Culloden

We spent a couple of nights in the north of Scotland in Inverness. The first day, we went to Culloden. That is the battlefield where British and loyalist Scots troops decisively defeated the last Jacobite rebellion led by Bonnie Prince Charlie, to put his father James on the throne of both Scotland and England. This rising and defeat are the subject of dozens of good songs that I have heard or even learned over the years. Very romantic.

In this first photo, an educational reenactor, acting as a British soldier shows two new "recruits," including Chris, how to use a Brown Bess musket and bayonet, the way they were used in the battle.

I had known the battle was a slaughter, but I had not known quite how bad it was. The museum had a fabulous film in the round of the battle itself. The audience stands in between four screens, between the Highlander charge and the British defense, which first by cannon, then musket volleys, then bayonets, then muskets again on any Scot who broke through the first line. Very intense, very realistic. Very well acted by the reenactors who did it. They looked much better than any of the medieval or other reenactments I have ever seen or been involved in.

Here is a photo of the reenactors in the film for the museum.

After the battle, it got worse yet, as the British killed most of the wounded and prisoners, then many men, women and children who were around the scene. This led to years of suppression of the traditional highland clans, effectively the breakup of that whole life and culture. The Scots still ruminate over and even savor that defeat in an ambivalent way, because romantic as it seems, Bonnie Prince Charlie was not much of a leader, most Scots did not want a traditional Catholic king again, and what we would now think of as modernization was roaring on in the Scottish lowlands in the other direction. Since my own ancestors were living in a village that is now covered by the Glasgow airport, I suppose they would not have thought much of the 1745 rising for Bonnie Prince Charlie.