The 1745 Rising has been romanticised over the centuries in many books and films, and still arouses strong emotions in Scotland. However, this is the first truly comprehensive history of the Jacobites` last serious attempt to regain the throne for the Stuart dynasty. It is based on original research in all available archives, including Swedish, French and German records. These make nonsense of the many popular histories based on self-serving accounts written by a few of the key participants. But it is no dry academic analysis. Christopher Duffy, the world`s greatest authority on eighteenth-century warfare, writes a vivid narrative that overturns many accepted `facts` about the `45.
Consider the following for instance:
A certain reputation preceded the Jacobite invasion force into England, where
"the people ...seemingly mightily afraid of the army...had abandoned all the villages upon their approach. When any of them was got, and asked why they ran away, they said they had been told that the army murdered all the men and children and ravished the women, and when they found themselves well used, they seemed mightily surprised. There was an old woman remained in a house that night where some officers were quartered. After they had supped, she said to them, `Gentlemen, I suppose you have done with your murdering today, I should be glad to know when the ravishing begins`."
The old lady was left in frustrated peace, for by any reckoning the Jacobite army must be reckoned one of the best behaved of its period, as supporters of the government had to admit to themselves. The MacDonalds of Glencoe insisted on mounting a guard to protect a mansion on the banks of the Almond at Kirkliston. This, as they well knew, was the property of the Earl of Stair, who was commander of the Hanoverian forces in England at the time and whose grandfather was the author of the massacre of Glencoe in 1692. Such was the working of self-discipline and the regard for the honour of the clan and for the authority of the clan chief or his representatives. Some of their enemies were so deluded as to take the very lack of atrocities as evidence of a primitive state of mind.
`The poor wretches are entirely under the command of their chiefs [wrote a Whig from Lancaster],
for soon after six at night the drum beat for them to retire to their quarters, which they did immediately; when their officers went and locked them up.`
The charges which are justly laid to the account of the Jacobite troops relate to their vindictiveness on their retreat through England, and to offences like stealing horses, poaching, killing hens and sheep, and the peculiar Highland form of mass desertion which was really absence without leave - all reprehensible, no doubt, but pretty mild when compared the plundering, incendiarism and murder carried out under the authority of the Duke of Cumberland in 1746.