The Jacobite rising of 1745 or 'The '45' (Scottish Gaelic: Bliadhna Theàrlaich ['bli?n??? 'hja:r?l???ç], "The Year of Charles") refers to the attempt by Charles Edward Stuart, also known as "Bonnie Prince Charlie" or "the Young Pretender" to regain the British throne for the House of Stuart. It was the last of a series of rebellions that began in 1689 with further revolts in 1708, 1715 and 1719.
The Rising forms part of the War of the Austrian Succession and took place with the bulk of the British Army in Europe. Charles launched the Rebellion on 19 August 1745 at Glenfinnan in the Scottish Highlands, capturing Edinburgh and winning the Battle of Prestonpans in September. The Jacobite army invaded England, reaching Derby on 4 December but were forced to retreat due to lack of support from English sympathisers and in danger of being cut off by vastly superior government forces. Despite a second victory at Falkirk Muir in January 1746, they were defeated at the Battle of Culloden in April, Charles escaped to France in September and the Stuart cause ended.
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Background
In 1688, the Glorious Revolution replaced James II with his Protestant daughter Mary and her husband William. Since neither Mary or her sister Anne had surviving children, the 1701 Act of Settlement excluded Catholics from the English and Irish thrones and after the 1707 Act of Union that of Great Britain. When Anne became the last Stuart monarch in 1702, her heir was the distantly related but Protestant Sophia, Electress Sophia of Hanover, not her Catholic half-brother James III. Sophia died two months before Anne in August 1714; her son became George I and the pro-Hanoverian Whigs controlled government for the next 30 years.
Jacobites remained a significant element in British and Irish politics but with very different and often competing goals. The Stuarts themselves were absolutist Unionists who wanted tolerance for Catholicism. English Jacobites were primarily Protestant Church of England Tories but unreliable since resentment at exclusion from government was a key aspect; failure to appreciate the post-1715 decline in English support was a major factor in the failure of the 1745 rising. Irish Jacobites expected the fulfilment of promises made by a reluctant James II for an autonomous, Catholic Ireland and the return of lands confiscated by Cromwell. Most Scottish Jacobites were Protestant Nationalists who opposed 'arbitrary' rule and wanted to dissolve the Union. These divisions became increasingly visible in 1745.
A successful rising required French backing but after the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht their priority was peace. The terms of the 1716 Anglo-French alliance forced the Stuarts to leave France and they were invited to settle in Rome by Pope Benedict XIV. Since religion was a key objection to the Stuarts, their status as Papal pensionaries combined with James' devout personal Catholicism to make them less attractive to potential supporters; the birth of James' sons Charles and Henry kept the cause alive but prospects of a Restoration seemed remote. This changed for a number of reasons.
The revenue-generating power of the centralised French state had provided a huge advantage over their rivals but was now threatened by the post-1713 expansion in British commerce. Since a Stuart restoration was unlikely to change this, an ongoing, low cost insurgency was more useful to France but potentially devastating for the Scots as Charles himself pointed out. As it had to be cheap and French statesmen routinely failed to appreciate the cost and complexity of seaborne operations, the result was a great deal of planning for very little action.
In 1739, commercial disputes between Spain and Britain led to the War of Jenkins' Ear, followed in 1740-41 by the War of the Austrian Succession. The long-serving British Prime Minister Robert Walpole was forced to resign in February 1742 by an alliance of Tories and pro-war Patriot Whigs who promptly did a deal to keep their partners out of government. Fury at this led junior Tories including the Duke of Beaufort to request French help in restoring James to the British throne, while the Scottish Jacobite Association made a similar request to restore him to the throne of Scotland and dissolve the Union. French Chief Minister Cardinal Fleury consistently viewed Jacobite claims with scepticism and ignored both requests.
When Fleury died in January 1743, Britain and France were not yet at war but hostilities appeared imminent; in August Louis XV sent his Master of Horse James Butler to England to assess Jacobite prospects. Butler was given lists of supporters, including one claiming 190 of the 236 members of the powerful trade body the Corporation of London as 'Jacobite'. When Louis asked why the English needed help if support was so widespread, his advisors attributed it to dislike of foreigners and government repression. In reality it was a combination of wishful thinking and confusing indifference to the Hanoverians with enthusiasm for the Stuarts.
In November, Louis notified his uncle Philip V of Spain and James in Rome of his decision to launch a cross-channel invasion in February. 12,000 troops were assembled at Dunkirk; once French naval forces had lured the Royal Navy away from the Channel, the troops would board the transports and land near London. Since success depended upon speed and surprise, James remained in Rome while Charles travelled in secret to Gravelines in France to join the invasion.
These efforts were wasted since the plan was leaked; when a French squadron left Brest on 26 January the Royal Navy refused to follow. Storms then sank 12 French ships and severely damaged the transports, while the British government arrested a number of suspected Jacobites. At the end of March, Louis cancelled the invasion, declared war on Britain in October and focused on campaigns in Europe.
Charles suggested an alternative landing in Scotland and came to Paris to argue his case where he met Murray of Broughton in August 1744. Murray later said he advised against the idea but Charles replied he was 'determined to come the following summer... though with a single footman.' Hearing this, the Scottish Jacobites reiterated their opposition to a rising without French military support but Charles gambled once there the French would have to back him.
Maps Jacobite rising of 1745
Charles in Scotland
Charles spent the first months of 1745 purchasing weapons, while victory at Fontenoy in April encouraged the French government to provide limited support. This comprised 700 volunteers from the Regiment du Clare of the French Army's Irish Brigade and two transport ships; Elizabeth a 64-gun warship captured from the British in 1704 and the 16-gun privateer Du Teillay.
In early July, Charles boarded Du Teillay at St Nazaire accompanied by seven companions later known as the Men of Moidart. The most prominent was John O'Sullivan, an Irish exile and former French Army officer acting as Charles' chief advisor. After meeting Elizabeth the two ships left for the Western Isles on 15 July but were intercepted four days out by the British warship HMS Lion. A four-hour battle left both Lion and Elizabeth so badly damaged they had to return to port. This was a major setback as Elizabeth carried most of the weapons and the Irish volunteers but Du Teillay continued and Charles landed on Eriskay on 23 July.
Their initial reception was unpromising; the MacLeods and MacDonalds advised Charles to return to France but were persuaded by the commitment of the powerful and influential Donald Cameron of Lochiel committed himself. Charles now had a force of about 1,000 and on 19 August launched the rebellion by raising the Royal Standard at Glenfinnan. The Jacobites set off for Edinburgh, reaching Perth on 4 September where they were joined by more sympathisers. These included Lord George Murray, an experienced soldier previously pardoned by the government for his participation in the 1715 and 1719 risings. Murray replaced O'Sullivan as Commander of the Jacobite army due to his better understanding of Highland military culture and spent the next week re-organising it.
The senior government officer in Scotland, Lord President Duncan Forbes received confirmation of the landing on 9 August, which he forwarded to London. His military commander Sir John Cope had only 3,000 mostly untrained recruits and initially could do little to suppress the rebellion. Forbes instead relied on his personal relationships to keep people loyal and though unsuccessful with Lochiel, Murray and Lord Lovat, many others stayed on the sidelines as a result.
On 17 September the Jacobite army entered Edinburgh unopposed although the Castle itself remained in government hands and the next day James was proclaimed King of Scotland and Charles his Regent. Shortly thereafter, Sir John Cope landed at the port of Dunbar a few miles from Edinburgh; the Jacobites marched out to intercept him at Prestonpans and in the early morning of 21 September scattered the government army in less than 30 minutes. The rebellion was now taken more seriously and in mid-October, the Jacobites received a shipment of money and weapons from France with an envoy, the Marquis d'Eguilles. The Duke of Cumberland, George II's younger son and commander of the British army in Europe and was recalled from Flanders with 12,000 troops.
The Prince's Council of 15-20 senior Jacobite leaders spent the next six weeks debating strategy. The Council was set up due to Scottish concerns with Charles' autocratic style and fears he was too influenced by his Irish advisors. As a result, Charles resented the Council as an unwarranted control by the Scots on their divinely appointed monarch while it also emphasised the deep divisions between the factions. These became apparent in the meetings held on 30 and 31 October to discuss the invasion of England.
The primary Scottish objective of ending the Union was now possible and they wanted to consolidate their position; although willing to assist an English rising or French invasion, they would not do it on their own. For the Irish, only a Stuart on the British throne could provide the autonomous, Catholic Ireland promised them by James II. Charles argued removing the Hanoverians was the best way to guarantee an independent Scotland, that thousands of supporters would join once they entered England, while the Marquis d'Eguilles assured the Council a French landing in England was imminent. The Council agreed to the invasion but only on the understanding that they would receive significant English and French support.
Most Scottish incursions into England historically crossed the border at Berwick-upon-Tweed but to maximise the chances of meeting these two conditions, Murray selected a route via Carlisle and the traditional heartland of Jacobite support in North-West England. The last elements of the Jacobite army of about 5,000 left Edinburgh on 4 November and government forces under General Handasyde retook the city on the 14th.
Invasion of England
The Jacobite army formed two columns to conceal their destination from General Wade and entered England on 8 November without opposition. Two days later they reached Carlisle; while the castle defences were in poor condition and manned only by 80 elderly veterans, it should have been held since the Jacobites had minimal siege equipment. However, it surrendered on 15 November after learning Wade could not relieve them in time and the Jacobites marched south leaving a small garrison in place. On 26 November, they reached Preston, site of a major battle in 1715, followed by Manchester on 28th, where the first significant intake of 200-300 English recruits was received and formed into the Manchester Regiment. The army entered Derby on 4 December and the Council met the following day to discuss next steps.
Neither of the conditions agreed in Edinburgh had been met; despite continual assurances by d'Eguilles that a landing in England was imminent, the only French assistance had been received in Montrose on 24 November, while the Manchester recruits were a one-off. Similar discussions had been held in both Preston and Manchester and several senior officers felt they should have turned back already. Murray argued they had gone as far as possible and now risked being caught between Cumberland in the south-west and Wade in the north, each army being twice the size of theirs. Charles' admission he had not heard from the English Jacobites since leaving France stunned the Council; this meant he lied when claiming otherwise in Edinburgh and fatally damaged their relationship. The Council was overwhelmingly in favour of retreat and the next day they left Derby and headed north.
The decision has been debated ever since but there is no evidence for later claims by exiles there was panic in London on 6 December. Most historians doubt the Hanoverian regime would have fallen even if the Jacobites reached London. The Duke of Richmond who was with Cumberland's army wrote to the Duke of Newcastle on 30 November listing five options for the Jacobites of which retreating to Scotland was by far the best for them and worst for the government.
The fast moving Jacobite army evaded pursuit with only a minor skirmish at Clifton Moor, crossing back into Scotland on 20 December. Cumberland's army arrived outside Carlisle on 22 December and seven days later, the garrison was forced to surrender, ending the Jacobite military presence in England.
The road to Culloden
While the invasion itself achieved little, reaching Derby and successfully retreating back into Scotland was a considerable achievement. Morale was high and recruits from the Frasers, Mackenzies and Gordons plus drafts from Scottish and Irish regiments in French service brought Jacobite strength to over 8,000. French-supplied artillery was used to besiege Stirling Castle, the strategic key to the Highlands. On 17 January the Jacobites dispersed a relief force under Henry Hawley at the Battle of Falkirk Muir but the siege itself made little progress.
Hawley's forces were largely intact and advanced on Stirling again once Cumberland arrived in Edinburgh on 30 January. Many Highlanders had gone home for the winter and on 1 February the Jacobites abandoned the siege and retreated to Inverness. Cumberland's army entered Aberdeen on 27 February and both sides halted operations until the weather improved.
The Jacobites received several French shipments during the winter but the Royal Navy's blockade led to shortages in both money and food. When Cumberland left Aberdeen on 8 April, Charles and his senior officers agreed a decisive battle was their best option. The choice of location has been argued ever since but is unlikely to have changed the result. As well as superior numbers and equipment, Cumberland's troops had been intensively drilled in countering the key Highlanders offensive tactic of using the speed and ferocity of their initial charge to break the enemy line. When successful, this resulted in rapid victories as at Prestonpans and Falkirk but if it failed, they could not hold their ground. With the Jacobite forces exhausted by an ill-advised night march, the Battle of Culloden on 16 April was over in less than an hour and ended in a decisive government victory.
Charles and most of his personal retinue escaped northwards while an estimated 1,500 survivors assembled at Ruthven Barracks. On 20 April, Charles ordered them to disband, explaining his reasons in a letter of 23rd. He argued the French preferred an ongoing, low-level civil war in Scotland to a decisive victory, a view almost certainly correct as explained in the Background section above. Since this placed the burden of suffering on the Scots, they should disperse until he returned from France with additional support. In reality, the breakdown of the relationship between Charles and his Scottish supporters made a successful second campaign unlikely. Even before Derby, Charles accused Murray and others of treachery; disappointment and his habitual heavy drinking made these outbursts more frequent, while the Scots no longer trusted his promises of support. After several months of evading capture in the Western Highlands, Charles was picked up by a French ship on 20 September and never returned to Scotland.
Aftermath
After Culloden, government forces spent the next few weeks searching for rebels, confiscating cattle and burning Non-Juring Episcopalian or Catholic meeting houses. Prisoners from regiments in the French service were treated as POWs and exchanged but 3,500 captured Jacobites were indicted for treason. 650 of these died awaiting trial, 120 executed (including 40 British Army deserters and several officers from the Manchester Regiment), 900 pardoned and the rest transported. The Jacobite lords Kilmarnock, Balmerino and Lovat were beheaded on Tower Hill in April 1747 but these were among the last executions. Public sympathies had shifted and Cumberland's insistence on severity earned him the nickname 'Butcher' from a City of London alderman.
The last person to be executed for their Jacobite beliefs was Doctor Archibald Cameron, younger brother of Lochiel who was convicted of treason for his part in the 45. He escaped into exile but returned to Scotland in March 1753, allegedly betrayed by members of his own clan and executed in London on 7 June.
Steps were taken to prevent future rebellions; William Roy completed the first comprehensive survey of the Highlands, new forts built and the network of military roads started by Wade after 1715 finally completed. Additional measures were taken to undermine the traditional clan system, which had been under severe stress even before 1745 due to changing economic conditions. The Heritable Jurisdictions Act ended the traditional powers exercised by chiefs over their clansmen while the Act of Proscription outlawed Highland dress unless worn in military service. This Act was repealed in 1782, by which time its purpose had been achieved.
The Jacobite cause did not entirely disappear after 1746 but the exposure of the key factions' conflicting objectives ended it as a serious threat. Many Scots were disillusioned while the decline of English Jacobites since 1715 was shown by their failure to provide substantive support. Irish Jacobite societies continued but increasingly reflected opposition to the existing order rather than affection for the Stuarts and were eventually absorbed by the Republican United Irishmen.
The Rebellion was the career highlight for both leaders; Cumberland resigned from the Army in 1757 and died of a stroke in 1765. Charles was initially treated as a hero but the French wanted to end the war and the Stuarts were barred from France once more by the 1748 Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. Worst of all, in June 1747 his brother Henry entered the Catholic Church, later becoming a Cardinal; this was seen as tacit acceptance the Stuart cause was ended and Charles never forgave him. He secretly visited London in 1750 and continued attempts to reignite his cause but habitual heavy drinking made him argumentative and hard to work with. In 1759, he met French Chief Minister de Choiseul to discuss another invasion attempt but Choiseul dismissed him as incapable through drink. Charles never visited Britain again and died in Rome in January 1788, a disappointed and embittered man.
Legacy
The traditional focus on Bonnie Prince Charlie and Highlanders obscures the true legacy of the '45. Modern historians argue nationalism was a key driver for many Scottish Jacobites, making the rebellion part of an ongoing political idea not the last act of a doomed cause and culture. In addition, the Jacobite Army is often assumed to be essentially composed of Gaelic-speaking Highlanders while in reality many of its most effective units came from the Lowlands. In 2013, the Culloden Visitors Centre listed Lowland regiments such as Lord Elcho's and Balmerino's Life Guards, Baggot's Hussars and Viscount Strathallan's Perthshire Horse as 'Highland Horse.' The persistence of these views stems from the post-1746 search for a Scottish identity within a Unionist framework.
Part of this involved converting Highlanders into a noble warrior race rather than 'Wyld wykkd Helandmen' racially and culturally inferior to other Scots. For decades before 1745, rural poverty drove many to enlist in European armies but while military experience was common, the military aspects of clanship itself had been in decline for many years. Foreign service was banned in 1745 and recruitment into the British Army accelerated as deliberate policy. Victorian Imperial administrators continued this by their policy of recruiting from so-called 'martial races,' groups like Highlanders, Sikhs, Dogras and Gurkhas arbitrarily identified as sharing military virtues. This imagery was both powerful and long-lasting.
Another was the creation of a Scottish literary culture which grew out of the Scottish Romantic movement's reaction to Union and included the vernacular poetry of Allan Ramsay. After 1746, Robert Burns continued this trend but others like James MacPherson now looked back to a more distant past that was both Scottish and Gaelic. In the early 19th century, the novelist Sir Walter Scott went further by transforming the Rising and its aftermath into a shared Unionist history. The hero of his novel Waverley is an Englishman who fights for the Stuarts, rescues a Hanoverian Colonel and rejects a romantic Highland beauty in favour of the daughter of a Lowland aristocrat. By 1822, the reconciliation of the Stuart cause with Union allowed Cumberland's Hanoverian nephew George IV to be depicted on a visit to Scotland wearing Highland dress of his own design.
Perspectives were also shaped by 19th-century Scottish art; until the 1860s, the Highlands were portrayed by artists like Horatio McCulloch as wild, remote places largely empty of people. This was gradually replaced by 'Jacobite Romantic' artists who focused on events e.g. John Blake MacDonald's 1879 painting Glencoe, 1692. This created a Scottish identity largely expressed through cultural markers like the Victorian inventions of Burns Suppers, Highland Games and tartans and the adoption by a largely Protestant nation of romantic Catholic icons Mary Queen of Scots and Bonnie Prince Charlie. These views continue to impact modern perspectives of the 1745 Rebellion and Scottish history in general.
The '45 in popular culture
In literature, apart from Scott's Waverley novels, the best-known books with the Rebellion as a backdrop include Robert Louis Stevenson's novels Kidnapped and Catriona, the Jacobite trilogy by D.K. Broster and in modern times, Diana Gabaldon's Outlander novels.
While not strictly related to the '45, the British author Joan Aiken wrote a series of children's books set in an alternative 18th-century Britain where James II was never deposed and his son James III battles constant pro-Hanoverian conspiracies.
Significant screen versions include 1948's Bonnie Prince Charlie starring David Niven who summarised it as 'one of those huge, florid extravaganzas that reek of disaster from the start' and Culloden, Peter Watkins' 1964 docu-drama. In addition to the current Outlander TV series, the aftermath of the Rebellion is the theme of the now lost 1966 Dr Who series The Highlanders.
Musical references to the '45 are numerous, both for bagpipes (e.g. Johnnie Cope) and in song; the most famous is the Skye Boat Song but there are many others, one collection being the 1960 album Songs of Two Rebellions: The Jacobite Wars of 1715 and 1745 in Scotland by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger.
Notes
References
Sources
- Chambers, Robert; History of the Rebellion of 1745-6 (W. & R. Chambers, 1869).
- Cruickshanks, Eveline; Political Untouchables. The Tories and the '45 (Duckworth, 1979).
- Duffy, Christopher; The '45 (Cassell, 2003).
- Hook, Michael and Ross, Walter; The 'Forty-Five. The Last Jacobite Rebellion (Edinburgh: HMSO, The National Library of Scotland, 1995).
- Lenman, Bruce; The Jacobite Risings in Britain, 1689-1746 (Methuen Publishing, 1984)
- McGarry, Stephen; Irish Brigades Abroad, (Dublin, 2013)
- McInally, Thomas; "Missionaries or Soldiers for the Jacobite Cause?". In Douglas J. Hamilton, ed., Jacobitism, Enlightenment and Empire, 1680-1820 (Routledge, 2015).
- McLynn, Frank; The Jacobite Army in England. 1745. The Final Campaign (John Donald, 1998).
- Pittock, Murray; 'Charles Edward (1720-1788)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, September 2004; online edn, May 2006, accessed 25 October 2009.
- Riding, Jacqueline; Jacobites; A New History of the 45 Rebellion (Bloomsbury 2016).
- Roberts, John; The Jacobite Wars: Scotland and the Military Campaigns of 1715 and 1745 Edinburgh University Press, 2002
- Speck, WA; The Butcher. The Duke of Cumberland and the Suppression of the 45 (Welsh Academic Press, 1995).
- Szechi, Daniel; The Jacobites: Britain and Europe, 1688-1788 (Manchester University Press, 1994).
- Whitworth, Rex; William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland. A Life (Leo Cooper, 1992).
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