The Battle of Culloden (1746) by David Morier, oil on canvas.
Battle of Sheriffmuir, 1715, by John Wootton. The Jacobites under John, Earl of Mar, failed to exploit their numerical superiority and, after an indecisive battle, left the government forces under John, Duke of Argyll in possession of the battlefield and with the initiative.
Uprisings that attempted to restore the Stuart Dynasty, and the last land battles on English and Scottish soil. Following the Revolution of 1688—which had been sparked by the birth of a son and potentially Catholic heir to James II of Great Britain, and the successful invasion of William of Orange, the king’s Protestant son-in-law, who assumed the throne with his wife, Mary—James fled to France with his wife and son. For the next 57 years, Jacobitism, the support for the exiled branch of the Stuart family, would be a major tool of European foreign policy and spark four armed uprisings and numerous plots in England, Scotland, and Ireland.
Returning to Ireland in March 1689 with a contingent of French officers sent by Louis XIV, James began to muster an Irish army. Meanwhile, in Scotland, John Graham, Viscount Dundee, had also raised a Jacobite army and, after a successful series of raids, had defeated government forces at Killiecrankie. Although defeated at Dunkeld, Dundee’s army, gaining support among the Highland Scots, fought on. In Scotland, the government was forced to an expensive policy of fort building and slow harassment of the clans, while in Ireland, the government fought using mercenaries hired from Europe to augment English forces. William of Orange defeated James on 1 July 1690 at the Battle of the Boyne, although French naval support allowed the Jacobites to continue fighting until government reinforcement arrived and captured Limerick and Galway. With the Jacobites defeated, William turned his resources to fighting France until the treaty of Ryswick in 1697.
The next Jacobite rising occurred in 1715, following an abortive invasion scare in 1708. The Earl of Mar, unhappy with his prospects under the new king, George I, raised the banner of James II’s son, James (“the Old Pretender”), in the highlands, expecting significant French assistance. A corresponding English rising, centered on northern Catholics, failed to accomplish much and was defeated and captured at Preston in November 1715.Mar, meanwhile, fought an indecisive battle at Sheriffmuir on 13 November against the Duke of Argyll. When James Stuart arrived in December, without French aid, the rebellion was fading, and most of the leaders had fled to France by February 1716.
In 1719, with Britain and Spain on hostile terms because of Spain’s invasion of Sicily, Cardinal Alberoni, prime minister to Philip V of Spain, lent his support to a Jacobite invasion of Scotland. Again mustering highlanders to augment 250 Spanish regulars, the Jacobites, under the command of the earl Marischal and marquis of Tullibardine, quarreled among themselves and were caught at the pass of Glenshiel by government forces. The Scots fled, leaving the Spanish as prisoners of war until ransomed by their own government.
The final Jacobite campaign, “The ’45,” was first sponsored as a French diversion meant to draw British troops out of the War of the Austrian Succession. A 1744 invasion, to be led by the Marshal de Saxe, fell through after a great storm not only destroyed stockpiled supplies but disrupted the French fleet sent to gain control of the English Channel. Not to be dissuaded, the Stuart claimant, Charles Edward Stuart (“the Young Pretender” or “Bonnie Prince Charlie”), prepared an invasion on his own, borrowing money and counting on a mass uprising upon his arrival in Scotland. Again due to poor weather, the Jacobites arrived with only half the planned men and supplies. (Many began to mutter that “God is a Protestant!”) The Jacobites did muster a number of highlanders, captured Edinburgh Castle, and defeated the local government forces at Prestonpans, before marching south into England with an army of about 4,500. The Jacobite army turned back at Derby, now convinced that there was no support in England or substantial French aid on the way, abandoning a strike at London in favor of a retreat back to Scotland.
Pursued by two Hanoverian armies under the Duke of Cumberland and George Wade, they collected a trickle of smuggled French supplies and, after successfully holding off the government troops at Falkirk, went to ground over the winter of 1745/6.Charles Edward Stuart, emerging from a fit of petulance over the retreat from Derby, insisted on a conventional action rather than continued evasion and in April 1746 met Cumberland at Culloden, where the Jacobites were decisively defeated.
Fleeing, Charles Edward Stuart dismissed the survivors of his army who had rallied after the battle and made his way in secret through the Highlands before reaching France. Ruthlessly punished by the government for their participation, the Scots, disenchanted by Jacobitism, abandoned the Stuarts to romantic nostalgia and the Jacobite threat ceased to exist
References and further reading:
Jarvis, R. C. Collected Papers on the Jacobite Risings. 2 vols. Manchester, UK:Manchester University Press, 1972.
Reid, Stuart. [The Doyen of 17th-18th Scottish History]1745: A Military History of the Last Jacobite Rising. New York: Sarpedon, 1996.
Szechi, Daniel. The Jacobites: Britain and Europe. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1994.
