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16 Apr 2022

Recordings of Culloden Commemoration 2022 events

An old stone marking the grave of soldiers who fell during the Battle of Culloden stands beside a path across the battlefield.
Watch the recording of two special events that took place at Culloden in April 2022 to commemorate the 276th anniversary of the battle.
Aftermath and Cumberland's Policy in Scotland – recorded 15 April 2022

Transcript

Five voices: Katey Boal (KB); Murray Pittock (MP); 3 audience members (AM1, AM2, AM3)


[no audio can be heard]


(KB)
... talks in person, real life people in our space. And welcome to those folks who are logging in from across the world, we really appreciate you taking the time to come and join us here at Culloden Battlefield.
So what we're going to do now folks is I'm going to introduce you to Murray Pittock.
I'm very, very happy that Professor Murray Pittock has decided to join us today. He's a leading international historian and current Bradley Professor and Pro Vice-Principal of the University of Glasgow, and excitingly has a new book coming out in July called: Scotland: The Global History.
So we're very pleased that you were able to join us today. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to get you all logged in -- there we go. Bring you up, start sharing ...


There we go! Thank you so much. Really appreciate it.


(MP)
Thank you very much Katey. It's a pleasure to be back. Thank you everyone for coming along this lunchtime on Good Friday and thanks to those who are joining from overseas.
I know that plenty of you are doing that and I'm just going to shout out to Ross Plows from North America who's among those joining us and to anybody else -- I'm sure there are other people I know who are joining today.


So, what I'm going to talk to you about today is atrocity and administration after Culloden.
I think sadly the world we live in is all too contemporaneously reminded of what atrocities carried out by occupying military forces are like. And I have to say, although it's closer to 300 years ago than 200 now, although there isn't very much that's very pleasant to be said about the British army in the immediate aftermath of Culloden, the atrocities carried out by no means came near to matching those that have been carried out by the Russian Federation.
Indeed, only in Ireland did the English, and later the British, army carry out atrocities on anything like that scale.


But I'm not going to talk so much about the litany of atrocities linked to the battle and the aftermath of the battle itself, but I'm going to talk rather about perceptions.


[audio missing]


Oh, I see. Ah ...


[audio missing]


But they're not getting that on the screen ...


(MP)
So I'm going to talk about the way in which people start to conceive what they're doing more in terms of the administration of Scotland post-Culloden, and how they understand where they are and what their policies are; what was the thinking behind where the British army and the British administration got to in the aftermath of Culloden.
I've got a couple of things to tell you about. One of them requires an image, which I hope will be in front of us very soon. But one of them is to say that although it's since the 1960s been very common -- it wasn't so common before the 1960s -- to conceive of Culloden as, and indeed the Jacobite rising in 1745-46, as a civil war, that's not exactly how it was conceived of by the administration or by the British army at the time.
So how it was conceived fundamentally was in terms of an occupation of Scotland.
And Scotland, as the rebellious country concerned, they did not think that they were involved in a civil war.
They thought they were involved in a war largely with Scotland.


Sorry! The slide pack is not moving forward ...


[no audio]


It's showing online ... What happens if I take it off and we show ...


[no audio]


Right.. got it!
Right, there we go. Apologies!


(MP)
Thank you for getting us back again. Now, these are two more or less contemporary maps.
One of them is the Traveller's Companion to England and Wales -- I hope you can see the delineations of England and Wales -- and the English counties are much the same as you would recognise them today.
There's a certain antiquity about the map obviously, but basically the outline's the same.
This is before the Roy mapping of Scotland after Culloden.
That is what Scotland looks like. You can see very significant differences from the way Scotland appears to the eyes of a British cartographer, a British soldier, a British politician.
It appears that the area north of the Great Glen is much larger geographically than in fact it is.
The shape of Skye and the other Inner Hebrides is obviously really far off any kind of proper geographical reference; and even areas quite close to England like Dumfries & Galloway are swollen in terms of the understanding of their size and scale.


So what you're actually seeing from the point of view of an 18th-century Britain is a different country here from here, not just in terms of its history and politics but in terms of its geography.
And a geography which is quite poorly recognised, despite the pioneering efforts to map Scotland, which started at the end of the 17th century.
The geography is not nearly so well understood as it is south of the border.


Now, the other thing to notice is that from the period we're talking about, the period immediately after Culloden, comes the notion, though very imperfectly at first, of the modern understanding (and it is more or less still a modern understanding) of the Highlands.
And the only parliamentary efforts, which were actually crystallised initially in the 1784 Distilling Excise Act, to delineate what the Highlands actually were.
This is a Victorian, early 20th-century representation of what became the standard or the relatively standard understanding of what constituted the Highland line, though I think people who define the Highlands can see variations from that in the definition in their own heads.
But this was more or less the standard definition.
The interesting thing is that it itself still reflects the uncertainty with which Scotland was administered after 1746 because this line bisects large numbers of counties and county administrations, which of course in our popular understanding the Highlands do.
But it represents an understanding of Scotland which was crystallised in the decades after 1746 and which didn't actually represent the nature of its civil administration prior to those decades.


Now, that's the sense it was a visual representation of some of the thinking behind Scotland as it appeared to the British army and British politicians in the 1740s.
But the thinking is also very important, and it's very important to note that the atrocities after Culloden and the immediate aftermath of the battle were not the product so much of anger, bloodthirsty rage -- the emotions of a moment.
They'd been in place for a long time.


On 12 December 1745, four months before the battle, Cumberland wrote 'as they have so many of our prisoners, the Jacobites, in their hands. I did not care to put them to death, the Jacobites in capture to death, but I'd encourage the country people to do it.'


So in that sense, at that stage he was overtly encouraging the population in England, through which the retreating Jacobite army passed, to kill any stragglers found.
In February 1746 he was talking about speedy punishment of those wretches who were the greatest part of the common people and were too many for the criminal justice system to deal with.
So he's already thinking of killing people out of hand, as indeed some of the senior politicians are.
The Duke of Newcastle ... there was a letter from Lord Chesterfield, the other Chesterfield the Duke of Newcastle, the prime minister on 20 March 1746 requests mass starvation and wholesale slaughter of Highlanders.
On 31 March Cumberland notes the whole government and constitution in these parts of the kingdom to be changed; and of course that famous quote that he makes on leaving Scotland: 'I tremble for fear that this vile spot may still be the ruin of our island and family'.


And by the 'vile spot', he does not mean Culloden; he means Scotland itself.


So, in April, before the battle, he's talking already about 'the whole of the laws of this ancient kingdom must be new modelled' and we see an embryo -- a two-pronged attempt which is going to occur in the next few years of changing the legal basis under which Scotland is governed and using the army to effectively occupy the country.
And this plan is already embryonically present before Culloden was even fought.
The Scots Magazine, who were relatively neutral in terms of reporting the '45, noted in early 1746 with a little degree of apprehension, 'In England our laws and customs are generally not well understood nor what relates particularly to this part of the kingdom properly attended to'.
I don't know if that strikes a chord with anybody.


But Cumberland was immediately, in the aftermath of the battle, noting 'the Jacobite rebellious principles that are rooted in this nation's mind that this generation must be pretty well wore out before this country will be quiet. Nobody meddles with them; nobody actually supports the British government or the British army; nobody meddles with the Jacobites except I send military force.'


And he's very keen to see an additional session of parliament sitting so that legislation could be passed.
Major General Bland, who was the senior figure commander of the cavalry on the day of Culloden itself and a senior figure both in the development of British army practice in theory and the administration after 1746, wrote in his 1743 Treatise on Military Discipline that 'there should be a respectful attitude by occupying military forces towards the civilian population.'


In May 1746, he wrote 'destroy all persons you can find who have been in the rebellion or their abettors'.
Abettors, of course, we have already discovered from what Cumberland has said covers virtually everybody who doesn't join the British army in suppressing the Jacobites.
Cumberland meanwhile is already writing to the prime minister very anxious that he absolutely insists that the new laws take place before his majesty's forces quit this country.
He's determined to create the conditions for a legal solution by the imposition -- relatively short scale, he talks about a month or six weeks at longest -- by the imposition of military force.


Lord President Forbes starts to name plans for transportation in his memoir, Observations on the Present State of the Highlands of Scotland.
The idea of mass transportation of groups of the inhabitants is certainly in circulation, even among moderates, by the middle of 1746.
Cumberland leaves Scotland and is replaced by the Duke of Albemarle, who complains promptly about this posting to the prime minister by writing in June 1746: 'this cursed country', and then later 'L'Ecosse est ma bete'.


[inaudible speech, followed by laughter] ... translated so literally!


'Notwithstanding hopes that this kingdom could be restored to peace and quietness.' 'Nothing could effect it but laying the whole country waste', Albemarle writes on 6 September.
He's looking there now for legal support and that's the suspension of Habeas Corpus, effectively the suspension of jury trials and the normal process of evidence, which was suspended to 20 November 1746, looking for it to be suspended again for a further four months, or three further months as it turned out, to the late winter/early spring 1747.


The first sign at this stage there is no sense that Scots are going to be recruited en masse into the British army because they're regarded as far too dangerous.
But there is a plan, which starts to take effect in 1746/7, to recruit some Scots for service in the Scots Brigade in the Netherlands.
So the Scots Brigade in the Netherlands is a largely Protestant unit, which doesn't get fully incorporated into the Dutch army until 1782.
But it's interesting that here, the British army's early plans for recruitment for Scots are to actually send them to join the foreign armed force.
Again and again the same, despite the fact that the legislation is starting to go through parliament, and I'll come to that, again and again the same kind of statements are made.
Albemarle writes to Newcastle on 6 December that he 'needs to distress the Clan Cameron and oblige them to be in compliance with the present laws; for that, a military force will be necessary.'
And unlike Cumberland who thinks that changing the law will be enough, Albemarle gets more and more depressed.
2 February 1747: 'upon the whole I think this kingdom can never be kept in awe but by a sufficient military force'.
There's a lot of concern right into 1748 when the Lord Justice Clerk Andrew Milton writes to Newcastle that there's an illegitimate and contraband trade between Scotland and indeed its potential Jacobite partners overseas, most clearly in France.


It's not that they've got nothing to be worried about.
They have got something to be worried about.
A significant -- it's still not fully understood -- but a significant number of Jacobites remain in the field.
Glenbuchat's Regiment remains in the field for several weeks after Culloden.
Jacobite troops who returned home intact include the First and Second Ogilvy's and the MacGregors, who virtually marched as a completely intact unit back to Balquhidder.
Parts of the first and second battalion of Lochiel's and Clanranalds remained in the field and Ardsheal continued to pay his officers into June.
A rendez-vous of 13 May brings 600 men; MacPhersons only surrendered just after that, at the 17th.
And in July, Ardsheal and Glencoe MacDonald are still in the field with a company of Cromartie's at Dingwall as late as 1747.
While this process is going on, the very gradual dissolution of the Jacobite army, a significant number of Jacobites who evaded capture joined one of the three regiments in the French Service, under Ogilvy, Drummond and Lochiel.


Of course, all fought in the '45.
The Master of Lovat is in fact offered a fourth, but decides to join the British army instead.
Persistently, right into 1750 and 1751, armed men in groups, possibly the remnants of Jacobite units, continue to be reported.
Now, these are some of the figures I'm talking about: William van Keppel, the Earl of Albemarle; Thomas Pelham-Holles, the Duke of Newcastle and prime minister frequently during this period right up to 1760.
Andrew Fletcher, the Lord Justice Clerk; and Humphrey Bland, first Major then later Lieutenant-General.
Now, one of the problems that the administration experiences with the law at an early stage is expressed by Cumberland again to Newcastle in 1746: 'one half of the Magistracy have either been aiders or abettors to this rebellion, but the others dare not act in fear of offending their chiefs or of hanging their own cousin. I hope for little from them.'


By autumn of that year, both General Bland and the Lord Justice Clerk favoured army officers taking over as justices of the peace in the localities, but they made little headway.
Bland reported that in the Inverness region no JP was willing to assist the army, and he was making similar complaints right into the 1750s, less than three years before the start of widespread recruiting into the Highlands.
Cumberland was still pressing Pelham, Newcastle's brother, for further legislative action from Westminster as late as 1752 to undermine the Scottish administration of Scottish law, which was the real problem that they faced.
'The connivance of the Scottish interest pervaded every level of the administration' says Bland.
Jacobites continued to be appointed as sheriffs and sheriffs depute, and were rife in the lower features of the Magistracy.


These were the laws that they attempted to use to control the Jacobites.
Of course, many of them are familiar to you -- the Disarming/Proscription Act, which was used in Argyll in particular to target local rivals, which talked about the disarming of the Highland counties and started to delineate the Highlands in the terms which we now understand in terms of the Highland Line, but also included Aberdeenshire, Banffshire, Forfarshire, Kincardineshire, Perthshire and Stirlingshire in total.


The Act of Attainder, which effectively named those senior Jacobites who would forfeit their estates and lands, although they hadn't been convicted in a court of law but were regarded as guilty.


The Vesting Act, which started to make arrangements for the disposal and administration of their estates,


[audio missing]


holding effectively the rights of a jury superior both to have service in terms of military service and also to be able to act as judge and jury on their own land.


The Act of Indemnity protected soldiers in the British army from any consequences of any actions they carried out before 25 July 1746.
So it's not possible that anybody guilty of an atrocity could be pursued for it.


22 George II C.48, a couple of years later, talked about automatic outlawing.
Automatic outlawing became a category for a number of Jacobites; it was not actually repealed until 1977, although I think that was probably an oversight.

The Annexing Act, three years after that, took 14 of the estates which have been vested under the Vesting Act and permanently annexed them to the Crown.
There was a real determination to keep these estates close to the Crown because there was a real view by the British government that Argyll in particular wanted to get his hands on some of them, or Argyll's dependents and friends and relatives.
After 1715 the House of Argyll didn't really benefit from 1745, not because it was on the wrong side but because the status of the House of Argyll and British politics depended on overclaiming how important it was.
And what happened in 1745, there's a list of Argyll's vassals who listen to the Jacobites.
The people who are nominally, like Cameron Locheil himself and others nominally vassals of the Duke of Argyll, in fact had not practically ever been vassal of the Duke of Argyll and were claimed.
And so when they rose for the Jacobites, it looked as if Argyll was not fully behind the British government.
He was, but he got into trouble because the House of Argyll did tend to claim more power than it actually had, and so when it showed that he couldn't exercise that power and indeed some of its so-called dependents rose for the Jacobites, it fell under suspicion as really trying to play two sides of the game at once.


In terms of the more immediate consequences of law and prosecution, these are a couple of the hulks, with their 70% mortality rates, on which Jacobite prisoners were confined in the Thames prior to transportation.
Most of them who were sentenced to transportation, or waiting to be sentenced to transportation, didn't in fact make it.


Now, a new generation of mapping comes in with a William Roy survey, drawn and supported by Paul Stanley who is of course a war artist to the British army and was in Edinburgh for several years after 1745.
One of the interesting things here -- this is Aberdeen and this is North Berwick -- is again the vision that the administrative power sees in front of it.
Contour lines, hills are very strongly marked indeed; much more strongly than they would be in later maps.
And one of the interesting things is that effectively -- I choose North Berwick because I didn't think anyone would claim North Berwick was in the Highlands --the map is Highland-ised.
Everything looks as if there are huge hills everywhere.
Of course, there are hills close to North Berwick, and they are large by English standards, but the Sanday maps actually portray a country which is all potentially alien in its topography.
The topography is much more accurate than the older maps but at the same time, the way in which the topography is portrayed is much more alien.


We're on really the verge of the world of the sublime islands and the Highland tour.
Everything in Scotland is perceived as mountains.
One of the other elements of the Act of Proscription, just to give you a couple of the details, are the restriction on Episcopalian places of worship, including a penalty of transportation or imprisonment for life for not praying for the king, and making the English and Irish Anglican orders the only ones legitimate, and indeed excluding any Scottish peer from the House of Lords who has attended two Episcopal services.
So, one of the things I think which is still ... of course, the people who agreed to the Act of 45 know about the marginalisation of Episcopacy and Episcopalians, it's a very serious part of the legislation.


There is the text below that of the weapon surrender legislation and the clans that it affects.
'These things do not seem to have worked, once again to the extent that was hoped for'.
So Newcastle wrote to the Barons of Exchequer who were responsible largely for ensuring they made the maintenance administration of a vested estate.
On 2 April 1752: 'If it were to be wished that no Highlander was ever employed.'
And one of the ironies is that Colin Campbell of Glenure, the Red Fox, who was shot in the Appin murder, was [audio loss] because he wasn't trusted because of that comment.
So he was killed before he could be made redundant -- a sadder end no doubt but nonetheless shows you that even somebody as highly relied on as him was not trusted by the British government.


[loss of audio]


as I've mentioned, saw the administration by the Barons of Exchequer in Scotland.
The Chief Baron was in the Lord Chancellor of England Hardwick's pocket and there were other direct lines of control and patronage from government.
All that was really provided on the estate was care and maintenance management costs and rents in Westminster.
14 -- finally I mentioned it was 13 -- annexed by government were Ardsheal, Buchanan of Arnpior, Barisdale and the others following - Cameron of Callart, Cluny, Cromartie, Lochiel, Lovat, Monaltrie, Perth and Struan.
That legislation was reversed by Dundas in 1784, but there were persistent problems in actually getting these rents.
In June 1748 'it proved impossible to levy rents in Dungallon and Lochiel without military assistance.'
Lochiel's brother then threatened any tenants who might pay rent to Colin Campbell of Glenure.
The Kinlochmoidart tenants threatened to shoot anyone distraining goods for rent.
When Robertson of Struan died in 1749, who had been dispossessed of his estate several times and had always been on it, on 16 January 1750 they decided to collect the rent in this estate.
So, two captains and forty men of Barrie's Regiment at Perth, combining with 65 and 70 from the Crieff and Dunkeld garrisons, were sent to join a party already at Tay Bridge to assist the factor for the Crown Mr Ramsay upon the forfeited estates in raising the rents of the said estate of Struan Robertsons according to law.
So we have a situation where roughly 150 British soldiers are needed to get the rents off Struan's land after Struan had died.
Before, it wasn't even possible.


So, with gratitude -- they've done the best one -- to the Stennis Historical Society, I just want (with their permission) I'd like to show their gif of the British garrisons in Scotland.
Under various ... these overnight stops are in green; fortifications are in orange; long-term camps are in purple; and temporary camps in yellow.
But what you see here right from 1746, 1747, 1748, 1749 1750, 1751, 1752 -- things getting a bit easier, 1753 -- a bit more localised, 1754 -- problem's back again but less of them, 1755 -- at last!, 1756 -- not quite!
These are actually all over Scotland.
The most important thing about the ten years after Culloden is that the British army is stationed all over Scotland.
It's not stationed in the Gaeltacht; it's not stationed in the West Highlands -- well, it is but that's not even where most of it is stationed for most of the time.
It's stationed throughout the country and that's one of the most fundamental things about these ten years, that one ... [loss of audio]


assess. So, how did that army live?
Well, they were often moved around -- there are quite a lot of temporary encampments.
They have very poor quality equipment.
They were lodged in tenants' huts, billeted or in tents -- we've got the exact dimensions of the tents.
They were requested not to 'do any violence to the country people, nor to take anything from them without paying for it' but that was not until 1749.
It was very difficult to accommodate them so Corgarff and Braemar were bought in 1748 to help with the accommodation.
Mobile patrols, of which there were 60 as late as 1756, delivered weekly reports to the General Officer Command in Scotland, specifying 'the number of cattle stolen and recovered; what manner of rebels, thieves, deserters are apprehended; and persons taken up for wearing the Highland dress or carrying arms'.
This wasn't a pain-free occupation.


For example, in the register for 1 September 1746, 48 were recorded as dying in August.
By that stage, there were 10,324 effective soldiers in Scotland, but there was a request for 2,200 more.


and ... [no audio]


To look at the army in a couple of the burghs, in Inverness John Hossack the Provost writes to Lord President Forbes on 9 August 'two Regiments have quartered themselves in the town. We're all accounted rebels; we have no persons to complain to'.
The magistrates of Inverness write to Lord Justice Clerk in November: 'we have not the command of a prison, tollbooth, courthouse nor townhouse; all the offices of administration and justice have been taken over by the army.'
In January 1747, the magistrates report: 'the soldiers are generally the greatest rogues in the British army'.
They've broken down sepulchres, fences and enclosures; stolen ploughs, roots, corn, meal on its way to market; up to 17 of the inhabitants have been whipped in a day; they've been 'pillaged of bed plaids and blankets. If any inhabitants did meddle, General Blake would give it in Orders that the soldiers should run them through.'


And there's a struggle between the desire to raise money through the excise and taxes in the localities, and the lack of trust that you can do it.
So in May 1747 there's a recommendation that a Surveyor General of Customs be appointed for Inverness, but it's dropped as an office because there isn't any trust that there's anybody you can select who could fulfil it and who would be trustworthy.
In Aberdeen, Fleming's Regiment in Aberdeen on 6 August described itself as '141 short' and request recruits from England.
Two Aberdeen merchants are arrested for boarding a ship flying the French colours and describing excisemen as 'King George's beagles', on 8 August.
Viscount Arbuthnott is ordered to give up his arms after his house was burnt.
Sheriff Grant reports 'my house is surrounded by 60 soldiers' who requested billet support and then robbed a tenant of Grant's upon pain of having his house burnt.
There's a lot of low level attack of this kind, but the point is that's on a Sheriff, and on a Sheriff's household and tenantry.
It's intimidation.


So victims are of all stages and ages, and sometimes they are wrongly victimised and compensation is paid out.
So in August, John McLaren, a Banff kirk elder of 80, is compensated for having his house burnt because it's realised that being a kirk elder, he's probably not a Jacobite.
Having his house burned was an oversight; could happen to anyone really.


Unsurprisingly, although they're largely administering the Scots law where they can themselves, they're confused over what.
Bland writes to Major Wilson, one of the junior officers: 'there's confusion over what it actually is' in various circumstances in December 1747.
There are repeated deployments to avoid depredations against the 'insults of the disaffected', as they're called.
Repeated efforts to appoint officers as judges and as justices of the peace, which again flounder.
In as late as 1751, General Churchill as General Officer Commander in Scotland released the soldier convicted of killing a Cameron and gave him a guinea, just completely overriding the judicial process to which by that time he'd been subject.


But one of the key elements here is that there's a genuine confusion, which I can't
go into in detail, between anti-excise riots and resistance and the excise collected -- which happens in places like, for example, Ayr, 23 June 1750 -- and the disturbances in Jacobite Scotland.
And they really can't tell the difference.
They have great difficulty in separating in their heads anti-excise riots in Irvine and Jacobite demonstrations in Stonehaven or Montrose.
That's one of the reasons why fundamentally the whole country remains under suspicion.


Here are a few examples.
The paymasters had to be protected; dragoons were required to assist the civil magistrates; there are demonstrations in places like Montrose; and even the lack of trust in Argyll -- Rich's which is the most masonic lodge found, it's truly an orange battalion and it's even a success to ballad, who of course fought just outside here.
Rich's is sent to Inveraray on 7 March 1751 to suppress the wearing of tartan and arms despite the proximity -- and they don't get much closer to the Duke of Argyll in Inveraray.
Proximity of Argyll, it is an English regiment that is sent to ensure that that happens.
It's not left up to even a local mighty name like Argyll.


And as late as 8 December 1751, Lord Provost George Drummond writes to General Churchill: 'if you would draw the dragoons, I dare not answer for the town of Leith continuing being quiet'.
There are only nine months before the New Town plans for Edinburgh were approved.
There is such concern that ... [loss of audio] for the fragility of order in the city, and particularly in Leith, that British army forces continue to be requested.
And of course, in that sense, in many ways we regard Fort George as a white elephant, as having been finished and built long after the Jacobite threat was over.
Well, in a sense that is true and certainly in the sense of there being a real risk through France, but in a sense it reflects the genuine fears and concerns of the time, which we have a tendency to underestimate because a large number of troops -- it begins as 12,000, it goes down to a lower number but it's still very large in the context of the whole British establishment only being 48,000 troops in the outbreak of war in 1756, the Seven Years War.


A very large proportion from the British army, many of them on rotation, have got some experience in Scotland, and their experience is endlessly troublesome and always a prolonged period of time linked to petty low-level irritations, loss, death, passive resistance and the unreliability of the law.
For example, just to take one of the examples there, cases involving trews where some were generally dismissed by sheriff courts in terms of in the tartan legislation, but sometimes sheriffs gave the defenders time to sew up their kilts in the middle so they could count as trews.
That kind of thing was extremely wearing if you happened to be a British army officer, as was the passive resistance for the big advert for the 'great variety of the newest patterns of tartan' on sale in James Baillie's shop in Edinburgh on 24 November 1748.


This continued, despite rotation, to avoid 'going native' and the suggestion that outpensioners at Chelsea Hospital might all of them be brought into Scotland.
In the end, a Chelsea Hospital was established near Loch Rannoch; and in the mid-1750s, able-bodied Chelsea pensioners were reassigned.
Some of them weren't able-bodied; two were reassigned to garrison duty, obviously not for active service.
Right from the beginning also that's part of a much larger story was proposed that some of the experience the troops had gained in Scotland could be used elsewhere.
In particular, Loudoun's troops -- Loudoun was later General Officer commanding in Canada -- were used in garrisoning and defending Moray against 'thieving Highlanders' as recently as September 1747 should be moved to Nova Scotia where their presence would counter the French Acadians.
There's simultaneously the idea that Loudoun's troops themselves are unreliable and also the germ of what became Le Grand Arrangement in the 1750s, the deportation of the French Acadian population in Canada on a model which had been intended, but not carried through, in Scotland in 1746.


So I think I'll probably leave it there.
It was slightly slow getting started but I want you to have time for questions and thank you everyone for listening.
There's a great deal to get through and to understand in this; it's not a simple question but fundamentally we're looking at a situation where there is an alignment between legal change and military occupation.
The legal change doesn't work without the military occupation continuing to impose it, and the military occupation cannot be got rid of.
It's not until the mass recruitment of Scottish soldiers into the forces bound for North America in 1755 and 57 that actually this period comes to an end.
And as late as 1768 there are still isolated garrisons in Scotland because of the continued fear of what the country is like and is capable of.
There's a great deal of misunderstanding and a great deal of misattribution of what Scotland really is, no doubt, in the conduct of the British army in Scotland after 1746, but it's extremely revealing not least because of the close links between senior officers and senior policymakers in Westminster.


(KB)
Thank you so much for taking the time and being patient with our technology!


Am I on mute? Am I on mute? So thank you so much. Now if folks have questions for Professor Pittock, please pop your hand up.
Just so you're aware, up there is a microphone so you will be heard by the rest of the people who are attending virtually.
But I would ask if you are at the back and you have a question, if you want to step forward slightly, it just makes it easier to hear.
Does anybody have any questions?


(AM)
Just a quick one.
Obviously after Culloden, there was a lot of atrocities and it continued.
Do you think that we'll ever see a government apology?
Do you think there should be a government apology?
Sorry to put you in the spotlight!


(MP)
I don't think we'll ever see an apology.
I think that myself -- and this is a different kind of debate -- I'm not that keen on historic apologies, if you can't easily discern who the current victims are.
But I think what you need more than an apology is actually an understanding of what went on and what this was about.
And that actually the story doesn't end here on Culloden battlefield; the story goes on an incredible length of time, and we have to ask ourselves -- and this is a longer project I'm working on, there's an awful lot of material out there -- why almost nothing has been published on this in 250 years?
Because people just do not want to think that what happened in Scotland for ten years after Culloden was an occupation.
They really don't want to think that but that's exactly what it was.


(KB)
We have a question from online.
They have asked: when and why did Scotland stop being seen as a violent bog and begin to be seen as picturesque and romantic? Highlanders becoming 'noble savages' ...


(MP)
That is actually there before -- it's a very good question -- because it's actually there before 1760, because the association of the 'mountaineer with freedom' comes through two routes.
It comes through the Swiss from the 1730s and 40s and the growth of the cult of William Tell by the 1780s and 90s, and it comes through the Scots -- and that starts at the end of the 17th, into the 18th century.
But from the point of view -- that's largely a Jacobite discourse -- from the point of view of non-Jacobites, they don't know, this is a horrible place: it's cold, windy, rain, full of horrible land.


The change there comes through two main routes: first of all the popularity, despite the good deal of opposition it receives, of MacPherson's Ossian; and secondly, the beginnings of the myth of the Scottish soldier.
If you actually look at senior reports from commanders in North America, quite often they're not that enthralled by some of the troops they're commanding and indeed they still don't trust them.
The Black Watch even only get issued with rifles when they land in Guadeloupe in the 1760s.
Don't have them before that because you never know what they'll get up to!
Because of the 1743 mutiny, it's still in people's heads.
But at the same time, they're commanders, people like the Master of Lovat, people like the Earl of Eglinton and others.
Their commanders start to portray the idea of the Scottish soldier, as Scotland as a martial nation.
They start themselves to use the Jacobite mythology, to invest the role of the Scottish soldier in the British army where, of course, is the only place you can wear tartan until the repeal of the legislation in the early 1780s.
So for 36 years, the only place you can officially wear tartan in public is in the British army; and it's those 36 years that are the crucial time and particular time after the appearance of the Ossian poems in 1761 and 1763, and the successful outcome of the Canadian war in the same period.
That's really the moment of change.


(AM2)
I was once the minister at Culloden and we could have fought a world war from the retirees that were there.
I once asked one of the army chaps, he asked me to be involved with the cans, but I asked him: the Black Watch, we were a commander then, but they were at one time the attack battalion of the British army.
He said immediately: they still are.


(MP)
So what was the 43rd became the 42nd, absolutely.
It was that in the 18th century and unsurprisingly Stuart of Garth, Highlanders and Scotland set the seal on the future you live in exactly the same way because it valorised Black Watch and created the myth that is reflected in the monument in Aberfeldy.
Though interestingly putting a mutineer on part of ... the image of one of the mutineers in 1743 on top of a Victorian monument -- it's an interesting tribute to the doubleness of the Black Watch's experience: loyal servants but not always trusted.


(KB)
Do you have any other further questions from the room?


(AM3)
Yep, with the Gaelic language, did that sort of hand in hand get phased out with the perception of how Scotland was?


(MP)
So, one of the things that's influenced understanding of the Highlands is that the area which was identified as Highland in 1746/7 was very close to the area in which Gaelic was spoken, though that actually was a historical coincidence.
Gaelic had been spoken in, and probably fragments survived, in Kyle and Carrick in the south-west until the 1750s, so this affected Scotland.
Highland Scotland and Gaelic Scotland were all put in the same category and it wasn't as if there was a great deal of support.
Obviously the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge (SPCK) had fundamentally helped to undermine -- one of many organisations -- helped to undermine Gaelic before the 1750s.
But there was no enthusiasm for it afterwards.
And what you get is a pile-on, which is quite similar to what happens in Ireland after 1810, whereby in Ireland in the early 19th century, the Protestants who supported the rising of 1798 created a story that it was entirely a native Catholic rising, and it was all them.
And exactly the same thing -- change the circumstances -- happened in Scotland.
So the idea that it was a Highland and Gaelic rising starts to develop in the 18th century where people, some of whom were quite significant figures of Enlightenment Edinburgh who were closely aligned with Jacobites if not Jacobites themselves, to say really it wasn't us, it was them.


And saying 'it was them' is a really important part of the demonisation and marginalisation of Gaelic and the contribution to that, because Gaelic is first of all associated with disaffection and then it's associated with wilful redundancy and backwardness, and those two things together would be toxic.


(KB)
We have another question from online, which is: what information is available about the conditions on the hulk and are there any sources?


(MP)
We don't know, as far as I know there are no sources on the exact conditions of the hulks.
There are reports of the numbers who died and the individuals who died, so we know the death rate was 70%, roughly speaking, over a typical period of being held for several months, three to six months and people were held in the hulks for long periods because it was known the death rate was high.
It was a way of not actually having to go through the fuss of a trial or the cost of a transportation.
But as far I know, there are no actual first-hand accounts of life in the hulks, which would be very interesting.
If somebody knows that there are, I'd be really interested to hear about them but I don't know myself.


(KB)
Well, I think that that brings our talk to a close but thank you again so much for coming and joining us; and again thank you for being in the room and thank you for joining us online.


We have some more events happening this weekend.
There's tons of stuff up on the web, including another talk by Professor Pittock.
So, thank you so much for joining us.


Thank you!
(clapping from the audience)

Perspectives on Culloden – recorded 16 April 2022

Transcript

Nine voices: Raoul Curtis-Machin (RCM); David Alston (DA); Maggie Craig (MC); Arran Johnston (AJ); 4 audience members (AM1, AM2, AM3, AM4); Kasey


(RCM)
Welcome everybody to this afternoon's session.
Thank you so much for coming. I've got to say, this is an amazing day actually, seeing everybody back at Culloden for the anniversary.
It's a really special occasion and a fantastic atmosphere, so I hope you're having an enjoyable day. This afternoon's the thoughtful, reflective bit really. It is a commemoration day.
But this is where we start to explore some of the themes behind the battle itself and some of the challenges it poses, posing more so today.


So this afternoon's all about different perspectives on Culloden.
I've got three fantastic speakers lined up, and they're going to speak for about 10 minutes or so, and make a small presentation, and then after that we're going to have a panel discussion with questions online from our online participants -- thank you -- and also from the floor.
Bear with us. We invested very recently in this super duper technology with a microphone bar, fantastic camera -- I'm told we can now do a global international conference from this room. Fingers crossed, it's going to work ... so far!
We'll try our best. So, this is this afternoon ... And we have three speakers.
The first is David Alston. David, I've just put this on to ...


David was born and brought up in the Highlands. He is a freelance historian and author, who's been a youth worker in Toxteth in Liverpool, a school teacher in Wallsend in Tyneside, and -- back in the Highlands of Scotland -- an adult education organiser, a museum curator, local authority councillor and chair of an NHS board. (Blimey!)
For 25 years he's been researching the role of northern Scots in the slave-worked plantations of the Caribbean, especially Guyana. He's the author of Slaves and Highlanders: Silenced Histories of Scotland and the Caribbean.
David ...


(DA)
Thank you very much for being here and thank you for the invitation for me to be here today. The perspective I want to offer is that after the Jacobite risings -- '45, '15, '18 -- there were a number of Jacobites whose route back from the loss of family members, loss of fortunes, loss of position in society was through involvement and engagement in the slave plantations. And of course in the exploitation of enslaved Africans.


[loss of audio]


... the example of Cummings, of Craigmiln near Elgin.
This was [loss of audio]


Thomas Cumming of Craigmiln.
He eventually died back in Scotland. His gravestone is in the church in Dallas, near Elgin. When he was briefly back in this country, he had his portrait painted.
He's described on the gravestone as Thomas Cumming Esquire of Demerara, so the place where he sought an impact was Demerara on the north coast of South America.


And just so that everybody's clear, because 25 years ago I couldn't have told you where Demerara was. If you don't know completely, I do understand!
It's now part of Guyana, the Republic of Guyana, which was formerly British Guyana. And it's part of a wider area of land on the north coast of South America called the Guyanas. Next door is Suriname, which was once known as Dutch Guyana and was formerly Dutch; French Guiana, also known as Cayenne; and there was also Spanish Guyana, which is now part of Venezuela. But it's the former Dutch colonies that became the Republic of Guyana. Georgetown, the capital, is at the top on the coast. It's near Georgetown that Thomas Cumming had his plantations.


On that gravestone, he is commemorated as a 'principal promoter of its prosperity and wealth'. He spent 50 years there and died at the age of 73. I'm just doing a little bit of the mathematics, obviously he ended up there when he was 17 or 18, having been born in 1740.


The connection to Culloden is that his father fought at Culloden and died in prison afterwards, and so did his older brother. I'll come back to his older brother in a moment.
He's described on his gravestone in the usual glowing terms: 'completely esteemed and beloved by all whoever knew him'. Unless of course you were an enslaved black African.


I'm going to read a couple of pages from my book about just how complicated that family was, and I think it helps to shed light on the complexity of what happened to people who were seeking a route back after Culloden. I'm going to be talking about his white family, that's complex enough, but I'm going to do that with this slide in front of us.
There's Thomas Cumming. This is Winston Braithwaite.
Winston is a Caribbean-born American lawyer, who is now studying history at Harvard. And he's doing that out of an interest in his own family history.
Winston is a descendant of Thomas Cumming, or of one of his close relations who was also in Demerara. It's important to remember that sexual abuse of enslaved women was endemic within the plantation system. There are many descendants of Thomas Cumming and his relations, who were not part of that white acknowledged family. I want to read you this, which refers to the white family, with that in mind.


On Sunday 3 November 1799 in the parish of Urquhart near Elgin, the Cummings family gathered for the double christening of 60-year-old Thomas Cumming's daughter Hannah and his grandson Christopher, babies born within two weeks of each other.
In 1798 Thomas had returned from Demerara, where he was the owner of two sugar plantations and 600 enslaved Africans.
He bought Innes House near Elgin, styled himself Thomas Cumming Esquire of Leuchars, had his portrait painted and married for a second time. His young wife Isabella Fraser had been seriously ill since Hannah's birth and was confined to bed.
Her three brothers -- James, Simon and Evan Fraser of Belladrum -- were all absent in South America as prominent plantation owners in Demerara and neighbouring Berbice.
But Isabella's sister Sarah had joined them with her husband William Fraser of Culbokie, recently returned from St Vincent.
Cumming's older daughter Katherine, baby Christopher's mother, had been born in Demerara in 1769 to his first wife Catherine Gertrude Lossner, a Dutch widow.
With Katherine was the baby's father, John Bagot -- an Anglo-Irish officer in the British army -- accompanied by his sister and brother.
Then there were Thomas Cumming's five unmarried sisters from Dufftown, still supporters of the long-lost Jacobite cause, including the youngest, Eliza, dressed in her habitual black as a sign of mourning for the Stuarts' loss of the throne. It was not until 20 years later that she put on her brightest colours, when hearing news of the death of George III.
They were joined by a nephew -- the son of the older brother, William Cumming -- by now known as Guillaume. He had fled Scotland for France after the defeat of the Jacobite army at Culloden and had risen to become a Chevalier of the Order of Saint-Louis and an aide-de-camp for Prince Francois Xavier of Saxony. Guillaume may have died by this time but his son, the French-speaking nephew, was there at the ceremony. He was Thomas de Cumming de Craigmiln and had been educated from 1786 at the Ecole Militaire at Brienne, where his older brother Andre had also been a pupil.
Thomas de Cumming had recently arrived from Amsterdam. This was perhaps the first time they had all met. No doubt, everyone was interested in his brother Andre's classmate at the Ecole Militaire, a young Corsican named Bonaparte.
Collectively, the extended family spoke English, French, Dutch and probably Gaelic.
They mourned the defeat of the Stuarts and loyally served the Hanoverian state.
They were citizens of nations and empires who were, at that moment, at war with each other; yet they were one family whose interests crossed all these boundaries.


Demerara, which was above all a place to make money, engendered such entanglements. And while Thomas Cumming was here, his financial situation deteriorated and he went back to Demerara after a couple of years. In 1810, at the age of 70, Thomas came back to Scotland for the last time.
When it was clear to his brother colonists that he was not to return, 101 men in Demerara and 50 in Berbice, many of them Highland Scots, subscribed to present him with a piece of silver plate, costing 500 guineas.
He died in Elgin in 1813, commemorated in the parish church of Dallas as 'a principal prominent promoter of Demerara's prosperity and wealth'.
Thomas Cumming is both an example of the involvement and knowledge of Scots in the plantations of Guyana and one reason why so many others followed him there.


This is my book. This is the cover of the book. Through the cover of the book, you're glimpsing the work of a contemporary Guyanese artist: Dudley Charles.
You can see his picture on the back of the book. It's a picture called Back Dam Fire -- the back dam is at the back of the plantation, along the coast of Guyana. A fire has been lit there. Thomas Cumming, and others like him, lit fires which are still burning in the Caribbean.
I was very pleased that the introduction to my book has been written by two Guyanese, Juanita Cox and Rod Westmaas. They begin their introduction to my book with a quotation from a Guyanese poet, Martin Carter. His most famous work is called 'University of Hunger'. He was imprisoned by the British.
The quote they use is: 'like a web, is spun the pattern. All are involved.' It's something of Martin Carter that is often quoted. It's a very short poem and I'd like to read it all to you, because the title of it is: 'You are involved'.


You are involved.
This I have learnt:
today, a speck
tomorrow, a hero
hero or monster
you are consumed!


Like a jig
shakes the loom
Like a web
is spun the pattern
All are involved.
All are consumed.


I think being here today, because of an interest in what happened here in 1746, means that in some way you feel involved in that history. If so, you are also involved in this history.
Thank you.


(RCM)
Thank you, David. That's food for thought.
Sounds like a great book if you get a chance to read it ...


[unclear audio]


So, next we have Maggie Craig -- Scottish novelist and historian; author of the acclaimed non-fiction Damn Rebel Bitches: The women of the 45 and Bare-arsed Banditti: The men of the 45.
Both books have just been published by Penguin in new editions, now fully referenced. And I believe it's the 25th anniversary edition of Damn Rebel Bitches.
So, Maggie is going to be helped by Kasey ...


(MC)
Ok, [unclear audio]
... the slides, it's my esteemed assistant here who's going to be showing the slides.
This is the new cover of Damn Rebel Bitches, 25 years old.
And my son said to me, 'what about the men? Are you not going to write a book about the men?' I said yes. That's what we call Bare-arsed banditti; well, I called it bare-arsed banditti ...
The publishers panicked about four days before it went to press and said, 'Could we not call it Bonnie Prince Charlie's sweat and [?] myth?'


[unclear audio]


Fortunately, it gets through filters in the States because arse is a very Anglicised, English/Scottish word! The Americans don't say that.


I've been here quite often to speak about the women. They're both close to my heart. When I first published this, I remember a man, at a talk I gave, took a step back from me and said: 'just a feminist book'. And I thought, well, yes ... But why should writing about 50% of the human race be considered as a niche subject?


But as regards the 45, there were some husbands and wives and partners and families who were going to different sides, and there were others who were standing side by side.


Now, I am a Glaswegian, and I'm proud of it. Often it's stated that the Lowlands were uniformly for the Government, but this is just not true. And the person I want to speak about today is another Glaswegian and his name was Andrew Wood, and he was a shoemaker in the High Street of Glasgow. He probably supplied boots and shoes to the Jacobite army. It's doubtful he ever got paid for them. However, what he did get was a commission in the Jacobite army, which he got from the hand of Charles Edward Stuart himself when the Jacobites occupied Glasgow on Christmas 1745.


Now unfortunately, I don't have an image of Andrew Wood because he was a shoemaker. He wasn't gentry. People like that didn't get their pictures painted. But he was in John Roy Stuart's Edinburgh regiment, which we could joke and say was a terrible thing for a Glasgow man to do ... But however, that was the regiment that he joined. And what I have got is just a little ... on slide two ... is the targe of John Roy Stuart, which is currently at ... well, not currently ... owned by Aberdeen University now. It's a fearsome-looking defensive and offensive weapon.


If we move on to slide three, that's John Roy's Doune pistol. It beats me why a pistol was decorated with a heart ... but there you go. Right, Andrew went off with the Jacobite army when they went to Falkirk. There was a battle fought in January. The Edinburgh Regiment were in charge of the baggage train, but it seems that John Roy Stuart fought there and Andrew fought there.


Hang on, I'm missing that picture there but we'll see it later ... Glasgow was trying to follow the bad boys to say there's no Jacobites here; we're absolutely loyal to the Protestant succession. This is all mixed up with the transatlantic trade, and how Glasgow had got access to what had been New England's colonies and then became Britain's colonies. Thomas Cochrane of Glasgow was frantically writing letters to the powers that be, saying Glasgow's a big manufacturing city. We've got all these stores -- Jacobites are going to just come in and loot the place.
He's terrified about this -- and can we have some arms to defend ourselves because they weren't soldiers, people who were in Glasgow, generally. And eventually he got permission to set up the Glasgow militia. The Glasgow militia was then promptly drafted off to defend Stirling as a result of Falkirk.


It's a very sad story: in one of these fascinating wee books that Victorian historians wrote about, that a man came in and his sister was making soup, and he lifted a ladle and drank it, and said 'we're off; farewell sister'. And she never saw him again because he was killed at Falkirk. Though, it's important to remember the people on the other side who were killed in these conflicts. 19 men of the Glasgow militia were killed at Falkirk, but Andrew Wood saved a lot of them by taking them through the Jacobite lines and sending them back on their way to Glasgow.


He also fought at the Skirmish of Keith, which was in March 1746. I think we often also tend to forget there was lots of Jacobite activity going on in Aberdeenshire and Banffshire and Angus; it wasn't just in the West Highlands. So he was there, and then he fought at Culloden. I found it really moving to think he was out there on that field on 16 April 1746, with the Edinburgh Regiment. He was captured. He was taken to Inverness. And we know that Inverness was a hellhole. After Culloden, every lockable space was used, so Andrew was one of those. And then he was transported to London on the thane and found ...


There are quite a lot of records of Jacobite prisoners being interrogated. There was one, a different man, who was asked for his name and he said: 'if you want to know my name, go and ask my mother'. So, there was a lot of just refusing to cooperate, which is very inspiring really. Andrew refused to be cooperated time and again. They just noted that he refused to answer further. Next slide please.


This is a picture from a book by a man called W Drummond Norrie. And it shows the Jacobite trials, so as you'll see there's a lot of men in the box and they're being tried in London on a charge of treason. They're all not wearing Highland dress; they're wearing top coats and breeches. I like to think that one of these guys with his back to us is Andrew Wood because it's perfectly possible. Although interestingly, this drawing was done by someone in the 19th century. Where did he get his information from? Was there another sketch that somehow got lost? I really like how the Redcoat soldier with the mitre hat is turning. Obviously, the men in the box were saying something, and he's checking that they're not going to misbehave in court.


So, Andrew was tried and was sentenced to death. He was in the new jail at Southwark on the south of the River Thames -- can we have the next slide, please? -- and when he was there, he gave a ha'penny to his jailer. And it's inscribed with:
'Given to me by Captain Andrew Wood of the Rebel Army whilst confined'. It says it's 1745, but obviously it was in 1746. I bought this from a coin collector -- I won't attempt to say the other word -- who says to me that this is a sign of authenticity because if you were going to fake it, you would make sure to get the date right.


Now, can we have the next slide please, Kasey? This is Andrew Cochrane, Provost of Glasgow. Actually, I rather admire him. He was from Ayr originally, and he came to Glasgow. He would do anything for Glasgow, to make Glasgow a strong and prosperous city. And he also said foolishly that when there was a ball thrown by Bonnie Prince Charlie in December 1745, 'our very ladies were not interested'.
And you think, there's a prince, there's a Stuart prince in town -- you're not going to be interested? It's not believable. It's just something you would have gone to see, but he said 'nobody went from here, only ane drunken shoemaker', which seems to refer to Andrew Wood.


However, Andrew Cochrane -- can we go on to the next one? I can't see that -- it's a petition, yes. Andrew Cochrane or somebody gathered a lot of signatures, many from the men who had been saved at Falkirk, and sealed it with the seal of Glasgow Corporation, sent it to London, asking for clemency for Andrew Wood. I'm just going to read a wee bit here, a very short bit. However, the petition for clemency is refused. I have to take off my glasses to read here ... Some of the signatories, that's what it says on the affidavit, is:
'Had it not been for his humanity and safe conduct of us, we should have been carried prisoners by the rebels further north and should have been stripped and robbed of all that we had if not deprived of our lives.'
And the names on that affidavit are from nine men: James Stephen, John Ballantine, James McCain, John Buchanan, Alexander Sullivan, Robert Logan, William Thompson, Thomas McKinley and Robert Phyllis Hills. And there were two separate affidavits from the student of divinity and one from Joseph McCrae, who was a fencing master in Glasgow. They too believed that they owed their lives to Andrew Wood showing mercy to them at the Battle of Falkirk.


The petition for clemency didn't work. There's masses of these petitions for clemency and they say things like, they always apologise for taking part in this wicked and unnatural rebellion, and if clemency is given to them. Clemency might have been to be sent across the Atlantic as an indentured servant. So, there was clemency and there was clemency ...


I have here -- maybe one to have a look at afterwards -- which is a photocopy from the National Archives in Kew, which shows the particular petition of Andrew Wood to the king's most excellent majesty, the humble petition of Andrew Wood.
Please do have a look at that if you would like.


The day before his execution, we know that he was distressed but not because he feared death. He seems to have been a very religious young man, or perhaps men just get very religious when they know they're going to die the next day! That's maybe a different point; that's what you might have hoped for, that there is going to be an afterlife. A Presbyterian minister came to the jail and said, I'm not giving you communion. You're a bloody rebel. Andrew was really upset by this and was in tears. And then an Episcopalian minister, Bishop Gordon, gave him the communion and Andrew took a lot of solace from this. Bishop Gordon reported that afterwards he was 'easy and cheerful' and it's reported that he stayed that way until the end of his life.


He wrote a dying speech, as was traditional then, and they were thrown out to the crowd. A lot of these things were collected later by Bishop Forbes, who compiled them all. I'm sure a lot of people in this room know about The Lyon in Mourning, but if you don't it's a wonderful resource and it's online -- you can get it through the National Library of Scotland. So when he was responding to the Presbyterian minister who said: 'you're a rebel; I'm not giving you communion'. Andrew said that he'd taken up arms in support of the lawful king and if he got the chance, he would do the same again. Second, Charles Edward Stuart's religion was neither here nor there. Everyone owed him and his father James their allegiance.
Think, look at what Scotland had lost.
I bid him remember too the massacre of Glencoe and destruction of the Scots entirely. The base and scandalous unions, the articles of which have constantly been violated as often as ever it served the wicked purposes of the usurpers and their infamous tools, particularly on the present occasion with regards as the poor prisoners who are brought up here out of our own country, the ancient kingdom, to be triumphed by them and murdered by strangers and foreigners, the most inhumanly thirst after our blood.


So he went the next day to the scaffold at Kennington Common, which is just across, nowadays, from where the old Oval cricket ground stands. He was calm. He forgave his enemies. He affirmed his support for the Stuarts and appealed to his fellow Scots to realise that by uniting with England all that his forefathers fought for has gone. He asked God to bless King James and Prince Charles and committed his spirit to the Lord. He was 23 years old.So there's [unclear audio] Andrew Wood.


There's a couple more slides to show you.
This is St George's Gardens in London, which I'm informed -- I haven't been, I hope to go -- is 5 minutes' walk from Kings Cross Station, near St Pancras. The Jacobite prisoners, including one by the name of Wedderburn whom David will recognise that name obviously, were taken back to the jail and then they were allowed to be buried, because that was considered to be merciful that you were buried and your head wasn't put on a spike at Temple Bar. And I got in touch with the person who's the chair of St George's Gardens, which is now a community space, an oasis in that part of London. That plaque is in its position and -- the next slide please -- that's just more detail of the plaque.


And then the next slide is a view of St George's Gardens. It seems to be very much sustained by the people who live there as a peaceful place to go. And also Zachary Macaulay is buried there and I just contacted the woman, and I just read about Zachary Macaulay in David's book. He was in the anti-slavery movement, and they did a play a couple of years ago about Zachary Macaulay.


Next slide is ... this is Old St Pancras Church. This is a picture that I found I think in St Pancras library because this is 26/27 years ago that I was doing this. It is the London Metropolitan Archives, and I'll just read out very briefly what it says on the different fields where there is some writing.
On the right-hand side is: this is sketch of St Pancras Church, done by me on return to England upon seeing my poor brother's grave, who was disgracefully murdered for taking arms in support of excellent prince at Culloden.
This was Henry Townley and his brother was Francis Townley, of the Jacobite Manchester Regiment. On the gravestone he's written: Here lie the mangled remains of Francis Townley. And on the left, a little diary note: on returning across fields to Holborn I was stopped by footpads but escaped by wounding one when the other ran off. So it was quite an adventurous thing to go and look at St Pancras.


There's just one final slide there ... The ha'penny has come back to Culloden on one occasion and we brought it back [unclear audio] of the Edinburgh Regiment ...
... and I usually lay daffodils in memory of Andrew Wood.


[rustling and unclear audio]


(RCM)
Have you lined up Arran? That's fine, I'll just introduce Arran from here.
If you don't know, Arran's with the Scottish Battlefields Trust. Born in Derbyshire in 1985, he moved back to Scotland aged 18 to attend Edinburgh University and remained in Edinburgh after completing his studies. Arran's an active historian and author of two books on Scottish history: Bloodstained Fields and Valour Does Not Wait: The rise and fall of Charles Edward Stuart, as well as editing further titles.
His appearances for tv and video both as a historian and in character. In 2013 he wrote and voiced the narration for the animated film of the Prestonpans tapestry and in the next couple of weeks is due to become curator of the new museum at the Battle of Prestonpans, which is due to open in the next couple of weeks.
Arran ...


(AJ)
Thank you very much, and thank you for the opportunity to come back to speak about Culloden. When we were first talking about this event, the idea was to look at individuals whose voices might have been sometimes forgotten amidst the clamour of the bigger picture of the great battle here. As some of you might know from some of my other work, I spend a lot of time focusing on Charles Edward Stuart himself and his role as the commander of the Jacobite forces during the rising. And occasionally, I was criticised for saying: 'well, stop talking about the generals and start talking about the men on the ground' -- the point is the generals were there on the ground as well.


But today I went halfway between those two extremes and wanted to look at a very senior, very significant man in the Jacobite army who also seems to have a bit of a forgotten voice, and seems to have disappeared as a real person and become something of a bit of a caricature. And I'm talking about Mr O'Sullivan, an Irishman, which is how he's usually introduced in Jacobite memoirs. And that will lead me to my concluding points, that second half of that title.


In fact, I want to talk about two Mr O'Sullivans. The first is this guy. Lord George Murray said of him:
'Mr o'Sullivan was at supper with the Prince. He'd got some Mountain Malaga, (a sweet Spanish wine) which he seemed very fond of' and then goes on to say basically no orders were written that night because this Mr O'Sullivan is very fond of his Mountain Malaga ... [unclear audio]


It also says elsewhere in his accounts: 'for my own part, I've never seen him (strange word) in time of action neither at Gladsmuir (that's Prestonpans), Falkirk nor at this last' (which is of course Culloden). So there was this peculiar absence during the moments of great crisis during the campaign. Lord George Murray, at the very end of the campaign in his final, bitter letter to the Prince after the battle, says 'Happy had it been for us that Mr O'Sullivan never got any other charge or office in our army than the care of the baggage' adding in a little bit of spite, I think, 'which I'm told had been brought up to and understood'. So, this guy's only fitness is for dealing with the logistics of the baggage.


So, this is one Mr O'Sullivan, an Irishman; and this is another. In the words of Sir Thomas Sheridan, 'the zeal which he has shown and the exertions he has made, ever since the Prince confided to him his intention of coming to Scotland, have been immense.'
It's very different to the lazy chap with the Mountain Malaga. The Prince promoted him to brigadier the day after the Battle of Gladsmuir -- that's the Battle of Gladsmuir that Lord George Murray said he was nowhere near the action in -- on account of the service that he did there. Sheridan also tells us that at the Battle of Falkirk this Mr O'Sullivan rallied part of the left wing that was at the crucial moment at Falkirk, where part of the Jacobite army was breaking up and crucially reserves were pushed in by the Prince. And this Mr O'Sullivan helped to rally the Lowland units that were fragmenting then. Another source here, the Prince's valet, he says that this Mr O'Sullivan 'understood the irregular art of war better than any other man in Europe nor was his knowledge of regular law much inferior to that of the best general then living.' Quite a different fellow to this guy who's only fit to look after the baggage.


And of course, these two men are the same. This is John William O'Sullivan, who is a man of complete contrast depending on who is writing about him. We have to remember of course that all of these were written by people who knew him and worked with him on a regular basis. So how on earth do we ever get to the truth of who somebody like John William O'Sullivan is? And the reality is that, although Sullivan was promoted to Adjutant General of the Jacobite army, he was responsible for most of the logistical planning of the army's movements, its motions, once the decisions had been taken in Council as to where it was going. It was up to O'Sullivan to work out how it was going to get there. This is a man about who we actually know very little and what we do know comes from relatively few accounts and sources.


Just to pick up a couple of things here, there were people who clearly had a very high opinion of him, including James Francis Stuart. He said, before the rising, that 'I'm very glad' -- this is writing to his son, the Prince of course -- 'you are thinking of taking Mr O'Sullivan with you into the country, and you may say as much as you please that I put him about you, for it is true I think him a proper person to be with you.'
Prince Charlie had written to his father saying that he wanted to take O'Sullivan with him to Scotland. He found him extremely competent, very useful at organising his household affairs and the preparations for the expedition to Scotland, but he was worried that because he was a newcomer into the Prince's circle that other people would become jealous of him. And so he wanted to be able to say that he had his father's authority to take O'Sullivan with him.


Michele Vezzosi, the valet again, he says, just to give us a sense of O'Sullivan's background: 'after which ...' and this is an account of him serving in Corsica in the French army ... 'O'Sullivan served two campaigns, one in Italy and one on the Rhine, and was reckoned the best irregular warrior in Europe.' He might have been over-stating things a little bit there -- he was only a captain. 'And the Prince, knowing him to be an expert officer, made him Director of his Artillery and aide-de-camp.'


Maxwell, just to get another voice in here, 'of the 7 or 8 gentlemen that the Prince brought with him from France, there were only three that had ever served, none of them in a higher rank than that of a captain, and of these three, Mr Sullivan only had had an opportunity to learn something of the detail of an army, having been aide-de-camp to this French officer during the Corsican campaign.'


The important thing is O'Sullivan was therefore one of the most experienced military men that the Prince had in his immediate circle at the beginning of the campaign. He found him competent. He found the king (his father) had confidence in him. And these are all strong recommendations as to why the Prince would listen to a gentleman such as O'Sullivan. You then get a different sense of what's going on from looking at some of the other things that are happening here.


We've got a quote from Murray of Broughton there that just talks about how O'Sullivan with the Duke of Perth, one of the Lieutenant Generals of the Jacobite army of course, was directly involved in scouting out 'within a pistol shot' of where the batteries should be during the Siege of Carlisle, and there's lots of other examples I could have chosen, from accounts where it's clear that O'Sullivan is very active, is very specifically engaged in the planning of the army's motions and the instruction of orders, with or without the Mountain Malaga days. And Captain Johnston there saying that 'Lord George could receive still less assistance from the subaltern Irish officers who, with the exception of Mr O'Sullivan, possessed no other knowledge than that which usually forms the whole stock of subalterns, namely how to mount and quit guard.' So, an attempt here to say the Irish officers are generally fairly useless but I do have to qualify that with the exception of Mr O'Sullivan.


I dropped in a quote from O'Sullivan himself there, who writing back to France says: 'you should certainly accuse me of conceit if I had the honour to tell you of all the different affairs given to me to manage.' O'Sullivan was clearly trusted by the Prince and it was very important for somebody with the level of responsibility and pressure that the Prince was under that he had somebody close to him who he could trust and who he had confidence in to say that if he wants this to be done, the Prince could do it.


Now, I don't want to go too long into it but when you start to go through into the accounts, the memoirs of some of the senior Jacobite officers like William Murray, you get a very negative perception however of O'Sullivan. And just picking up some of them, here Murray is talking about the Battle of Prestonpans and he says that O'Sullivan puts Cameron men into the churchyard at Tranent, 'for what reason I could not understand'. And because Lord George Murray doesn't understand the reason, the reason must be truly nonsensical and it's a mistake. Actually, I understand why you put them in there, because it's a strong, fortified viable position forward of the Jacobite lines controlling the dry routes across the battlefield.
So I think here, what we're seeing is an exposure of the fact that O'Sullivan, whose military experience was based mostly within the last five or six years, had a very different perception of what type of war they were fighting than Murray, whose previous military experience was considered a little limited, and considerably further back in time. Also, Murray says that O'Sullivan's manner was to write his orders in a specific way, naming who was to be where -- very specific. And he says that that might have done well in a regular army 'but in ours, more exactness and attention to detail is necessary.' And although Murray is trying to criticise O'Sullivan here, I think he's actually doing the opposite. He's actually saying this man was writing out orders in the manner of a regular army, which is what he and the Prince were trying to create. And he notes there, in my third quote I put up, that 'the Prince chiefly trusted him with the disposition' (this is back at Falkirk).
And he said 'Mr O'Sullivan, whom the Prince chiefly trusted with the disposition, was the person that might easily have remedied the error in bringing up men from the second line' (this is that moment that the second line is collapsing at Falkirk) 'but that gentleman had certainly no knowledge in these affairs, nor was he ever seen to do anything in the time of action'. That is pretty easily disproved from the other accounts of what was happening at Falkirk. Just because Lord George Murray didn't see it, doesn't mean it didn't happen. Although Sullivan didn't do it.


Now, what's really happening in all of this? Clearly, there are personality clashes. O'Sullivan and Lord George Murray don't get on. That's true, that's clear. But what's also happening is that there is a distinct and clear and often unspoken about bias in the Jacobite accounts -- the Scottish Jacobite accounts -- of what happened against the Irish officers who were involved in the Jacobite rising. And that is an important point. It takes me back to my introduction where the title is Mr O'Sullivan, an Irishman. Is that a problem? It seems to be.


If you look at Lord Elcho, who sometimes in his eagerness to criticise everybody and get his point across, exposes his views a little bit more clearly than he might otherwise have done, is very clear about the context of this. 'The officers took much amiss the preference the Prince gave the Irish to the Scots, which he did upon all occasions. His reasons for that were that they were of his own religion and paid always more court to him in their discourse. As they had nothing at stake (this is the crucial bit!) they had nothing at stake and were only there to gain his favour and protection, so whatever he proposed they were for.'
Now, this is the crucial point. There is running through some of the attitudes of some of the Jacobite officers a sense that those Irish men, particularly by that they mean O'Sullivan, who the Prince is confiding in during the course of the campaign, have nothing at stake compared to what the Scottish Jacobite officers have.


O'Sullivan had been born in County Kerry. He had then been sent overseas by his family because there were no prospects available for a young Catholic gentleman.
He'd had to create a life for himself in that exile. And I think it is grossly unfair to suggest that the men who were fighting alongside the Prince, for whatever their reasons, had any less at stake than any of the others. And so I was very gratified to see my friend Raymond in the uniform of the Irish Picquets today laying flowers at the cairn on behalf of the Irish soldiers who fought on this field. It's there in Elcho; it's there in others. Vezzosi again refers to this and he says that they had treated O'Sullivan 'as a private gentleman of no more merit and of less importance to Juba [that's the Prince] than themselves. The Scotch Chiefs were not only jealous of the Irish favourite but of one another.'


It's a very uninspiring slide but there are in here a number of points that I wanted to share. Firstly, that even some of the people who are most significant to the operation and successes, and perhaps also the ultimate failures of the Jacobite campaigns, are not men about which we know an awful lot. We know about O'Sullivan in 1745 and 46. We don't know very much about his life before then. We know very little about his life and career after that, except that he continued to serve in the French army for some years and was clearly considered therefore of some military competence there. So just because you're significant in the army and having a great deal of influence doesn't mean that we know everything about you and that your voice is always heard.


O'Sullivan wrote a full account of the campaign for King James, which has been published. It is very detailed. It's very interesting. It's almost phonetically written. You can hear his accent if you read it. But it is often in the secondary accounts of the campaign. It is often relegated as a source because it contradicts Lord George Murray. And if you give prominence to O'Sullivan's account, you also have to give credit to O'Sullivan. And there is an inherent anti-Irish bias in some of the ways that this story is told. So that is my other point. There are vents and there are inherited biases that we pick up that are there in the secondary historiography, and also there in the sources and the accounts of the men who were here. That anti-Irish and anti-Catholic bias was present all the way through the Council of War that was determining how this war was fought.
Thank you.


(RCM)
Well, thank you Arran. I'll just put the title page back for a second.
We'll move to questions. Please have a think of any questions you might have.
Just a reminder for a second by Christopher Duffy. Professor Christopher Duffy would have loved to have been up for this year's anniversary. Sadly, he can't. He's been unwell recently, but he was up a few weeks ago and he's busy gathering evidence for a research project of every piece of documentary evidence that he can find on the battle and he's aligning it with the latest archaeology because we're interpreting the LiDAR survey that we've done and we're fusing archaeology with history for the first time. It's really, really exciting. I asked him rather naively, because I am not an expert on Culloden and would never pretend to be, when are we going to get the latest edition of the Battle of Culloden? He absolutely shot back at me: 'Don't be stupid! We're never going to get the latest edition of the Battle of Culloden. We'll never know, because it's all perceptions. A lot of it will be based on what we understand at any given moment.'
So I'll just put this back up and ... I'm going to ...
Kim, you're aware of what's online but should we ask the floor first of all? Has anybody got any questions for the panel? Yes, sir.


(AM1)
There was a slide ... Chevalier Johnstone, aide-de-camp to Lord George Murray, Lord Elcho and the Prince, said that Lord George Murray and O'Sullivan were kept apart because they were scared that Lord George Murray was in close contact with O'Sullivan and ... [unclear audio] ... They had fell out. Lord George Murray never came to the Parliament House, which as the headquarters of the Jacobite army in January, he was supposed to be. They were as far apart as they could keep them apart. And in the Battle of Falkirk he had never listened to O'Sullivan's advice during the march to get up to Falkirk. So I think that they fell out in Falkirk and never gained it again.


(AJ)
I think it started earlier. I think it was a clash of personalities right from the outset. And I think it's both the clash of personalities and that underlying sense, that is there, that some people have more at stake in this conflict than others and were therefore more risk-averse than others. But it's an important point because if you don't understand the personalities of the people that are at the top of the army making the decisions, you can't really understand how the Jacobite army was making its decisions or indeed not making its decisions.
And so you have to understand all of those personalities, and as I've tried to make the point, it's sometimes very difficult to find the real person behind the two completely opposite extremes that you're presented with by people who were there with them and knew them. So if they can't give you a consistent picture of people ... [unclear audio]
So I think that is critical.
And I think what we've done is spend a lot of time listening to what Lord George Murray says and sometimes therefore forgotten to give credit to what O'Sullivan says. I think there are things there, because O'Sullivan's work and his responsibility in the army were often logistical and were about the orders of the day and movement of the armies, that stuff is often the invisible stuff that's happening behind the scenes whilst the army is making its motions. It's not the glamorous stuff, sword in the hand. When we pick up snippets of what O'Sullivan is doing and where he is during the battles particularly, he's riding backwards and forwards. People are always saying, he's with Broughton, with Murray, with Johnstone. They always say O'Sullivan suddenly rides up and tells us this. And then they decide whether or not they're going to do it. The point is he's riding up and down the lines, giving these instructions. Very active staffwork that O'Sullivan's doing but sometimes it's invisible stuff.


But when you look at the army's achievements in terms of its movements, the best example is the march from Edinburgh to Carlisle, when three columns move out of Edinburgh at different times, on different roads. They all meet at the right place at the right time ahead of the siege of Carlisle. That is down to staff work. That is the responsibility of O'Sullivan. It doesn't become a big battle; it's not the big achievement of the Jacobite army. But there are clearly things that the army is capable of that are almost certainly down, at least in part, a large part, to the work of O'Sullivan. So that's why I want to try and say, look, this guy's an important player ... [unclear audio]


(AM2)
Why ... [unclear audio] ... why did they think that the media has such a habit of presenting O'Sullivan -- I could think of Chasing the Day in the film just in view as one example ... [unclear audio] ... such a bad press in the media, a bad portrayal, as they do of the Prince as well at times. Why do you think this is? Can your talks go someway towards redressing this? Why do you think the media are giving him such a bad portrayal?


(MC)
Because lice have long legs. And they have legs that go on for hundreds and hundreds of years ...
I'm very interested in what you're saying about even two people who were in the same room could have -- and we all know about personality clashes in our own circles and our own families -- but I think with the '45, things have been repeated.
I get really annoyed when people talk about busting the myths because I think if your experience has kicked in, you've busted the myths already. We expect a lot of journalism but there's a lot of lazy journalism as well.


(AJ)
I think it's also important to remember when we're thinking about the context of personality clashes, this is a relatively small number of people, most of whom have very limited levels of experience of doing what they're doing at this level, and they are under immense pressure and strain right from the beginning. These decisions -- they were very conscious and the Prince certainly was very conscious that the decisions they were making affected thousands of people, and they knew that. And the pressure that that puts somebody under means that the strains on those relationships are extreme. And everybody's opinion needs to become extreme, in that context. We have to understand that human process that's happening.


(DA)
I think there's something similar in what we're all doing -- the technical term is micro-history. It's trying to get down into the lives of individuals who are not seen as the big players, people who kept extensive records. And I think in some ways that's getting easier because more sources are becoming available and digitised. But there are particular skills involved in it. I think sometimes you have to read the records against the grain, so you're looking at Murray's criticism but trying to take out that fact, not what the criticism is but what it actually tells us about what he felt despite himself. I think there are particular skills involved in that.
I hope it's helping us to get down the social tree in our history, to cover a wider range of people more accurately. But there always will be a lot we don't know and that can be very frustrating as well.


(RCM)
Can we take a question online first, and then we'll come back to you sir?


(Kasey)
I have a question for Arran from Ross Smith, asking: what was Murray's link with the Battle of Falkirk to the Battle of Culloden?


(AJ)
Murray's link ... well, Murray had been in charge of the right wing of both the army at Falkirk and the army at Culloden. So he was in that position, and Murray's style of leadership was very commendable. He was leading his brigade from the front and directing it at the critical moment of action. And that's, I think, why he's able to say probably quite truthfully I never saw O'Sullivan where I was, which was right at the front line, sword in hand, targe on arm.
And that's because O'Sullivan is doing the staff work, carrying those orders along the line, because Murray himself says that at Culloden, he is repeatedly ridden up to by O'Sullivan and given specific instructions by O'Sullivan that Murray does not act upon because he doesn't agree with them. It's not really how an army is supposed to work, but that's what's happening.
So Murray's particular style of leadership, although Murray is technically a senior officer, he's Lieutenant-General, but he's there at the front with a brigade to command. And that's why I think sometimes he is not seeing what other people are doing behind him and he is not experienced in the command of a large army, even though some accounts and certainly some 19th-century histories inflate Murray as being one of the greatest generals in Scottish history. I don't mean to be unkind to Murray but he is not and he never had the experience to suggest that he might even have been.


(DA)
Could I ask you something? You used the term a number of times 'irregular' and 'regular' warfare. What did irregular mean? And was there a difference in view as to what was 'proper military'?


(AJ)
Yes, there was, and Jacobites sort of fall into the gap. The Jacobites are often depicted as an irregular army, one that is best suited to hit and run and is not designed to stand toe to toe on a battlefield with a 'regular force' ie a paid, professionally trained modern army. That isn't really how most of the Jacobites saw the Jacobite army. They played up to the image of the Highland elements of the army, but what the Prince and O'Sullivan were trying to create was an army that was capable of going toe to toe on the battlefield, and that's why they were so adamant that they wanted French military support -- regular soldiers trained to exchange volley fire with British soldiers.
The Jacobites, however, slide towards the irregular end of the spectrum, if you want to put it that way, in the sense that they are prepared to campaign through the winter, through difficult territory, maximising their manoeuvrability and their movement. And they did that very effectively. But ultimately, the Jacobite army's style of winning this war was based on forcing pitched battles and going face-to-face against the opponents. They were not prepared, although later on there were advocates for this, especially after Culloden. They were not trying to fight a guerrilla campaign; they wanted to fight a conventional military operation.


(AM3)
David, do you think there's a danger of compartmentalising blame for the situation of the treatment of slaves? I think in your own example the gentleman called Braithwaite ... [unclear audio] ... was one of the key ports for the triangle trade, so I don't think our man from Elgin can be held solely to blame. You need to look at the entire picture rather than compartmentalising and demonising a particular sector. Would you agree?


(DA)
Well, I certainly wasn't trying to demonise. I think we have to recognise what ... the slave trade ... [unclear audio] What I'm trying to say is that one aspect of this history, the people ... the whole systems of slavery and the slave plantations are a place that people ... [unclear audio] and I think we need to look at actually the people risk, the significant risk involved in getting involved.


The death rate -- I only realised that the death rate among whites who go to the Caribbean is actually higher than enslaved Africans. Millions more enslaved Africans die, but the death rate is higher among the whites. So it's risky. Who's prepared to do that? Well, people who take risks are often people who've already lost, who are looking for the opportunity for a way back. And I think that's where the connection with Jacobites is, that there are significant numbers ... [loss of audio] that motivation.


(RCM)
We've got time for one more question. Would anyone like? Anyone else got any thoughts?
One final question then, just to sum things up, should we be commemorating battles at the moment, given what's happening in Europe and given the wider perspective? Should we be protecting battlefields? Maggie?


(MC)
Ok, a personal perspective on this. When I was a Scottish tourist guide and I used to bring people here and tell them the story, and they would say you make it sound like a battle [unclear audio]. And it did. But I was guiding Germans who had been in Berlin when the Russians advanced and I heard stories that would make your hair curl about what happened to them, the German women in Berlin.


However, that's one thing but I think obviously we should be conserving, protecting our history -- I think it's given us a lot of pause for thought as to what's happening at the moment. But it doesn't help if we don't protect our heritage, because that's what the Ukrainians are going for. They're protecting their heritage and their culture and the language.


(AJ)
Yeah, I think it's perhaps more evident than ever the need for us to remember the conflicts of the past and lessons from them, but also to contextualise them, to spend time like this understanding how it happened, why it happened, what the motivations were behind it. There's a tendency sometimes in military history to look at battles from the sky, as blocks of people on a two-dimensional map, and until you can stand out there on a field like this one and consider the stories like those that we've been talking about, where individual people who've come here for all sorts of different reasons and from all sorts of different backgrounds -- they've gone through extraordinary experiences here that then leads to extraordinary experiences, positive or negative, afterwards. And because all of what happens here affects thousands and thousands of people during the time of the battle, I think that is the motivation, or the ... [loss of audio] ... reinforce the point.


Just as something to close, somebody says to me you study lots of different historical periods, which moment would you want to go back to? And I often give them the answer: the party in London at the Restoration in 1660 because that sounds like great fun. But you're a battlefield historian -- surely you want to go back and see a battle? And I say no. If battlefield history teaches you anything, it's the last thing you want to see is a battle.


(DA)
I agree completely with everything that's been said. I think that it's about making sure it's the right kind of commemoration, the right kind of remembering. One of the things I think I've learned in recent years is that, in relation to the work that I'm doing on the history of slavery and that's also about the history of resistance, we do actually need a military perspective to understand a great deal of what was going on in the resistance of enslaved Africans to slavery. And if that's missing, we've lost an important part of understanding. In this case it's a battle that lasts years but still it's ... [loss of audio] ... colonies.


(RCM)
One last word!


(AM4)
It's one for the National Trust -- is it possible for the National Trust for the extreme left wing of the Battle of Culloden and pulling that right away from the B9006 so that people can get to the Culloden walls and see the extreme left wing where the last cannon firing was positioned. Surely that can't be an impossible task for the NTS?


(RCM)
Actually, I'm the Operations Manager -- I'm Raoul -- it's actually on my list to consider how we open up some of those views and bring that into the experience.
We're considering everything from a tunnel to a bridge to a right of way. The big issue is that folk travel along there at 60mph plus right now and it's a bit dangerous. That said, there's going to be a way, so watch this space. It won't happen by this time next year but it's coming. Thank you.


Right, before I get on with the day job!
Thank you everybody and thanks very much to our panel members. [loss of audio]

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