Were your people there?
All sorts of folk were at the Battle of Culloden. However, this battle is unfortunately like many others. Many claimed to have been present that weren't, and many have claimed forefathers were present who weren't within coo-ee of the joint. This is much more so of the Scots than the English, perhaps because of their participation in their German-speaking general Butcher Cumberland's genocidal actions after the battle.
And if all the Scots who claimed to be or who have been identified as being present had, in fact, been present the Stuarts might still be on the throne and I would probably be speaking French, considering what a useless bunch of wasters most of them were. Actually, I'm being unfair. It was only the men who were wasters. Queens Mary and Anne, the last two Stuart monarchs, the former in the company of King William 3, were actually quite reasonable monarchs, at least in comparison to their forebears.
Mind you, it's not as if any of the monarchs since, the German Hanoverians and their descendants, have been any great shakes, so maybe it wouldn't have made much difference!
Anyway, apparently I (Lex) had at least two relatives who I know were definitely not at the Battle of Culloden, but had a connection to it, and I'm ashamed to write they were on the side of the genocidal maniac Butcher Cumberland. Mind you, one of them at least would not, I suspect have expected Cumberland's actions.
The other forebear was either too stupid to know what he was getting himself into, or found himself in a situation he didn't welcome, either through unwillingness to fight and maybe die, or, worse, be rendered crippled and made a beggar, or some other reason. Note: I do not condemn any person who fears having to fight for some tosser's pride or power or whatever.
I must say I'm unsure of my actual relationship with these blokes. This stuff's based on stories I was told by my father, an extremely avid reader, but not necessarily a stickler for the absolute incontrovertibly provable truth!
One of these men, my father told me, was named Borthwick, having the same family name as mine. (For an explanation of why I think I am probably related to a bloke in the mid-1700s simply on the basis of his name, click here.)
It seems likely my family is descended from a younger son of the 3rd Lord of Borthwick. The current Lord of Borthwick is the 24th. Therefore, the cousinly separation has grown rather vastly, and chances are, if I'm related to the Culloden fellow, that that cousinly separation will also be rather far.
Anyway, this Culloden Borthwick didn't make the battle. He was hanged. For desertion. Prior to the army he deserted from winning the battle!
The second was a bloke called Duncan Forbes, Lord of Culloden. The current Culloden House, now used as a hotel, as is Borthwick Castle (!), wasn't his house. The current house was built a couple of decades after his death. Duncan's house, an old castle, burned down. The point is, Charlie Stuart, BA (Calcutta) (Failed) (sorry, whenever I think of Charlie Stuart I can't help but think of the two Ronnies' comedy creation Charlie Farlie, or was it Charley Farley - whatever!) stayed in Duncan's house the evening before his defeat at Culloden.
Yep, while his men struggled through the night to carry out one of his stupid orders, a failed night attack on Stinking-Billy-to-be's camp, Charlie was high-footing it, boozing, and probably rooting (which, I might say, has nothing to do with the US meaning of that term!) his way to a comfie night's sleep. Rest well, young Charlie, for tomorrow you fly, so to speak, or write, in my case. He made sure he was able to piss off quickly, despite a probable hangover, while thousands of his men died, were later massacred, executed, or transported to a short life as white slaves in the American colonies. Leaving Butcher Cumberland, Stinking Billy, to set up the almost total destruction or twisting of Highland culture.
Oh, I nearly forgot. Duncan Forbes. He was actually extremely lucky he was absent when Charlie occupied his house, for as an open opponent of the Stuart claim to the throne of the United Kingdom, he might have gone the same way as poor Borthwick.
So what, you may ask. And fair enough, too. Except, I do have a point. The Scottish diaspora has tended very strongly to glorify the "forty-five" and "Bonnie Prince Charlie". Consequently, they fondly imagine their forebears were participants in Charles Stuart's effort to put his father on the throne of the United Kingdom as James 3 of England and 8 of Scotland.
Of course, Charles was as much Scottish as I am, and his Stuart forebears who were Kings and Queens of England as well as Scotland only called on the Scots when they needed help. Otherwise, they stayed almost as far away as they could, and to the best of my knowledge not a single one of them ever set foot in Scotland after James 6 left to become James 1 of England. I speak more Gaelic than Charlie did, and when he spoke English it was with a very noticeable Italo/Polish accent (I remind you, his mum was Polish).
The story is, of course, even more complicated by the fact Charlie was Roman Catholic christian, and his German-speaking Hanoverian opponent, George 2, was Protestant. In fact, it's said some fifty potential heirs to the throne were overlooked when George 2's father, who became George 1, was chosen as heir because those fifty or so were catholics. Of course, Charlie's old man, Jimbo, made his first attempt to seize the throne in the middle of this. He failed, obviously. Jimbo was the Old Pretender and Chas the Young Pretender, although Chas was still aiming to whack Jimbo on the throne.
That's not all. The Highlands, as usual, were riven by warlordism, with clan hatreds and feuds going back centuries, if not millenia. Some saw backing Charlie as a chance to seize the upper hand from their enemies. And, of course, others saw backing the Hanoverians as the way to climb to the top of their local greasy pole.
And on top of that, there were the usual Scottish/English hatreds, hundreds of years old, and the Highland/Lowland hatreds also centuries old.
And the result? Well, confusion. Let's look at these clan representatives at the battle:
Boyd, Cameron, Chilsom, Davidson, Drummond, Farquharson, Fraser, Hay, Livingstone, MacBean, MacColl, MacDonald of Glencoe, MacDonald of GlenGarry, MacDonald of Keppoch, MacDonald Clan Ranald, MacDuff, MacFie, MacGillibray, MacGregor, MacInnes, MacKinnon, MacKintosh, MacIntyre, Maclver, MacLachlan, MacLaren, MacLean, MacLea, MacNeil of Barra, MacNaughten, MacPherson, Menzie, Morrison, Oglivy, Oliphant, Robertson, Stewart of Appin.
These clans came out for the Italian/Pole.
But look at the names of these mobs who were also at the battle:
Clan Campbell, Clan Cathcart, Clan Colville, Clan Cunningham, Clan Grant of Freuchie, Clan Gunn, Clan Kerr, Clan MacKay, Clan Munro, Clan Ross, Clan Semphill, Clan Sinclair, Clan Sutherland.
Yep, these clans were on the side of the Hanoverian poms. In fact, once you chuck in the lowlanders there were actually more Scots in the German's army than in the Italian/Pole's.
But the fact that a clan name is listed for a particular side doesn't mean all people of that clan, or having that name were on that side. The Campbells, for example, execrated by diaspora "Scots", comprised a large clan. But that only meant they were more likely not to agree on everything. One of the sad little raised heaps of dirt left on the battlefield cover the remains of dead Campbells who fought for Charles, at least I hope they're all dead. There are stories about the ghosts of soldiers past walking Drumrossie Moor. Bullshit, of course ... but ... well ... nah, of course it's bullshit ... isnt it?
What else? Oh, yes, the Manchester Regiment. These were English blokes, probably obviously, considering where Manchester's located. They didn't fight at Culloden because they had already been captured by the Butcher. That's right, "captured". I suspect they were catholics, who supported the Stuart bid for the throne in the hope they would restore catholicism to at least a state where they could be free to practice it. Charlie the Drunk left them to defend Stirling.
Unfortunately, not least for them, they couldn't. Defend Stirling, I mean. Several of them were hanged. I don't know the fate of the others, but they were probably imprisoned and/or found themselves on a ship with some of the 1500 or so unfortunate Scots transported to slavery in the Americas, to both the Caribbean colonies and what became the United States , where the average life span for such men was two years.
And that's still not all. The King of France, who had originally intended to invade England via Scotland with a full blown army which had been blown apart, so to speak, by inclement weather while on the high seas, loaned Charlie some troops of Scottish and Irish origin who were enlisted in his army, and wore their French uniforms in the battle. They were probably largely catholic exiles, but were treated as prisoners of war by the Butcher and repatriated to France.
In relation to this, I'm reminded that a bloke whom the Irish might have known if he had been born in the land of his forebears as Patrick MacMahon was the President of France for a couple of years in the late 1870s under the magnificent name and titles of Marshal Marie Esme Patrice Maurice, Count de MacMahon, Duke of Magenta. His Irish antecedents had been supporters of Jimbo 2 and 7, and eventually had to seek refuge in France. I also understand the French had a sizeable unit in its World War 1 army made up of men with Scottish antecedents and names.
So where might participants have come from, and where might their descendants now live? As to the first half of that question, we know:
- there were heaps of Scots there, highlanders, islanders, and lowlanders on both sides, although most on the Hanoverian side, especially, but far from only, lowlanders;
- there were English, mainly, if not completely, on the Hanoverian side as Charlie's Manchester Regiment was already passing through the English justice system like turds through an arsehole;
- there were some men of Irish and Scottish descent who may already have settled or were to later settle in France, or who themselves or their descendants may at some stage have managed to return to Ireland or Scotland; and
- the Hanoverian side may have had some Hanoverians/Germans, and after fighting for some time in what we know as Belgium may have had some men from there.
As to the second half of the question, there can be no answer even approaching definite. Of course, there will be descendants in Scotland, England, Canada, the United States, New Zealand, and Australia. However, it's also likely there will be descendants in France, and possibly both Irelands. And maybe Germany and Belgium.
But in my year of writing, 2017, some 271 years have passed. Descent will now be spread very far and wide. For example:
- The English-speaking countries I've just identified have over all those years undergone considerable immigration of people with varied ethnic, cultural, and racial backgrounds. Any of these immigrants could have fathered or borne children of descendants of the Culloden participants.
- Further, each of these English-speaking countries have people who lived within what are now their national boundaries prior to the arrival of the British colonists. Like the immigrants, any of these first peoples could, through marriage/partnership or for much more ghastly reasons, have borne or, less commonly I'm afraid, fathered children of descendants of the Culloden participants.
- Then, of course, in British cultures at least, family names usually only indicate male lines of descent. But, equally of course, there are female descendants who, unfortunately, have often tended to drop their family name upon marriage. Obviously, this can make descent from a participant in almost anything very difficult to identify - but far from necessarily impossible.
- Finally, but by no means least, in those 271 years since Culloden, Europeans from all countries have spread their semen, and in a few cases their ova, from one end of the world to the other, and, of course, being the most widely spread Europeans of the lot, the British, including the Scots and Irish, have spread a heck of a lot more semen than most. Consequently, obviously, there are people all over the world, some in the most unexpected of places, some of whom bear their fathers' names even, who are descended from particpants at Culloden.
So, were your rellies there? Of course, they may have been on the other side, whichever that is, to that which you thought. Or, of course, much more likely, really, is whoever you thought was there wasn't within a 747's roar of the place.
And why would people claim to have been there, or, as I've noticed is much more likely, their descendants have claimed they were there? Well, there might be good legitimate reasons, although I can't think of any. And there might be any number of illegitimate reasons, of course. I don't want to spend a heap of time on completely unsubstantiated and, probably in most if not all cases, impossible to substantiate opinions, but I'll mention just the very obvious one.
Some people believe there is reflected glory in being involved by descent in the last great land battle in Britain, the last of a terrible string of defeats visited on the Scots in general and the highlanders in particular. In this case, the glory rests with the ineffably stupid losing side rather than the genocidally ghastly winning side. But it shouldn't. There's no bloody glory. Just blood, guts, and the burnt pork stink of burning human beings. And screams. And screams. And endless fucking screams.
They died in the battle, or were bayoneted afterwards while lying wounded and begging for their lives on the battlefield, or were burned to their screaming oven-roast deaths while lying wounded in bothies and huts. Those who managed to survive that and hadn't managed to dodge the hunting dragoons were refused the rights of prisoners of war, tried under English law, in trials held in a language they couldn't understand and for which they weren't permitted translators.
The lucky ones were subsequently executed, and the others were transported to be worked in the burning sun to their deaths from heatstroke, seriously severe sunburn, dehydration, overwork, cruel beatings, or untreated disease. Even then some survived to eventually find freedom and settle.
And why were they at Culloden? They were fighting because they felt tradition-bound, honour-bound to do so, blindly following their clan leader, the actual cause irrelevant, about which they knew bugger all except for the bits that would encourage them to fulfill their duty to follow their clan leader. And the clan leader? He, or in the case of the Mackintoshes she, was in turn following a 25-year old incompetent dandy about whom their knew nothing but that he was a Scot.
Which, of course, was untrue. James 1 and 6 had good reasons to hate the Scottish arseholes who subjected him to an ineffably cruel upbringing. But Charles's 1 and 2, and James 2 and 7 only called on the Scots when they needed their help, having been born and bred in England. And Charles the would-be 3, after his father James the would-be 3 and 8, being solid believers in the Stuart mindset of divine rule, to the enormous detriment of everyone in the world would have swept backwards the constitutional victories earned by those who supported 1688's so-called Glorious Revolution which brought William 3 and Mary 2 to power by way of their protestant Dutch invasion.
And the clan leaders our poor deluded men were following? What were their motivations for following the ponce of Rome? Nothing glorious here, either, I'm afraid. Mostly, for them it was about short-sighted nationalism, and/or vengeance, greed, hatred, religion, power, or politics, which is a mix of all of the above.
Brave? Maybe. But stupidity and venality? Well, it's easy for me to condemn from a different time and with the benefit of knowing the devastation wrought on highland culture as a consequence of their actions, but it's hard for me to go past stupid and venal. And although the mythology's glorious, I'm afraid the reality was anything but.
And would anyone with more than a gram of knowledge about he and his father have really wanted Charles to have won at Culloden?
Before my next comment, I have to make clear I believe strongly that unexpected and long distant benefits that can be said to have accrued from short-term brutal cruelty causing rape and death for a century or so can't excuse the cruelty. But most of us in the diaspora that resulted are significantly better off in all sorts of ways than if we had stayed in Scotland. I find the whole uprising that ended in Culloden very sadly depressing, but I'm writing this in a large house I own with my partner, another member of the diaspora, and our two wonderful children. I'm comfortable, I've been well paid, and I love where I am.
Of course, I would never have been born if not for the diaspora, but if perchance I could be born in a time and place where the uprising didn't occur I very strongly suspect I would be living in some horrible, grey, cold, dingy hovel on the outskirts of some ghastly Scottish city, or scratching a living out of a piddly bit of dirt I rent from some scumbag getting rich on my labour.
Parliamentary democracy would be next to non-existent, the ideas of human rights and the rule or law, trial by jury. and all the rest wouldn't exist. The industrial revolution? Probably not, at least not in Britain. A revolution of workers? Quite possibly, or of the middle class, perhaps. And history tells us win or lose revolutions don't usually end well for ordinary people. Freedom of speech and thought? Probably not.
So, I'm contemptuous of the Stuarts, and I hate the Hanoverians, and I resent that their descendants are still the monarchs of my country, but I'm grateful for each of those poor bastards who died, each of those shackled white slaves in the Americas, each of the women who were raped, and each of the poor souls who starved to death in the clearances. I'm even grateful to the Stuarts for being so bloody singlemindedly incompetently power-hungry, and the Hanoverians for ... well ... being there, I guess.
Does this mean I forgive the Butcher and his toadying cohorts? Not on your nelly. What they did was a completely unforgiveable crime even then. And while the men who went to their deaths or worse were mostly stupid, there was, despite their blood lust, and the reality they had probably as they invaded England before being drawn back into Scotland committed rape, plunder and maybe murder in both directions, have, to me, a touch of a lost simplicity, almost an innocence about them which I know intellectually is probably not real, but an emotional feeling emanating from my inculcation with the diaspora's mythologising.
But of glory, I'm afraid there's none.
So, were your rellies there? And why on earth do you care? After this many years the blood's getting more than a little thin. But there may be an interesting story there, so why not check it out and follow it up. You never know what you might find. Or not!