The Battle of Culloden, 1746. Origin of Modern UK Royal Family. Scottish Defeat, Highland Culture Systematically Eradicated, Britain's World Dominance Ensured.

The crushing defeat at Culloden sealed the fate of the Scottish Catholic royal line, ending their final bid for the throne of Great Britain. It also reaffirmed the deep-rooted animosity between Britain and France, a rivalry that would only intensify with the outbreak of the Seven Years' War a decade later.

Culloden. April 16, 1746.
Jacobite Forces: ~ 5,000 Scottish Warriors.
UK Government Forces: ~ 9,000 Soldiers.

Additional Research and Reading:

• Gibson, John. Lochiel of the '45: The Jacobite Chief and the Prince.
• Hartman, Cyril. The Quest Forlorn: The Story of the Forty-Five.
• Scott, Sir Walter. A History of Scotland.
• Daiches, David. Charles Edward Stuart: The Life and Times of Bonnie Prince.

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Transcript

Welcome to History's Greatest Battles, Season 01, Dpisode 55: The Battle of Culloden, the 16th of April, 1746.

Scottish Forces: roughly 5,000 Fighting Men.

English Forces: roughly 9,000 Soldiers.

The crushing defeat at Culloden sealed the fate of the Scottish Catholic royal line, ending their final bid for the throne of Great Britain. It also reaffirmed the deep-rooted animosity between Britain and France, a rivalry that would only intensify with the outbreak of the Seven Years' War a decade later.

The saga of Culloden reaches far beyond the battlefield’s bloody moor, back two hundred years to the iron-fisted reign of England’s King Henry VIII, a monarch whose will reshaped the very fabric of nations. When Henry’s lust for power—and a new wife—brought him into direct conflict with the Pope, he did the unthinkable: severed ties with Rome and declared himself master of England’s Church, tearing centuries of tradition asunder with a single stroke of royal decree. His dominion over England’s soul endured only as long as his life, for upon his death, the crown passed to his sickly son, Edward VI, a boy-king barely old enough to wield a scepter, let alone command a nation. But Edward’s brief reign ended abruptly, and the throne shifted to his elder half-sister, Mary, a woman of unyielding Catholic fervor, determined to resurrect the power of the papacy in England. Mary wasted no time. She restored papal authority, and to solidify her grip on the faith, she married the formidable Catholic king of Spain, Philip II, aligning England with the might of Europe’s most devout kingdom. Yet fate spared England from becoming a Spanish satellite. After five turbulent years, Mary died without an heir, leaving her half-sister Elizabeth to ascend the throne, a woman every bit her father’s daughter, and no friend to the Pope.

Elizabeth, with the fire of her father coursing through her veins, did more than reinstate his defiance of Rome—she crushed the Catholic Church in England, naming herself supreme ruler of the faith, wielding both the sword and the cross with equal authority. This bold act set her against the Catholic titans of Europe, yet Elizabeth, ever the strategist, played the ruthless game of power politics with unmatched skill, bending nations to her will as deftly as any king before her. But even Elizabeth, in all her mastery, could not defy death. Childless, her crown passed to her Scottish cousin, James VI of the House of Stuart, a man poised to unite two kingdoms under a single banner in 1603. Though no Catholic, James brought greater formality to the Anglican Church, establishing bishops to anchor his authority over both religious and secular matters. His son, Charles I, inherited neither his father’s tact nor his restraint. In his blind ambition to dominate Parliament and suppress the rising Puritans, he plunged England into civil war in 1642, a bloodletting that would forever scar the nation.

Charles met his end not in the bedchamber of old age, but beneath the executioner’s blade, after Oliver Cromwell’s relentless armies shattered the royalist cause and abolished the monarchy itself, leaving England a kingdom without a king. When the fragile Protectorate collapsed, Charles II crawled out of exile in France to reclaim his father’s throne, but it was a crown he would wear in the shadow of Parliament’s growing might, the monarch’s power forever diminished. The Stuart line’s troubles were far from over. Charles’s son, James II, unwisely flaunted his Catholic faith, sparking a new rebellion. By 1688, England had had enough, and in a daring coup, offered the throne to Protestants William and Mary of Holland. Queen Anne, their heir, left no child to follow her, and once again, Parliament sought foreign blood—this time calling upon the Protestant George I of the House of Hanover to take the English throne.

In choosing Protestant rulers over the Catholic Stuarts, Britain now bowed to foreign-born kings. By 1707, this new Great Britain officially united England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland under the crown, but at a price that festered deep within the Scottish Highlands. The Stuarts, rightful heirs in blood if not in power, languished in exile across the Channel, sheltered by the Catholic kings of France, nursing dreams of restoration. By the 1740s, the Stuart cause found a new champion in Prince Charles Edward, "Bonnie Prince Charlie." With France's cautious backing, he prepared to stake his claim to the throne that his family believed was theirs by divine right and blood. Here, politics and religion were not mere allies, but inseparable forces that moved armies and toppled crowns alike. France’s support for the young pretender, Prince Charles—known to history as "Bonnie Prince Charlie"—was far more than an act of religious solidarity. His claim promised France an ally in the halls of British power, a dagger at the heart of England.

In 1745, Britain was locked in yet another bloody contest on the Continent. The War of the Austrian Succession, which had ignited five years earlier, split Europe into warring camps. England and France, eternal enemies since the medieval clashes of the Hundred Years' War, found themselves once again pitted against one another in the violent chessboard of European power. May 1745 brought humiliation to Britain’s armies. At Fontenoy, in the fields of Flanders, British forces and their allies were crushed in a defeat that reverberated across Europe. With British arms reeling from the blow and the cabinet crippled by infighting, the moment Charles had long awaited was finally at hand. The kingdom appeared vulnerable, distracted, and ripe for the taking. Despite caution from the French court and even from within his own circle, Charles was resolute. He ignored all warnings and, driven by destiny and pride, launched his campaign for Scotland. The price of his defiance was French hesitation, leaving him without the military aid he so desperately needed.

On August 3, 1745, Charles touched Scottish soil in the Hebrides, nearly alone, the weight of history and an empire resting on his shoulders, but with only a handful of men by his side. Scotland, torn by its own fractures of religion and loyalty, was no easy ground to rally. The Highland Catholic clans, fierce in their hatred of the English crown, answered Charles’s call to arms. They were the Jacobites, named for "Jacob"—James Stuart, their true king—but the Protestant lowlanders, suspicious of both France and Catholicism, watched with cold neutrality. Yet even that indifferent passivity left space for Charles to breathe life into his rebellion. He gathered 2,000 hardened Highlanders, their loyalty forged in ancestral hatred of the English, and by mid-September, Edinburgh, the ancient capital of Scotland, fell into his hands.

The English, unwilling to tolerate this rising threat, dispatched 3,000 troops under Sir John Cope to crush the rebellion. But at Prestonpans, Charles’s Highlanders, wild and unrelenting in their charge, shattered Cope’s forces, sending them fleeing in disgrace. Emboldened by victory, Charles could have consolidated his power, but he had no patience for delay. Instead of resting through the bitter Scottish winter, he made a bold gamble—to carry his banners across the border and strike into the heart of England itself. As Charles marched south, more clans rallied to his cause, swelling his force to 5,000. English resistance was feeble, almost non-existent. In November, Carlisle and Manchester fell without a fight, and by December 4th, he occupied Derby—only 120 miles from the gates of London itself.

The English government, sluggish and caught off-guard, scrambled to react. When they finally mustered troops, their strategy was a blunder of epic proportions. The English commanders, in their arrogance, assumed Charles would veer towards Wales to gather more anti-English support. They misjudged him—fatally. It was only when Charles planted his standards in Derby that panic swept through the English ranks. They had miscalculated, and now the enemy was perilously close to the capital. At that moment, the crown of England lay within Charles’s grasp. Had he driven south with relentless force, London—unprepared and trembling—could have been his for the taking. But Charles faltered. Fed false intelligence from the cunning Duke of Cumberland, who claimed 30,000 English soldiers were bearing down upon him, Charles hesitated, doubting his strength. Believing his own army too small to face such a massive host, Charles made the fateful decision to retreat, turning his back on the greatest prize he had ever come close to seizing.

Even the whispered support of English Catholics could not sustain his cause. With no supplies, no reinforcements, his campaign ground to a halt, starved of the lifeblood an army needs. For now, the bitter winter winds of Scotland seemed a more prudent choice than the uncertain fields of England. As his weary Scots marched back toward their homeland, Charles, still burning with ambition, laid siege to Stirling, hoping to rekindle the fire of rebellion. For two months, his forces encircled Stirling, repelling English relief efforts at Penrith and again at Falkirk, where they cut down their enemies in cold defiance on those December and January fields. But by February, even the Highlanders could fight no longer. With food and powder running dangerously low, they had no choice but to retreat deeper into their rugged homeland.

For weeks, Charles's forces waged brutal skirmishes against English sympathizers, but by early April, they were huddled near Inverness, exhausted and worn. Word soon reached their camp like a thunderclap—Cumberland was just 15 miles away, encamped at Nairn, preparing to crush them once and for all. Charles’s army, already fraying at the edges as men deserted to return to their Highland homes, stood on the brink of collapse. Sensing the tightening noose, the prince resolved to strike Cumberland before more of his men slipped away into the Highland mist. Surprise, or swift action—anything—was better than waiting for the noose to tighten. On April 16, 1746, the two armies came face to face on the bleak, windswept moor of Culloden, where blood would soak the earth, and the fate of nations would be decided.

Charles commanded 5,000 Highland warriors, fierce and loyal to their clans. On the right stood Clan Atholl, on the left the proud MacDonalds, with 3,800 more battle-hardened men stretched between them, their tartans fluttering in the cold air like the last vestiges of an ancient way of life. Behind them, a meager second line of Lowland clansmen and a smattering of French troops, about 1,200 in all, stood ready, while a handful of cavalry, barely enough to call a regiment, waited for their chance to charge. The Scots had a pitiful artillery—a mere thirteen light cannons, more for show than effect. Their powder supplies were nearly exhausted, and shot was scarce. Their firepower, like their cause, was running dangerously thin.

Across the field, Cumberland stood at the head of 9,000 well-drilled soldiers. English regulars, loyal Scots, and hardened German mercenaries—merciless men who had crossed many battlefields and would show no hesitation in slaughter. Cumberland’s forces were a juggernaut—fifteen seasoned infantry regiments, backed by Scottish militia, 850 ironclad dragoons, and thirteen cannons primed to tear the Highlanders apart before they even reached English lines. That day, brother faced brother. Scots on both sides of the field, some fighting for Charles in defiance of their own clan chiefs, others standing with the English, their rivalries centuries old, brought to a bitter climax on this cursed ground.

By late morning, both armies stood poised for destruction. At 12:30, the silence broke—the Jacobite cannons roared to life, but their volleys were feeble, their impact barely stirring the English lines. The rebels had little powder to spare, and their shots fell weak and scattered. Cumberland’s artillery thundered in reply, merciless and unrelenting. For nearly an hour, the air was thick with smoke and death as the English cannons tore through Highland ranks, carving bloody gaps in their numbers. Men fell in waves, unable to return fire with any force. Desperation set in. Deprived of ammunition, the Scots could do nothing but ready their swords and prepare for the savage charge, the only weapon left to them—bravery forged in blood and steel. And then, with a surge of pent-up fury, they charged. Without waiting for orders, the Highland center and right wing stormed forward, a wild, uncoordinated rush, driven more by rage than strategy.

They hurled themselves into the teeth of English musket fire, bodies falling in heaps as the lead tore through their ranks. But still, they pressed on, pushing back the first English line on the left, their momentum born from desperation and the primal need to survive. But the English second line stood like a wall of iron. Musket volleys ripped into the charging Scots with brutal precision, breaking their ranks, and what had begun as a fearsome Highland charge now unraveled into chaos and slaughter. “The Highlanders... still driven by fury, charged headlong into Sempill’s regiment, their discipline shattered, many having discarded their guns after the first assault. The English line, three ranks deep, awaited them in perfect formation. The first line knelt, muskets ready, while the others stood poised to unleash hell. They held their fire until the remnants of the first English line escaped around their flanks, then let loose with devastating precision.” “The Highlanders charged to within a yard of the English bayonets, but then Sempill’s battalion fired with lethal accuracy. The volley tore into the Scots, cutting down wave after wave, and those still standing were forced to turn back” (Scott, A History of Scotland, vol. 3, p. 194).

As his men fell in droves, Charles faltered. One of his officers, desperate to rally the prince, urged him to lead the survivors into battle, to fall in glory as a king should. But Charles, paralyzed by indecision, gave no reply. Another voice spoke—this time urging Charles to flee, to save his life and abandon the field. It was to this cowardly counsel that Charles, disheartened and defeated, finally listened. The remnants of his shattered army broke apart. Some, holding their discipline, withdrew in an orderly retreat toward Inverness. Others, their morale broken, fled for the Highlands, disappearing into the wilds of their homeland. The moor was littered with bodies—1,000 Highlanders lay dead in the mud, another 1,000 taken prisoner. But mercy was not on Cumberland’s agenda. He had given the order for no quarter, and soon the captives would join their brothers in death.

After ten months of relentless advance and daring victories, the rebellion known simply as "The ’45" crumbled into dust, its hopes shattered on the moor of Culloden, the dream of a Stuart restoration extinguished. In the days that followed, Cumberland’s troops unleashed hell upon the Highlands. They hunted down every survivor they could find, killing without mercy. Rumors spread of executions so indiscriminate that even those who merely looked suspicious were cut down where they stood. For five ruthless months, Cumberland scoured the Highlands, erasing all traces of rebellion with fire and sword. His campaign of terror left scars that would fester in Scotland’s soul for generations, birthing a hatred that would not die easily. As Cumberland’s men ravaged the Highlands, Bonnie Prince Charlie remained a fugitive, barely kept alive by the loyalty of a few staunch supporters. When the English finally turned their blood-soaked boots back home, Charles slipped away, retreating to France—a defeated prince with a ruined cause.

The consequences of Charles’s failed bid for the throne were nothing short of devastating for the Highlands. The land of the clans would never be the same again. The English crown, its patience exhausted with the rebellious Highlanders, made a chilling decision. They would cleanse the Highlands, eradicating the clans they saw as little more than nests of insurgents. This brutal process became known as the "Highland Clearances"—a calculated purge of an entire people, the likes of which the Highlands had never seen. The English nobility, now gifted vast swaths of Highland land, wasted no time. They began clearing the countryside, evicting the people by the thousands, replacing villages with sheep pastures, and leaving barren hills where once proud clans had thrived. Those Highlanders who remained became little more than serfs, bound to their land but robbed of their freedom. Tens of thousands were forced into exile, their homes reduced to ashes, their fates cast adrift on foreign shores. Many sailed to America, where they would one day fight in another war, this time against the very crown that had exiled them. Thirty years after Culloden, the sons of Highlanders would carry arms in the American Revolution, bringing their ancestral defiance to the New World.

For the Highlanders who remained behind, survival came at a cost. Their culture—centuries of tradition and pride—was all but annihilated. The English sought to break their spirit completely. Gaelic, the ancient tongue of the clans, was banned. Wearing tartan—the symbol of their identity—became a capital offense. Even the mournful wail of the bagpipes, once the battle cry of Highland armies, was silenced by law, as though the very soul of the Highlands could be erased by decree. The final blow came through the imposition of English schools. The language of the conqueror was forced upon the children of the Highlands, as the English sought to remake the very minds of a proud and broken people. Yet for those clans who had betrayed their fellow Scots and stood with the English, life was different. They were rewarded with favor, and many were enlisted into the British army, where they would prove their worth on the battlefields of Europe, serving with distinction during the Napoleonic Wars. Though these Highland regiments were first raised as temporary forces, their valor would not be so easily dismissed. After Napoleon’s fall in 1815, many of these units became permanent, marching under British banners in wars across the globe.

In time, even the symbols of Highland pride—the kilts and pipes once outlawed—were reinstated. They became not only symbols of rebellion but badges of honor, woven into the identity of Highland regiments that fought in the British army until the dawn of the Second World War, when the pipes finally fell silent on the battlefield. But beyond the broken bodies and burned homes, Culloden’s legacy was the firm cementing of the Hanoverian dynasty. With the Stuart threat obliterated, the line of kings that began with George I now reigns unchallenged as the House of Windsor, a direct result of the blood spilled on that Scottish moor. History would have been irrevocably altered had the Stuarts succeeded in reclaiming their throne.

When the Seven Years' War erupted in 1755, it was the old enmity between Britain and France that drove the conflict, both in the forests of North America and on the battlefields of Europe. Had Bonnie Prince Charlie worn the crown, that war, like so much else, would have unfolded very differently. The clash between Britain and France in America might well have ended with a diplomatic settlement, rather than a prolonged war. And without English gold propping up Frederick the Great’s armies, Prussia would have fought alone, weakening the might of Europe’s rising powers. The balance of power in Europe, instead of favoring Britain, would have tilted toward France, reshaping the very foundations of the continent’s politics. The American Revolution might still have come, but the economic pressures that led Britain to tax its colonies could have been delayed, changing the timing and course of the rebellion.

A delayed American Revolution would have undoubtedly rippled through history, affecting the rise of the French Revolution itself. And with the revolution’s delayed course, the meteoric rise of Napoleon, and the vast empire he carved, might have never come to pass. In the end, Culloden’s significance lies not just in what happened that day, but in the countless what-ifs—the vast tides of history that could have shifted had the Stuarts reclaimed their throne. The world as we know it was forged in the blood and defeat of that April day.