The Battle of Culloden took place on 16 April 1746, near Inverness in the Scottish Highlands. A Jacobite army under Charles Edward Stuart was decisively defeated by a British government force commanded by the Duke of Cumberland, thereby ending the Jacobite rising of 1745. Charles had landed in Scotland in July 1745, seeking to restore his father James Francis Edward Stuart to the British throne, and after victory at Prestonpans had controlled much of Scotland before an invasion of England reached as far south as Derby. By April 1746, however, the Jacobites were short of supplies, facing a superior and better-equipped opponent, and their commanders concluded their only option was to stand and fight.
In the days before the battle, the Jacobites had attempted a night attack on Cumberland's encampment at Nairn on 15 April, hoping to catch the government troops less vigilant after celebrating Cumberland's 25th birthday. The plan collapsed when Murray's leading elements reached Culraick still two miles from the intended crossing point, only an hour before dawn, and the attack was aborted. Many Jacobite soldiers, exhausted by the failed march, dispersed in search of food or fell asleep, and several hundred may have missed the battle entirely. The main Jacobite army of about 5,400 had assembled on the Culloden estate, five miles east of Inverness, and formed up on Drummossie Moor in substantially the same battle order as the previous day.
When the two armies finally met at Culloden, the battle was brief, lasting less than an hour, with the Jacobites suffering an overwhelming and bloody defeat. This effectively ended both the 1745 rising and Jacobitism as a significant element in British politics.
The Jacobite night march before the battle offers a striking glimpse of the army's desperate state: Murray led his men across country in darkness to avoid government outposts, but one participant, James Johnson, wrote that the march on a dark night was accompanied with confusion and disorder. Murray ultimately aborted the attack when his leading elements were still two miles short of the crossing, yet the Duke of Perth's separate column of 1,200 men pressed on, unaware of the change in plan, with one account claiming his troops made contact with government sentries before realising their colleagues had turned back.
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