At the battle of Prestonpas, the MacGregors, with a band of Camerons, composed the centre.  They were conspicuous for their wild charge and the carnage they inflicted on the enemy.  Armed only with sharpened pikes and scythes bound on long poles, they cut the legs of the horses and severed the bodies of their riders in half.  Captain James Roy MacGregor, at the commencement of the battle received five wounds, but recovered from them, and rejoined the Prince's army with six  companies of battle-scarred MacGregors.

Even during the harrowing retreat from Derby, they again and again, assumed the most dangerous risks and proved their worth.  At Falkirk, where General Hawley found to his dismay that the cornered wild boar had tusks, along with the Camerons, they victoriously fought in the centre of the front line.

Major James Mohr MacGregor became the Prince's personal adjutant, and also acted as guide over the most dangerous of mountain treks.  The Prince's personal piper was a John MacGregor.

The early Jacobite successes were actually due to the brilliant tactician, General Lord George Murray.  Unfortunately for the cause, Murray had an offensive manner and would not accept any criticism.  This resulted in a continually tense atmosphere between Charles and Murray.

Although 60,000 cheering people went out to greet Charles upon his triumphant arrival in Edinburgh, few Jacobite troops had been raised in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and the Southwest (homeland of the "Scottish" Anglo-Saxons) were openly hostile.  A majority of Highlanders, and practically all the Lowlander population were against a return to Stuart rule.  Charlie's successes were an illusion.

Some men had been drummed up in Manchester, but there was no serious support from the Roman Catholic families of northern England either.

Prestonpas

Outside Edinburgh, the seasoned Hanoverian redcoats lined up at Prestonpas to do battle with Charles.  Murray directed his troops through a secretive night march through a swamp to outflank the redcoats, pinning them with their backs to a ten foot high stone wall.

In the early morning mists, the highlanders split and charged towards the two ends of the enemy's line where the dragoons were waiting.  In the heavy mists of morning, cannons and muskets had little effect.  This was to be a matter of hand to hand conflict, a specialty of the highlanders.

Out of the heavy mist the highlanders were suddenly  upon them screaming their Gaelic war cries, slashing, and sowing panic into the otherwise disciplined dragoons.  They fled, allowing the highlanders into the rear of the centre. 

More panic ensued as the sandwiched centre was attacked from both the rear and forward.  MacGregors and Camerons charging from the front slashed the horses with their pikes and scythes.  The entire line broke and fled in panic straight into the insurmountable wall, where they either died amongst the carnage or managed to surrender.  The Jacobites won the day with only 40 men lost against 400 Hanoverians killed and 1400 taken prisoner.

After the stunning win at Prestonpas, a conference of Charles, his commanders, and the Highland Chiefs took place in Holyrood Castle.  Charles argued to invade England, as he considered himself King of the whole of Britain.  Murray argued against this as he considered it more important to consolidate Jacobite control over all of Scotland first.  There remained vast areas still under Hanoverian control, not the least being the vast holdings of the Campbells.

Murray lost the standoff by one vote.  The small Highland army then invaded England.

It took the Jacobite column just two days to take Carlisle.  All Hanoverian garrison troops there were pardoned after agreeing to swear an oath not to take up arms against Charles.  This magnanimous gesture set the tone for the entire Jacobite march into England.

The Hanoverians were desperate, they realized this was a "do or die" struggle for both sides, the loser would be hunted down and killed, the winner would rule the British Empire.  A new Commander in Chief was appointed to save the country from the "Papists" threat.  This man was none other than the Duke of Cumberland, the second son of George II.  Cumberland was a seasoned commander, and had fought in continental Europe, mainly against Catholic forces, of which he detested.  He directed his officers to treat the Jacobites as traitors.  No mercy or quarter would be given to these rebels.

The Jacobites outmaneuvered the enemy at every turn, won every skirmish, and soon was at Derby, 150 miles from London.  There was nothing to stop them from entering London, and the House of Hanover was terrified in their haste to pack up and return to their province in Germany.

The Beginning of the End

Then, an event occurred that changed Charle's destiny forever.  A gentleman appeared from London with impeccable Jacobite credentials bearing news of "a 9,000 man army of Redcoats preparing to defend London, also, there was no sign of any French army preparing to invade England."

This gentleman was, in fact, a Hanoverian spy, and his false news resulted in a hurried conference of the Jacobite war leaders.  This time, James lost the vote to Murray's caution, and his army of liberation soon began a sorrowful retreat back to Scotland.

In a sober overview of the situation, it is obvious that, for all his faults, Charles was the better strategist, and Murray was the better tactician.  Many armchair strategists have since argued the Jacobites would have won this uprising if Charles had deferred to his battle-experienced Commander at every turn.

However, considering there were no serious obstacles between the Jacobite army and London, and that the French fleet, at the very moment Charles was in Derby, were preparing to embark on warships to invade southern England, Charles appears to have been much the wiser of the two in the grand scheme of things.

Regardless, he gave such a fright to the Hanoverian King George II that suitcases were hurriedly packed ready to flee out of the country, as Charles was expected to seize London.   The fear that Charles instilled in the Hanoverians would later serve to incite their armies to acts of cruelty not seen before or since on British soil.

In December of 1745, they began a careful withdrawal, denying the Hanoverians any chance of a weak spot to exploit.  Fleeing back to Scotland with two powerful Hanoverian armies hot on his heels, Charles won a rear-guard action at Penrith, and then at Falkirk in January 1746.

The Battle of Falkirk

Back in Scotland, the Jacobite troop complement rose again to eight thousand men, and they began a siege of Stirling Castle.  To aid the trapped government for there, General Henry Hawley left Newcastle with eight thousand more troops.

On 16 January 1746, Hawley was in Callendar House, near Falkirk, resting before an expected confrontation.  However, in the early morning, he awoke to find the Jacobites had come to meet him and were massing higher on the plateau behind the house.

The Hanoverians rushed to get onto the high ground also, but the scramble up the muddy hillside through the morning mist was disorganized and disastrous.  This was the element in which Highlanders excelled.  They eagerly charged down the muddy slopes screaming their Gaelic war cries and again sewed panic in the English ranks.

Less than fifty Jacobites were lost in the twenty minute rout which took the lives of several hundreds of Hawley’s troops.  The Hanoverians fled to Linlithgow while the Jacobites resumed their siege of Stirling Castle.

However, in the highland tradition, many wounded or disillusioned highlanders simply walked away and went home after their inglorious retreat from the threshold of victory.

The 4,500 half-starved Jacobite army was cut to pieces by the Duke of Cumberland's 10,000 English regulars and German mercenaries with their cannons and bayonets on Drum-mossie Moor, Culloden, near Inverness on 16 April, 1746.  It was the last pitched battle on the soil of mainland Britain.  Over ten thousand Jacobite soldiers, along with innocent women and children were massacred for only 300 Hanoverian troops killed.

The Highland genocide had begun.  It continued for over 100 years, until the highlands were bereft of people.  Absentee landlords in the pay of Hanoverians drove out people in favour of the "black-faced clansmen" the Suffolk sheep of renown. Drastic laws were enacted to reduce Scots to the level of indentured servants to the English.  History was rewritten to eliminate anything positive about Highlanders.

What Might Have Been

With London in Charles' hands, and with England under a renewed Stuart throne, with occupying French troops at his bidding, the Hanoverian sympathizers in Scotland would have fled.  With his Highland power base in hand, Charles would have effectively overthrown the largest Empire the world has ever known.

History certainly would have judged him differently.  Whether it would have resulted in a better Britain, or a different North America, who knows?  Bonnie Prince Charlie would be forever remembered as the outnumbered, outgunned hero who conquered all of Britain from a surreptitious landing in north-west Scotland with merely seven men, and persevered mostly on his own inner strength and courage.

Whether his rule had been popular or not, he would stand forever in league with those other few determined men who had previously conquered Britain, Julius Caesar and William the Conqueror.

And what of the MacGregors?  Their influence with Charles far outweighed their numbers, thanks largely to the efforts of the Houses of Balhaldie and Roro.  With a Jacobite win, the Campbells certainly would have been castigated into oblivion.  Their vast holdings, which were the largest in Scotland,  would surely have been confiscated.   The MacGregors, who had lost all their ancestral lands to Campbells, would have been amongst the greatest beneficiaries.

Our clan fortunes would have emerged as the greatest turn-around in Scottish history, at least in the short term.

Illegal Slaughter of Jacobite Garrison Troops at Carlisle

One of the most immoral and horrific acts of vengeance in the annals of English armed forces was committed at Carlisle a few miles from the Scottish border on England's west coast. 

When the Jacobites troops swept out of Scotland towards London in 1745, they met with success after success.  The town of Carlisle was quickly surrounded and the English garrison was promised a safe passage out of the town if they surrendered their arms and left peacefully.   That is exactly what happened.

A skeleton garrison force was left behind, amongst them was an officer in Charlie's army of the Clan Gregor.  In 1746, when two English armies were chasing the Highlanders back into Scotland, the town was surrounded again, this time by English Hanoverian troops.

Naturally this garrison expected to be treated as they had treated the English a year before.  Such was not the case.  The men were quickly rounded up and treated  as common criminals.  Those men from the ranks who took a renewed oath of allegiance to George II were pardoned.  The remainder were thrown into prisons where many perished from maltreatment.   However, they fared much better than their officers, who were quickly sentenced to death by hanging/quartering.

That method of execution was terribly grisly as it combined hanging and then before death, the victim was cut into pieces.  The condemned men were allowed one letter each to family, one such letter was sent from the Lt. MacGregor to his wife, through a friend who was being pardoned and was returning to the Highlands.. 

An old Gaelic myth claims that a Highlander who dies outside his beloved homeland will return home through the underground.  So he told his friend "Ye take the high road and I'll take the low road, and I'll be in Scotland before ye".

It became one of the most beloved and moving love songs ever written.  It was written in Gaelic, but the English version was called:

"The ballad of Loch Lomond".

It is the background song in this chapter.

To confront Charles's ragtag Army of 7,000 Highlanders was a force of 10,000 British Army regulars, and the logistical support of most of the Protestant population of Scotland, including the vast Campbell estates.   The Hanoverian, George I, sent his own son, the Duke of Cumberland.  The  Duke despised all  things Scottish  and  made  no  bones about  it.  He was a ruthless commander and a worthy proponent of 'Teutonic thoroughness.'  He would give no quarter and show no mercy to these Jacobite upstarts.  He would go down in history  as 'the Butcher of Culloden.'

A Portrait of the Carnage at Culloden, the first battle where Highlanders faced bayonets

As a result of the horrific and shameful slaughter of wounded soldiers, and of  innocent women and children after the battle, no British Regiment has ever included Culloden in their battle honours.  

The Aftermath

The real cost of this Jacobite rebellion had yet to be counted.   The English Government was now psychologically ready to penalize all  Scots as never before.   If the Highland and Lowland Scots who had sided against Charlie had known of the horror to come, they would not have stood by and let it unravel.   In a Teutonic thoroughness  never before witnessed in Britain,  whole populations were yet to be subjected to an ethnic cleansing, that would have been unthinkable without the traumatic shock of this, the final effort of Scottish independence.    The highland Scots had been 'demonized' and had become fair game for anyone with no conscience.

Perhaps the only positive outcome of this defeat and oppression was the emergence of two great Scottish literary characters; Robert Burns and Sir Walter E. Scott, thereby heralding a new age of awareness and appreciation of Scottish history & tradition...