Culloden Page #5

---

Privates Davis, Pollock and Walker.

Battalion, take care.

Battalion will dismiss,

save for the duty picket.

Battalion, dismiss.

You treated Private Walker

a short while ago, Doctor?

Yes... Yes, I did.

What did he die of?

This one? He died of shock,

if I remember correctly.

Why was that?

He was an amputee.

I had to take his arm off.

Do you know what...

what is our young Billy's pleasure

because we fought

with such gallantry?

His Royal Highness thanks

all ye officers and men

for their gallant behaviour.

Get out of it! Leave off!

His Royal Highness releases

all ye military prisoners

who were this day

in custody of the provost.

- Have you heard about the wounded?

- Well, yeh, some talk about it.

They're gonna pay 12 guineas

out of the Duke's own purse

for all those wounded in the battle.

For Lachlan MacDonald,

who's been now lying on the moor

two days with a severed right leg,

there'll be no 12 guineas.

Orders for Friday 18th April 1746.

"A captain and 40 foot

to march directly"

"and visit all the cottages"

"in the neighbourhood

of the field of battle."

"The officers and men

will take notice"

"that the public order of the rebels

on the day of battle"

"was to give us no quarter."

Line up the bodies, men.

Come on, quick as you can.

There's another one over there.

The public orders of the rebels

to give no mercy to the royal army

do not exist in any other form

than a crude forgery

alleged to have been found

on the field of battle.

All right, lad.

We're only taking you to hospital.

Bu! Whether he knows this

public order is a forgery or not,

Cumberland makes it his excuse

to authorize what now happens.

Battalion, present your firelock...

at the man in front of you.

Fire!

The officer in charge

of this execution squad

is himself a Scotsman.

Captain Scott, are many of the rebels

being killed in this fashion?

As many as we can find.

I don't know how many men

have been killed in this fashion.

I fear to think.

But just this morning I heard

a Campbell officer saying that,

in just one area, he himself

saw 72 wounded rebels

shot or clubbed on the head.

Yes, I saw what was done.

Did you agree with it?

No, of course I didn't.

I will always thank God that I had

nothing to do with the black work.

You must try to remember that

this is a most difficult problem.

I have talked much with officers

from Lowland Scots regiments

and they undoubtedly feel

that these Highlanders

are threatening their culture,

their Protestant religion.

They're threatening to disrupt

their peace and their commerce.

There's a great feeling of insecurity

in the Lowlands.

These people still remember

the Highland host.

They still remember the years

of cattle thieves and murder,

men coming down at night

from the hills

and extorting blackmail

under pain of being robbed.

You see, the Highlander

talks a different language.

He wears different clothes...

and he undoubtedly has

some uncouth and barbaric practices.

For all these reasons,

I think you'll find most Lowlanders

hold the man

from this part of the country

in contempt and hatred.

Much more so

even than the English do.

Why is your army treating the

prisoners and the wounded like this?

Of yourself, it's been said you're

keeping the prisoners in Inverness

without warmth, food and water.

And that you're even withholding

medical dressings from them.

Surely this is against

all bounds of humanity.

Look, I think the point

somewhat eludes you.

These men are rebels and barbarians

and as such are to be rated as cattle

and treated as cattle.

Get that thing

back out the way, please.

For three days and nights

since the battle,

these men, many of them

stripped of their clothes,

many of them dying

from gaping wounds,

have been lying in cold attics

and clamp cellars,

awaiting removal to the prison ships

anchored in the firth.

The British army authorities

have withheld from them

even medical dressings,

thus hoping to solve

the acute lack of prison space

by ensuring

the mortality rate remains high.

They get no food, no light,

no medical dressing.

Get their headgear

while you're about it.

The belt here, too.

The smell in here is terrible.

This man next to me...

I think he's dead.

The way they are treating us,

you'd think we were just animals.

Robert MacLean, salmon fisher.

To be tried without defence

at an English trial,

of which he is able to understand

not a word spoken.

His sentence, execution at York

by being hanged, drawn and quartered.

Check these shackles

while you're about it.

Ranald MacDonald, farmer.

To wait in prison 14 months

for a trial.

Then sentenced at Brampton to be

pulled through its streets on a sled

and hanged, drawn and quartered.

Charles Edward Stuart, believing

the Scots to have betrayed him,

refuses to listen

to last-minute pleas

to stay and fight in the mountains.

Curtly and without a word of thanks

he dismisses the Highland army.

In his saddlebags

the last of the Jacobite funds,

which he has now decided

to keep for himself,

his need, he estimates,

being greater.

Alistair John Stewart,

to lie 10 days in prison, untended,

with a broken leg.

To die on the 11th day of gangrene.

John William O'Sullivan,

soon to be safely in Rome.

To tell King James of the good part

he has played in the rising

and to promptly receive

first a knighthood

and then a baronetcy.

Alexander Sutherland,

never brought to trial.

Disposal unknown.

Lord George Murray,

who to the end blamed Prince Charles

and his Irish administration

for the defeat at Culloden,

is soon to leave Scotland forever,

forced to seek exile in Europe.

Prince Charles refuses to see him

again and never forgives him,

blaming his opposition

to his administration

for the downfall

of the Stuart cause.

Bad day for us all, this.

Lord George Murray, estimated by some

as one of the most brilliant generals

of the 18th century,

who, if left to his own counsel,

could perhaps

have turned Culloden into a victory.

Keep in step, now!

May 23rd. The British army moves

to Fort Augustus in the Great Glen.

From here, the centre link

in a chain of forts and garrisons

stretching from Inverness in the east

to Tobermory in the west,

from Bernera in the north

to Dumbarton in the south,

the Duke of Cumberland mounts

what he terms,

"the pacification of the Highlands."

Patrol of Bligh's,

you will proceed on police action

to Lochaber,

with sufficient rations for two days.

All right, lads. Fall out

and pick up your firelocks.

Move it!

Lord Sackville, what is the function

of these patrols.

Their function is to march

deep into the glens

occupied by the rebels

and their families

and there, by vigorous police action,

ensure that never again will these

people disturb the peace of our land.

May 30th. A military patrol

under Lord George Sackville

strikes deep into a corrie

in Lochaber,

searching for

fugitive rebel families.

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes