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Culloden Moor 1746: The death of the Jacobite cause (Campaign)

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In 1991, Osprey Campaign volume #12 by Peter Harrington covered the Culloden campaign of 1745-1746. Now eleven years later, Osprey recovers the same ground with campaign volume #106 Culloden Moor by Stuart Reid. Aside from the questionable logic of re-doing the same topics when so many other topics in military history remain neglected, Osprey has at least picked the right person to revisit this infamous campaign. Stuart Reid, is an expert on the subject of Culloden and author of the ground-breaking accounts, Like Hungry Wolves and 1745: A Military History of the Jacobite Rising. Reid's narrative is efficient and professional, and the graphic presentation methods of the campaign series have certainly improved over the past decade. As to whether Reid's volume is better than Harrington's, I would say that both are good campaign summaries but they approach the subject from different angles. Harrington's earlier volume dealt with the '45 as a whole, spending considerable effort discussing the battles of Prestonpans and Falkirk and only 41% on the Battle of Culloden itself. Reid's account is more squarely focused on Culloden with 60% devoted to the battle, and much less to events preceding the battle. Unlike Harrington, Reid does not even bother to discuss the flight of the Pretender or the brutal mop-up operations. Therefore, Reid's account contains more battle narrative than Harrington's, but Harrington provides more background material on the campaign as a whole.

Culloden Moor 1746 follows the standard Osprey campaign series format and begins with a short introduction and campaign chronology, followed by short but well-written sections on opposing commanders, opposing armies and opposing plans. Reid includes orders of battle for the Dutch and Hessian auxiliary troops that served under British command, as well as the main Jacobite and British forces that fought at Culloden. The campaign narrative itself, which covers the period January-April 1746, is 55 pages long. Reid concludes with a brief aftermath section, notes on further reading and comments on the battlefield today. There are five 2-D maps (Major troop movements in Britain, operations around Inverness, the Jacobite night march, initial dispositions at Culloden, and Culloden moor today) and three 3-D "Bird's Eye View" maps (Culloden opening moves, the Highland charge and the destruction of the Jacobite army). There are also three full color battle scenes: the Highland charge at Prestonpans, The Royal Scots at Culloden and the Royal Ecossois at Culloden.

Reid makes a number of very good points about the weaknesses of British cavalry in the reconnaissance role, the Jacobite oatmeal stockpile in Inverness that was critical for their survival as an army, the operational choices facing the Jacobites in April 1746 (run and disperse, defend or attack) and the cautious but professional tactics of the British. The author also makes insightful comment that the British infantry volleys at Culloden almost certainly caused far greater casualties to the Jacobites than the artillery barrage, which he reckons was shorter and less destructive than generally claimed. Indeed, the reader is left with little doubt that Reid has mastered the historical details of this subject.

The only complaint with Reid's narrative applies equally to his other works on Culloden: a tendency to downplay British atrocities. Nowhere in these pages do we find mention of "Butcher Cumberland," the notorious accolade for the British commander who presided over one of the grimmer chapters in British military history. Reid's bias is the standard device for those who wish to avoid dealing with black pages in their country's history: deny, minimize, ignore. According to Reid, John Prebble, author of the classic Culloden in 1961, was too inclined to accept atrocity allegations at face value. Reid denies the most vicious atrocity stories about Culloden - such as the alleged burning of Jacobite wounded in a farmhouse and bayoneting of wounded - but concedes that "isolated incidents" by the "vestry men" (British short-term conscripts) probably occurred. Minimize: it wasn't the British army that did these atrocities, but if any occurred it must have been the draftees not the regulars. Furthermore, the "everybody was doing approach" is employed by suggesting that other countries dealt just as harshly with rebels (this is really the "lowest common denominator" approach in suggesting that one's army merely need not act worse than any other army - say, the Turks - rather than setting any kind of higher standard). Then, Reid has the audacity to state that, "the bitter legacy of those punitive expeditions [that followed the Battle of Culloden], justified as they were..." Murder and rape are justified? Readers should consult Prebble's account to get a better understanding of the year-long killing, raping and looting spree that the British army undertook along the Great Glenn in reprisal for the Jacobite Uprising. In particular, Prebble - unlike Reid - notes that the British were so indiscriminate in their reprisals that they often brutalized loyalist Scots who had supported the crown against the rebels. Even if Prebble's account is too biased against the British as Reid claims, there is no doubt that the British punitive measures were very harsh indeed. Furthermore, American readers should consider the brutal repressive measures that this same British army would use to combat American rebels thirty years later; British regulars bayoneted many unarmed American soldiers in the Gowanus Swamps outside New York in 1776 and Banastre Tarleton's atrocities in the south were infamous. Reid's efforts to whitewash this sorry chapter in British military history are just as offensive as German historians attempting to minimize the activities of the SS or Japanese historians the Bataan Death March.

The fact is that Culloden was a seminal event in Scottish history. Reid's account is essentially an operational account that - while very good in the military realm - leaves out the true social, political and psychological context of this battle. The British used Culloden and the suppression of the Jacobites to crush any trace of Scottish independence for over a century and in that unstated sense, it was a national tragedy.

In 1991, Osprey Campaign volume #12 by Peter Harrington covered the Culloden campaign of 1745-1746. Now eleven years later, Osprey recovers the same ground with campaign volume #106 Culloden Moor by Stuart Reid. Aside from the questionable logic of re-doing the same topics when so many other topics in military history remain neglected, Osprey has at least picked the right person to revisit this infamous campaign. Stuart Reid, is an expert on the subject of Culloden and author of the ground-breaking accounts, Like Hungry Wolves and 1745: A Military History of the Jacobite Rising. Reid's narrative is efficient and professional, and the graphic presentation methods of the campaign series have certainly improved over the past decade. As to whether Reid's volume is better than Harrington's, I would say that both are good campaign summaries but they approach the subject from different angles. Harrington's earlier volume dealt with the '45 as a whole, spending considerable effort discussing the battles of Prestonpans and Falkirk and only 41% on the Battle of Culloden itself. Reid's account is more squarely focused on Culloden with 60% devoted to the battle, and much less to events preceding the battle. Unlike Harrington, Reid does not even bother to discuss the flight of the Pretender or the brutal mop-up operations. Therefore, Reid's account contains more battle narrative than Harrington's, but Harrington provides more background material on the campaign as a whole.

Culloden Moor 1746 follows the standard Osprey campaign series format and begins with a short introduction and campaign chronology, followed by short but well-written sections on opposing commanders, opposing armies and opposing plans. Reid includes orders of battle for the Dutch and Hessian auxiliary troops that served under British command, as well as the main Jacobite and British forces that fought at Culloden. The campaign narrative itself, which covers the period January-April 1746, is 55 pages long. Reid concludes with a brief aftermath section, notes on further reading and comments on the battlefield today. There are five 2-D maps (Major troop movements in Britain, operations around Inverness, the Jacobite night march, initial dispositions at Culloden, and Culloden moor today) and three 3-D "Bird's Eye View" maps (Culloden opening moves, the Highland charge and the destruction of the Jacobite army). There are also three full color battle scenes: the Highland charge at Prestonpans, The Royal Scots at Culloden and the Royal Ecossois at Culloden.

Reid makes a number of very good points about the weaknesses of British cavalry in the reconnaissance role, the Jacobite oatmeal stockpile in Inverness that was critical for their survival as an army, the operational choices facing the Jacobites in April 1746 (run and disperse, defend or attack) and the cautious but professional tactics of the British. The author also makes insightful comment that the British infantry volleys at Culloden almost certainly caused far greater casualties to the Jacobites than the artillery barrage, which he reckons was shorter and less destructive than generally claimed. Indeed, the reader is left with little doubt that Reid has mastered the historical details of this subject.

The only complaint with Reid's narrative applies equally to his other works on Culloden: a tendency to downplay British atrocities. Nowhere in these pages do we find mention of "Butcher Cumberland," the notorious accolade for the British commander who presided over one of the grimmer chapters in British military history. Reid's bias is the standard device for those who wish to avoid dealing with black pages in their country's history: deny, minimize, ignore. According to Reid, John Prebble, author of the classic Culloden in 1961, was too inclined to accept atrocity allegations at face value. Reid denies the most vicious atrocity stories about Culloden - such as the alleged burning of Jacobite wounded in a farmhouse and bayoneting of wounded - but concedes that "isolated incidents" by the "vestry men" (British short-term conscripts) probably occurred. Minimize: it wasn't the British army that did these atrocities, but if any occurred it must have been the draftees not the regulars. Furthermore, the "everybody was doing approach" is employed by suggesting that other countries dealt just as harshly with rebels (this is really the "lowest common denominator" approach in suggesting that one's army merely need not act worse than any other army - say, the Turks - rather than setting any kind of higher standard). Then, Reid has the audacity to state that, "the bitter legacy of those punitive expeditions [that followed the Battle of Culloden], justified as they were..." Murder and rape are justified? Readers should consult Prebble's account to get a better understanding of the year-long killing, raping and looting spree that the British army undertook along the Great Glenn in reprisal for the Jacobite Uprising. In particular, Prebble - unlike Reid - notes that the British were so indiscriminate in their reprisals that they often brutalized loyalist Scots who had supported the crown against the rebels. Even if Prebble's account is too biased against the British as Reid claims, there is no doubt that the British punitive measures were very harsh indeed. Furthermore, American readers should consider the brutal repressive measures that this same British army would use to combat American rebels thirty years later; British regulars bayoneted many unarmed American soldiers in the Gowanus Swamps outside New York in 1776 and Banastre Tarleton's atrocities in the south were infamous. Reid's efforts to whitewash this sorry chapter in British military history are just as offensive as German historians attempting to minimize the activities of the SS or Japanese historians the Bataan Death March.

The fact is that Culloden was a seminal event in Scottish history. Reid's account is essentially an operational account that - while very good in the military realm - leaves out the true social, political and psychological context of this battle. The British used Culloden and the suppression of the Jacobites to crush any trace of Scottish independence for over a century and in that unstated sense, it was a national tragedy.

Stuart Reid's many books are among the best modern sources for the final Jacobite Risings, and the '45 and the Battle of Culloden. The coverage of the forces present, their positioning on the battlefield, and their movements during the battle is beyond thorough, and Gerry Embleton's three color plates add a splash of lively color. Overall this is what a good Osprey title looks like, offering concise but detailed information on the topic and reinforcing it with lots of contemporary artwork, bird's eye views of the battlefield, and other visual sources.

The work reviews the final battle in the campaign of Bonnie Prnce Charlie (Stuart) to regain the British threone from the Hanoverian line. The Authors describe the opposing sides and political situation well. The battle is done with great care and leaves the reader with a sense of being there. I can best describe it as similar to the experience of watching the movie Culoden nearly forty years ago on PBS.The period has always fascinated me and I have continually searched for works on the topic. For many years John Prebble was the only source. It is nice to find good works at a fair price available.