This morning we visited the site of a historic battle in the evolution of Scotland. On the upland plain of Drummossie Moor, just 5 files to the east of Inverness. The Battle of Culloden was fought on April 16, 1746 and lasted less than an hour. To understand the significance of this battle you have to understand some of the history that preceded it.
Early in the 17th Century, 1603, the crowns of England and Scotland where united under the Stuart King James VI (Scotland) and James I (England) (same person), but not the governments. With the death of James VI in 1625 his son Charles I inherited the throne. He married the Roman Catholic French princess Henrietta Maria and proposed the use of more formal rituals of the Church of England, which were unpopular, especially with the Scots, as this was viewed as an attack against their Presbyterian principles. In 1649 King Charles was tried for treason, found guilty and condemned to be put to death. As a result, England was declared a republic, but the Scots accepted Charles I’s son as king of both England and Scotland and crowned him Charles II in 1651. Following a defeat at the hands of Oliver Cromwell, Charles II was forced into exile on the Continent. A decade later England restored its monarchy with Charles II as King. Charles II tried to introduce tolerance of Roman Catholics. By 1673, the Test Act excluded Roman Catholics from both Houses of Parliaments. Charles II died in 1685 and his brother James, 51 and a convert to Catholicism came to the throne as James VII of Scotland and II of England & Ireland. Three years later, his Catholic wife, Mary, gave birth to a son, James Francis Edward Stuart. But within 5 months they were sent into exile and fled to France. In their place, the Protestant William of Orange and his wife Mary were invited to rule. In the constitutional upheaval Presbyterianism became the state religion in Scotland, ousting the Episcopal Church and threatening its supremacy in England.
*** maybe that was a bit too much detail ***
Jacobitism was the political movement dedicated to restoring the Stuart Kings to the thrones of Scotland and England. They took their name from the Latin form of James, Jacobus, after their deposed King James VII. Under pressure the Scottish parliament accepted the 1707 Act of Union. This was a further irritant to those in Scotland who opposed a government based in London and thereby further English domination (which strikes a common thread with the Independence vote to be held in 2014 in Scotland). The Jacobites hoped that a Stuart king would end the discriminatory laws against Catholics.
Fast forward to 1745 and James Francis Edward Stuart’s son, Charles Edward Stuart, as so known as “Bonnie Prince Charlie” crosses the English Channel from France to claim the throne of Scotland.
During 1745 he successfully amasses troops under the Jacobite name, takes control of Scotland and heads south into England. He promises that as these Scots head south their numbers will swell with addition of Jacobites in England and additional support from the Continent. They got within 125 miles of London when the lack of additional support from Europe and limited English Jacobites conscripts disheartens many of their key leaders of they stop short of London and return to the Highlands of Scotland for the winter and where their knowledge of the terrain would give them an advantage in a future fight.
This gave the English the opportunity to call troops home from battles abroad and “the Redcoats” followed the Jacobites back to Scotland. Many think of the Battle of Culloden as a fight between the English and the Scots, but this is an oversimplification. The Jacobites were composed of mostly Scots, but there were supporters from England and Ireland as well. They were fighting the Government troops who were composed of many British soldiers, but also many from Scottish regiments as well. In many cases members of the same families and clans were fighting each other.
Against the advice of his best military advisor s, Bonnie Prince Charles marches his men onto Drummossie Moor (Culloden) and take up a position in anticipation of the Duke of Cumberland’s Red coats arriving for a battle from their camp some 12 miles away. But they receive word that Cumberland’s troops are not coming that day, possibly because it is Cumberland’s birthday and his men have received a ration of spirits to celebrate. Prince Charles has the idea that they should surprise them while they are sleeping off the effect of their spirits and suggests a night attack. However, in order to avoid the obvious sentries on the road they must traverse the 12 miles, through the woods, at night, in order to reach the Government troops by 2 am. The Jacobites are hungry and tired and the trek through the woods turns out to be folly and they end up returning to the Moor without ever reaching the enemy.
The next morning Prince Charles’ forces were tired from their night march and hungry as they were running low on provisions. The 5,500 men marched out in the rain to the battlefield to face the 7,500 men who had made the 12 mile march to the Moor, well rested and well fed.
A number of factors, including the soggy wet conditions of the Moor, the terrain and the constant bombardment from the Government cannons and riflemen, led to the battle lasting less than an hour. With 1,250 Jacobites being killed, the same number injured and nearly 400 being taken prisoner, the rest, including Prince Charles fled. In contrast, the Government troops lost 50 men with another 300 injured.
To make an example of this resistance to the Government, the following weeks and months were spent rounding up Jacobites and administering justice. In many cases it was not easy to tell a Jacobite from a Scot wearing a kilt, so the Government forces treated them equally harshly. So it became dangerous to wear a kilt for fear of being labelled as Jacobite. Eventually the Government forbid the wearing of kilts and the speaking of the Gaelic language.
The site of the battle has been remembered with a wonderful interpretive center and you can walk out on the battlefield with a GPS triggered audio guide that will take you through many of the events of the battle. You can see Deana walking along the Red coats line, marked by a line of flag poles with the red flags.
As you walk closer to the Jacobite you come across burial mounds with tombstones inscribed with the names of the clans who’s men died that day. There are no individual graves but a farmer in the 1800’s built a memorial in memory of the men who had fallen on that day.
This was an extremely powerful interpretive site. The information and visuals inside the building provided the perfect background prior to walking out onto the ground where the actual battle took place. The GPS triggered audio tour and the additional information available as you walked completed the experience. This is definitely a “must see” if you are ever in the area.
On a lighter note, we left Culloden and visited Cawdor Castle. This castle is reputed to have been built in the late 1300’s with just the center block at first. It’s difficult to see in the picture, but if you look at the left window just above the wall on the center tower you can see a larger arched opening that has been bricked in to leave just the space for the window.
In that era you put the front entrance on the second level with some sort of removable steps so that you could more easily defend yourself. Over the years more buildings were built and a draw-bridge installed. They also have a beautiful garden that was buzzing with bees pollinating all of the flowers. Note the bumble bee hovering at the right edge of the photo below.
The castle is still inhabited by the Dowager (widow) Countess Cawdor. She is at her cottage nearby, so her standard is flown at the top of the flagpole.
Deana is standing in the garden next to a decorative globe fountain that has been built from pieces of slate recovered when the roof was redone in the 1800’s.
On our way back into Inverness we stopped at Clava Cairns, which date back 3-4,000 years ago. Roy has spent a good part of his education in this field of study and is currently working on his PhD, and it shows. He did an excellent job of getting us to look at and understand these features from a perspective of 2,000 BC rather than our current 21st century AD. I’ve used the term “prehistoric” many times but I’m not sure I ever really understood what it meant. To better understand “prehistoric” Roy took us through the periods where people are simply nomadic as they move from place to place in search of food. Then they evolve to the point were they can settle down in one place and start to develop permanent structures. However, if they have not gotten to the point of creating a record of their activities, practices and heritage then they are not establishing a “history” of their existence. Thus they are pre-history or prehistoric. As a result, we look at these burial mounds and without any form of written or pictorial record we can only surmise why the people did certain things. However, the presence of only bones within these mounds leads us to the concept of a worship or belief of some type with the assumption that there is a difference between life and the “after-life”.
The mounds were created with the entrance way aligned to be illuminated with the setting sun on the winter solstice in December. This level of accuracy suggests that these people were intelligent to the point of recognizing the repeating pattern of the sun and ingenious enough to construct a chamber within the mound from just stone, to hold the remains. After Roy’s introduction the mounds took on far more significance than if we had just come and looked at these piles of rocks on our own. Although, even Roy can only provide possible theories to explain what happened here as we don’t have any record of what actually took place. In front of some of the vertical stones (similar to Stonehenge) there were people sitting quietly in some form of meditation, or possibly they believe these to be, as some people do, the result of alien contact and they are waiting for the aliens to return. We didn’t stay around long enough to find out.
On the way back to Inverness we got a great panoramic view of the city on the south bank of the River Ness. Tomorrow we go in search of the elusive monster up river in the Loch!