Jacobite rising of 1745

The 1688 Glorious Revolution replaced James II and VII with his Protestant daughter Mary and her Dutch husband William, who ruled as joint monarchs of England, Ireland and Scotland. Neither Mary, who died in 1694, nor her sister Anne, had surviving children, which left their Catholic half-brother James Francis Edward as the closest natural heir. The 1701 Act of Settlement excluded Catholics from the succession and when Anne became queen in 1702, her heir was the distantly related but Protestant Electress Sophia of Hanover. Sophia died in June 1714 and when Anne followed two months later in August, Sophia's son succeeded as George I.

Louis XIV of France, the primary source of support for the exiled Stuarts, died in 1715 and his successors needed peace with Britain in order to rebuild their economy. The 1716 Anglo-French alliance forced James to leave France; he settled in Rome on a Papal pension, making him even less attractive to the Protestants who formed the vast majority of his British support. Jacobite rebellions in 1715 and 1719 both failed. The birth of his sons Charles and Henry helped maintain public interest in the Stuarts, but by 1737, James was "living tranquilly in Rome, having abandoned all hope of a restoration".

At the same time, by the late 1730s French statesmen viewed the post-1713 expansion in British trade as a threat to the European balance of power and the Stuarts became one of a number of potential options for reducing it. However, a low-level insurgency was far more cost-effective than an expensive restoration, especially since they were unlikely to be any more pro-French than the Hanoverians. The Scottish Highlands was an ideal location, due to the feudal nature of clan society, their remoteness and terrain; but as many Scots recognised, an uprising would also be devastating for the local populace.

Trade disputes between Spain and Britain led to the 1739 War of Jenkins' Ear, followed in 1740–41 by the War of the Austrian Succession. The long-serving British prime minister Robert Walpole was forced to resign in February 1742 by an alliance of Tories and anti-Walpole Patriot Whigs, who then excluded their partners from government. Furious Tories like the Duke of Beaufort asked for French help in restoring James to the British throne.

On 19 August, the rebellion was launched with the raising of the Royal Standard at Glenfinnan, witnessed by a force of Highlanders O'Sullivan estimated as around 700.

The Battle of Prestonpans, also known as the Battle of Gladsmuir, was fought on 21 September 1745, near Prestonpans, in East Lothian; it was the first significant engagement of the Jacobite rising of 1745.

Jacobite forces led by the Stuart exile Charles Edward Stuart defeated a government army under Sir John Cope, whose inexperienced troops broke in the face of a Highland charge. The battle lasted less than thirty minutes and was a huge boost to Jacobite morale, establishing the revolt as a serious threat to the British government.

In early January, the Jacobite army besieged Stirling Castle but made little progress and on 13 January, government forces under Henry Hawley advanced north from Edinburgh to relieve it. He arrived at Falkirk on 15 January and the Jacobites attacked late in the afternoon of 17 January, taking Hawley by surprise.

Fought in failing light and heavy snow, Hawley's left wing was routed but his right held firm and for a while both sides believed they had been defeated. As a result of this confusion, the Jacobites failed to follow up, leading to bitter disputes over responsibility for failure and allowing the government troops to regroup in Edinburgh, where Cumberland took over command from Hawley.

Cumberland's army advanced along the coast, allowing it to be resupplied by sea, and entered Aberdeen on 27 February; both sides halted operations until the weather improved.

Battle of Culloden won by the British led by the king's younger son, Prince William Duke of Cumberland. Charles Edward Stuart decided to fight the battle on a flat moor outside Inverness, against military advice. It was a case of English cannons against Scottish daggers and swords

A potential 5,000 to 6,000 Jacobites remained in arms and over the next two days, an estimated 1,500 survivors assembled at Ruthven Barracks; however on 20 April, Charles ordered them to disperse, arguing French assistance was required to continue the fight and they should return home until he returned with additional support.

After evading capture in the Western Highlands, Charles was picked up by a French ship on 20 September; he never returned to Scotland but the collapse of his relationship with the Scots always made this unlikely. Even before Derby, he accused Murray and others of treachery; these outbursts became more frequent due to disappointment and heavy drinking, while the Scots no longer trusted his promises of support.

Historian Winifred Duke claimed "...the accepted idea of the Forty-Five in the minds of most people is a hazy and picturesque combination of a picnic and a crusade ... in cold reality, Charles was unwanted and unwelcomed." Modern commentators argue the focus on "Bonnie Prince Charlie" obscures the fact many of those who participated in the Rising did so because they opposed the Union, not the Hanoverians; this nationalist aspect makes it part of an ongoing political idea, not the last act of a doomed cause and culture.

After 1745, the popular perception of Highlanders changed from that of "wyld, wykkd Helandmen," racially and culturally separate from other Scots, to members of a noble warrior race. For a century before 1745, rural poverty drove increasing numbers to enlist in foreign armies, such as the Dutch Scots Brigade. However, while military experience itself was common, the military aspects of clanship had been in decline for many years, the last significant inter-clan battle being Maol Ruadh in August 1688. Foreign service was banned in 1745 and recruitment into the British Army accelerated as deliberate policy. Victorian imperial administrators adopted a policy of focusing their recruitment on the so-called "martial races," Highlanders being grouped with Sikhs, Dogras and Gurkhas as those arbitrarily identified as sharing military virtues.

The rising and its aftermath has been a popular topic for many writers; the most significant of these was Sir Walter Scott, who in the early 19th century presented the Rebellion as part of a shared Unionist history. The hero of his novel Waverley is an Englishman who fights for the Stuarts, rescues a Hanoverian Colonel and finally rejects a romantic Highland beauty for the daughter of a Lowland aristocrat. Scott's reconciliation of Unionism and the '45 allowed Cumberland's nephew George IV to be painted less than 70 years later wearing Highland dress and tartans, previously symbols of Jacobite rebellion.