CULLODEN is one of the most emotive words in Scottish history, and the place itself conjures up visions of what a hell on Earth the battlefield must have been for the Jacobites and government soldiers who perished there.
It is a place that evokes powerful feelings in all who visit it, and the air of tragedy and doom is palpable above the heather.
Ever since the battle took place on Drumossie Moor on April 16, 1746, people have disputed all the details of where exactly it took place and what actually happened that day.
It is a remarkable fact, however, that the name of Culloden might not feature at all in the history books or the current row about housing plans, if two of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s senior officers had got their way.
For as Emma Mason quite brilliantly summed up in a recent edition of BBC History magazine, Drumossie Moor was not the battleground of choice of the Jacobites.
She wrote: “The first was at Dalcross Castle, which John Sullivan, the Irish adjutant and quartermaster general, rejected because the distance across the ravine would have been too small to protect the Jacobite army from British musket fire from the other side.
“The second was on the south side of the Nairn, chosen by Lord George Murray. This was poor ground, did not protect the road to Inverness and was vulnerable to British mortar fire from the other side of the river. It is clear that this site was a prelude to retreat and the dissolution of the army, because it was not an effective battle site.
“The third site was about 1km east of where the battle was eventually fought, and John Sullivan drew up the army there on April 15. It was on higher and less boggy ground than the final battlefield, and both wings of the army could see each other, which they could not in the next day’s sleet and rain.
“No one ‘chose’ the site of the battle on Drumossie Moor as a preference: it was the line closest to headquarters at Culloden House which could defend the road to Inverness.”
As the final confrontation of the Jacobite Rising of 1745-46, Culloden’s place in history is sealed and it remains the last full-scale pitch battle to be fought on the island of Great Britain.
To walk on the battlefield and see the memorial stones for the clans who charged and died there shows just how seriously the Highlanders and the many lowland and Irish soldiers, not forgetting the contingents from France and England, took their oath of loyalty to Charles Edward Stuart.
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