Cruachan
“Military men susceptible of friendship are much to be pitied.”
Chevalier de Johnstone, Battle of Culloden, 1746.
The Scottish Highlanders fought tenaciously for Bonnie Prince Charlie at the Battle of Culloden, the swansong of great Scottish clan battles. Ultimately they were routed by English grape shot, bayonet and the tactics of the “Butcher Cumberland” who saved the day for his father, English King George II (King of Scotland too since the Union of the Crowns in 1707). I vividly remember a visit to Culloden Moor when I was a kid and seeing the burial sites with the Campbell graves apart. I am a Campbell and it was they who with Lowland Scots fought with the English. Here is an explanation Duncan Forbes gives which illuminates Campbell allegiances. Cruachan incidentally is the Campbell war cry.
“It has been for a great many years impracticable (and hardly thought safe to try it) to give the Law its course among the mountains. It required no small degree of Courage, and a greater degree of power than men are generally possessed of, to arrest an offender or debtor in the midst of his Clan. And for this reason it was that the Crown in former times was obliged to put Sheriffships and other Jurisdictions in the hands of the most powerful families in the Highlands, who by their respective Clans and following could give execution to the Laws within their several territories, and frequently did so at the expense of considerable bloodshed.” Thus it was clans such as the Campbells of Argyll and Breadalbane policed the highlands and grew more powerful with the prestige and perks that role offered.
John Prebble, Culloden, p35, Penguin Books, 1967.
Chevalier de Johnstone, Battle of Culloden, 1746.
The Scottish Highlanders fought tenaciously for Bonnie Prince Charlie at the Battle of Culloden, the swansong of great Scottish clan battles. Ultimately they were routed by English grape shot, bayonet and the tactics of the “Butcher Cumberland” who saved the day for his father, English King George II (King of Scotland too since the Union of the Crowns in 1707). I vividly remember a visit to Culloden Moor when I was a kid and seeing the burial sites with the Campbell graves apart. I am a Campbell and it was they who with Lowland Scots fought with the English. Here is an explanation Duncan Forbes gives which illuminates Campbell allegiances. Cruachan incidentally is the Campbell war cry.
“It has been for a great many years impracticable (and hardly thought safe to try it) to give the Law its course among the mountains. It required no small degree of Courage, and a greater degree of power than men are generally possessed of, to arrest an offender or debtor in the midst of his Clan. And for this reason it was that the Crown in former times was obliged to put Sheriffships and other Jurisdictions in the hands of the most powerful families in the Highlands, who by their respective Clans and following could give execution to the Laws within their several territories, and frequently did so at the expense of considerable bloodshed.” Thus it was clans such as the Campbells of Argyll and Breadalbane policed the highlands and grew more powerful with the prestige and perks that role offered.
John Prebble, Culloden, p35, Penguin Books, 1967.
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