An Overview

Prince Charlie's campaign, did not have as many high points as he would have liked. When he got to Scotland's shores, he went to Glenfinnan where he met his loyal Highlanders and led them off to the war. I'm not going to go into a lot of detail on the battles right now, because I will tell about them in later months when they actually happened, but the first blow was an amazing victory for the Jacobites. It happened at Prestonpans, on the 21st of September in 1745. The English commander, General Johnny Cope (immortalized in the folk song) challenged Prince Charlie to battle. The Jacobites attacked the English early in the morning before they knew what was going on, and, under the cover of a think fog, the Highlanders won the day, loosing only about thirty men when the English lost over two hundred! 

Charlie took his army south into England. Prince Charlie and his Jacobite army, are known as the Scots who have gotten the farthest on an English invasion. They got all the way down to Derby in the freezing winter of 1745. They had planned to march on London as well but the weather did not permit it and they marched back up north to fight the final battles of the war.

The next battle happened on January 17th 1746 at Falkirk Muir. It was most commonly known as a draw, but I think the Jacobites really did have the upper hand. After that battle, Prince Charlie decided that he needed to fight the battle that would decide the fate of Scotland, as he put it. That was what brought them to Culloden, up in the north by Inverness, and disaster.

That was a very short synopsis of what went on, but as I said, I will go into more detail later. This week I will be telling in detail about the Battle of Culloden, so come back!

Here are two songs for the day:

Johnny Cope (This is one of my personal favorites!)

And The News From Moidart

I'll be back tomorrow, hopefully!

Slainte, Hazel