Reid - Battle of Killiecrankie 1689

Battle of

Killiecrankie 1689

T HE L AST A CT of the K ILLING T IMES

T HE L AST A CT of the K ILLING T IMES

S TUART R EID

Frontline Books

BATTLE OF KILLIECRANKIE 1689

The Last Act of the Killing Times

This edition published in 2018 by Frontline Books,

an imprint of Pen & Sword Books Ltd,

47 Church Street, Barnsley, S. Yorkshire, S70 2AS

Copyright Stuart Reid, 2018

The right of Stuart Reid to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

ISBN: 978-1-52670-994-3

eISBN: 978-1-52670-996-7

Mobi ISBN: 978-1-52670-995-0

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

CIP data records for this title are available from the British Library

Pen & Sword Books Limited incorporates the imprints of Atlas, Archaeology, Aviation, Discovery, Family History, Fiction, History, Maritime, Military, Military Classics, Politics, Select, Transport, True Crime, Air World, Frontline Publishing, Leo Cooper, Remember When, Seaforth Publishing, The Praetorian Press, Wharncliffe Local History, Wharncliffe Transport, Wharncliffe True Crime and White Owl.

For more information on our books, please visit

www.frontline-books.com

email

or write to us at the above address.

T he battle of Killiecrankie, which was fought on 27 July 1689, probably ranks as one of the four most famous battles in Scottish history; following closely after Culloden, Bannockburn and Flodden. It was certainly a dramatic battle and arguably it was also probably the only occasion when the Highland clans really did roar down a mountainside in an avalanche of steel the battle of Prestonpans in 1745 by contrast was fought on a flat Lothian cornfield bisected by an early railway line! However, for that very reason, the battle itself, unlike its background and its protagonists, has been a curiously neglected one. While the Highland war, and the Jacobite risings which followed have received no lack of attention, Killiecrankie, despite a well-known song, tends to be hurried over simply because of its apparent brevity and a belief that there is little to tell, and all of it uncontroversial. As the defeated General Mackay himself recalled, when the Highlanders crashed into his battle-line; he turned about to see how matters stood, and found that all his left had given way, and got down the hill which was behind our line, ranged a little above the brow thereof, so that in the twinkling of an eye in a manner, our men, as well as the ennemy, were out of sight, being got doun pall mall to the river where our baggage stood.

In a matter of moments, it seemed, the clansmen charged down the hill and the redcoats ran away. Done sorted. Yet, when we look at Killiecrankie more closely, there was rather more to it than that. The battle may indeed have been lost and won in the twinkling of an eye, but it was certainly not all over. After that first decisive clash, devastating though it was for both sides, the fighting continued until well after dark when the defeated army withdrew in relatively good order. Yet thereafter the battle was reduced in rhyme to all but a few lines before proceeding to elegies of lost leaders. This not only fails to explain what really happened during the battle, and why it turned out the way it did, but it does a disservice to those who fought and died there on both sides.

Moreover, while the Highland War of 1689 is popularly accounted to be the first of the Jacobite risings which dominated Scottish history for fully half a century, it was actually very different in character from the eighteenth century risings which followed it. Indeed, the very term Jacobite would not be coined until sometime afterwards and while there is no dispute that the term is derived from the Latin Jacobus , signifying James, in writing this book the earliest instance of its use which I can find comes in General Mackays memoires, written or dictated before his death in 1692, but probably no earlier than 1691. I cannot find a single use of the term in Scotland during 1689-90. Of itself this might be accounted mere semantics, but the fact of the matter is that the Highland War of 1689 was not a straightforward uprising in favour of an exiled rightful, lawful king. Instead, it was primarily the last act of a much more fundamental struggle which began in 1638 with the signing of the National Covenant. Killiecrankie and the Highland War was, in reality, the last act of the wars of the Covenant and the Killing Time that followed. i

In the popular imagination, those later risings of 1715 and 1745 pitted English Redcoats against Scottish Highlanders, in a proxy conflict between a German king in London and the rightful lawful king over the water. But by then, after the Union of 1707, the Jacobites were more concerned with reasserting Scotlands independence than with upholding the pretentions of the old house of Stuart. By contrast that overt nationalist element was completely lacking in 1689. The overwhelming majority of the Redcoats at Killiecrankie were Scots Presbyterians, not Englishmen. Indeed, only one English regiment fought there and had its counterpart in an equally solitary Irish regiment on the other side. And if the majority of King Jamess soldiers were Highland clansman, King Williams general, Hugh Mackay of Scourie, was himself a Highlander. In name and, in actuality, it was two Scottish armies which met at Killiecrankie.

Cavalry will be found referred to as either Horse or Dragoons and in theory the two were quite different. The first were regarded as heavy cavalry, sometimes wearing armour and consequently requiring large strong horses. They were armed with broadswords, carbines and pistols. Dragoons on the other hand were intended to be mounted infantry albeit in practice they proved very reluctant to fight on foot unless absolutely compelled to do so. They principally differed from Horse in carrying infantry firelocks instead of carbines and riding smaller and cheaper (but much sturdier) nags.

Infantry, more frequently referred to as Foot, were variously armed with muskets, firelocks and pikes, which will be properly discussed in due course, but for the present it should be noted that muskets were normally matchlocks (so called because the powder charge was ignited by a length of burning slow-match) and not therefore to be confused with fusils and firelocks, the contemporary term for what we generally recognise as flintlocks.

Spelling in the seventeenth century was an uncertain business and advantage has been taken of this to use common variations in order to distinguish between people and places. For example, Atholl is an area in Perthshire, which was largely in the hands of the Marquess of Athole , and likewise Argyll was dominated by the Earl of Argyle . Unfortunately, while Dundee was occasionally spelled Dundie , the latter spelling is more likely to confuse than enlighten.