Culloden: Battle & Aftermath

Charles Edward Stuart's campaign to seize the British throne on behalf of his exiled father ended with one of the quickest defeats in history: on 16 April 1746, at Culloden, his 5,000-strong Jacobite army was decisively overpowered in under forty minutes. Its brutal repercussions, however, endured for months and years, its legacy for centuries. Paul O'Keeffe follows the Jacobite army, from its initial victories over Hanoverian troops at Prestonpans, Clifton and Falkirk to their calamitous defeat on the field of Culloden. He explores the battle's aftermath which claimed the lives, not only of helpless wounded summarily executed and fugitives cut down by pursuing dragoons, but also of civilians slaughtered by vengeful government patrols as they 'pacified' the Highlands. While in the long term the doomed Stuart cause acquired an aura of romanticism, the Jacobite Rising of 1745-46 remains one of the most bloody and divisive conflicts in British domestic history, which resonates to this day.