followers. The 45 had begun.
06:37Once raised, the small army marched first to Perth. The next move was to make a dash
06:44for Edinburgh. As they marched southward towards Perth, additional men joined the Prince's
06:51colours.
06:58The Prince had appointed Lord George Murray and the Duke of Perth as his Lieutenant Generals
07:06and James Johnson as his aide-de-camp.
07:11The organisation of the Highland Army was intended to be inter-regiments, about 500
07:17men each, and essentially these were linked to clans. So you had a clan regiment because
07:22then you had all the coherence of people who were relatives and wanted to fight well for
07:27one another. And so in those terms it was coherent, but in terms of an army of the mid-18th
07:34century it was rather old-fashioned and ramshackle.
07:38This was at best a rebel army. It didn't have the drill and the discipline of a regular
07:43army and where it really fell down were in matters of supply and logistics.
07:52The Jacobite army in 1745 is quite often portrayed as if it was a tribal army or a kind of rag
07:59bag of very dissimilar units, but in fact we've got two surviving regimental order books
08:06from the army of 1745 and that and other evidence makes it very clear that the army was conventionally
08:12organised in exactly the same way as most continental or British armies were at the
08:18time.
08:21At first the Jacobites could muster only some 1,200 men, but their support in Scotland was
08:28growing. The commander of the British troops in Scotland, General Sir John Cope, therefore
08:35took a difficult decision. He had two choices. Either he could stand fast and defend the
08:44line of the fourth, as the Duke of Argyll had done against the Jacobites in 1715, or
08:52he could march into the Highlands to nip the rebellion in the bud, as General Whiteman
08:57had done in 1719. The first option was out of the question. It meant abandoning most
09:06of Scotland to the Jacobites and the rising might then take months to suppress. Cope therefore
09:14marched northwards, hoping to enlist the support of the Protestant Highland clans who were
09:20sympathetic to the government.
09:23The Forty-Five Rising has some elements of a Catholic-Protestant conflict, but those
09:30are really the elements that were dreamt up as propaganda by the government. About 70%
09:38of the Jacobite army were Episcopalian Scots and they were fighting against people on the
09:45other side who were, to all intents and purposes, their co-religionists, Anglican soldiers in
09:51King George's army. And the relatively small number of Catholics who supported the Jacobites
09:57were magnified out of all proportion by propaganda.
10:02To the dismay of Sir John, he found none of the pro-government clans were willing to support
10:08him. So, with the Jacobites rapidly gaining strength, Cope was forced to turn aside rather
10:16than risk a battle. He therefore made for Aberdeen. With Cope out of the way, the road
10:24to the south now lay open and the Jacobites raced southwards for Edinburgh, the capital
10:30of Scotland. The citizens of Edinburgh opposed the Jacobites, but they were unwilling to
10:37fight and the city was taken by surprise and captured on the 17th of September, 1745.
10:46Probably with the connivance of the city authorities.
10:56As the Jacobites settled down to the occupation of the capital of Scotland, General Cope had,
11:02meanwhile, found enough shipping to take his army south by sea. He had hoped to retake
11:09Edinburgh, but instead his troops were surprised and routed on these fields by the Highland
11:16army at the Battle of Prestonpans, early on the morning of the 21st of September, 1745.
11:28Under the skilful leadership of Lord George, the Highlanders had changed position during
11:33the night to gain the advantage of drier ground to charge over. The early morning mist
11:40over the flat field had helped to mask the approach of the Highland army from a new and
11:46unexpected direction. Their sudden charge prompted a panic in the government ranks where
11:53Redcoat forces were still struggling to reorganise. The government dragoons were the first to
12:00break ranks, but as the Highlanders came down upon them, the infantry soon followed suit.
12:09In a brief flurry of flashing broadswords, the government army was reduced to a fleeing
12:15rabble. Unfortunately, the ease of the victory was to lead to an overconfidence in the power
12:23of the Highland charge. It was to have disastrous consequences later in the campaign.
12:44Despite the fact that Charles Edward had claimed the throne of Scotland and actually had his
12:49father proclaimed as James VIII of Scotland, he decided that his real mission lay in winning
12:58the throne of England. Still unsupported by French troops, Charles Edward Stuart viewed
13:06his Highland army as the only option for regaining that throne too. But even the prince himself
13:13must have suspected its unsuitability for the job. Nonetheless, against the expressed
13:22wishes of many of the Highland chiefs, on the 1st of November 1745, Edinburgh was abandoned
13:30and the invasion of England began. The invasion of England did have some prospect
13:36of success. Charles Edward raised several thousand Highlanders and that gave him a substantial
13:43force. And with the British army being largely involved on the continent, a sharp movement
13:48south might well have succeeded in achieving his aim, which was to get himself to London
13:55and challenge what he saw as the Hanoverian usurper.
14:00The invasion progressed rapidly and the Jacobites were soon in control of Manchester. The youthful
14:07Duke of Cumberland, with a substantial field army, tried to intercept the Jacobites near
14:12Lichfield but they bypassed him and by the 4th of December were at Derby, only 127 miles
14:22from London. With no immediate sign of French reinforcements,
14:30the Jacobite army halted at Derby. There the young pretender and his officers argued for
14:37two days about what to do next. Charles Edward Stuart himself insisted that
14:43they should continue to London but his military advisers said to him that with the force reduced
14:49by the attrition of the march to barely 5,000 men, he couldn't advance and deal with the
14:57city itself. However, in London there was general panic and George II had actually prepared
15:03all his treasure to be put on boats to be taken away.
15:11In the end, Charles had to accept the decision of the Highland chiefs. But he ever more considered
15:18himself betrayed by the Highlanders and increasingly relied upon his Irish quartermaster general,
15:24John William O'Sullivan, in preference to the Highland chiefs represented by Lord George
15:31Murray. The decision to turn back at Derby made absolute
15:37sense. With not one but two government armies closing in on them and far away from their
15:43base of popular support, if the Jacobites had lost a battle near Coventry, it would
15:48have been a disaster for them. They had to leave England as quickly as they possibly
15:53could and there was never any real doubt about that in the minds of people like Lord George
15:57Murray. They had only agreed to march into England on the expressed understanding that
16:02they were going to be backed by a large body of French regular troops. When that didn't
16:08happen, there was no question that they had to turn round and get out of England as quickly
16:12as they possibly could. On the 6th of December, the army turned around
16:19and began retreating northwards. It's one of the most wonderful what-if questions
16:25in history, whether the Jacobite army should have turned back at Derby. If the Jacobites
16:29had advanced, they would have beaten Cumberland to London. London was defended by only 17
16:35companies afoot, including irregular militia and the Black Watch. So the Jacobites would
16:42have entered London and after that, who knows what would have happened. It all boils down
16:48to whether the English Jacobites would have risen if they had seen the success and or
16:56whether the French, who were certainly planning to make landfall, would have effectively landed
17:01their own Irish and Scottish troops in the French service on the south coast of England.
17:07And then who could have said what the long-term future would be.
17:15Still expecting the Jacobites to move on London, Cumberland had planned to fight them near
17:20Coventry and he was taken completely by surprise by the sudden change of direction. So the
17:27Highland army had almost reached Scotland before he managed to re-establish contact.
17:34Unhindered for the moment, the Jacobites made for Glasgow and then laid siege to Stirling
17:40Castle. General Henry Hawley attempted to relieve the garrison but he was defeated in
17:49a hard-fought battle outside Falkirk on 17th January.
17:57Despite the fact that it is normally regarded as a Jacobite victory, the Battle of Falkirk
18:03nevertheless gave the Jacobites something of a fright.
18:08It was the first time that the British line regiments stood and successfully repelled
18:13a Highland charge. They'd run away at Prestonpans the year before, they'd been able to make
18:19any headway at Penrith earlier on and Falkirk proved that the Highland charge could be beaten.
18:27So although it wasn't decisive, it had that implication and of course that meant a lot
18:32of the time we'd come to Culloden.
18:40By now a small contingent of French regulars had finally arrived in Scotland to assist
18:45the Jacobites and it was this detachment which saw off the government troops and thus won
18:51the battle for Charles. Unfortunately, the French troops who helped secure the victory
18:59at Falkirk were the only French regulars to be sent to assist the 45.
19:08The French invasion had again been called off and the Duke of Cumberland hurried north
19:13again to take over Hawley's defeated army.
19:17Falkirk strategically was a disaster because what happened is that the government forces
19:24were handed over to the command of the Duke of Cumberland, the second son of George II
19:29and for him this was a personal campaign. He was on a crusade to eliminate the seeds
19:34of the Jacobite virus as he felt it to be once and for all.
19:41All of the predictions that the rising was bound to fail without French help were now
19:46coming true.
19:49After Falkirk the Jacobites had two choices. They could either advance into the central
19:54lowlands, try to re-occupy Edinburgh and recruit in Scotland, or they could retreat.
20:02The decision to retreat was taken in a panic when an exaggerated report of the number of
20:08deserters reached the Jacobite high command. After they'd begun to retreat it was clear
20:14that only a quarter of as many people were deserting as had actually been reported but
20:18by that time it was too late to go back. So Falkirk was potentially a victory which
20:23the Jacobites could have followed up but one which they had not the heart to do so.
20:30The Jacobites retreated northwards to Inverness. Cumberland pursued them slowly, halting for
20:37a month at Aberdeen. But on the 8th of April he left the city and within six days was at
20:45Nairn, only a few miles short of the Jacobite headquarters at Inverness.
20:55The speed of Cumberland's sudden advance caught the Jacobites by surprise. Although many of
21:01their best men were away there was no real option left but to fight. So on the morning
21:07of the 14th of April 1746 they marched out from Inverness prepared to take up their battle
21:14positions on Culloden Moor. But the government army did not appear that day nor the next.
21:27The 15th of April was Cumberland's birthday and to celebrate he gave his army a day's
21:33rest at Nairn before committing them to battle on the 16th.
21:39On the 15th of April, while the Jacobites waited in vain for the British army to advance,
21:45they hatched a desperate plan. The Jacobite leaders supposed that as his men were celebrating
21:53the Duke's birthday they were likely, as Lord George put it, to be drunk as beggars.
22:01They therefore agreed the ill-fated plan to secretly march on Cumberland's army by night
22:08and mount a dawn attack on the sleeping camp. This was to result in the infamous all-night
22:18march which preceded the Battle of Culloden.
22:25Lord George Murray's plan can be seen in some respects as a bold and daring attempt to catch
22:31the government army at a disadvantage. He understood that the Jacobite army was not
22:38as well equipped, was undergunned, did not have the artillery support of the government
22:43army and thus using the surprise combined with the main tactic of the Highland all-out
22:50charge might well have succeeded.
22:53But the crucial problem with the night march was the terrain and it was during the night
22:59march that we see aspects of different kinds of troops in the Jacobite army manifesting
23:07themselves. For example, the true Highland troops had to be called back several times
23:13because they were moving so fast they were detaching themselves from the rest of the
23:16army and if they had been allowed to go on they would have reached the camp. Whereas
23:22the French regulars, who were such an important part potentially of the army in battle, found
23:28marching over Moorland at night virtually impossible and they slowed up the whole attack.
23:36By first light they were still two miles short of their objective and it was clear that the
23:42British army would be ready and waiting for them in broad daylight.
23:50Lord George Murray, therefore, abandoned the attempt and ordered his men back to Culloden.
23:59The Prince was furious, but there was nothing to be done. After a night spent blundering
24:06around in the darkness, all that had been achieved was to exhaust his men on the eve
24:11of their greatest trial.
24:20The battlefield upon which the two armies faced each other was a broad ridge of moorland
24:30five miles to the south-east of Inverness. The Jacobites took up a strong-looking position
24:36between two sets of walled parks. On their right, the Culwinnock Park, stretching down
24:42to the river, and on their left, the walls of the Culloden Parks.
24:50Lord George Murray was very unhappy about the battlefield of Culloden. It was far too
24:56open and exposed. He knew that he needed to, at least to some extent, surprise the government
25:03army and certainly find some way of neutralising its advantage in artillery and cavalry. That
25:10meant that the moor of Culloden, which was so open, really he knew was placing the Highland
25:14Army in danger.
25:17It's said that Lord George Murray had selected a far more favourable battleground, but the
25:23Prince, with O'Sullivan in his ear, decided that Culloden Moor is the place they would
25:28fight. We'll never know for certain whether that's true, but certainly Culloden was by
25:33no means the ideal battlefield to deploy that Highland Army.
25:43By the time of Culloden, the Highland Army was more conventionally equipped, and most
25:48had French muskets and bayonets, though the front rank still kept their swords and targes.
25:56The Highland method of fighting, however, was still very different from that of the
26:03red-coated regulars opposite. They had neither the training nor, indeed, sufficient ammunition
26:10to engage in protracted exchanges of musket fire.
26:16Instead, led by the swordsmen in the front ranks, they came down to within musket range
26:25and shot, fired a single volley, and then ran in with sword and targe, hoping to induce
26:32panic in the enemy ranks. This was the famous Highland Charge.
26:40It was actually, on a much smaller scale, a similar tactic to Hitler's ground war blitzkrieg
26:47that you move forward on a very narrow front with maximum force, punch a hole, and then
26:51widen the hole as your troops poured through.
27:01One of the problems with this was that by the time of Culloden, they were facing at
27:06least some veterans of the French campaigns who were not going to be as easily frightened.
27:14It relied on shock action, and if the government troops were not frightened, if their morale
27:20was not already sagging by the time that the Highlanders charged, then this one-shot weapon,
27:27this one-shot charge, would encounter difficulties.
27:35Behind the Highland regiments in the front rank of the Jacobite army stood a second line
27:40of lowland Scots regiments, armed with French fire locks and bayonets, and stiffened by
27:46two regiments of French regulars. One was called the Irish Piquets, and the other was
27:54the blue-jacketed Royal Ecossais, or Royal Scots.
28:04All in all, the Jacobites ought to have mustered some 6,500 infantry. In addition, there were
28:11a small number of cavalrymen and gunners. Unfortunately, far too many of the Highlanders
28:18had straggled off in search of food and shelter, and the Jacobite army probably amounted to
28:24little more than 4,000 infantry on the field that day.
28:33In front of the Jacobite line were placed 11 three-pounder cannon, and it was these
28:40guns which would signal the commencement of the battle.
28:49On the other side of the moor, Cumberland had some 6,500 infantry drawn up in two lines.
28:57He also had a regiment of government Highlanders, the Argyll Militia, together with 14 troops
29:03of mounted dragoons on his flanks.
29:07One of the great myths about Culloden is that it has come to be portrayed as a war
29:13between Scotland and England. It never was that. In the best sense, it probably represented
29:20a civil war, and the Romantics probably hate to hear it, but there were a very substantial
29:26number of Scots on the side of the government, and they played a very significant role in
29:31the victory at Culloden.
29:39Unlike the civilians manning the cannon of the Jacobites, all of Cumberland's artillery
29:44men manning the ten guns of the army were well-trained professionals who handled the
29:49guns with deadly efficiency.
29:54Artillery was a very important battle winner in the mid-18th century, if you had enough
29:59of it. You have to remember that at Culloden there were only a few three-pounder guns,
30:04and they were relatively small weapons. But what artillery could do is it could disrupt
30:09the enemy's formation, and indeed what happened at Culloden was that the fire of the Cumberland's
30:15forces' artillery forced the Scots into advance, which they didn't necessarily want to do.
30:22So it could be dangerous and it could be disruptive, and at close range it was extremely bloody.
30:29The cannons of the period fired a solid shot, which was a vicious weapon. It would smash
30:37through people, it would tear off limbs, it would cause the most horrendous injuries.
30:43The guns themselves weren't particularly accurate, but it didn't help that the forces of the
30:48time stood shoulder to shoulder and effectively presented the gunners with a target that they
30:54could hardly miss.
30:57At this period, firepower normally decided the outcome of regular battles, but sometimes
31:04it was not enough, and the soldier then had to turn to his bayonet, which was a fearsome
31:10weapon.
31:14Utilising the lessons from Preston Pannes and Falkirk at Culloden, a departure on the
31:20normal bayonet drill was used.
31:27Instead of lunging straight forward at the man in front of him, who would be protected
31:31by his shield, each soldier was trained to thrust instead at the swordsman attacking
31:37the man on his right. By doing this, he would have a clean thrust at the unprotected right
31:44hand side of the Highlander.
31:48It's unclear as to how the new government bayonet drill actually worked out. Certainly
31:55the idea of every soldier using his bayonet to protect the soldier on his right and thus
32:02stabbing at the Highland clansman with his claymore upraised in his right arm was a very
32:09novel idea. Perhaps what's more important is its morale effect on the government soldiers,
32:16that here was a drill which they believed would give them the edge against the Highlanders.
32:23A great deal has often been made of the Cumberland bayonet drill. There is, in fact, precious
32:29little evidence that it worked. Where the Jacobite troops reached the government front
32:33line at Culloden, they broke it. And the reason that they didn't break it as effectively as
32:39they'd done on previous occasions was because so many of them had been killed during the
32:43charge.
32:51Sometime around midday, one of Cumberland's staff officers, Lord Berry, rode forward to
32:59count the Jacobite guns and was fired on by two of them. The government artillery fired
33:06back and the battle was begun.
33:14The ill-served Jacobite guns were soon silenced. Now, for as long as the Highlanders stood
33:24their ground, the government artillery kept up a steady rhythm of one round a minute with
33:29the ten guns. No one knows for certain how long the Highlanders stood facing this bombardment.
33:41It could have been for as little as ten minutes or as many as twenty, but they had to endure
33:46it because hundreds of men were still hurrying to the moor to rejoin their regiments. This
33:54delay was exacerbated by the unwillingness of the prince to give the order to attack.
34:02The government bombardment had relatively limited effects in terms of killing people,
34:07but it had very serious effects on morale. Standing still under heavy fire, even if not
34:12many people are being killed, is not a pleasant experience for half an hour when it's raining
34:16and you haven't had any breakfast.
34:20As the Jacobite army stood immobile awaiting the order to charge, General Hawley ordered
34:26his four companies of Argyll-Shear Highlanders to break down the walls in the enclosure on
34:32the Jacobite right flank in order to let the dragoons through to attack them. By doing
34:39so, he was threatening the right flank and rear of the Jacobite army. The moment had
34:46now arrived. The Highland army had to charge or be defeated.
34:54A brief respite was gained for the Jacobites when Lord Lewis Gordon's two lowland battalions
35:03from Aberdeen swung around to face the approaching dragoons. Faced with this threat, the order
35:11was given at last for a general assault on Cumberland's position while there was still
35:16time.
35:22Over the past hundred years, yelling mobs of clansmen had inspired fear and panic amongst
35:28regular troops on a score of battlefields. But at Culloden, it was to prove a disastrous
35:36failure.
35:39The Highland charge effectively needed three things to maximise its effectiveness. It needed
35:47either to have a downward slope, or to have confined space, or to have a short distance.
35:56At Culloden, it had a relatively long distance over poor ground, about 500 yards. It had
36:02a very wide space because Culloden Moor is very broad, and it certainly wasn't downhill,
36:08so it was a disastrous battlefield from that point of view.
36:12The Moor was not as featureless as it might at first have appeared. The Inverness Road
36:18ran diagonally across it from the bottom corner of the Culloden Park to Old Learnoch, and
36:24the ground between the road and the British army was wet and boggy.
36:33As the Jacobites set off towards the British lines, the Highland left, made up of Macdonald
36:40regiments, blundered into the morass, while those in the centre desperately tried to avoid
36:45it by swinging to their right. Unfortunately, they at once collided with Lord George Murray's
36:53right wing, which was itself veering to the left in order to avoid the Learnoch enclosure
36:59wall.
37:04For a moment, they were all brought to a confused halt, and Cumberland's gunners switched from
37:09round shot to grape shot.
37:14Grape shot was a very nasty weapon indeed. It was a bag of musket balls which was loaded
37:19into the cannon, and when it fired, it spread out, causing a storm of musket balls that
37:26would lacerate the people running towards you and cause the most horrendous injuries.
37:33After this pause, the Camerons and the Mackintoshes led the Jacobites on again, so that the whole
37:44weight of the attack fell upon just one battalion, Burrell's Fourth of Foot, now the King's
37:51own Royal Border Regiment.
37:54It was only on the Highlanders' right wing that they actually managed to contact some
38:00of the government forces, and when they did, the effect was devastating. The members of
38:06the regiment that absorbed the impact had to cope with the large claymores of the Highland
38:13troops and their charges, which could be used to protect the Highlanders.
38:22The men of Burrell's battalion fought back savagely, but were overwhelmed by sheer weight
38:28of numbers, losing one of their colours and nearly a third of their strength in killed
38:33and wounded.
38:36However, two regiments from the government's second line were ordered by a watchful Cumberland
38:44to march up to attack the Jacobite flank, while two more, including Sempil's Scots
38:50Borderers, engaged them from the front.
38:55There were now ranged around them some 1,700 well-drilled soldiers, who proceeded to fire
39:02five or six volleys into the column at point-blank range. In the space of just two terrible minutes,
39:10800 clansmen were killed or wounded, and the macabre outline of that massive column can
39:17still be traced today, in the great slew of graves stretching southwards from the Well
39:23of the Dead on Culloden Moor.
39:37Faced with those terrible point-blank volleys of musketry, some Jacobites began surrendering,
39:45but most of the survivors turned and ran back across the moor.
39:50On the other flank of the Highland Army, the MacDonalds struggled to within 20 yards
39:55of Cumberland's men, but then the relentless musket fire of the Royal Scots and Pulteney's
40:0213th Foot brought them to a complete halt. Not one of the MacDonalds even reached the
40:09British line.
40:16The Highland regiments in the Jacobite army had been routed, but the Battle of Culloden
40:22was still far from over.
40:29The Lowland units standing in the second line were a rather mixed bag, but there were some
40:35good regiments among them, and as the Highlanders came running back, a desperate fight began
40:41to protect their retreat. General Hawley's Dragoons and the Highlanders of the Argyll
40:48Militia were pushing into the Jacobite rear, threatening to encircle them. But James Moore
40:56of Stoneywood's Aberdeen regiment played a major role in keeping the government cavalry
41:01at bay.
41:09It was at about this time that the pretender himself made his escape.
41:16Lord Elko, the leader of his own bodyguard, called bitterly after him,
41:22Run, you cowardly Italian.
41:27With Elko's cry ringing in his ears, he rode off the field with a small escort of French
41:33cavalry to look to his own destiny.
41:47Even with the Prince gone and the Highland regiments scattered, the remnants of the last
41:52Jacobite army continued its final death struggle, and in one of history's sad little ironies,
41:59the Scots soldiers of the French Royal Ecossais in the Jacobite ranks exchanged fire for a
42:06time with the British Royal Scots of the Government Army.
42:11The French regiments at Culloden did not take a very important part in the main battle itself.
42:18They were kept in reserve, and the idea was that they could be used to follow up the impetus
42:24of the Highland charge. Of course, when the Highlanders came back, when they were broken,
42:29when they were routed, the French infantry's job then was to cover the retreat, and that's
42:34what they and their lowland supporters did, to try and get as many of the Jacobites away
42:39safely from the battle as they could.
42:42By doing so, they probably saved many lives, because afterwards, the Government Army was
42:46to demonstrate that they were in no mood to show any compassion.
42:53The brave actions of the Royal Ecossais gave the fleeing MacDonalds the brief respite they
42:58needed to escape. But as Government troops arrived, they were soon surrounded by Government
43:05cavalry, and after a fierce fight which left half of them dead or wounded, they laid down
43:11their arms, surrendering as prisoners of war.
43:21Once the Royal Ecossais had surrendered, there was nothing left to restrain the dragoons,
43:27and they mercilessly rode down the Jacobite fugitives. An indiscriminate slaughter of
43:34the fighting men and women and children who followed in the wake of the army began, and
43:39continued all the way into Inverness. No mercy was shown in respect of age or sex, and many
43:47innocent civilians were brutally murdered in the ensuing bloodshed.
43:55Back on the field, the battle was now over, and Cumberland marched his infantry forward
44:01across the moor to stand on the ground formerly occupied by the Jacobites. By this symbolic
44:08act, he formally claimed his victory.
44:15After the battle, the Prince, rather ungraciously, told his followers to fend for themselves,
44:22while he himself tried to escape back into exile into France. He doesn't appear to have
44:30shown much gratitude for the people who had lost everything in the support of the Stuart
44:36cause.
44:39In all, the British army lost a total of 50 killed at Culloden. On the other hand, something
44:47like 1,500 Jacobites were slain on the field or cut down on the road to Inverness.
44:57Hundreds more of the Jacobite wounded were taken prisoner. Indeed, over the next few
45:02days, the number of prisoners rose dramatically as the wounded Jacobites were brought in from
45:08the moor and fleeing fugitives were captured.
45:15Terrific atrocities were committed in the days that followed by small groups and squads
45:20of government soldiers under the direction of their officers.
45:26Cumberland had actually given orders that no quarter was to be meted out to any Jacobite
45:32prisoners. Thus, it's unclear as to whether the government army was out of control or
45:38whether it was following orders. Certainly, the government dragoons which galloped away
45:45in pursuit of the Jacobite army were out of control and were sabring often innocent bystanders.
45:54From the large number of prisoners that were taken in the aftermath of the Battle of Culloden,
45:59I don't think it's probably correct to say that the government army was out of control
46:04or there was any kind of systematic slaughter. But there certainly were a number of brutal
46:10and vicious incidents which took place on the field. There were definitely prisoners
46:14and wounded men who were murdered on the field of Culloden.
46:21We can divide the post-Culloden atrocities, if you like, into three phases. The first
46:27is the pursuit of the Jacobites long after the battle had been completed, the burning
46:33alive of groups in barns and the killing of fugitives without offer of quarter. The second
46:40phase was the pursuit of the Jacobite strongholds, if you like, the townships, the areas which
46:49had supported large-scale Jacobite activity, which were in many cases attacked and burnt
46:56and people driven out of their homes. The third was the starvation policy whereby the
47:04crops were effectively destroyed in these areas and therefore people starved to death.
47:15In the months which followed, many Jacobites were tried and executed, while hundreds more
47:20were transported to the American colonies or, most ironic of all, conscripted into the
47:27British army. Inevitably, for a man pledged to break the power of the clans forever,
47:35Cumberland's pacification of the highlands was heavy-handed and brutal, but the punitive
47:40expeditions served their purpose. The clans refused ever to rise in arms again.