Sweet William or the Butcher?

The Duke of Cumberland and the '45

Jonathan Oates

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781781598221
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Early Modern History
• Index: History

'Butcher' Cumberland is portrayed as one of the arch villains of British history. His leading role in the bloody defeat of the Jacobite rebellion in 1745 and his ruthless pursuit of Bonnie Prince Charlie's fugitive supporters across the Scottish Highlands has generated a reputation for severity that has endured to the present day. He has even been proposed as the most evil Briton of the eighteenth century. But was Prince William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, the younger son of George II, really the ogre of popular imagination? Jonathan Oates, in this perceptive investigation of the man and his notorious career, seeks to answer this question. He looks dispassionately at Cumberland's character and at his record as a soldier, in particular at this behavior towards enemy wounded and prisoners. He analyses the rules of war as they were understood and applied in the eighteenth century. And he watches Cumberland closely through the entire course of the '45 campaign, from the retreat of the rebels across northern England to the Highlands, through Battle of Culloden and on into the bloodstained suppression that followed.

Chapter 1

The Duke and the Historians

Who now remembers the victor of Culloden
except as ‘butcher Cumberland’?¹

This chapter will examine how historians and others have dealt with Cumberland and his part in the Forty Five. But first we need to bear in mind a few points about the nature of history and the pitfalls that await the unwary.

Our perception of any historical event or character is usually formed for us by those who write about them, whether in books, films or other performances. This image is not a static one. History is as much an art as a science and is neither impartial nor objective. This is for several reasons. First, every historian is human, with his or her own likes and dislikes. Figures whose values and actions are favoured by the writer will tend to be viewed and written about in a better light than a figure whose behaviour is found by them to be unsavoury. The historian is also a product of his environment and his times. He may be as much influenced by contemporary values as by those of the time he is investigating, though any good historian will guard against this. Secondly, historians have to be selective if they are writing about anyone about whom there is a mass of documentation, such as a ruler, an author or an important military figure. It would be impossible to write everything about that individual. The question then is how to select information for inclusion and what to reject. Again, the historian’s judgement is required–objectivity again. Here, deliberate bias can occur, as favourable information can be included and even exaggerated and derogatory material be left out or minimized, or vice versa.

Thirdly, there is a question about the material used in the first place. Primary sources, such as correspondence, diaries, memoirs and newspapers, are usually subjective and the latter two doubly so, for they aim to give one particular view to a wide audience. But even the former will be shaped by the writer’s own views of people and events, and also their own knowledge of them, which is usually only partial and may be second hand. If one source is the only account of a particular event, how truthful and accurate is it? With varying accounts giving differing views and even ‘facts’, a historian needs to choose one version, but how is he to choose which one? Surviving evidence often comes from a small and not necessarily representative circle of individuals. In the case of the Duke of Cumberland, most of what was written about him comes from men of a fairly senior rank in the army and government, or from his virulent political enemies. We only have a few accounts written by the men in the ranks of the army he commanded, nor is there anything written by Jacobites below the rank of the officers. In any case, the surviving evidence is often incomplete and open to interpretation. Assumptions can be made which may not necessarily be accurate.

Finally history can easily be written as propaganda. This does not mean that the writer is writing lies. Every fact included can be utterly genuine, but the work is still a propaganda piece. A history of the Soviet Union could be written (and has) without any account of the gulags and other methods of extermination and repression by the state. Such an account would be a grotesque distortion of reality, but every word of it could be entirely supported by fact.

History is not, therefore, a monolith of facts which are unchallengeable. It would be a very tedious subject if it were so. An eminent military historian has recently written, ‘Nobody can pretend to offer the last word on the ’45. History is constantly reinventing itself’ and ‘Nobody is so divorced from origins and instincts as to be able to avoid “taking sides”, once exposed to this subject matter’.² Yet there is such a thing as historical orthodoxy, in which certain characters are usually cast as heroic and others as villains, and this is how the mass of the public perceive them, though many historians would not accept such black and white delineations. Those deemed heroic include Elizabeth I, Winston Churchill and Lord Nelson. Villains would include Sir Oswald Mosley, King John and the Duke of Cumberland. Of course, it is possible to make a case against the first three and for the second three.

I shall now survey how historians have written about Cumberland since 1746, in roughly chronological order. A number of histories of the Forty Five appeared just after the campaign was over. These include those by John Marchant, James Ray and Andrew Henderson and were all published in Britain. Naturally enough, all of them were favourable towards the Hanoverian status quo and virulently opposed to the Jacobites.

These authors did not think they were writing propaganda. Andrew Henderson wrote that his book was ‘By an Impartial Hand, who was an Eye Witness to most of the Facts’.³ Likewise, James Ray wrote in his preface:

I took all opportunities of writing a Journal; which contains the most material Things that happen’d during that period; and those Circumstances that did not fall directly under my Observation, I have taken Care to collect from the most Authentic accounts I could procure ... I have taken care through the whole of my History, to relate Facts with the greatest Perspicuity and Exactness.⁴

Yet perhaps what Ray meant was that the facts he included would be accurate, but that he would also be highly selective in deciding which he would use. Unlike later historians, Ray nails the purpose of his history to his mast at the first possible moment. He wrote:

I hope that great Example of theirs will spread its Influence, through the Dwellings of the Disaffected and convince them (and such are of unsettled Opinions and Prejudices) that it would be wise Part of them to discountenance all Popish Imposters, and to defend to the last Drop of their Blood that illustrious and heroick Family, which kind Providence has made us a free and happy People.⁵

It is interesting to note that Henderson, writing as he was, just a few years after Culloden, does not omit that the regulars killed wounded Jacobites after the battle of Culloden, though he excuses such behaviour. Ray, on the other hand, does not allude to such activity.⁶ Cumberland is portrayed favourably in these works, Ray writing about the soldiers’ behaviour at Culloden, ‘Who could do otherwise when animated by the Presence of so brave a Commander? That ordered all the Dispositions, perhaps, as just as the mind of Man could conceive’.⁷ Henderson went on to write the first biography of the Duke, which was published in 1766, a year after the latter’s death. It shows Cumberland in an impossibly good light during every phase of his life.⁸ Marchant’s book does not hint at any wrongdoing by the Duke or his army, either.⁹

Yet Douglas’s History, published in 1755, does reveal wrongdoing by the soldiery after Culloden. He retails the suffering in the Highlands and how some innocent people had their property stolen from them. Cumberland is not explicitly blamed for any of this, however. It is interesting to note that both Henderson and Douglas were Scottish.¹⁰

At the onset of the nineteenth century, two histories of the Forty Five were published, the last to be by those who were alive at the time of events. One was by John Home and the other by Giulo Caesare di Antonio Cordara, an Italian nobleman, who knew the exiled Stuarts at Rome. The latter was written in 1751, but not published for decades. It was the first account to show what many other writers have; namely that Cumberland and his forces dealt savagely with their beaten foes. One extract reads:

The King’s troops, pressing round them in ever-growing numbers and becoming more savage as the victory became more complete, killed every one in their way. Edward [Charles] succeeded in escaping from the horrible butchery with the utmost difficulty. Every one had already fled from the field, hurrying wherever terror and the hope of safety carried them ... Many were caught and killed. In vain did the wretches beg for mercy on their knees, in vain did they implore help from Heaven and from man. Neither prayers nor piteous appeals moved the cruel butchers to spare them. ¹¹

Cordara’s writing is based on accounts of fugitive Jacobites in Rome. However, like Ray, Home (another Scot) does not mention any savagery after Culloden; perhaps it was too soon after events to do so.

It is a truth, almost universally acknowledged, that history is written by the victors. Although, as we have just seen, this was true in the immediate aftermath of the Forty Five, perspectives changed in the nineteenth and twentieth century. Professor Speck notes: ‘Though it is often complained that historians record successes and have little time for failures, the reverse is true of the Forty Five. Hardly a year goes by without the appearance of a new life of Bonnie prince Charlie, or a Jacobite saga. ’¹²

In the nineteenth century, a number of memoirs written by former Jacobite officers were published and these have been used by historians as key sources. However, they do, somewhat naturally, give a Jacobite bias, and though the Jacobites indulged in quarrelling and infighting, they could all agree on their common enemy. The sources for the Forty Five as written by Cumberland and other key figures in the British state have mostly not been published and lie in manuscript or microfilm form in the National Archives, Windsor Castle, the British Library and elsewhere and are therefore less easy to access, and so are less well-known and less used.

Unfortunately, many of the Jacobite accounts only offer vague and generalized statements about the alleged brutality after Culloden. James Maxwell of Kirkconnell (1708–62), a Jacobite officer and an otherwise excellent source for the military history of the Forty Five, writes:

There is hardly an act of violence to be found in the histories of the most barbarous nations, but may be matched in the Duke of Cumberland’s expedition to the Highlands ... The reader will be satisfied with the manner of treating this subject in general, when he reflects, that it saves him abundance of shocking scenes he must have seen had I been particular.¹³

Had Maxwell been less concerned about his readers’ sensibilities, we would be better able to judge the veracity of his comments. But the impression he makes is very unfavourable to Cumberland.

Similar remarks come from the pen of James Johnstone (1719–c.1800), another Jacobite officer, who wrote:

The Duke of Cumberland never failed to say to the commanders of these detachments at the moment of their departure, ‘Make no prisoners, you understand me’. They had particular instructions to stab the Prince if he fell into their hands ... the sanguinary Duke, whose officers and their detachments–his executioners–inflicted more cruelties on the brave but unfortunate Highlanders than would have been committed by the most ferocious savages of Canada. ¹⁴

Again, it is a pity that the second half of this quotation is so vague, and the fact that the veracity of the first half is questionable at best does not bode well for that of the second. Furthermore, it seems unlikely that either Maxwell or Johnstone was an eye witness to the events referred to.

Another good source of apparently primary material about the atrocities is the Lyon in Mourning. This was a collection of letters, poems and accounts written by Jacobites after the rebellion which detail their sufferings at the hands of their enemies. It was gathered together by the Revd Robert Forbes (1708–75), the Scottish Episcopal bishop of Ross and Caithness, who was a staunch Jacobite. Some of its contents may, however, be suspect, and there is no doubting its bias. Although this was not fully published until 1895, some of it did appear as early as 1834 and Forbes wrote,

The humanity displayed, and the regular and honourable payments made on all occasions by the Chevalier, in contrast with the licence and barbarity, now for the first time fully brought home to the royal army, will hardly fail to disturb some of the prepossessions of the English race.¹⁵

It is hard to find any military campaign in which atrocity stories are absent. However, as one historian cautions, ‘We are usually dependent for details on enemy accounts produced largely for propaganda purposes, so there can be considerable difficulty in establishing the exact circumstances of each incident, and sometimes indeed whether the actually happened at all.’¹⁶

It was in the nineteenth century that the portraits of Charles and Cumberland that we know today were established. Scotland, long seen in England as remote, backward and barbarous, began to be shown as a centre of historical romance and contemporary patriotism. Royal approval was granted when George IV visited Scotland in 1822 (the first reigning monarch to do so since the seventeenth century) and this was reinforced by the visits of Victoria and Albert in subsequent decades. Walter Scott’s Jacobite novels, such as Rob Roy and Waverley, featured incidents from the Jacobite rebellions, depicting the Highland warrior as a heroic and an honourable man, albeit as a noble savage. Now none of this was explicitly anti-Cumberland, but it did show his opponents, Charles Edward Stuart and his supporters, in a favourable light. The damage had been done.

Alexander Ewald, in his The Life and Times of Prince Charles Stuart, published in 1883, stated what was by the late nineteenth century the orthodox view on Cumberland:

We are so accustomed to connect the character of William, Duke of Cumberland, solely with the awful barbarities that followed Culloden, that we are liable to overlook everything else in his conduct, and every other event in his history. One most foul blot overshadows his escutcheon that we do not care to inquire into its quarterings. History having recorded him as a merciless enemy, an inhuman victor, and a glutton for all that was brutal, we pass him by with loathing.¹⁷

Ewald proceeds to list Cumberland’s virtues: liberality, honour, bravery and respect for authority. But he then goes on to enumerate his failings, which are in part because Cumberland’s morals were not those of the conventional Victorian (whose were in the eighteenth century?) and in part are questionable, and overlook much in Cumberland’s actions. The point to be made, though, is that Cumberland’s reputation was alrea...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Plates
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 - The Duke and the Historians
• Chapter 2 - The Theory and Practice of the Times
• Chapter 3 - Cumberland’s Early Life, 1721–1745
• Chapter 4 - Cumberland and the Campaign of the Forty Five, July 1745–April 1746
• Chapter 5 - The Battle of Culloden and its Aftermath, 8–18 April 1746
• Chapter 6 - Operations around Inverness, April–May 1746
• Chapter 7 - Operations around Fort Augustus, May–July 1746
• Chapter 8 - Contemporaries, the Duke and the Rebellion
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index