BILL McALLISTER: Culloden and the Jacobites feature in Inverness tour guide's new look at our history
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DRIZZLE and sleet greeted the combatants on grim Drumossie Moor 286 years ago on Saturday past (April 17, 1746) as the bloody crushing of the Jacobite cause at Culloden was over in 40 minutes or so.
Inverness man Jim Johnstone has run his own chauffeur-tour guide business for 40 years, conducting thousands of visitors on a personal visit to the battlefield – as well as to other historic attractions across Scotland.
He has written ‘a private tour through Scotland’s history’ titled: Was William Wallace a Jacobite? – a question a Michigan lawyer once asked him, not appreciating the 400-year gap involved!
Jim, who has read widely on the subject, stresses: “The traditional view of Culloden as the last great battle between England and Scotland is fundamentally wrong but, unfortunately, one that still persists.”
He says the romanticised view comes largely from 19th century fictionalised retelling of the Jacobite saga and perpetuated by modern historical drama.
Certainly, hundreds of Scots, including a number of Highlanders, fought in the battle for the British Army against the Jacobites
Johnstone emphasises the approach of Prince Charles Edward Stuart, who, after his victories at Prestonpans and Falkirk, ensured that enemy casualties received medical attention, demanded prisoners be treated with dignity and personally supervised teams sent out to bury the dead of both sides.
He contrasts this with Cumberland’s order that no assistance be given to the wounded and dying scattered on the moor and no friends or relatives were allowed to claim their dead for burial.
Many prisoners were held in local churches, with executions in the Old High Churchyard. Jim quotes a statement by English Jacobite James Bradshaw, immediately before his execution. “After the Battle of Culloden I had the misfortune to fall in to the hands of the most ungenerous enemy that I believe ever assumed the name of a soldier… whose inhumanity exceeded anything I could have imagined.
“I was put into one of the Scotch kirks together with a great number of wounded soldiers who were stripped naked and then left to die without the least assistance. Though we had a surgeon of our own, a prisoner in the same place, yet he was not permitted to dress their wounds, but his instruments were taken from him to prevent it. In consequence of this, many died in agony.”
The author points out that today this would be considered a war crime.
Jim says that many of the guests he has chauffeured did not realise that the Jacobite movement was not purely a Highland one, but existed in many parts of the UK and Europe. But by looking on Highlanders as “little more than savages”, Cumberland’s troops justified atrocities in the same manner as Russians in Ukraine. When news of Cumberland’s post-battle conduct eventually became known, England recoiled in horror. The ‘Butcher’ was only 44 when he died in London, not greatly lamented.
Johnstone, now 67, who chauffeured Inverness Provosts such as Bill Fraser, Bill Smith and Jimmy Gray to official functions, got the idea for his career from visiting the American South in 1982. He noticed the number of taxis in Nashville offering private tours taking in the homes of country music stars and thought:”We’ve got Loch Ness, Culloden and Cawdor Castle, why are we not doing something like this?” It all took off from there.
I like his tale of King William of Orange being killed when his horse stumbled on a mole hill at Hampton Court and the monarch died of his injuries. Jacobites would raise a secret toast to “the small gentleman in the black velvet coat” – the mole!
Jim’s book is an insightful and amusing dip in to Scottish history. Iain and Marjory Mackenzie diverted guests at their Culloden House Hotel his way for tours – and one, a ‘Mr Benjamin’, who was fascinated by Fort George, turned out to be Benjamin Netanyahu, later President of Israel.
“Visitors like the cleanliness of Inverness and comment on the quality of restaurants for such a small city”, he comments. Covid-19 limited his tours – “but now the Americans are back and bookings are rolling in.”
Including more to visit the battlefield…
n Sponsored by Ness Castle Lodges.
