tag:theconversation.com,2011:/id/topics/bonnie-prince-charlie-29275/articlesBonnie Prince Charlie – The Conversation2019-01-18T16:41:40Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1099932019-01-18T16:41:40Z2019-01-18T16:41:40ZMary Queen of Scots: don’t worry about movie accuracy, historians can’t agree on who she really was either<p>The story of Mary Queen of Scots, packed as it is with drama and tragedy, has always been a favourite of film makers. As far back as 1895, Thomas Edison made <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIOLsH93U1Q">The Execution of Mary Stuart</a>, a short film which was the first ever to use special effects to show Mary having her head chopped off. Since then, the doomed Scottish queen has been the subject of numerous biopics, ranging from Katharine Hepburn’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0027948/">Mary of Scotland (1936)</a> to the new Josie Rourke film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2328900/">Mary Queen of Scots</a>, starring Saoirse Ronan as Mary. </p>
<p>When news media cover period dramas, historians are always asked if they are accurate. As far as the new Rourke film is concerned, the answer is no, of course not. Yet again audiences will come away thinking that she met Elizabeth I in person; there was a romantic involvement between Mary’s husband Henry Stewart Lord Darnley and her Italian secretary David Rizzio; and that 16th century Scots were wild and uncultivated. </p>
<p>Compared to its predecessors, however, Rourke’s film does quite well at blending the established narrative about Mary with creative licence. The <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067402/">1971 film</a> of Mary’s life, starring Vanessa Redgrave and Glenda Jackson, had the two queens meeting not once but twice. The 1936 movie was generally criticised for its melodramatic portrayal of Mary. And let’s not even address the wildly inaccurate treatment of Mary and the Anglo-Scottish relationship in the <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0127536/">1998</a> and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0414055/">2007</a> biopics of Elizabeth I, starring Cate Blanchett. </p>
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<p>Yet while tallying points on the historical scorecard in films is always fun, it’s harder to criticise film makers here than over many other historical events. The reality is that it’s highly problematic to think in terms of the “truth” about Mary because right from the beginning, all the historical sources have polarised into two wildly different accounts of to what extent she influenced the events of her demise. </p>
<h2>Mary vs Mary</h2>
<p>Everyone agrees that Mary returned to Scotland from France in 1561 to become the active monarch, and that her reign started well and began to crumble after she married her cousin Lord Darnley in 1565. The marriage soon fell apart and Darnley was murdered by an explosion two years later. </p>
<p>Mary quickly married the Earl of Bothwell, and was forced to abdicate by rival nobles who objected to him becoming so closely interlinked with the throne. She ended up imprisoned before fleeing to England in 1568, where she was <a href="https://www.historyscotland.com/articles/mary-queen-of-scots/where-was-mary-queen-of-scots-imprisoned">jailed</a> again, in large part because of the threat she posed to Elizabeth as a rival to the throne. She remained in captivity until she was executed in 1587. </p>
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<p>The disagreement turns on whether Mary was essentially a blameless victim or scheming perpetrator. Did she have a hand in Darnley’s death, in collusion with his possible murderer Bothwell? Did she marry Bothwell willingly or was she effectively forced because he had raped her? Was she actually involved in the Babington Plot against Elizabeth which resulted in her execution? </p>
<p>The two competing narratives sprang up from the moment Mary was forced off the throne in favour of her 13-month-old son, James VI. The intellectual and poet George Buchanan wrote one version, initially in his scurrilous 1571 tract <a href="http://ota.ox.ac.uk/tcp/headers/A69/A69648.html"><em>De Maria Regina Scotorum</em></a>. He smeared her as a lascivious whore who colluded with Bothwell in Darnley’s murder and helped her lover to seize the Scottish throne. </p>
<p>The victim narrative was created by Catholic writers like John Leslie, Bishop of Ross, who was one of Mary’s leading agents during her English captivity. Leslie’s <a href="https://glasgowuniscotrenaissance.wordpress.com/2018/04/23/john-leslie-a-defence-of-princesse-marie-quene-of-scotlande-and-dowager-of-france-with-a-declaration-as-well-of-her-right-to-the-sucession-of-the-crowne-of-englande-as-that-the/">1569</a> text celebrated her Catholic piety and condemned <a href="https://www.tudorsociety.com/24-july-1567-the-abdication-of-mary-queen-of-scots/">her removal</a> from the Scottish throne as an act of highest treason against the rightful Stewart monarch. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254527/original/file-20190118-100267-1wu3qog.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254527/original/file-20190118-100267-1wu3qog.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254527/original/file-20190118-100267-1wu3qog.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254527/original/file-20190118-100267-1wu3qog.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254527/original/file-20190118-100267-1wu3qog.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254527/original/file-20190118-100267-1wu3qog.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=790&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254527/original/file-20190118-100267-1wu3qog.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=790&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254527/original/file-20190118-100267-1wu3qog.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=790&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Quite contrary.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp02996/mary-queen-of-scots">NPG</a></span>
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<p>The same binary approach to Mary continues to the present day. During the civil wars of the mid-17th century, everyone compared her to her grandson Charles I. Royalists <a href="https://specialcollections-blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=6793">claimed</a> they were both examples of how ambitious opponents have cast down the lawful monarch. Pro-republicans like John Milton <a href="https://www.dartmouth.edu/%7Emilton/reading_room/eikonoklastes/text.shtml">countered that</a> she was the source of Charles’s deceitful and evasive nature, and a moral warning of Stewart tyranny to come. </p>
<p>In the Victorian era, Mary’s <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Mary_Queen_of_Scots.html?id=msZMAQAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">critics</a> built on Buchanan’s negative image of her, influenced to some extent by Presbyterian bias. <a href="https://www.baumanrarebooks.com/rare-books/skelton-john/mary-stuart/60252.aspx">Defenders</a> excused Mary’s failings on account of her youth, gender, and a French upbringing which ill-prepared her to rule Scotland. Modern historians have been far better at viewing Mary in the context of her gender in a highly patriarchal society, but still divide vehemently. The late <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jan/29/jenny-wormald">Jenny Wormald</a> received death threats for her unrelentingly harsh <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Mary_Queen_of_Scots.html?id=9bGbnAEACAAJ&redir_esc=y">critique</a> in 1988; while John Guy took the process full circle with a staunch <a href="https://www.abebooks.co.uk/book-search/title/my-heart-is-my-own-mary-queen-scots/author/john-guy/">defence of Mary</a> in 2004. </p>
<h2>Mary in public</h2>
<p>We know less about public perceptions of Mary down the centuries. Indeed, I’m involved in a new two-year <a href="https://www.gla.ac.uk/news/headline_629499_en.html">research project</a> at the University of Glasgow, with more than 40 academics and curators, partly to understand this better. We know, for instance, that in the 18th century, Mary was curiously absent from the propaganda of the Jacobites battling to return the Stewarts to the British throne through Bonnie Prince Charlie. This might have been because the attempts to restore her to power had always failed. </p>
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<span class="caption">En deuil blanc by Franςois Clouet (1559).</span>
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<p>We also know that the imagery of Mary has consistently presented her as a martyr. What are believed to have been authentic likenesses of Mary were produced during her time as a youth in France – most notably the 1559 <em>deuil blanc</em> (white veil) portraits mourning the death of her first husband, François II. </p>
<p>But while Mary was highly fashion conscious and wore a huge range of colours and outfits – a fact captured well in the new film – she’s almost always seen dressed like in the image earlier in the article: a black gown with a widow’s cap, high white collar, tightly bound hair and rosary and crucifix. This is derived from <a href="https://www.mountstuart.com/execution-mary-queen-scots/">contemporary accounts</a> of what she wore in captivity and at her execution. But in a similar way to images of Robert Burns, these details would stay the same over the years while her face, body size and shape have varied hugely. </p>
<p>The films of Mary have also been consistent, depicting her mainly as a sympathetic, strong heroine. It may or may not be the real Mary; we will never know for sure. So there isn’t a lot of point in worrying about historical accuracy when it comes to this Scottish icon. Take her as you find her, and rest assured that it won’t be long before Hollywood decides to serve up another new version for mass consumption.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/109993/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Reid receives funding from the Royal Society of Edinburgh for the research project described in the article. </span></em></p>The doomed Scottish monarch has divided opinion ever since the days when she was forced off the throne.Steven Reid, Senior Lecturer, Scottish History, University of GlasgowLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/639782016-08-22T15:35:24Z2016-08-22T15:35:24ZScottish identity is moving too fast to keep up, as Edinburgh play shows<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134973/original/image-20160822-18734-nts5gt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What's it all about, wonders Sandy Grierson.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mihaela Bodlovic </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>What does the Scottish national identity amount to in 2016? That’s the central question in one of the most hotly anticipated shows at this year’s Edinburgh Festival, <a href="http://www.eif.co.uk/2016/light">Anything That Gives Off Light</a>. A collaboration between the Brooklyn-based <a href="http://theteamplays.org/about/about-the-company/">TEAM ensemble</a> and the National Theatre of Scotland, the play was originally intended to coincide with the 2014 independence referendum. With a second referendum now <a href="https://theconversation.com/scottish-independence-back-in-play-after-brexit-shock-with-a-note-of-caution-61457">looking likely</a> after the Brexit vote in June, it feels just as timely. </p>
<p>The plot focuses on three main characters with different perspectives on Scottish identity: Brian (Brian Ferguson), a Glaswegian living in London who has returned home to find a burial place for his granny’s ashes; Red (Jessica Almasy), a Virginian holidaying in Scotland to try and understand her estranged husband; and Iain (Sandy Grierson), Brian’s childhood friend who stayed with his mammy in Glasgow. </p>
<p>It opens with Brian shuffling around the stage, trying and failing to shake off London and reconnect with Scotland by walking in a “Scottish way”. It concludes with Iain driving around Glasgow, finding his Scottishness in everything from a group of Slovaks singing in three-part harmony to a girl outside a Sikh gurdwara clapping to the rhythm of an Orange March. </p>
<p>In between is a bawdy, mythical, emotional romp across Scottish and Appalachian landscapes on an introspective quest for self and Scottishness. It tells the story of the shift from a rural-based, tightly-knit Scottishness to a more inclusive, urban one which has more experience of dealing with migrants and outsiders. </p>
<p>This sense of a Scotland emerging from its dark imperial past reminded me of the sentiment in Hamish Henderson’s <a href="http://tobarandualchais.co.uk/en/fullrecord/98252/2">Freedom Come-All-Ye</a>, sometimes described as an alternative national anthem. Yet it’s Iain, the Scot within the country, for whom this shift is more apparent than for Brian, the one who has moved away.</p>
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<p>As the characters journey towards the Highlands, they travel not only in space but in time, and their different homelands merge. The story of an old lady about to be evicted as part of the 18th and 19th-century <a href="http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/scotlandshistory/jacobitesenlightenmentclearances/clearances/">clearances</a> of tenant crofters by Highland aristocrats blends into the story of a young lady whose home is threatened by environmental disaster in <a href="https://www.namb.net/send-relief/arm/appalachian-culture">Appalachia</a> in the eastern US, many of whose original settlers came from Scotland. </p>
<p>Brian, who works in London property, first becomes the landowner evicting the tenants during the clearances, then turns into a Scottish emigrant “made good” in latterday Appalachia and responsible for pushing people off their land. It was a perceptive comment on the circularity of life and the way different generations deal with the same issues again and again. </p>
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<span class="caption">Jessica Almasy as American tourist Red.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mihaela Bodlovic</span></span>
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<h2>Stories and heritage</h2>
<p>The play explores how stories are central to our sense of identity. We all have stories of family, community, nationhood and past successes and failures. We carry them in our journey through life and have to negotiate and recreate them during crises. As part of Scotland’s story, the play references <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/wallace_william.shtml">William Wallace</a>, <a href="http://www.history.co.uk/biographies/bonnie-prince-charlie">Bonnie Prince Charlie</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-death-of-margaret-thatcher-and-the-legacy-of-thatcherism-13324">Margaret Thatcher</a>. Meanwhile Red sings of putting stories in a bag around her neck that eventually merge into a single story that becomes too heavy to carry. </p>
<p>The three characters in the play hotly debate themes of Scottish heritage, putting the record straight about some things along the way. For example the common understanding of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/culloden-why-truth-about-battle-for-britain-lay-hidden-for-three-centuries-62398">battle of Culloden</a> of 1746 as simply a massacre of the Scots by the English – making it a useful vehicle for Scottish nationalism – is dismissed as ignoring how Scots colluded against one another at the time. </p>
<p>The play also emphasises the impact of the <a href="http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/scottishenlightenment/">Scottish Enlightenment</a> on American political culture, while <a href="https://theconversation.com/walter-scott-was-no-bland-tartan-romantic-he-was-dumbed-down-28933">Walter Scott’s</a> <a href="http://www.walterscott.lib.ed.ac.uk/works/novels/waverley.html">Waverley</a> novels are credited with inspiring the <a href="http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/civil-war-overview/overview.html">American Civil War</a> by generating a sense of Romantic nationalism replete with notions of identity and loyalty. </p>
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<span class="caption">Digging in the dirt: Brian Ferguson – as Brian.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mihaela Bodlovic</span></span>
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<p>But above all, Anything That Gives Off Light is about how Scotland is perceived from the inside and outside. It is about how outsiders have not necessarily caught up with the ways in which stereotypes about parochial Scots with a Culloden-type chip on their shoulder have been superseded in the years since devolution and even the Scottish referendum. </p>
<p>There is much truth in this, in my view. In the <a href="https://theconversation.com/brexit-europes-new-nationalism-is-here-to-stay-61541">Brexit referendum</a>, it was the English who voted in fear of the effect of immigrants on their national identity while the Scots appeared more comfortable with theirs. And while Red speaks several times in the play about how Scots and Americans both view themselves as underdogs but see them as losers and survivors respectively, the confidence of the two Scots in the play seems to question this aspect of the Scottish psyche. </p>
<p>The play is a powerful reminder to outsiders to listen first and speak cautiously about what they think they know: culture and identity are constantly evolving, however much it might be more comforting if they stayed still.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63978/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mairead Nic Craith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Anything That Gives Off Light explores Scottishness from three very different perspectives.Mairead Nic Craith, Professor of Culture and Heritage, Heriot-Watt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/623982016-07-14T11:03:23Z2016-07-14T11:03:23ZCulloden: why truth about battle for Britain lay hidden for three centuries<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130426/original/image-20160713-12358-mjlb9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Culloden#/media/File:The_Battle_of_Culloden.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Battle of Culloden of 1746, where British troops defeated the Scottish Jacobite army for the final time near Inverness, has long been mis-represented for political purposes. The Jacobites’ struggle to restore the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/James-II-king-of-Great-Britain">deposed Stuart dynasty</a> to the British throne was a major threat to the success of a single centralised Britain. Yet for several centuries, historians presented the Jacobites as kilted primitives. </p>
<p>Culloden also saw the beginning of a national narrative about reconciling England and its “less developed” peripheries – a mission that would soon also be applied to more remote peoples to justify expanding the British Empire. Benjamin West’s famous painting of <a href="https://www.gallery.ca/en/see/collections/artwork.php?mkey=5363">The Death of General Wolfe (1770)</a>, which depicted not Culloden but the Battle of Quebec of 1759 between Britain and France, is an early example of how this was done. </p>
<p>It pictures a curious Native American observing the British general’s dignified death. Behind the man in green uniform stands Simon Fraser, chief of the Clan Fraser, who had fought for the Jacobites on the opposite side to Wolfe at Culloden (and was not in fact at Quebec). The message is plain: Fraser has been integrated into the dignity of the British imperium, as the Native American will be, too. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130444/original/image-20160713-12392-zu7d6e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130444/original/image-20160713-12392-zu7d6e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130444/original/image-20160713-12392-zu7d6e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130444/original/image-20160713-12392-zu7d6e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130444/original/image-20160713-12392-zu7d6e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130444/original/image-20160713-12392-zu7d6e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130444/original/image-20160713-12392-zu7d6e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130444/original/image-20160713-12392-zu7d6e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Death of General Wolfe.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-americas/british-colonies/colonial-period/a/benjamin-wests-the-death-of-general-wolfe">Wikmedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is no coincidence that this idea of Jacobite primitives has been contested since 1970 as imperial Britain has become more fragmented and Scottish nationalism has risen. Yet the popular image of the Jacobites at Culloden remains. Arguably no battle is remembered so powerfully and so falsely. Peter Watkins’ <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KaE2CAkk4Q">1964 film Culloden</a> demonstrates the enduring power of this vision, in which modern British guns supposedly brought down kilted swordsmen.</p>
<p>British statists and romantic Scottish patriots have both drawn on the same image: dirty, badly-armed savages sacrificing themselves for the Italian princeling, Bonnie Prince Charlie (or Prince Charles), yet get credit for nobly defending an ancient way of life. As I have demonstrated in my <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/culloden-9780199664078?cc=gb&lang=en&">new book</a> on the battle, Culloden as it happened is in fact much more interesting than Culloden as it is remembered. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/f_wE-j2gMO4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>What really happened</h2>
<p>On Culloden Moor on April 16 1746 arguably the last Scottish army sought to restore Prince Charles’ father James to a multi-kingdom monarchy more aligned to European politics than colonial struggle. </p>
<p>Forget any idea of Highland clans against British regiments. The Jacobites were heavily armed with muskets and formed into conventional regiments. They were drilled according to French conventions and some British army practice and fought next to Franco-Irish and Scoto-French allies. They possessed numerous artillery pieces <a href="http://www.scotsman.com/heritage/people-places/amazing-discoveries-250-years-after-culloden-1-466171">and fired</a> more balls per man than the British.</p>
<p>On the other hand, they had no more than 200 mounted men; the British had almost four times as many. Once the Jacobite frontline failed to break the British front at more than one point, their reinforcements were readily disrupted by British cavalry and dragoons on the wings, and the ensuing disorder led to collapse. The British benefited from using their cavalry late, having learned from the battles of <a href="http://www.battleofprestonpans1745.org/heritagetrust/html/history.html">Prestonpans</a> and <a href="http://www.britishbattles.com/battle_of_falkirk.htm">Falkirk</a>. </p>
<p>The Jacobite army also only numbered about 5,000, barely a third its maximum strength in the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/scottishhistory/union/features_union_jacobites.shtml">rising of 1745-46</a> and <a href="http://www.britishbattles.com/battle_of_culloden.htm">several thousand fewer</a> than the British. It fought Culloden in spite of these numbers partly because it was a regular army and unsuited to a guerrilla campaign. Culloden was always going to be difficult for the Jacobites to win, but this manpower shortage – combined with the lack of cavalry – was critical. That was what made it possible for the British dragoon blades to cut down the Jacobite musketeers. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130427/original/image-20160713-12353-yjired.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130427/original/image-20160713-12353-yjired.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130427/original/image-20160713-12353-yjired.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=761&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130427/original/image-20160713-12353-yjired.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=761&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130427/original/image-20160713-12353-yjired.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=761&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130427/original/image-20160713-12353-yjired.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=956&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130427/original/image-20160713-12353-yjired.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=956&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130427/original/image-20160713-12353-yjired.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=956&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Charles Stuart: the Young Pretender.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.anglophile.ru/en/kings-queens/681-bonnie-prince-charlie.html">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Jacobites are also usually accused of choosing the wrong battlefield. The Irish quartermaster and Jacobite adjutant general John Sullivan <a href="http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Battle_of_Culloden">gets blamed</a> for persuading Prince Charles to choose boggy, flat terrain, which did not play to the army’s strengths. </p>
<p>Some historians argue that the error was not listening to an alternative suggestion by the prince’s lieutenant-general, Lord George Murray. But while it is true that Sullivan vetoed several other sites, one of which at least was Murray’s choice, neither made sense. </p>
<p>The best site was chosen by Sullivan 1km east of the final battle line. Its only disadvantage was that it was very visible to the Royal Navy in the Moray Firth. This delayed the Jacobites’ night attack on April 15 and in the subsequent confusion they ended up deployed further west than intended. In that sense, no-one “chose” the final battlefield. </p>
<h2>Civil war or conquest?</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040183">Until the 1960s</a>, Culloden was seen as the final battle in an Anglo-Scottish conflict. It was the precursor to the Highlands becoming the last part of Scotland to be fully incorporated into Great Britain, the British Empire and, most importantly, the British army. This helped underline the sense of Jacobites as aliens: Gaelic-speaking Catholics in an English-speaking Protestant country (never mind that all Jacobite military orders were in English). </p>
<p>But the rise of modern Scottish nationalism made the idea of an Anglo-Scottish battle uncomfortable. Jacobitism has nationalist implications nowadays. Since the 1960s, there has been a <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/culloden-9780199664078?cc=gb&lang=en&">determined effort</a> by British historians to present Culloden as the final battle in a civil war. “British army” is often supplanted by “government troops” or “Hanoverians”, despite being more British by some distance than the force commanded by Wellington <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/timelines/zwtf34j">at Waterloo</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130428/original/image-20160713-12358-13ndxqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130428/original/image-20160713-12358-13ndxqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130428/original/image-20160713-12358-13ndxqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=335&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130428/original/image-20160713-12358-13ndxqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=335&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130428/original/image-20160713-12358-13ndxqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=335&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130428/original/image-20160713-12358-13ndxqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130428/original/image-20160713-12358-13ndxqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/130428/original/image-20160713-12358-13ndxqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jacobite re-enactment.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/thepatman/11252918735/in/photolist-i9o9Gg-5UZZri-i9ozqn-fj6rrg-pNfk6N-Y4dm9-qAzzon-3c4VFp-nFpMn1-a3fV4r-AhVqzt-azJzuz-eiABox-8tGaQX-ekAMvr-fuuCMG-pDXuQT-nxYKEb-b6Zv5c-ndMc1M-qUJ13h-i9oeuc-fj878M-fjn8zW-obJAFD-78GyvP-i9opEm-i9o7B4-aqjiiH-7ra9YJ-i9o5NK-ejHsqt-i9ocNh-i9owov-i9oaQ8-fusZP4-i9obCR-i9oA9r-nVXwx2-HbGuaH-4RXpW8-i9o5cp-i9oiXE-i9okiY-fuuDhd-8MWqVz-i9oBtF-i9omDw-8MWrvM-odvsT6">Rob Eaglesfield</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Culloden was of course a civil war, as was the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/easterrising/aftermath/af04.shtml">Anglo-Irish war of 1919-21</a> or the <a href="http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/wars_american_independence.html">American War of Independence</a>. But every national struggle divides its nation, and the Jacobite Rising of 1745-46 was certainly a fight for a Scottish nation, too. Ending the Anglo-Scottish <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/aosp/1707/7/contents">union of 1707</a> to restore the Stuarts’ multi-kingdom monarchy was a key Jacobite war aim. </p>
<p>So not only is the “primitives” narrative wrong and not only was the battle quite different to the memory, but Culloden was the final significant defeat of a Scottish alternative to the British state. The irony is that a federal British Isles under a single crown, <a href="https://scottishhistorysociety.com/learning-resources/the-union-of-1603/">which had existed</a> between 1603 and 1707 and is effectively what the Jacobites wanted, is closer to where we are today than the victors of Culloden could ever have imagined.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62398/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Murray Pittock does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Jacobites are regularly cast as ‘primitive’ Scots – yet it is a false narrative suited for political ends.Murray Pittock, Bradley Professor of English Literature, University of GlasgowLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.