LA BELLE REBELLE
Euan Macpherson remembers the woman who Bonnie Prince Charlie dubbed the ‘beautiful rebel’ and who risked everything for the Jacobite cause
The story of Jacobite heroine Anne Mackintosh
Two hundred regular soldiers under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Cockayne marched out of Inverness on Thursday 16 April, 1746, heading south towards Moy Hall. The Battle of Culloden was over and Bonnie Prince Charlie was on the run, but rather than pursuing the fugitive prince into the heather, ‘Butcher’ Cumberland’s first priority that Thursday morning was to secure the arrest of 25-year-old Anne Mackintosh.
Few people today have heard of Anne Mackintosh. In 1746, however, she was almost as famous as Bonnie Prince Charlie himself.
The soldiers came along the side of Loch Moy in the weak evening sunshine. An officer marched ahead, hammering with his sword hilt on the front door and demanding ‘that bloody rebel Lady Mackintosh’. A beautiful young woman answered in a tartan habit trimmed with lace. She was pushed aside as locked cupboards and chests were broken open with bayonets and the butts of muskets.
The next morning, Anne was put on a horse and taken to Inverness. As she
walked up Inverness High Street, Colonel Cockayne offered her his arm so that she would not appear to be his prisoner. He brought her before The Duke of Cumberland who was probably expecting to meet a large Amazonian figure who rode into battle on a white horse. Instead, the woman before him was small, slim and well-mannered.
Anne Farquharson had been born in Invercauld, near Braemar, in 1723. She married Angus Mackintosh, 22nd Chief of Clan Chattan, in 1740 and moved into Moy Hall. But happy married life was shattered when her first child was stillborn and then shattered again by the arrival on these shores of Prince Charles Edward Stuart. With war looming, Angus Mackintosh rode off to Fort George to enlist in Lord Loudoun’s Argyll militia (which later became the Argyll Highlanders and subsequently the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders). Anne remained at home while the war went well for the prince and badly for her husband. General Cope was routed at Prestonpans and England was invaded. But within a few months came devastating news: the prince’s small army was on the retreat from Derby, pursued by two large armies.
It takes great courage to join the losing side in a war, but this is what Anne did. She mounted a horse and rode off to enlist not only the men of Clan Mackintosh but also the neighbouring clans such as the MacGillivrays, Davidsons and Shaws. ‘Lady Mackintosh’s Regiment’ marched south and met up with Prince Charlie at Falkirk, where he was being pursued by 7,000 British Army regulars under the command of General Hawley. Bolstered by these new recruits, the Jacobite Army turned around and attacked as a thunder storm broke above their heads. Hawley’s army scattered.
Prince Charlie now split his army in two to confuse the enemy. One branch marched up the east coast to Aberdeen. The other branch, under the prince’s command, marched up The Great Glen. Rather than sleeping outside in January, the prince rode ahead of his army to enjoy the comforts of Moy Hall. While the main body of his famished army lumbered into Aviemore, Prince Charlie was enjoying a lavish dinner.
“It was Anne’s recruits who led the charge at Culloden
But, in Fort George – then a walled stone castle near Inverness rather than the remarkable fortress completed in 1769 – Lord Loudoun could scarcely believe his luck. He had 1,500 men and the prince was in Moy Hall without a bodyguard. Loudoun waited until dark and then marched. Sunset would have occurred around 4pm allowing him enough time to get to Moy and capture the prince in bed.
After the soldiers had left Inverness, The Dowager Lady Mackintosh, Angus’ Mother, sent 15-year-old Lachlan Mackintosh running across country to warn the prince. At about 2am, Lachlan arrived, breathless, at Moy Hall and alerted the house. Servants rushed upstairs and hammered on the prince’s door but there was no answer.
So where was His Royal Highness? Was he in Anne’s bedchamber, perhaps? All that we know is that, moments later, Anne was rushing about ‘like a madwoman’ in her shift. The prince ran off down the side of Loch Moy. He was wearing only his night shirt and did not take time to buckle his shoes, which flew off as he ran.
Anne’s blacksmith fired a shot from the only pistol he had into the main body of Loudoun’s army, killing one man instantly. He then shouted on Clan Cameron to attack as Anne’s piper blew a pibroch. Thinking they had run into the main body of the Jacobite Army, Lord Loudoun’s troops turned and fled.
Two months later, Lady Mackintosh’s Regiment stood on the front line at the Battle of Culloden. The prince was stationed to the rear, out of sight of the guns. He gave the order to charge but did not see the messenger being decapitated by a cannonball and did not know the order was never delivered.
The clans stood in line and waited for the order to attack as Cumberland’s cannons fired grapeshot at them. Speed of attack had been the reason behind the Jacobite victories at Prestonpans and Falkirk, but here they were standing still, making easy targets, while the enemy fired upon them. The lack of communication between the prince in the rear and the men in the front was disastrous.
It was Lady Mackintosh’s Regiment which lost patience and broke away first. Hence it was Anne’s recruits, not Bonnie Prince Charlie, who led the charge at Culloden.
Had her husband led Clan Mackintosh out for the prince, Anne might have stayed at home and read in the newspapers of the fate of her prince. His treachery forced her to become a heroine. When Cumberland talked of pardoning Anne after her arrest, General Hawley, whose dinner had been interrupted by her rampaging Highlanders at Falkirk, shouted: ‘Damn the woman! I’ll honour her with mahogany gallows and silk cord.’
But even ‘Butcher’ Cumberland baulked at hanging a woman. Anne was set free and died in Leith, aged 63.
She has since been forgotten while Hollywood has preferred to romanticise that more conventional female heroine, Flora MacDonald. As the 300th anniversary of her birth approaches, perhaps we should look again at this woman who risked losing everything to put the true king on the throne.
Euan Macpherson is the author of The Last Jacobite Heroine.