The Crazy Story Of The Jacobites | Who Were The Jacobites? | Old Pretender | Bonnie Prince Charlie

Get comfy, gang, because today I'm going to take you through over a century of scandalous royal history that makes the Windsor family's issues with each other look like a playground brawl between six-year-olds. This is the crazy story of the Jacobites, Britain's other royal family, who lost the throne in 1688 and spent 100 years trying to get it back. It's got dramatic escapes, epic battles, does the word Culloden ring any bells, marital meltdowns, one royal who got the nickname The Butcher and another known as Bonnie Prince Charlie. There's even a little treat coming up for Outlander fans, so let's stop flirting around with the intro and get to the good stuff. The year is 1688 and James II of England, who is also James VII of Scotland, has been on the throne for three years. James has been married twice. His first wife was Lady Anne Hyde and by her he has two surviving daughters, Mary Princess of Orange, who is married to her cousin William of Orange, and Anne Princess of Denmark, who is married to Prince George of Denmark. For simplicity's sake I'm going to refer to them for the time being as Princess Mary and Princess Anne. James is Catholic and has been displaying increasing tolerance towards his Catholic subjects during his reign, but at the insistence of his deceased brother Charles II, his daughters were raised Protestant. When Lady Anne Hyde died, James remarried to the Catholic Mary of Modena, but as of 1688 none of their children have survived. As it stands, Princess Mary is therefore the heiress presumptive to the throne, and should she die without children it will go to Princess Anne and then her children. Then in June 1688, Queen Mary gives birth to a healthy baby boy named after his father. Princesses are displaced in the line of succession and suddenly the realm is faced with the prospect of a new Catholic dynasty. I already have a video which looks in detail at how James II lost the throne, linked on screen and below for you, so as we have a lot to get through today I'm just going After ludicrous claims, supported by Princess Anne, that the new little Prince of Wales is a changeling smuggled into the birthing chamber in a warming pan, a bunch of noblemen plus one bishop and collectively known as the Immortal Seven get together and basically ask William of Orange to invade England to save Protestantism. William obliges, arriving with an army in November 1688. James has an even bigger army but he delays attacking and is beset by defections, including those of his daughter Anne and her husband. He appears to have a mild breakdown at the thought of what might be coming, bear in mind this is the son of Charles I who was beheaded by the parliamentarians back in 1649, and he sends his wife and baby son to safety in France with the Queen disguised as a laundress. James tries to flee himself on the 11th of December but is captured and sent back to London. William then basically lets him escape again rather than kill his own uncle slash father-in-law. By Christmas James is also in France where his cousin Louis XIV installs the family in the chateau of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Princess Mary now also arrives in London from Holland and in February 1689 she and William are proclaimed William III and Mary II. They are crowned the following month in the only case of a joint monarchy in the island's history, though true power was actually invested in William. And on a little side note before anyone mentions the likes of Mary I and Philip of Spain, Philip was Mary's consort, he couldn't continue to rule after his wife's death. William and Mary were both regnants, neither's position as monarch of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland was dependent upon the other, as we'll see in a few minutes. This sequence of events is known as the Glorious Revolution and it is at this moment that the Jacobite cause is born, for from here on out King James, his family and their supporters are referred to by that name in reference to the Latin version of the name James which is Jacobus. There are now two branches of the Stuart family both claiming to be the rightful rulers and things are only going to get messier. Speaking of family trees, if you've got Irish ancestry you may be interested to know that my book Find Your Irish Ancestors Online is just days away from being published as an e-book and paperback and you can already pre-order the electronic version from Amazon using the link in the description box below. It's a directory of hundreds of websites which provide certificates, transcripts, photographs and other information that can help you build out your Irish family tree, learn your family stories so that your ancestors feel like three-dimensional people and feel better connected to your past. The websites are graded on a simple star system to tell you which ones are the best and the book will also share with you which ones are free, and many of them are, plus provide tips on how best to use them. So whether you're a seasoned genealogist or you just want a new hobby, if you have Irish ancestry I urge you to check this out and hopefully your ancestors won't be as dysfunctional as the Stuarts, though sometimes the dysfunctional ones have the best stories. King James was at first determined to get his throne back, just as his older brother Charles had been restored to it in 1660, and in March 1689, with French backing, he went to Ireland, hoping to use it as a stepping stone back to England. He was warmly welcomed there and stayed at Dublin Castle, which back then still actually looked like a castle, it's really a mansion today with just one stone tower remaining above ground. There were sieges and fights in what is now Northern Ireland and William sent over the Duke of Schoomburg that July to combat James's activities. The results were mixed but did leave Williamite forces in control of the northern province of Ulster by the spring of 1690. Then in June, William himself arrived in the kingdom, landing here at Carrickfergus Castle on the shores of Belfast Lock for the final showdown with his rival. This showdown was at the Battle of the Boyne on the 1st of July that year. Note that that's in the old Julian calendar, it is now commemorated on the 12th of July due to the switch to the Gregorian calendar in 1752. The old Duke of Schoomburg was killed but King William, who unlike James it must be said, bravely engaged in the battle himself despite an asthma attack, won the day. King James was forced to flee back to Dublin and from there to France, later admitting that he should not have lost his nerve in this way just as he had done in England in 1688, for much of his Irish army remained intact and could have continued the fight. It was not to be however and though some of his supporters did try to press on in his name, they ultimately failed, though it wasn't until 1691 and the Treaty of Limerick that the war was finally won in Ireland by William's forces. William himself left in 1690 as well. The attempts by James's supporters in Scotland during 1689 and 1690 to restore him had come to nothing also and James would never regain his throne nor set foot in any of his kingdoms again. Despite these early and severe setbacks, the Jacobite cause would rumble on for many more decades. Back in France, King James and Mary of Modena continued to live at Saint-Germain-en-Laye on the charity of Louis XIV, where they had another child, Princess Louise, in 1692, further discrediting the idea that the Prince of Wales was a changeling and that Mary couldn't have more healthy children. There were constant ideas about how to get the king his crown back and a number of the English aristocracy hedged their bets by sending secret messages of support to James just in case he did pull off a restoration, but none of the plans were ever successful and with a host of hangers-on who had basically ruined themselves through their support of him, the Jacobite cause became bleak and impoverished, with Mary of Modena even forced to sell her jewellery to raise funds. Meanwhile in England, Mary II died of smallpox in December 1694 and William III, despite having a weaker blood claim on the throne than his sister-in-law, Princess Anne, was able to keep ruling as sole monarch because, as I said earlier, he was king in his own right. He didn't need Mary to rule, just as she would have continued as queen had he died first. There were some non-violent efforts to resolve the problem of the two competing royal families. William offered to adopt the Prince of Wales, restoring him to the succession, but James would not allow his only legitimate son to be taken from him and raised a Protestant. The plan was therefore that after William's death, the throne would go to Anne, then to her only surviving child, the Duke of Gloucester. Don't ask me what would have happened if King William remarried and produced a legitimate child, it would have been a nightmare. However, Gloucester died in 1700 and it was evident that Anne would have no further offspring and that a new plan was needed if a Jacobite restoration was to be prevented. In 1701, the Act of Settlement was therefore passed, which vested the succession in the Protestant descendants of King James I's daughter, Elizabeth of Bohemia. This made the heir after Anne a woman called Sophia Dowager Electress of Hanover. This was not recognised in many places outside the Three Kingdoms though, in fact Scotland didn't even accept it as it hadn't gone through its parliament, and when James II died in September 1701, France declared his 13-year-old son, James III, with his mother as his regent, despite the fact that Louis XIV had actually recognised William as king as recently as 1697, that was as part of the Treaty of Ryswick. It had no effect in his titular kingdoms though, where his older half-sister Princess Anne smoothly acceded to the throne in 1702, after King William died following a fall from his horse. Five years later in 1707, Scotland was brought into a union with England and Wales, creating Britain as a political unit. This eliminated the Scottish Parliament altogether and ensured that the Hanoverians were now the legal heirs north of the border as well. During Anne's reign, there were further offers to take the young James III back as heir if only he would convert to Protestantism, but the answer was always a solid no. He was committed to reigning as a Catholic monarch, even if over a predominantly Protestant country. He did always say that he would display tolerance to his Protestant subjects, but that was never going to be enough. Furthermore, the political, social and economic terms of the union had alienated many Scots, pushing them towards James's cause. The Jacobite threat to Anne's throne was far from over. In 1708, her now 19-year-old half-brother set sail from France to Scotland with a fleet of 30 ships and 5,000 men and got all the way to the Firth of Forth before the ineptitude of the fleet's admiral, the Comte de Fourbin, combined with the threat of pursuing Royal Navy ships, forced them to turn back. It had been a close run thing though. Edinburgh was very poorly defended and James would have had considerable support in Scotland. It was not to be his last attempt to regain his father's throne and his supporters soon took to calling him the King over the Water. For now though, young King James remained based in France, fighting for his cousin King Louis. He even saw action at the Battle of Udenard in 1708 against the famed Duke of Marlborough. The English won the day, by the way. He was wounded at the Battle of Malpliquet, again fighting Marlborough, who again won, and was praised for his bravery. He hoped his half-sister Anne intended to leave the throne to him, which rather overlooked the terms of the Act of Settlement, but she did not express any intention of doing so. The Jacobite cause then suffered another setback in 1712 when his full sister, Princess Louise, still only a teenager, died of smallpox. The entire enterprise now hung by the thread of James's life. Soon after the Treaty of Utrecht, which was signed by many of the major European powers, including France and Britain, he was obliged to leave France and set up home in the First Sophia of Hanover, then Queen Anne, died in quick succession, and the throne now passed to Sophia's son, who became George I. Now there wasn't even a steward on the throne, only a German stranger who spoke little English, was 58th in line according to the rules of male primogenitor, and would surely always prioritise the welfare of his electorate, just as William III had always seemed to favour Dutch interests, right? Again, had James declared himself a Protestant, there's a real chance he would have been taken back as king, but it went against his conscience to do so, and I think we have to admire his convictions and devotion to them. I know some people might say that he should have just converted, but I imagine such people don't have strongly held religious beliefs as he did, and so can't really put themselves into his mindset, which was that his immortal soul was on the line, and not worth risking for worldly benefits. Still, he hoped that he would be able to leverage this situation to his advantage, and rushed to Paris, aiming for French help to take the throne. None was forthcoming. Despite grumblings in some quarters, the accession of George I went pretty smoothly, and while there were drawbacks to having him as king, there were advantages too. For here was an adult meal, with an adult married son in two, plus a male grandchild back in Hanover. The Jacobites, by contrast, had only the unmarried, childless James, and the ageing Mary of Modna. The Protestant succession now looked to be very secure, and James was referred to as the pretender, with a price of £100,000 put on his head if he attempted to enter England. Historian Desmond Seward, whose book The King Over the Water is one of my sources for this video, and is linked below for you, writes that a well-organised rising in the weeks after George's arrival would have sent him back to Germany, but the Jacobites lost their chance through a lack of forward planning. I think he's right. In fact, poor planning, combined with a refusal to convert to Protestantism, explains in a nutshell the reasons why the Jacobites would never retake the throne, as opportunity after opportunity was bungled or missed. One of the classic examples of this was what happened just a year later, in 1715. James still had his supporters in Britain and Ireland, and there was unease at the accession of a foreign-born German elector, leading to anti-Hanoverian riots in some places, especially as George had booted the Tory party out of power in favour of the Whigs, pushing many of them into becoming fully-fledged Jacobites. James's supporters hoped to leverage this disquiet to bring about his own accession, and another coup was planned. The Irish Duke of Ormond and Lord Lansdowne were both to head up separate risings in England, with other risings planned in northern England and Scotland, while James would come over with 2,000 French troops. The whole enterprise began to unravel before it had started though. News of what was planned leaked, and Ormond was forced to flee before his rising could start, while Lansdowne was captured and sent to the Tower before he could set off a rising either. Scotland did rebel under the leadership of the Earl of Mar in early September, as did Northumberland a month later under an MP with little to no military experience called Thomas Foster, and the Earl of Derwentwater, who was a grandchild of Charles II through one of his many mistresses. Mar was an incompetent leader, and despite having the superior numbers, when his forces fought against those of the Duke of Argyll at the Battle of Sheriffmure on the 13th of November, and could have won had they continued to fight, he ordered them to withdraw and did not engage again, even when Argyll's forces were weakened. Also on the 13th of November occurred the Battle of Preston, this time between Foster and the forces of General Charles Wills. It ended with the incompetent Foster's unconditional surrender, despite the fact that he had the superior forces which had suffered far fewer casualties than the Whig troops they were fighting against. James himself landed in Scotland in December with no troops and went to Scone Palace, but by then his little army was down to 5,000 men and it was too late to get his throne back. He lost further support when his men burnt a number of Scottish towns and villages, leaving those not killed by the flames to starve or freeze to death. With King George's troops in pursuit, even despite the atrocious weather, James's companions begged him to leave Scotland, believing that George's men would not pursue them further if he was no longer there to be caught, and so the would-be king returned to France in February 1716. Like his father before him, he would never set foot anywhere in the British Isles again. His army marched on without him, eventually scattering as its men tried to escape the country and avoid punishment for their support of him. Derwentwater and some of the others who had been captured over the course of the rebellion were executed on Tower Hill in London. Those without noble blood were beheaded if they were lucky or hung drawn and quartered if they were not. Others died in horrific prison conditions or were sold into indentured servitude, for which read slavery, in the West Indies or America. A few escaped though. Thomas Forster managed to slip out of his cell in Newgate Prison, no one's quite sure how, and get to France, as did a few others. Louis XIV had died on the 1st of September, leaving the throne to the five-year-old Louis XV, and the child's regent, the Duke of Orleans, was not interested in assisting the exiled king of Britain and Ireland. The XV, as it became known, was a bungled and unmitigated disaster for the Jacobite cause, and yet King George's heavy-handed dealings with the prisoners caused him to lose popularity, and James still hoped that he could get his throne back at another time. After a visit to his mother at Saint-Germain, he shifted his court to Avignon, for the Duke of Lorraine no longer wanted such a dangerous guest. Soon he had to leave though, thanks to the interference of George I, and he went to the Papal States, where the Pope gave him a palace and a pension, though he didn't stay in that home long, instead returning to Rome. The long-suffering Mary of Modena died in May 1718, leaving her son without any close family in his life. He was also in pretty dire financial straits, remember he was trying to support a court as well, and struggled to find a royal bride who would accept him, even considering marrying a commoner at one point. Then, in September 1719, he pulled the proverbial rabbit out of the hat, by wedding in Rome the seventeen-year-old, beautiful, wealthy and royal Princess Maria Clementina Sobieski, granddaughter of the King of Poland. George I was irate, as the last thing he wanted was the pretender married and fathering a new generation of Jacobites. The following year, his fears were further realised when James and Clementina, which is what she was known as, became parents to a son named Charles, and who was declared the Prince of Wales by his father, not to be confused with the Hanoverian Prince of Wales, who at that point in time was the future George II. History knows this new Stuart baby better as Bonnie Prince Charlie, or the young pretender, with James becoming the old pretender. In March 1725, he was joined by a little brother named Prince Henry Benedict, Duke of York. The next generation of Jacobites had arrived. The family were given a house in Rome by the Pope, plus a nice little country pad and an increased alliance to support themselves and their court. Over the next 25 years, there continued to be Jacobite plots to put James on the throne, but always they were thwarted, and none resulted in invasions or battles in the way that the 1715 rebellion had done. The Hanoverians became the accepted face of the monarchy in Britain, and when George I died in 1727, there was no issue with the succession of his son, George II. Nevertheless, the idea of Jacobitism remained popular with many, and was an easy rallying cry when times were tough. When disorder broke out amongst Spitalfield's weavers in 1736 because of Irish competition, the rioters were soon calling out for a Stuart restoration. Quite how they thought this would be a quick fix for their problems is unclear. James, like most people in Ireland, was a Catholic after all, and this was perhaps just a case of the grass seeming greener on the other side, or an easy way of insulting and angering the actual king, rather than a widespread show of love for the relatively unknown quantity that was his rival. That's not to say that there wasn't still a lot of genuine discontent with the Hanoverians though. The government was seen as incompetent and unrepresentative, George II kept the Whig party in power despite the fact that most people who could vote would have voted Tory, and it didn't help that he and his wife Caroline seemed so foreign. They spoke English with German accents, and the king wasn't a particularly inspiring figure. The new Hanoverian Prince of Wales, Frederick, was also perceived as a useless lump whose own parents hated the sight of him so much that Queen Caroline didn't even want him at her deathbed in 1737. See my video on her horrific demise to learn more about that. Compared to them, the Jacobites, with an English-born king even if he had left as a baby, and their two handsome young princes who spoke English as their first language, seemed rather romantic and dashing. Desmond Seward points to continuing Jacobite sympathies amongst university men and Parsons, Catholics, including in Scotland and Ireland, some Tory MPs and Freemasons. Like the Hanoverians though, things were not terribly rosy in the Stuart royal family either. The marriage between King James and Queen Clementina had soured during the 1720s. Clementina had terrible mood swings and depression, and James made matters worse by appointing staff members whom she hated, including James Murray, Earl of Dunbar, as Prince Charles's governor, who promptly stopped the Queen from seeing her own son, except in Dunbar's presence, and suggested sending the two little princes to be raised in Spain. King James refused this idea at least. Clementina suspected that her husband was cheating on her and wanted to bring up their children as Protestants, and the situation between the couple became so bad that she left him to enter a convent in November 1725. She stayed there for a year and a half, with occasional visits from her sons, until a reconciliation with her husband was patched up and she eventually returned to him in January 1728. The marriage was fatally damaged though, and soon they were leading essentially separate lives, though they would still be seen together publicly for appearances' sake. In January 1735, she died of TB or scurvy. I've She was buried in St Peter's Basilica and James would never remarry. There would be no more legitimately born Jacobite children. In 1733, James was asked to consider becoming the King of Poland. His wife was Polish, remember, and his children half-Polish, but he still had his heart set on Britain and Ireland and refused. As the decade went on, his good-looking elder son increasingly became the focus of Jacobite hopes and Hanoverian concerns, with George II grumbling every time the boy was recognised and shown courtesy by any other European court. He was right to be concerned. By the early 1740s, another plot was brewing to restore James, this time using his son as a figurehead. It's time to discuss the 1745 Rebellion and the Battle of The plan hinged on French assistance, as pretty much all Jacobite invasion plans did to some degree. Louis XV, now all grown up, wanted to distract the British from warring with France. The French had just lost to George II and his forces at the Battle of Dettingen in 1743, and putting his cousin on the throne would do just that. 10,000 French troops were to invade England in February 1744, with Prince Charles travelling over after them to rule as regent for his father until James could arrive. Charles even came to gravelands near Dunkirk in preparation for this event. However, news of the plan leaked to the English, and that, combined with bad weather, prevented the fleet from sailing for the English coast. The plan was called off. This latest play for the throne wasn't over yet though, and Charles remained in France, determined to try again. Borrowing money to fund his expedition and gathering up weapons and a little band of supporters, there were 100 volunteers from the Irish Brigade of the French Army, Charles was banking on getting to Scotland, raising the Highlanders, and the French then providing military support once the Rebellion was underway. The French did give him two ships up front, and despite losing one of these to a battle with the Royal Navy in the Channel, the ship wasn't actually sunk but it had to return to France, Charles, who was on the other boat, was eventually able to land in the Northern Kingdom on the 23rd of July 1745. This attempt on the throne had both advantages and disadvantages. Charles had lost his French army men and many of his provisions when his second ship had had to limp back to France, but on the other hand, many of the Scottish clan chiefs agreed to support him, and much of the British army was away on mainland Europe, fighting for the Hanoverians there. The union between England and Scotland continued to be unpopular in the northern country, and he cut a charismatic figure who wore tartan, endured the same rations and difficult conditions as his men, and was able to attract people to his cause. At first, things went well. The Jacobite army grew in number and succeeded in taking Edinburgh on the 17th of September, with no resistance except from the castle. Charles established himself at Holyrood Palace, where he met with local grandees, and just days later, on the 21st of September, the Jacobites won a victory against the Hanoverian troops of Sir John Cope at the Battle of Prestonpans, by Things were getting serious. Prince William, Duke of Cumberland, who had been fighting his father's wars on the continent, was recalled from Flanders with 12,000 troops. Meanwhile, recruitment to the Jacobite cause shot up, and in the second week of October, four French ships and 2,500 French troops arrived at Montrose with money and supplies. Then, on the 13th of that month, Louis XV recognised James as the King of Scotland. On the 31st of October, Charles and his army of 5,500 men left Edinburgh to invade England via Carlisle, which is in the northwest of the country if you're not familiar with the geography, so it's actually on the other side of the island from Edinburgh. They took the city, including its castle, which you see here, in mid-November. Next, it was on to Preston, then Manchester, but the expected flow of English recruits didn't materialise. Seward puts this down to the fact that the English did not hate the Union in the way that the Scots did, and remembered the punishments doled out after the failure of 1715. On the Jacobites went, though, expecting other English or French reinforcements, and reaching Derby on the 4th of December. Here, they discovered that the Duke of Cumberland was coming after them from London, while another Hanoverian general, Murray, was advancing from the north-eastern city of Newcastle, threatening to hem them in. Furthermore, no reinforcements had appeared. A difficult decision was taken to retreat back to Scotland. Charles, by the record, had wanted to press on to London, believing, possibly correctly, that his smaller army, not bogged down by as many cannons and other war machinery, could dodge Cumberland and get there first, but he was overruled by his council. On the 6th of September, they therefore began to head north again. Before I explain what happened next, just a quick reminder, if you're enjoying this video, to please give it a thumbs up, the algorithm likes that sort of thing, and subscribe to my channel with the notification bell switched on so that you never miss one of my videos. If you'd like more from me, you're in luck, because you have lots of options. You can become a channel member here on YouTube by clicking the join button under videos or on my homepage, then following the on-screen instructions. Or you can find me on Patreon, Instagram and my Amazon storefront. They're all linked below for you, and they all provide extra content from me. New patrons also get access to my Patreon archive for the tier they join and the lower tiers, so even if you're listening to this video long after it's gone live, as long as my Patreon still exists, you can still join and look up my earlier content. Don't forget to sign up to my free mailing list on my website too, and get a complimentary download giving you five quick and easy tips for spotting good and bad history books before you buy them or start reading. Two weeks later, they were back in Scotland and headed for Glasgow, still with Cumberland's men on their heels, though the Duke himself soon went back to London, believing that the French had invaded. Prince Charles and his men then besieged Stirling Castle in January. On the way there, Charles was taken ill with flu, and nursed back to health by a local woman named Clementina Walkinshaw, who was named after his late mother. More on her later. On the 17th of January, the two sides, with the Hanoverians now led by General Henry Hawley, engaged at the Battle of Falkirk, where the Jacobites won, forcing Hawley to retreat to Edinburgh. But Bonnie Prince Charlie had lost some of his best men in the fight, and he also came down with flu again, and went back to Clementina. Plagued by desertions, divisions amongst his council, and unable to take Stirling Castle, Charles agreed to retreat into the Highlands, which the Jacobites began to do on the 2nd of February. On the 20th, he captured Inverness, which is deep in the Highlands and near Culloden, and more recruits did indeed join the army, with a few ships even making it through from France with additional men and supplies. But it wasn't to be long now until the entire enterprise fell apart, for Cumberland was once more on Charles's tail. Having recovered from a near fatal dose of what was probably scarlet fever in the middle of March, I imagine his system was already weakened from the two doses of flu he'd had in the previous three months, Charles and his men got ready for what would be their final battle. They couldn't retreat further, as losing Inverness would have left them with no additional supplies. There was no more money to keep paying his troops, and as Seaward says, Charles had utter faith in his Highland soldiers, having not realised they had been chronically underfed by his useless quartermaster. They were also outnumbered. Cumberland had about 9,000 men, Charles about 5,500. Cumberland's 25th birthday fell on the 15th of April, and there had been a jackabout plan to attack his army that night, believing they would all be drunk in celebration, but it was called off at the last minute, despite Charles offering to lead it himself, as there was a mistaken belief that Cumberland had been forewarned. It was probably the last chance to avoid the disaster, which occurred just hours later. On the 16th of April, 1746, Cumberland attacked the starving and weakened Jacobites through the mist on the wide and nearly flat Culloden Moor. The result was a quick and brutal slaughter. Including the manoeuvres and cannon fire before the hand-to-hand combat began, the Battle of Culloden lasted only about an hour, but during that time, the Jacobite cause was all but ended. Charles showed great bravery, riding amongst his men to bolster their spirits and nearly being shot for his trouble, but the Stuart forces were no match for the Hanoverians, and were further hampered by the horrendous weather as rain and snow fell on the already exhausted troops. Though some put up a brave fight, others quickly saw how futile it was as their ranks began to be decimated, and they turned and ran. Charles was reluctant to leave, but when he saw his army either dead, dying or fleeing, he accepted that it was time to go. Cumberland would get his nickname of the Butcher for what happened next, as he had his men pursue the fleeing Jacobites over the coming days, killing them as they went. Those left on the battlefield were shot, bayoneted, beaten and even burnt to death. The Jacobites lost about 1,500 men, the Hanoverians only about 300. Over the next two months, Cumberland had his men absolutely ravage the Highlands, burning, pillaging and killing amongst other crimes to ensure that Scotland would never again think or be able to threaten his family's hold on the throne. The Jacobites who were captured were imprisoned, and a great number were executed, including many of Charles' top advisors. The power of the Scottish chieftains was removed by an Act of Parliament, as was the right of clansmen to bear arms. Even the wearing of Highland dress was made illegal. Back at the battle site, many of those who had fallen on both sides were buried there, though the headstones commemorating the various clans were only added by the landowner in 1881 and are not in the correct spots. Still, here is the little bonus promised to Outlander fans at the start of this video, the Clan Fraser Stone, which has become so popular in the wake of that show that it is now roped off to protect it a little from the enthusiastic tourists who come to see it. As for Bonnie Prince Charlie, he fled, first to the Scottish Isles, hoping to get a boat back to France as he dodged the soldiers hunting for him. Sleeping outdoors or in huts and dressed in increasingly ragged clothes, at points he was even barefoot, he endured a miserable experience over the next four and a half months, which included almost starving to death, nearly drowning and coming close to capture on several occasions. He even had to dress as a woman at one point to impersonate the maid of a lady called Flora MacDonald so that he could get from the mainland to Skye. He deeply impressed those with him by his good spirits, bravery and uncomplaining nature, however, and eventually he managed to get to a boat sent by Louis XV to rescue him and arrived in Brittany at the end of September. There he was warmly received and viewed as a hero. With the benefits of hindsight, we know that the Jacobite cause would never come so close to taking back the throne for the Stuarts again, and King James and Prince Henry seemed to know that as well, for James opposed any other risings in Scotland and did not object to his younger son joining the Catholic Church in 1747, meaning he would never marry and produce further heirs. Charles felt betrayed by their actions, he never saw his father again after 1745, and in contrast to them, still hoped that he could take England and spent years trying to gather support from one European power or another to attack it. No doubt he was buoyed up by the fact that there were still pro-Jacobite riots in the country from time to time, and books, pamphlets and speeches were made in support of the Stuarts. As his political ambitions floundered, so too did his personal life. He embarked on a series of ill-advised affairs, even fathering a short-lived son by his cousin, the Duchess of Montbazon, and he sought a rich wife from a powerful family, unwilling to accept that he wasn't a great catch by European royal standards. His hopes of marrying one of King Louis's daughters, or even Tsarina Elizabeth of Russia, came to nothing. In 1748, the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, which Britain and France both signed, included a clause stating that the Stuarts could not live in France, and when he refused to leave voluntarily, Charles was arrested and expelled, returning to Avignon instead, where he ran up huge bills at the Pope's expense. In the early 1750s, there was another plot to take the crown, known as the Ellebank Plot, which he took so seriously that he came to London for five days in secret in 1751. By now, he was used to using pseudonyms to help hide himself from George II's agents. There, he actually converted to the Church of England, something which, had he done it a few years earlier, might have made all the difference. The other plotters wanted to start the rebellion in Scotland again, though, while Charles would hear of nothing but England, and eventually the plot failed. By this time, Clementina Walkinshaw had also re-entered his life. Having heard that she was in Dunkirk in 1752, Charles set for her to be his mistress, to which she agreed, having no other options, and so they began an eight-year affair. This resulted in a daughter, Charlotte, born in but it was a miserable relationship that made no one happy. The family moved around Europe until, in 1760, Clementina took Charlotte and fled from Charles's violent outbursts to a convent. She was soon given a pension by King James. Charles now cut an increasingly sad and pathetic figure. His personality had greatly deteriorated from the bonnie Prince Charlie of 1745. Consumed by his disappointed hopes, yet still desperately clinging to the idea that he would regain the throne, he suffered depression, drank far too much, spent other people's money, and managed to alienate his English supporters when they raised false concerns that Clementina was a spy. They then ceased sending him any funds. He also refused to trust the French after they had ejected him in 1748, though they were probably his best chance of another attempt on the throne. In England, George II died in 1760, and was replaced by his young, English-born, and more popular grandson, George III, who soon began producing heirs with his wife, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, at a prodigious rate, and who wooed previously pro-Czechabite Tories to his side by giving them posts in his household. Although his popularity would ebb and flow with the political situation, the overall strength and entrenched nature of the Hanoverian regime, by now few could remember life without it, made it even harder to drum up further support for the languishing Stuart cause. The unmarried, prematurely aged, alcoholic, and unpleasant Charles, who had no legitimate children, cut such an uninspiring figure that when James III died on the 1st of January 1766, the Pope refused to recognise him as Charles III, though he did continue to pay him a pension. Most of his servants left their nasty, drunken, and violent master in December 1768, and though diehard Jacobites continued to toast and laud him in Britain, had he actually been able to take the throne, I think they would have been sorely disappointed with what they got. He finally married in 1772 to the 19-year-old Princess Louisa of Stolberg-Godern, and the two lived in Florence under the aliases a Count and Countess of Albany, but the marriage was a failure. There were no children, Louisa took lovers, Charles was abusive towards her, and eventually she left him in 1780 after he violently attacked her, with a formal separation following in 1784. She would ultimately die in 1824. With no other heirs, and no chance of getting any, Charles declared Charlotte legitimate in 1784 and made her the Duchess of Albany, though really it's farcical to say that a woman born out of wedlock and whose parents had never married was now magically legitimate, and Charles' ability to dole out titles is highly questionable too. Charlotte was also far from being ideal princess or queenly material, she hadn't been raised as a royal, she'd been the mistress of the Archbishop of Cambrai, and she had three illegitimate children of her own by him whom she hid from Charles. Still, she was a good daughter in that she stayed with her father and nursed him to the end. In January 1788, Charles suffered a stroke and died in Rome on the 31st of that month. He'd returned to Catholicism, and his brother was there to give him the last rites and conduct the funeral service. Bonnie Prince Charlie, the young pretender, and the would-be Charles III was ultimately laid to rest in St. Peter's Basilica with his parents. The fact that Charlotte's legitimacy was a sham is betrayed by the fact that the crown was considered to have passed to Prince Henry, not her, for it was he who was the last legitimate heir to James II's throne. In any case, she died in November 1789. Henry lived until 1807, but although he styled himself as Henry IX, he was never formally recognised as such, and he made no practical moves to obtain his supposed throne, though he was offended that the Pope recognised George III as king in his place. Although his claims technically passed to the descendants of James II's sister, Henrietta Duchess of Orleans, in reality, when he expired, the cause for which so many had fought and died, and which had destabilised British politics for over a century, was finally over. Also finished is this very long video, which is nevertheless only a brief history of the Jacobites and their ultimately doomed cause. I hope you enjoyed it. Let me know below which of the Jacobite royals is your favourite, and if you'd like to learn more about the Stuarts or Hanoverians, I have playlists on both which I recommend you check out. I'll be back next week, and until then, keep learning!