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The afternoon of 16 April 1746, off the Scottish coast near Inverness: snow showers and hail, His Majesty's Sloop the
Shark at anchor. 'About noon', wrote Captain Middleton in his ship's journal, 'saw the engagement begin betwixt His Royal Highness and the rebels on Clydon (Culloden) Moor about three miles south east of Inverness. At 2
the firing on both sides ceased: anchored off of Inverness. Saw a party of horse coming alongshore who told us that they had got a complete victory over the rebels. At 4 saluted His Royal Highness with 21 guns at the
time we judged he entered Inverness from the battle. At 7 went on shore to Inverness to wait on H.R.H. and give him joy of his conquest.' For His Royal Highness, the duke of Cumberland, the portly 25 year-old son of
King George II and commander of the royal army, it had been the happy outcome of a long campaign. The previous November the Jacobite army had come down from the north into England, and the regiments that the duke was
commanding in Flanders against the French had returned to Britain. In hard winter weather they had marched the length of England in pursuit of the Stuart prince and his tartan clad Highlanders. Supplied by sea from
transports such as those the Shark was escorting, the duke's army, 9000 strong, had marched up the eastern coast of Scotland to the shores of the Moray Firth. There they foolishly had been allowed by their adversaries
to cross unchallenged the swift flowing, unbridged River Spey and so to march on the burgh of Inverness, the headquarters of the Jacobites. On the morning of 16 April, with cavalry, infantry, guns, baggage
and camp followers, the Duke rode from his encampment near Nairn to attack Prince Charles's 6000 men, drawn up in two long lines on Culloden Moor, in the boggy, heather-clad upland country outside Inverness. Local
people knew it as Drumossie Moor. What came to be known as 'Drumossie Day' would be etched on their memories. Virtually the last hope of Jacobite success had vanished the previous night when, unknown to Cumberland, the
Jacobite army had attempted a surprise attack in the hours of darkness on his encampment near Nairn. This had been the plan of Lord George Murray, the Jacobite general. However, as military men have found throughout the
years, successful night attacks are hard to mount. As first light glimmered in the eastern sky and the cocks of Nairn began to crow, Lord George and the clan regiments were still miles away, and the attempt at surprise
was seen to have failed. There followed bitter recrimination between Charles and his general, the prince now hearkening to the fatal advice of Colonel O'Sullivan, his inept Irish adviser from the French army, that there
was nothing for it now but a pitched battle with the duke's army on the open moor. That morning Charles was still confident that God who, he was sure, so clearly intended his father to become king of
Scotland and England would grant him a victory. But it was the wrong field of battle for the Highlanders. No downhill slope to give impetus to the speed of a Highland charge; and an open moor giving full play to
the duke's vastly superior artillery. Nor was the Highland army at full strength. Some of its best fighting men were elsewhere in the Highlands on minor military operations of war such had been the surprise to the
Jacobites of Curnberland's quick advance from Aberdeen. The absence of these, the formidable MacPhersons from Badenoch, the MacDonnels from Knoydart and the hard men of Clan Gregor, would now be sorely felt. Of the 6000
who could now be mustered, many were exhausted after the abortive night march on Nairn; and all were hungry, Charles's supply system for once breaking down. The cannonade on Culloden Moor heard at about noon on the
Shark was, in fact, heralding the beginning of the battle. The guns of the redcoat army, under the command of an efficient officer, Major William Belford of the Royal Regiment of Artillery, fired round shot that clove
paths through the ranks of clan regiments 300 yards away. The few guns at Charles's command could make only a feeble response, he was also short of trained gunners. Cumberland, surveying the field of the coming battle
on horseback, played a waiting game as his guns did their execution. In an agony of frustration, Charles, also on horseback and positioned behind the two lines of his army, waited in vain for Cumberland's
army to advance. When it did so, Charles would send the clan regiments into their ferocious charge that had served him so well at Prestonpans and Falkirk. After half an hour of bombardment by Major Belford's guns, the
tartan-clad regiments of the right wing of the Highland army - Mackintosh, Cameron, Stewart of Appin, Stewart of Atholl, MacLachlans from the shores of Loch Fyne, MacLeans from Morvern, Farquharsons from Deeside all
goaded beyond endurance, broke out in a desperate shouting wedge bearing down on the left of the government army. Meanwhile the regiments of Clan Donald, whose onset Cumberland and his officers had feared the most as
they viewed them and their clan banners through their spy glasses, did not come simultaneously to charge. Even though they too had suffered from the work of the Royal Regiment of Artillery, there were reasons for their
relative caution. Their position was further from the government lines. The boggy ground to their front would rob their charge of its impetus. And in the frame of mind typical of the old Highlands, Clan Donald harboured
a grievance from having been denied their traditional place of honour on the right wing of the army. As the clans of the right wing swept down on Cumberland's army, Major Belford ordered his guns to change
from round shot to firing grape shot, devastating at short range. Cumberland's regiments opened fire as the Highlanders came into range, becoming hidden by the dense black smoke of their disciplined volleys. The heroic
clansmen who survived this fearful ordeal by fire were themselves valiantly met by Barrel's (later the 4th Regiment of Foot) and Munro's regiments in desperate hand to hand combat, the Highlanders' whirling broadsword
against the push of the government bayonet. Barrel's was all but scattered as Cameron and Mackintosh broke through to die in front of the muskets of one of Cumberland's Scottish regiments. Meanwhile the Clan Donald
regiments on the left, so one of Cumberland's officers recorded, 'came on three several times within a hundred yards of our men, firing their pistols and brandishing their swords'. They did not succeed in drawing the
fire of Cumberland's regiments. As Clan Donald faltered, the chief of the Keppochs was heard to shout in Gaelic, 'Mv God, have the children of my clan deserted me?' These were his last words, he was shot down charging
the government lines. During this, other Scots of the government army, the companies of Argyll men under their Campbell officers kept up a deadly enfilading fire on the now disordered clans of the Jacobite right wing.  |
