Drumclog was a battle fought in the Covenanter wars during William and Mary's Glorious Revolution. It was a religious war, but also a Jacobite war. The Jacobite leader was the famous Bonnie Dundee, John Graham of Claverhouse. Drumclog is at Loudoun Hill (a very popular place for battles) and on June 1, 1679, Claverhouse met the Covenanters there. The Covenanters had cover of a ditch and quickly formed a battle line as they saw Claverhouse's dragoons advancing. Claverhouse was outnumbered almost four to one, but he kept the advance going. Knowing that a cavalry charge would not do much good in the situation, he had his men dismount and and had them advance that way. The Covenanters moved across the ditch separating them and attacked Claverhouse's men at close quarters.
Claverhouse might have won the day for all we know, but his horse was wounded and bolted. Before he could find another horse, his men, thinking he was retreating, broke their line and followed him. Thirty-six soldiers were killed and seven were taken prisoner. Claverhouse and his men had to retreat through the narrow streets of Strathaven, having stones thrown at them as they made their way back to Glasgow where they had reinforcements.
Drumclog was the only set battle victory for the Covananters against the government forces during the war. While Claverhouse had lost this battle, he would eventually win the war itself, though not without loss of life.
The next battle fought in this campaign was at Bothwell Brig and that was on the 22nd of June, so we will be talking about that later this month.
Also, I thought I might share this little thing with you that I found on the internet last night concerning Edward Longshanks. I had to give a good laugh at that!
As always, have a good weekend. I will be back next week for more battles and such.
Slainte, Hazel
I love that you're doing a "battle season." Great stuff - I'm always learning something new from your blog.
ReplyDeleteHaha, thanks! There's not much I like better then a good battle scene! And there's so many interesting ones that happened within the next few months, that I thought I had to do something special for it.
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