Nature and the Memory of the Battle of Culloden

The typical site of a Highland Charge

Riding through the Scottish highlands, with mountains stretching up to the sky on all sides and sun glistening off of the snow that decorates the peaks, I couldn't help but feel dwarfed by the vast nature around me. Breathing deeply for what felt like the first time in weeks, I reveled in the crisp air unmarred by pollutants and the sound of songbirds. Passing miles upon miles of fields and pastures, with more sheep and cows than I could ever hope to count, it became entirely clear how important nature is to life in Scotland. On the Tuesday of our tour, the delight I had felt being surrounded by nature was tempered when we entered the solemn site of the Battle of Culloden, a battle that forever changed the way the Scottish people related to nature.

The Culloden Moor

In 1745, Charles Edward Stuart started a rebellion, called the Jacobite Uprising, against the British government in an attempt to reassert the ruling power of the exiled House of Stuart and regain the British throne. Bonnie Prince Charlie, as he was mockingly called for his effeminate appearance, returned to Scotland from France as Prince Regent and met with clans in the highlands to gain their loyalty and access to their warriors. Having gained an army, Charles started to march south down into England, progressing as far as Derbyshire. During their march south, the clansmen met British government forces in multiple skirmishes. In these skirmishes, the clansmen used their deep-seated connection to nature to their advantage, gaining decisive victories over the British troops. In these skirmishes, the Scottish fighters used the mountainous landscape they traversed every day against the British. The men would stand on top of a mountain, luring the British troops into the valley below them. At sunset, when the sun would just touch the top of the mountain they stood on, leaving the British troops blind down in the valley, the Scotsmen would charge down the mountain, cutting down all of the British troops in their way with their large claymores. Their knowledge of their native landscape helped the Scottish troops win decisive victories in the early days of the rebellion. 

The Well of the Dead where the MacGillivray Clan fell

A change in the landscape proved to be the downfall of the Jacobite Uprising. On April 16, 1746, the Scottish clansmen met the British troops of the Duke of Cumberland not on a mountain, as they had in the previous battles won with the Highland charge, but on the flat, marshy Culloden Moor. Left out in the open, without the cover of trees and blazing sunlight, the clansmen were picked off one by one with the British muskets and cannons. The Scottish claymores and broadswords were useless when the clansmen were picked off before they could run three feet through the thick, hindering heather. Entire clans were destroyed, men, women, and children alike, while Bonnie Prince Charlie retreated through the trees, eventually escaping to Italy where he died of alcoholism and syphilis. The flat, heather-filled moor, unlike the highlands the clansmen were used to fighting in, contributed to the deaths of between 1,500 and 2,000 Scottish men, women, and children. 

The cairn for the Battle of Culloden

In the aftermath of the Battle of Culloden, the Scottish clans that remained were stripped of their ways of life with the passing of laws that were meant to incorporate the highlands into the British kingdom and punish the rebels who survived. Clansmen were stripped of their lands, leaving them landless and unable to gain a profit if they remained in the highlands. This resulted in a forced exodus of the highlanders into the southern cities, out of the nature that had sustained them for centuries. But their movement into the cities was further complicated by the ruling that the use of the Gallic language was illegal. Since many of the highlanders only knew how to speak Gallic, they were left unable to communicate in the cities they had been forced into. Finally, the Scottish people were stripped of their most important cultural symbol: their tartan. The Scottish people could no longer wear the symbol of their clans and respect that part of their culture, leaving them without language, without their culture, and without the nature that had sustained them for so long. While the Scottish people were eventually granted the right to wear tartan, speak Gallic, and return to the highlands again, the impact of the Battle of Culloden and its aftermath continues throughout Scotland. Clans are still decimated, there are still stones marking mass graves where people think clan leaders fell, and there are still thousands of skeletons being trod over every day as people visit the battlefield. Historical memory and the way people relate to nature and its influence has forever been changed in Scotland because of the Battle of Culloden. But the battle site has proven how important nature still is, even if it did work against the clansmen at Culloden. The memorial cairn for the people who lost their lives has been made out of the rocks of the field and the plant life of the highlands. Thus, even in such a bleak part of Scottish history, the importance of nature continues in the continuation of memory.