The Last March: The Jacobite Rising of 1745
The final act of the Jacobite story began not with an army, but with a single ship in the mist. In July 1745, Charles Edward Stuart—young, charismatic, and tragically certain of his cause—landed on the remote shores of Eriskay in the Outer Hebrides. He came with little more than a handful of men, a few crates of gold, and a letter from his father, James Francis Edward Stuart, naming him Prince Regent. The Rising of 1745 was born not out of strength, but out of desperation and inherited destiny. It would be the most audacious Jacobite campaign ever mounted—and the last.
The origins of the rebellion lay in the long shadow of the Glorious Revolution (1688), when the Catholic James II and VII was driven from the throne. For over fifty years, the Stuarts had remained in exile, while Britain embraced a Protestant succession and political modernization under the House of Hanover. But resentment festered—especially in the Highlands, where clan society endured, and loyalty to the Stuarts had become as much about identity as monarchy.
Charles—known to history as Bonnie Prince Charlie—was no warrior by training, but he possessed a kind of reckless charisma that could ignite men’s loyalties. “He was,” wrote historian Frank McLynn, “a man who could inspire a march but not win a war” (The Jacobites, 1985, p. 197). Still, in the summer of 1745, his landing caught both London and Edinburgh by surprise. The British government, preoccupied with the War of the Austrian Succession, underestimated both his resolve and the depth of Highland support.
The rebellion began in earnest on 19 August 1745, when Charles raised the Stuart standard at Glenfinnan. Clans such as the MacDonalds, Camerons, and Stewarts rallied to him. Within weeks, the Jacobite army marched south, capturing Perth, Stirling, and, most stunningly, Edinburgh, where Charles entered Holyrood Palace as if the throne were already his.
On 21 September, the Jacobites met a British army under Sir John Cope at the Battle of Prestonpans. The result was swift and devastating: the Highland charge—a screaming rush of broadswords and targe—shattered the redcoats in minutes. “The rout was complete,” wrote John Prebble. “They had not fought a battle. They had survived a storm” (Culloden, 1961, p. 112). Emboldened, Charles pressed southward, marching into England in November.
The scope of the campaign now widened beyond Scotland. The Jacobites reached as far as Derby, just 120 miles from London. Panic rippled through the capital. But the rebellion’s fragility was beginning to show. English Jacobite support never materialized. Promised French assistance was delayed. And the Highlanders—far from home, undersupplied, and growing uneasy—urged retreat. Charles, against his instincts, turned back.
From that moment, the rebellion unraveled. The British crown, now mobilized under William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland—son of King George II—pursued the Jacobites north with methodical precision. The decisive blow fell on 16 April 1746, at Culloden Moor. It was not a battle. It was an execution. Charles’s army—exhausted, outnumbered, poorly armed—was slaughtered in less than an hour. Cannon ripped through the Highland ranks. Bayonets finished what artillery had begun.
“Culloden was not just a defeat,” wrote historian Murray Pittock, “it was a demonstration. It showed what modern war could do to ancient loyalties” (The Myth of the Jacobite Clans, 1995, p. 156). Charles fled into the Highlands, beginning a long, mythic escape that would include disguises, caves, and the immortalized aid of Flora MacDonald. But the cause was dead. By September 1746, he had sailed for France—broken, bitter, and, in many ways, already a ghost.
The aftermath was brutal. Government forces under Cumberland—the “Butcher” to Jacobite sympathizers—conducted a savage campaign of reprisals. Villages were burned. Prisoners were hanged or transported. The clan system, already frayed by economic change, was systematically dismantled. Tartan was banned. The Heritable Jurisdictions Act stripped chiefs of their legal powers. The Highlands were subdued—not only militarily, but culturally and politically.
Yet even in defeat, the 1745 Rising cast a long shadow. It birthed a romantic legend: Charles as the gallant prince, the Highlands as a noble but doomed society. “The truth,” wrote Bruce Lenman, “was darker and sadder. It was a revolt driven by despair, miscalculation, and the inability to recognize the world had changed” (The Jacobite Risings, 1980, p. 211).
It could be written of Culloden: “The Jacobites did not lose their war because they lacked courage. They lost because they marched into a century they did not understand.” In 1745, the past came galloping down the glens, bagpipes wailing, tartans flying—and collided with the cold precision of the modern state.
It never rose again.
References:
- McLynn, Frank. The Jacobites. Routledge, 1985.
- Prebble, John. Culloden. Penguin Books, 1961.
- Pittock, Murray. The Myth of the Jacobite Clans. Edinburgh University Press, 1995.
- Lenman, Bruce. The Jacobite Risings in Britain, 1689–1746. Eyre Methuen, 1980.
- Szechi, Daniel. The Jacobites: Britain and Europe, 1688–1788. Manchester University Press, 1994.