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Topic: Culloden, Battle of

Culloden, Battle of

Years: 1746 - 1746

The Battle of Culloden is the final confrontation of the 1745 Jacobite Rising.

On 16 April 1746, the Jacobite forces of Charles Edward Stuart fight loyalist troops commanded by William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland near Inverness in the Scottish Highlands.

The loyalist victory at Culloden decisively halts the Jacobite intent to overthrow the House of Hanover and restore the House of Stuart to the British throne; Charles Stuart never mounts any further attempts to challenge Hanoverian power in Britain.

The conflict is the last pitched battle fought on British soil.

Charles Stuart's Jacobite army consists largely of Scottish Highlanders, as well as a number of Lowland Scots and a small detachment of Englishmen from the Manchester Regiment.

The Jacobites are supported and supplied by the Kingdom of France and French and Irish units loyal to France are part of the Jacobite army.

The government force is mostly English, along with a significant number of Scottish Lowlanders and Highlanders, a battalion of Ulster men from Ireland, and a small number of Hessians from Germany and Austrians.

The battle on Culloden Moor is both quick and bloody, taking place within an hour.

Following an unsuccessful Highland charge against the government lines, the Jacobites are routed and driven from the field.Between 1,500 and 2,000 Jacobites are killed or wounded in the brief battle, while government losses are lighter with 50 dead and 259 wounded.

The aftermath of the battle and subsequent crackdown on Jacobitism is brutal, earning Cumberland the sobriquet "Butcher".

Efforts are subsequently taken to further integrate the comparatively wild Highlands into the Kingdom of Great Britain; civil penalties are introduced to weaken Gaelic culture and attack the Scottish clan system.

“The longer you can look back, the farther you can look forward...This is not a philosophical or political argument—any oculist will tell you this is true. The wider the span, the longer the continuity, the greater is the sense of duty in individual men and women, each contributing their brief life's work to the preservation..."

― Winston S. Churchill, Speech (March 2, 1944)