Culloden

Product Description

This is the story of ordinary men & women involved in the Rebellion who were described on the gaol registers & regimental rosters of the time as ' Common Men' There is little in this book about Bonnie Prince Charlie & other principals of the last Jacobite Rising of 1745 Culloden recalls them by name & action presenting the battle as it was for them describing their life as fugitives in the glens or as prisoners in the gaols & hulks their transportation to the Virginias or their deaths on the gallows at Kennington Common The book begins in the rain at five o'clock on the morning of Wednesday 16 April 1746 when the Royal Army marched out of Nairn to fight the clans on Culloden Moor It is not a partisan book its feeling is for the ' Common Men' on both sides
- John Grant charging with Clan Chatten & seeing the white gaiters of the British infantry suddenly as the east wind lifted the cannon smoke & Private Andrew Taylor in a red coat waiting for Clan Chatten to reach him likening them to 'a troop of hungry wolves' Culloden reminds us too that many of the men who harried the glens as ruthlessly as the Nazis in Occupied Europe were in fact Scots themselves It recalls the fact that many men in Prince Charles' army had been forced to join him It shows that a British foot-soldier's wish for a sup of brandy on a cold morning before battle is as much a reality as a Prince's pretensions to a throne The detail for the story told in Culloden has come from regimental Order Books & manuals from contemporary newspapers & magazines from the letters & memoirs of soldiers & officers eye-witness accounts of atrocity & persecution & the personal stories of the victims themselves Culloden is the story not of a Prince but of a people