Archaeologists in Scotland have discovered more than 100 projectiles from the Battle of Culloden in a part of the battlefield where no artifacts have ever been found before. The projectiles include lead musket balls, buck shot and cannon shot, including a three-pound ball believed to have been fired from a Jacobite cannon.
The Battle of Culloden was the final clash of the Jacobite uprising of 1745. On April 16th, 1746, the Jacobite army of Bonnie Prince Charlie was routed by the government army under the Duke of Cumberland. Between 1,500 and 2,000 Jacobite soldiers were wounded or killed, and the Jacobite cause died with them. Bonnie Prince Charlie fled to France, never to step foot in Scotland again.
A team of archaeologists from the National Trust for Scotland and the University of Glasgow worked with volunteers to investigate an area of the battlefield that was located between the Jacobite and government lines. Previous excavations came up empty-handed, possibly due to forestation works in the 19th century and later tree clearance. This time, the team employed a variety of techniques: metal detector scanning, digging trial trenches and test pits. The multi-pronged approach was successful beyond expectations, shedding light on one of the most significant clashes in the battle.
Professor Tony Pollard said: ’We’ve only had time to make a rapid assessment of our results, but musket balls fired by Jacobite and government troops, including pistol balls fired by government dragoons, likely relate to one of the last actions in the battle. This fight took place between the initial battle lines, at a location where boggy ground slowed the Highland charge, and this, in combination with heavy fire from Cumberland’s line, helped to seal the fate of the Jacobite cause.
’As the Jacobites retreated, a battalion of Irish troops in French service, fighting with the Jacobites, made a brave stand against hundreds of mounted men from Cobham’s Dragoons and possibly Kingston’s Horse, advancing from the right of Cumberland’s line. The job of these horsemen was to cut down the disordered Jacobites, and we have recovered some of the shot fired from their heavy pistols. The Irish troops, numbering about 150 men, under their commander Lieutenant-Colonel Walter Stapleton, blocked this advance and, according to an account by Adjutant General John O’Sullivan, one of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s senior officers, fired volleys into the approaching cavalry. The red-coated Irish Picquets then found cover behind the walls of Culloden Parks. Still, their surrender, after suffering heavy casualties, with Stapleton among the dead, was the only alternative to total annihilation. Being regular troops in French service, they were treated as prisoners of war rather than rebels, but nonetheless, they suffered the privations of confinement on a prison hulk in the Thames before being repatriated to France in early 1747.
’This valiant action helped thousands of Jacobites get away from the field, but it gets only brief mentions in most of the history books. A more detailed analysis of the artefacts and their distribution pattern will be required before we can make a definitive statement, but at present there are no obvious alternative interpretations.’
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