Though the battle was over and the Scots defeated, the war still raged on in the minds of the English. With nothing to stop them, the frustrated English army decided to make sure that the Scots would never again rise up against them in arms. The Duke of Cumberland ordered his troops to put all dying and wounded Jacobites let on the field to death. Cumberland justified his orders by producing an obvious forgery of supposed orders issued by Lord Murray advising his troops to take no prisoners.
Filled with a genocidal rage and still stinging from surprising defeats at the hands of the "savage" Scots and now made righteous by Murray's "orders", the English dragoons carried out their orders with brutal efficiency. With Charles Stuart beaten, the English shifted their focus on that which was the base of his power, the very people of Scotland the Bonnie Prince had intended to liberate. English soldiers working with the full support and aid of the Whig clansmen scoured the land murdering all those who were not allied with them. Wives and mothers who were tending to the wounded or waiting on the roads for news were cut down where they stood, and the lands of the Jacobite clansmen were pillaged almost completely and left in a state of total devastation.
Though the Jacobites had lost the battle, they were not completely beaten. Murray and the other chiefs wanted to rally the tattered remnants of their army and join up with the northern clans Ruthven. Charles Stuart however had lost his stomach for war. Crestfallen by the disaster at Culloden, Charles fled to the West and waited until a ship came for him so that he could resume his exile in France, abandoning his people to their fate.
The fate of the Scots was the very destruction of the Scottish culture and near extinction of their race. Eager to consolidate their empire and to ensure order, the English aimed to destroy the Scottish Highland way of life. The Gaelic language was banned, as was the wearing of plaids and the playing of the pipes. The clan chiefs had their power broken much in the same way that Louis XIV broke the power of his nobles. By encouraging the Scottish chiefs to move to cities such as Glasgow and Edinburgh, where extravagant lifestyles were costly and they were removed from contact with the people they presided over. The English plan succeeded so well that eventually, the English army would see Highland divisions comprised of the very people who despised them, now swearing their life for the crown.
Back To Chapter One