REBELLIOUS SCOTS TO CRUSH
◗ Andrew Bamford (editor) ◗ Helion & Company (2020) ◗ £25.00 ◗ 232 pages (softback) ◗ ISBN:9781912866748 ◗ helion.co.uk
Number 52 in Helion’s From Reason to Revolution 1721-1815 is a collection of essays examining the military response to the Jacobite Rising in 1745. In his Preface Andrew Bamford reminds readers that the key word in the loyalist verse from which the book takes its title is ‘Rebellious’ not ‘Scots’; that, contrary to later popular perception, the ‘Forty Five was not a war between England and Scotland, but a civil war between the English and Scottish who supported the Protestant, Hanoverian dynasty and those who sought a restoration of a Catholic, Stuart monarchy.
The Introduction provides an outline of Britain’s land forces at the outbreak of the Rising and of those units raised in response to it. The individual essays – listed below – then focus on particular units and their services.
‘These are only Cope’s Dragoons’: The 13th and 14th Dragoons by Jonathan D. Oates; Major General Pulteney’s 13th Regiment of Foot and the Regular British Infantry by Mark Price; The Noblemen’s Regiments by Andrew Cormack (which describes the thirteen regiments of foot and two of horse raised at their own expense by individual magnates, whose colonel’s commissions then enabled them to extend a great deal of patronage); The Edinburgh Units of 1745-6: The Trained Bands, City Guard, Regiment, and Volunteers by Arran Johnston; ‘If the Duke of Argyle would arme his Argyllshire men’: The Argyll Militia 1745-1746 by Jenn Scott;
The Yorkshire Blues by Jonathan D. Oates (this was one of the units raised by local associations, named for the colour generally adopted for their uniform coats. One of its companies, commanded by William Thornton, attached themselves to Wade’s forces at Newcastle and were present at the Battle of Falkirk). ‘Your Provincial Guard’: The Derbyshire Blues and the Chatsworth Contingent by Andrew and Lucy Bamford (which concludes that the most significant effect of these local troops was that they removed such arms as were stored in the county, preventing them and many riding horses from being seized by the Jacobites and denied them access to manpower).
The first appendix gives the Organisation and Orders of Battle of forces in the British Isles at the outbreak of the Rising; Cope’s Army; Wade’s Army; the Lichfield Army; the Finchley Army; Hawley’s Army, and Cumberland’s Army. The second lists the regiments of cavalry and infantry by seniority and gives the names of their colonels and any changes that occurred during the Rising.
Eight colour plates show Peter Dennis’s depiction of Lieutenant Colonel Whitney and Gardiner’s 13th Dragoons at Prestonpans; a grenadier of Pulteney’s 13th Foot and a volunteer of the Derbyshire Blues by Christa Hook; a reproduction of a portrait of Captain Leighton of the 78th Foot; and modern photographs of the front and rear of surviving grenadier caps of Granby’s 71st Foot and Harcourt’s 76th Foot.
A two page Select Bibliography, a three page Index of Regiments and Corps and a five page General Index conclude the book.
Many books have focussed on the Jacobite forces; this one examines the variety of units deployed or raised at short notice to meet the emergency, some of which fought in the battles of Prestonpans, Falkirk or Culloden, whilst others never fired a shot in anger. The essays provide a new perspective on the ‘Forty Five which will be of great interest to wargamers wishing to recreate that campaign and its battles.