Forsyth Notes, Issue93

FORSYTH NOTES April 15, 2005 Welcome to the ninety-third issue of Forsyth Notes . Forsyth Notes is published bi- monthly by Clan Forsyth Society of the USA, and is your e-link to your extended Forsyth family. April 16 th marks the anniversary of the major turning point in Scottish history – the Battle of Culloden. This issue of Forsyth Notes is dedicated to our brave ancestors who fought for freedom. They may have lost the final battle, and many lost their lives, but their bravery and philosophy has dramatically changed the world. America is the product of their thirst for freedom. Although a different time and place, the philosophy of these brave Scots was best expressed four hundred twenty-six years earlier in the Declaration of Arbroath (April 6, 1320): It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom -- for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself. The Battle of Culloden - April 16th 1746 The Battle of Culloden by Mark Churms The Battle of Culloden - April 16th 1746 - marked the fall of the Jacobite rebellion of 1745, which sought to restore the Stuart monarchy to the throne. In barely 40 minutes of fighting, the massed army of Bonnie Prince Charlie had been slaughtered by government troops (which also contained Scottish clans) led by Prince William the Duke of Cumberland. On a cold drizzly day in April in the year of Our Lord 1746, two armies faced each other across a bleak moor near the town of Inverness in the north of Scotland. One of them was made up of what were in effect tribal levies who, ostensibly fighting to restore the Stuart dynasty to the throne of Britain, were actually making a last stand for their ancient way of life. The battle lasted for less than an hour and the outnumbered Highland clansmen were crushed by a storm of grapeshot and musketry fired by the redcoated government troops. It was the last battle ever fought on the soil of mainland Britain. The moor was called Drumossie; the clansmen Jacobites; and their leader Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Young Pretender. The battle was called Culloden The politics behind the Jacobite rebellions of the 18th century were as simple and as complex as the blood relationships which governed the lives of royal families all over Europe at that time. In 1688 an overwhelmingly Protestant English people grew heartily sick of their Catholic Stuart king and his pretensions to absolutism. James II, whose father had been beheaded on the orders of Oliver Cromwell and whose brother had only been restored to the throne in 1661, was deposed in favor of his daughter Mary and her Dutch Protestant husband William of Orange. Unfortunately, they died childless and the throne passed to James' second sister Anne. This poor woman spent most of her life in childbirth and her tragedy was to bear seventeen children in all, and see not one of them live past infancy. The next in line were the children of Sophia the Electress of Hanover and when Queen Anne died in 1714, George Elector of Hanover became George I of Great Britain. In Scotland he was known as the "wee German lairdie". All the time the exiled James and his son brooded in their palace of St. Germain in France. Those who supported James were known as Jacobites, from Jacobus the Latin rendering of James. Though Jacobite sympathies in England grew hot and cold in parallel with the general level of political contentment, there was little chance that England would ever seriously contemplate a Stuart restoration with its accompanying Catholic baggage. In one place, however, the Stuarts could depend on a great deal of support, and that was in the Highlands of Scotland. There had been an invasion scare in 1708 and a French fleet had actually got as far as the Firth of Forth before Admiral Byng and the Royal Navy drove it off. The most serious of all the Jacobite attempts to overthrow the government, however, came in 1715. It was led by a Scots lord, the Earl of Mar who had the unfortunate nickname of 'Bobbing John'. Mar had originally been an enthusiastic supporter of the Hanoverians, but when he was snubbed by the new king he took himself north and somewhere on the journey became a committed Jacobite. He raised the standard of the Stuarts on the Braes o' Mar and the Mackintoshes and the Macdonalds came to join him. Stirling was held for the government by the Duke of Argyll and in an attempt to take the rebellion into England, Mar sent Mackintosh of Borlum and 2,000 men across the River Forth, down through the Borders and into the northern counties of England. Borlum picked up some support along the way, notably Viscount Kenmure and his borderers, but the ordinary folk gave him no help and the people in England were downright hostile. Linking up with the Earl of Derwentwater and his English Catholics, the Jacobites attempted to invade Lancashire but were stopped at the town of Preston. For two days of bitter street fighting they battled a superior government army, but were finally forced to surrender. Back in the north Mar was indecisive and unable to provide the passionate leadership that a call to rebellion requires. Early on, his men had occupied Perth and Inverness but no French warships bearing the 'rightful king', gold or weapons had come to his aid. In October after sending Borlum on his melancholy mission to defeat at Preston, Mar came down from the Highlands and in the shadow of the Ochil Hills, not far from the town of Dunblane, his men met the Duke of Argyll in open battle on the field of Sheriffmuir. Mar's army was twice as large as his opponent's and on the right of the Jacobite line the Macdonalds broke the government infantry and the horse behind them. On the left, however, Argyll's men did much the same and like some great bloody rotating wheel the battle was fought out indecisively. It was not a fight that either could claim a victory (though both did) and at the end of the day Mar retreated to Perth and Argyll still held Stirling and the roads to the south. The battle had been fought on that same Sunday that saw Borlum surrender at Preston. Just before Christmas James II's son, who had styled himself James III since his father's death in 1701 and whose reputation has labored under history's title of 'the Old Pretender', finally landed at Stonehaven in the north-east of Scotland. He was a cold man and did little to inspire those few who had stayed loyal to Mar after Sheriffmuir. With winter raging, no French troops or supplies and Argyll marching north against him, on February 4th he and Mar took ship for France. Neither would ever see Scotland again. The government was not as vicious in their pacification as they would be after the next great rising and only two of the leaders, Derwentwater and Kenmure, were beheaded. A series of roads were built into the Highlands by General Wade and a string of forts constructed down the line of the Great Glen. The clans were ordered to disarm but they handed in only old and rusty weapons, hiding the best for later use. That would come almost thirty years later and would be led by the Old Pretender's dashing young son - Bonnie Prince Charlie. The Rising of 1745 In July 1745, the son of the Old Pretender came to Scotland. He landed at Arisaig where the sands are that beautifully white color that graces so many north-western Scottish beaches. He came with almost nothing save seven companions, a little French gold and a few French weapons. He was young, healthy, handsome and bewitchingly charming. Nobody had wanted him to come; not his father, not Louis XV of France, not even the clansmen who would provide the bulk of his army. By 1745 only an old or middle-aged man could remember the 1715 rising and most of the men driven into exile by its failure had died old and embittered in squalid garret rooms in France, mocked by their hosts and forgotten by their countrymen. At least the prince had come before the rebellion began, and not like his father after it had failed. His name was Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender, known forever to history as Bonnie Prince Charlie. He raised his standard at Glenfinnan, at the head of Loch Shiel. The first to come to him were the Camerons led by their chief the 'gentle' Lochiel. Though gentle may have been the name men gave him, he was not slow to burn the cottages of those of his clan reluctant to come out in arms. He was, after all, the chief and his men were bound to him by laws ancient and abominable. Others came; Macdonalds, Frasers, Stewarts, Farquharsons, men of Clan Chattan, Athollmen bearing the name Murray, MacLachlans and many more, including the Forsyths. Perhaps the intelligence that the government was again raising the Campbells to fight against the Jacobites was more of a spur to participation than any supposed loyalty to the House of Stuart. The Campbells had many enemies amongst the clans and there were many old scores to be settled. In September Charles came down through the Stirling Plain and by the saltworks of Prestonpans. His wild clansmen, under the command of the able Lord George Murray, routed Sir John Cope and the only government army in Scotland in a battle that lasted barely 20 minutes.

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