The Great Turning Points of British History (18 page)

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Prince Charles Edward Stuart (‘Bonny Prince Charley’), grandson of James II and VII, had been summoned to France in December 1743 to head a French invasion of southern England scheduled to take place in early 1744. Bad weather, the royal navy and English Tory faintheartedness eventually brought that attempt to naught, and the prince frustratedly idled away his time for the next year. Or so it appeared. In fact, with the help of a syndicate of Irish merchants resident in France, he was secretly preparing a surprise attack on the British Isles. The news of the English defeat at Fontenoy provided exactly the opening he needed. On 5 July Charles Edward sailed from Nantes with two ships. His plan was to force the Jacobites of the British Isles to live up to their promises by throwing himself into their midst. If enough Jacobites responded and he could expose the weakness – as he believed – of the Whig regime he was sure the French would invade and victory would be his.

It was either a bold gambit or a foolhardy gamble, and certainly the odds against success were greatly increased when the prince encountered a royal navy patrol on the way to Scotland and one of his ships was damaged and forced to turn back (with most of his painfully accumulated arms, ammunition and a body of Irish soldiers aboard). Charles Edward thus arrived at Arisaig in Scotland on 25 July accompanied by few more than the famous ‘seven men of Moidart’.

Once ashore, however, Charles Edward worked wonders. Bluntly told to go home by one appalled Highland chieftain, Charles smoothly countered, ‘I am come home.’ Within three weeks his legendary charm had persuaded two senior clan chieftains to support the rising and other Jacobites were stirring throughout Scotland. As his little army of about 1,500 marched south from Glenfinnan on 19 August it steadily accumulated men. Many were doubtless forced out by their landlords and feudal superiors, but others certainly joined to support the cause that Charles Edward represented.

Hard marching and adept manoeuvring soon put the government’s army in Scotland, commanded by Sir John Cope, at a disadvantage it could only reverse by retreating. Luck and judgement then combined to allow the now 2,500-strong Jacobite army to seize Edinburgh on 17 September and defeat Cope at the battle of Prestonpans on 21 September. In little more than a month the Jacobites had virtually won control of Scotland. The only question was what to do next. Charles Edward had no doubts: he passionately advocated a march on London as hard and fast as the march on Edinburgh. His Scottish senior officers were not so sure, and only agreed when the prince assured them he had firm pledges of an English Jacobite rising if they would only march into England.

The 4,500-man Jacobite army accordingly crossed the border on 8 November and rapidly progressed southwards, as far as Derby by 4 December, capturing Carlisle and Manchester en route and outmanoeuvring two more government armies to put itself in a position where it could strike unmolested at London. But by the time they reached Derby, Charles Edward’s officers were questioning the whole enterprise. Bar a handful of militants recruited in Manchester, the English Jacobites had conspicuously failed to materialize. Charles Edward’s only solution to the predicament was to urge that the army press on and attack London, a city of approximately 500,000 people. At a council of the senior officers on 5 December the prince was outvoted by a coterie of officers centred on his most able commander, Lord George Murray. Instead, the Jacobite army was to retreat. Ironically, unbeknown to any of those involved, this decision was taken just as financial panic paralysed the City of London and the French army and navy were in the final stages of throwing together the invasion the Jacobites so desperately needed.

Regardless, the retreat was conducted with great skill. Murray dodged and feinted his way past the pursuing government armies, and by Christmas 1745 the rebels were back in Scotland, resting and re-equipping in Glasgow. Government pressure on the Jacobites now became relentless, however. William Augustus, duke of Cumberland and commander-in-chief of the British army, had been called back from the Netherlands with the best British regiments. All across England and Wales Whig loyalists were raising money, forming volunteer units and enlisting in the army to fight in defence of Protestantism and liberty (as they saw it). The royal navy was doing its best to isolate Scotland from the Continent, and Scottish Whigs led by the earl of Loudon were gathering an army of their own in northern Scotland.

Even so, the first government attempt to challenge the Jacobites’ control of central Scotland, led by General Henry (‘Hangman’) Hawley, was handily defeated by a revitalized, 8,000-strong Jacobite army at Falkirk on 17 January 1746. The victory was, though, a hollow one. The threat to their homes and families posed by Loudon’s army in northern Scotland united a majority of Charles Edward’s officers in demanding a further retreat northwards, which only ended when the tired army reached Inverness on 18 February.

The struggle was, however, far from over. For the next two months the Jacobites raided and probed south from Inverness, and Cumberland’s army raided and probed north from Aberdeen. Both sides were gathering their strength for the final crisis. This came when, for the first time, Cumberland succeeded in surprising the Jacobites by marching north in early April while nearly half their army was away from Inverness raiding and recruiting. He consequently caught the Jacobites at a severe disadvantage when he confronted them on Drummossie Moor near Culloden House on 16 April.

The ensuing battle did not take long. The Jacobites attacked in traditional Highland style (though many of the men in their ranks were in fact Lowlanders), but over ground that did not favour the headlong charge that was its culmination. Cumberland’s carefully deployed infantry and artillery were thus able to use their superior firepower to maximum effect. Within little more than an hour over a third of the 4,000 or so Jacobites on the field were dead or wounded and the rest in were flight. Charles Edward was hustled away in tears before the government cavalry could capture him. According to tradition, as he left, one of his senior officers Lord Elcho, overwhelmed by the death of his friends and the ruin of the Scottish Jacobite cause, shouted after him, ‘Run, you cowardly Italian!’ Hardly fair, but a token of what was to come.

Charles Edward fled into the Highlands, where he refused to sanction further resistance despite the regrouping of the greater part of his army at Ruthven between 17 and 20 April. Forced to disperse, the Jacobite soldiers went their separate ways, many of them shedding their weapons, uniforms and cause as they journeyed home to face the consequences of defeat. These were dire. For the next few months Cumberland and his subordinates had their men rape, murder and burn their way through the Highlands and Lowland areas believed sympathetic to Jacobitism. This may have been standard military practice for contemporary armies when dealing with rebels, yet it left a legacy of bitterness that was not quick to fade.

This dark aftermath was the beginning of a new trajectory for the British Isles. With the Jacobites beaten, Britain’s government could turn all three nations’ military energies outwards, and from the mid-1750s onwards Scotland was harnessed to achieving Westminster’s dreams of global empire. Scotland was, too, internally transformed by the events of 1745. The old ties between Highland chieftain and common clansman, and Lowland heritor and tenant farmer, which had been the basis of society for centuries, were in decline before the rising. After 1746 that decline became precipitous. Scotland was on track to becoming a class-based society.

Ireland, despite its apparent quiescence during the rebellion, was also far from untouched. Many expatriate Irishmen were involved in the French government’s efforts hurriedly to put together an invasion of England. Others slipped through the royal navy’s blockade and fought alongside the Scottish Jacobites at Culloden. When it was all over they were left with nowhere to go. As Charles Edward, haunted by bitterness and loss, drank himself to death in exile, the Jacobite cause withered and died with him. Where could Catholic Ireland now look for succour? Ultimately it turned to radical nationalism, something that would have been unthinkable before 1746. Like all the turning points in this series, 1745 irretrievably changed the scope of what was possible in the British Isles, and ultimately left no future generation untouched.

1707
Act of Union
. It may have been touted as an alliance of equals but, in reality, the creation of the kingdom of Great Britain saw a small Scottish representation grafted onto existing political structures at Westminster and Scottish interests subordinated to English politics. The constitutional fusion was also championed as being certain to deliver an immediate and substantial boost to Scotland’s allegedly ailing economy (its problems may have been more apparent than real), which it singularly failed to do for nearly fifty years.

1713
War of Succession
. The Peace of Utrecht brought the War of Spanish Succession (1702–13) to a close. This was a highly successful war for Britain in which France was defeated and forced to sue for peace. During the negotiations, however, French diplomats exploited British differences with their allies to extract relatively favourable terms. Britain nonetheless gained substantial imperial possessions and commercial concessions, though it alienated many of its wartime partners in the process.

1714
Death of Anne
. Queen Anne, the last of the Protestant Stuarts in the main line of descent from James VI and I, died on 1 August and was succeeded by Georg Ludwig, elector of Hanover, the nearest (ostensible) Protestant by collateral descent. The transition from the Stuart to the Guelph dynasty was initially peaceful, and only marred by many Tories’ coolness towards George I, whom they regarded with suspicion because of his religious indifference and the fact he was foreign.

1715
Jacobite uprising
. Inspired by messianic visions of their own righteousness (not to mention consequent likelihood of success) and political hysteria, Jacobite forces rebelled in Scotland, subsequently provoking a rising in northern England. Though much larger in numbers than the 1745 uprising, the rebellion was poorly directed and relatively easily defeated by government forces. The Jacobite army disintegrated in February 1716 in a storm of mutual recrimination that hindered further Jacobite risings for the next thirty years.

1720
Stocks crash
. Stimulated by excitement over the rise of French stocks and seduced by fanciful reports of great returns, investors poured huge amounts of money into the South Sea Company in Britain. The bursting of this bubble ruined a few speculators and caused serious losses to many more. As a result, British economic expansion was retarded for over a decade, and the Whig regime was nearly fatally compromised.

1736
Scots lynch army captain
. Troops under the command of Captain John Porteous fired on an Edinburgh crowd protesting about the execution of a smuggler. Porteous was convicted of murder, but then reprieved by government order. Fearing he would be pardoned, a mob broke into the city gaol and lynched him, for which the city was heavily fined by Parliament. Anger in Scotland at this punishment resulted in a crisis in the Scottish Whig party and a surge in support for the Jacobites.

1739
Mass starvation in Ireland
. The
bliain an áir
(great frost) struck Ireland in December, killing thousands and destroying stored winter food supplies. This was followed by a cold drought and the failure of the harvest in 1740, precipitating mass starvation. It is estimated that, by the time the crisis came to an end in 1741, a higher proportion of the population had died or fled overseas than as a result of the potato famine of the 1840s.

The American Declaration of Independence on 4 July 1776 was a key moment in the history not only of North America but also of Britain and the English-speaking world.

Until that moment, it had been possible that the fighting that had started outside Boston the previous year would end in a compromise, with George III backing down: the solution indeed sought by most of the American Patriots. However, the failure to reach compromise took the Patriots to revolution. What had seemed possibly a short-term conflict, ending when the British withdrew from Boston in March 1776, became instead a major civil war as the British Empire struck back with a concerted effort at regaining the lost colonies by force and as the Patriots opted for independence. In March 1776, Congress was still unwilling to accept a motion by George Wythe and Richard Henry Lee that King George III, not the ministry, nor Parliament, be seen as ‘the author of our miseries’.

This became possible only because George III in effect disowned the Americans as rebels and treated them accordingly. British policies, including the ban on trade with the rebellious colonies, were designed to hurt, while the government’s attempt to recruit subsidy forces (called foreign mercenaries in the Declaration of Independence) was associated directly with George, not least because these troops were Germans.

The rejection of British authority was symbolic as well as constitutional. On 9 July 1776, after the colonial assembly of New York gave its assent to the Declaration of Independence, the inhabitants of New York City pulled down a gilded equestrian statue of the king erected on Bowling Green in 1770 (its metal was to be used for cartridges), while, more generally, the royal arms were taken down, and usually treated with contempt. The king’s name was removed from governmental and legal documents, royal portraits were reversed or destroyed, and there were mock trials, executions and funerals of the king, each a potent rejection of his authority.

In the short term, the impact of the Patriots’ struggle for independence was serious in the extreme. It launched Britain into a war that it did not win, and that became strategically threatening when France (in 1778), Spain (in 1779), and the Dutch (in 1780) joined in as allies of the Americans. As a result, Britain, the great maritime power, was outnumbered at sea for the first time that century. The entire empire was under threat. The British lost positions in the West Indies, West Africa and the Mediterranean. Gibraltar faced a long siege. Britain’s enemies also sought to strike at the heart of empire, with the French and Spaniards trying, unsuccessfully, to invade England in 1779. There was also the danger that resistance elsewhere to Britain, especially in India, would be encouraged by Britain’s enemies. Indeed, the Americans struck at Canada in 1775, and the French at India in 1780.