How Long Did The Battle Of Culloden Last

The battle of Culloden was fought 275 years ago, on 16 April, 1746. While the date of the boxing may not be equally well known as 1066 or 1314, the battlefield itself, just outside Inverness, is an important tourist destination. Apart from this year's being a major ceremony, Frances Owen asks, why and how should Culloden be remembered?

The boxing

Part of its significance is that the engagement between the British (or government, or Hanoverian; so many terms used when discussing the 1745 Rising are loaded) army, led past the Knuckles of Cumberland, and the Jacobite regular army, nether Prince Charles Edward Stuart, on Drummossie Moor was the concluding pitched battle fought by regular troops on British soil.

In 45 devastating minutes, it also finer ended any hopes of restoring the Stuart dynasty to the thrones of England, Scotland and Republic of ireland, though neither side seemed to think this at the fourth dimension.

Merely 1745 was more than than a dynastic struggle. The Jacobites, until recently often regarded merely as anachronistic supporters of absolute monarchy and/or a dying mode of life, had been a real, and lasting, threat to the 1707 Union of Parliaments, to national stability, and to Hanoverian Uk'due south more aggressive global expansion, funded past the Depository financial institution of England and the national debt.

This is borne out by the brutality of Cumberland's retaliations later the battle, designed to be not only punishments merely to stop the possibility of whatever further Jacobite rising, e'er. Equally the Duke said: "I tremble for fear that this vile spot [the Gaelic-speaking Highlands] may still be the ruin of this island and our family."

More officially, Parliament passed a number of Acts designed to disarm the Highlands and strip association chiefs of their powers. And the threat lingered; as late as in 1788 – by a twist of fate, a fortnight after Charles Edward had died on the other side of the world – Arthur Phillip, the outset governor of the penal colony of New South Wales, had to swear that he "abjured allegiance" to the exiled Stuart family.

It could even exist argued that the Jacobites' defeat at Culloden gave a green light to United kingdom's global dominance in the following century. At any charge per unit, it was much more significant than the inevitable end to a rash (if romantic) venture involving a European princeling and his savage (if romantic) Highland followers – equally it has often been portrayed.

Remembering the boxing

And way the battle has been interpreted is irresolute. Older, entrenched views are being challenged, oft in lite of new archival and archaeological evidence.

The battlefield itself, which played a large part in the Jacobites' defeat, wasn't, equally has often been claimed, chosen by Charles and his aide and quartermaster full general, John O'Sullivan confronting the advice of Lord George Murray, the Jacobite full general. Instead, information technology was where Charles's regular army had no choice merely to fight, beingness surprised on the morning of 16 April by the approaching authorities troops afterward returning from an unsuccessful night foray against Cumberland's camp.

As historians such as Murray Pittock and Jacqueline Riding have pointed out, this wan't a fight between government redcoats using muskets and Jacobite Highlanders armed with sword and targe, equally gimmicky and later images (see above) imply. The Jacobite regular army was by now fabricated up of Lowland Scots, some English volunteers, and French and Irish professional soldiers as well as Highland clansmen. And, as has oft been pointed out, there were Highland and Lowland soldiers in the British army.

Prince Charles's men had been well drilled in the months of the campaign and were themselves armed with muskets. And archaeological evidence has plant more shot fired by the Jacobite side than by the authorities troops.

These are just some examples of the myths told and retold, often unquestioningly. It'southward worth thinking why "Culloden has been so systematically misremembered equally a boxing" over the past 275 years, to use Murray Pittock's words. It's not hard to sympathize that the victors wrote history to scoff their defeated enemies. A rabble of kilted primitives led past an incompetent and effeminate 'pretended Prince of Wales' could never have conquered the well-armed and disciplined British troops; the Jacobites were no threat, an irrelevance, they implied (though at the same time nosotros know that the regime in London took the Jacobite claiming very seriously). Progress and civilisation (preferably British, of form) were inevitable.

Another, more than insidious, reason for portraying the Jacobites equally conflicting-looking, badly-armed savages with questionable loyalties who preferred outdated means of life to progress, lodge and the British way of life emerges, though; othering them.

These were tribal, uncivilised people who dressed outlandishly, spoke a foreign tongue and opposed British rule (and on British soil, too!); so they could – should – exist treated similar rebellious natives in the colonies. And, past extension, just as the Jacobite savages were conquered, tamed and put to skillful use in the ranks of the British army, then could the primitive people of other countries.

One time safely neutralised, the Jacobites were romanticised. The Bonnie Prince and his childlike, yet warlike, Highlanders swirled through the mists of the belatedly 18th century and well into the 20th, peaking in the 19th with Balmoral, tartan and tourism.

The battlefield

Culloden is the third-biggest tourist attraction in Scotland. In 2019, the company eye had 209,011 visits, with well-nigh the same number going to the battlefield alone. It has a place in the memories of people around the world, with its "special sense of identify" and the connection many feel with the dead who vicious at that place.

Books and films have helped, of course; the publication of John Prebble'due south Culloden in 1961 and Peter Watkins's 1963 picture show of the same name, based largely on the book, repeated some of the myths we've looked at. Only they raised awareness of the battle and the site and drew more people to run into information technology. The National Trust for Scotland (NTS), which owns and runs what nosotros think of now equally the battle site, rebuilt its visitor center several times to meet both the ascent demand and the need for (changing) interpretations of Culloden. They also oversee the changing appearance of the state, which was partly planted with trees within living retention, and hope to restore information technology to something nearer the moor of 1746. And they look after the well-known memorial cairn and 'clan' graves.

In recent years, the NTS has been struggling to meet visitor demand. The popularity of Diana Gabaldon's Outlander books and the TV series of the same proper name accept caused a surge in the number of people going to Culloden (while, unfortunately, popularising some of the myths about the 1745 Ascent; but they're fiction, after all). The Fraser association grave had to be fenced off to cease the ground around it being worn abroad by Outlander fans.

And it'southward not but books and films which draw people. Many believe they have ancestors who fought at the battle; others want to pay their respects to the fallen who lie buried all over the battleground; and, for some, the battle is still a part of nigh living memory, stories passed down through the generations nearly it.

But Covid restrictions brought a stop to visitors to the centre and drastically cut the number walking around the site. This is a accident for NTS income, only has given the moor a hazard to recover. And it may also requite the pause and reassessment needed to knit together the bookish research, conservation and money-raising tourism that the battlefield – and by extension the retentiveness of Culloden – needs.

Since 1926, and every twelvemonth until the pandemic, the Gaelic Club of Inverness has held a commemoration service at the cairn on the Sat nearest the anniversary of the battle. This year, together with the NTS, it'due south taking the service online, together with a series of talks and an afternoon conference about the time to come of the battle site. Culloden 275 takes place on Saturday, 17 April and there may however be tickets left.

The need for a articulate vision for the time to come of Culloden is urgent. It's not widely known that the NTS only owns about a third of the area of the 1746 battlefield and, with force per unit area rising for housing in the Inverness area, developers have been applying for permission to build on land which was fought on 275 years ago. In some cases, this includes where the fallen were cached. The latest planning application was simply rejected in February this twelvemonth; and it's going to exist appealed.

On the solar day of the 275th anniversary, the NTS issued a manifesto calling "for battlefield landscapes to exist afforded the same protections equally other celebrated sites". It has as well asked members of the Scottish Parliament to support Culloden'south application for UNESCO Give-and-take Heritage Site status. Let's hope that these moves assistance Culloden to be remembered, with respect, for many more than years.

Frances Owen is editor of Historia. She has studied the Jacobite motility for a number of years and worked on a BBC Scotland series about Prince Charles Edward Stuart'due south escape after Culloden. She is the co-author of A Rebel Hand: Nicholas Delaney of 1798. Frances is one of the judges for the 2021 HWA Gold Crown Awards.

Read about Charles's arrival in Scotland and the raising of the standard at Glenfinnan. And observe out more nearly the Prince in 5 surprising facts virtually Charles Edward Stuart.

Tim Lynch looks at the problems with preserving sites and remembering the dead in The fight for our battlefields.