Between 1688 and 1746, Scotland was torn apart by a series of uprisings that would shape the country's identity for centuries. The Jacobite risings, fought in the name of the exiled Stuart kings, were not merely military campaigns. They were the expression of a world view: a belief in the sacred nature of dynastic monarchy, in the loyalty of clansmen to their chief and their king, and in the possibility that a single desperate charge across a Scottish moor might change the course of history. When the last charge finally failed, on the cold and boggy ground of Culloden on 16 April 1746, the Highland way of life was shattered beyond repair. The Jacobite cause became one of history's most enduring romantic myths, and one of its most devastating tragedies.
This is the complete story of the Jacobite risings: who fought them, why they fought, how they came so close to victory, and why they ultimately failed. Whether you are tracing Jacobite ancestors, exploring the battlefields and castles of the rising, or simply seeking to understand one of the most dramatic chapters in Scottish history, this guide covers everything you need to know.
The Origins of the Jacobite Cause
The Jacobite cause began with a constitutional crisis. In 1688, King James VII of Scotland (James II of England) was deposed by a coalition of English nobles who invited the Dutch Protestant William of Orange to take the throne. James, a Catholic, had alienated Protestant opinion across Britain with his attempts to extend religious toleration, which many saw as a cover for restoring Roman Catholicism. When his queen gave birth to a son in June 1688, the prospect of a permanent Catholic succession panicked the Protestant establishment. William landed in England in November 1688, James's army melted away, and the king fled to France. This became known as the Glorious Revolution, glorious, that is, to those who supported it. For those who remained loyal to James, and his descendants, it was a usurpation that could never be legitimised.
The word "Jacobite" derives from Jacobus, the Latin form of James. Jacobites were those who maintained that James and his heirs were the rightful monarchs of Britain, and who were prepared to fight, and die, to restore them. The cause was strongest in the Scottish Highlands, where clan loyalty, Episcopalian and Catholic religious sympathies, and a deep suspicion of the Presbyterian Lowlands and the London government combined to create a powerful pool of support for the Stuarts. But Jacobitism was never purely a Highland or Scottish phenomenon. There were Jacobite sympathisers across England, particularly in the north and west, and substantial support in Ireland, France, and the wider Catholic world.
The exiled Stuart court established itself at Saint-Germain-en-Laye near Paris, under the protection of Louis XIV of France. France, perpetually at war with Britain and its Protestant allies, saw the Jacobites as a useful instrument of foreign policy: a ready-made invasion force that could threaten Britain from within whenever France needed a distraction. This French connection would prove both a blessing and a curse for the Jacobite cause. It provided vital funding, troops, and naval support; it also meant that Jacobite risings were inevitably entangled with French strategic calculations that did not always align with Scottish interests.
The First Rising: Killiecrankie and Dunkeld (1689–1690)
The first Jacobite rising began almost immediately after William's accession. John Graham of Claverhouse, "Bonnie Dundee", raised the Stuart standard in the Highlands in the spring of 1689. Claverhouse was one of the most capable military commanders Scotland had produced in a generation: charismatic, ruthless, and intimately familiar with Highland terrain and tactics. He gathered a force of approximately 2,500 Highlanders, drawn from Clan MacDonald, Clan Cameron, the Robertsons, and a dozen other Highland clans.
On 27 July 1689, Claverhouse's army met General Hugh Mackay's government force of some 3,500 men in the narrow Pass of Killiecrankie in Perthshire. The Highlanders held the high ground above the pass and waited, with the extraordinary patience that Highland tactical doctrine demanded, until the setting sun was directly in their opponents' eyes. Then they charged. The result was annihilating. Mackay's line broke within minutes; some 2,000 government soldiers were killed against perhaps 600 Jacobite casualties. It was the most spectacular demonstration of the Highland charge in history, but it came at a devastating cost. Claverhouse himself was struck by a musket ball during the charge and died on the field. Without him, the rising lacked leadership, and the momentum was lost.
The Battle of Dunkeld, fought just weeks later, demonstrated the limits of Highland military power without strategic direction. A Jacobite force besieged a small force of Cameronian (hardline Presbyterian) soldiers in the town. The Covenanters, defending house by house with desperate courage, held out until the Highlanders, unaccustomed to prolonged urban fighting and running short of ammunition, withdrew. The 1689 rising sputtered out, and Jacobite hopes passed back to France and the exiled court.
The Fifteen: Scotland's Near-Miss (1715)
The death of Queen Anne in 1714 without a surviving heir triggered the next major crisis. The Act of Settlement of 1701 had barred Catholics from the succession; when Anne died, the crown passed to the Elector of Hanover, George I, a German Protestant who spoke no English and had never visited Britain. To Jacobites, this was the moment to act. James Francis Edward Stuart, "the Old Pretender," son of the deposed James VII, was the rightful king, and he had far more claim to the throne than any German prince.
The Earl of Mar, "Bobbing John," so called for his ability to change political allegiance as circumstances demanded, raised the Jacobite standard at Braemar in September 1715. He assembled a formidable army of some 10,000 men, drawn from the great Highland clans: the Gordons, the Frasers, the MacKenzies, the Camerons, and many others. This was the largest Jacobite force ever assembled, potentially enough to overwhelm the small government garrison in Scotland if used decisively. It was not used decisively.
Mar was a politician, not a soldier. He hesitated and manoeuvred when he should have struck, allowing the Duke of Argyll, commanding a much smaller government force at Stirling, to fortify his position and gather reinforcements. The decisive confrontation came at Sheriffmuir on 13 November 1715. The battle was inconclusive in military terms, both sides won on one wing and lost on the other, but strategically it was a catastrophe for the Jacobites. Mar's far larger army failed to destroy Argyll's force, and the initiative passed to the government. James Edward arrived in Scotland in December 1715, but by then the rising was already collapsing. He left again six weeks later, never to return, and the rising dissolved. Our Battle of Glen Shiel Targe commemorates the Spanish-backed episode in 1719 that followed the '15, when a small Jacobite force made one last attempt in the western Highlands before being crushed at Glenshiel.
The Clans and the Jacobite Cause
Understanding why so many Highland clans supported the Jacobite cause requires understanding the clan system itself. For Highland chiefs, the question of which king sat in London was not purely abstract, it was a matter of their own authority, their lands, and their people's survival. Many clans had received their lands and titles from Stuart monarchs; loyalty to the Stuart line was inseparable from loyalty to their own position. Others were motivated by religious sympathy, particularly the Catholic clans of the western Highlands, for whom a Protestant succession meant continued discrimination and exclusion from public life.
But clan politics were never simple. Many major clans were divided. The Clan Campbell, dominant in Argyll and one of Scotland's most powerful dynasties, almost uniformly supported the Hanoverian government, their Whig politics and Presbyterian religion made them natural enemies of the Jacobite cause. The Grants, the Munros, and the Sutherlands were predominantly Hanoverian. Even within Jacobite clans, there were those who judged the cause hopeless or who had sons on opposite sides, hedge-betting that was rational but made the Jacobite coalition permanently fragile.
The Jacobite clans who fought most consistently and most bravely were the Camerons under Lochiel, the MacDonalds (both of Clanranald and of Glengarry), the Frasers under Lord Lovat's son the Master of Lovat, the Stewarts of Appin, the MacPhersons, and the MacGregors. These were the clans whose names appear again and again in Jacobite documents, whose chiefs led the charges, and whose clansmen died on the battlefields. For these men, the Jacobite cause was not romantic abstraction, it was life, identity, and honour.
The Forty-Five: Scotland's Last Great Rising
The rising of 1745, "the Forty-Five", was the most dramatic and nearly successful of all the Jacobite campaigns. Its protagonist was Charles Edward Stuart, known to history as "Bonnie Prince Charlie", the grandson of the deposed James VII, and the most charismatic figure the Stuart cause ever produced. For more on the man himself, see our dedicated article on Bonnie Prince Charlie and the 1745 Rising.
Charles landed on the small Hebridean island of Eriskay on 23 July 1745 with just seven companions. He had received no French troops, no ships, no artillery, France had abandoned the planned invasion. Cameron of Lochiel, the most important Highland chief whose support Charles needed, initially advised him to return to France. Charles's reply became legendary: "I am come home, sir, and I will entertain no notion at all of returning to that country where I was sent from; for I am persuaded that my faithful Highlanders will stand by me." It was a statement that combined magnificent audacity with a reckless disregard for military reality. Lochiel was moved, and committed his clan.
That commitment changed everything. With the Camerons declared, other chiefs followed. The Jacobite standard was raised at Glenfinnan on 19 August 1745, with some 1,200 clansmen gathered on the banks of Loch Shiel. The rising had begun.
The March to Edinburgh and Prestonpans
The Jacobite army moved south with remarkable speed. By 17 September, Charles had entered Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland was in Jacobite hands without a shot being fired. Days later, at Prestonpans on 21 September, the Highland army met General Cope's government force and destroyed it in less than fifteen minutes. A local guide had led the Jacobites through the marshy ground separating the armies in the pre-dawn darkness, and the Highland charge, delivered at dawn through the morning mist, was devastating. Cope's army broke and fled before the wave of charging clansmen had even reached their line. It was the most complete victory in the history of the Highland charge, and it sent shockwaves through London.
The Jacobites now controlled most of Scotland. Charles held court at Holyrood in Edinburgh, presiding over balls, receptions, and councils of war with the easy charm that made him, briefly, the most talked-about man in Europe. An English invasion was proposed and approved. In November, the Jacobite army crossed the border into England.
The March into England and the Retreat
The English campaign of 1745 brought the Jacobites to Derby, within 120 miles of London, before the fateful council of war on 5 December 1745, known as "Black Friday." Charles's officers, led by Lord George Murray (the most capable military commander in the Jacobite army), argued that the promised English Jacobite support had failed to materialise, that a large government army was closing on them from the north, and that another government army stood between them and London. They voted to retreat.
Charles was devastated, and never truly recovered from the decision. He believed, with some justification, that they were within striking distance of the throne. Government intelligence later revealed that London was in a panic, that the Bank of England had been paying out in sixpences to slow the run on its reserves, and that George II had packed his bags. But the intelligence was not available to the Jacobite council, and the vote stood. The retreat from Derby was the turning point of the entire rising.
Falkirk and the Final Campaign
The retreat was not a rout. The Jacobite army fought a skillful rearguard action and inflicted a significant defeat on General Hawley's government forces at Falkirk on 17 January 1746, the last major victory of the Highland charge. But the army was weakening. Men were deserting, supplies were running short, and the disciplined government army under the Duke of Cumberland was tightening its grip. By February, the Jacobites were back in the Highlands, attempting to maintain control of the north while their strategic options narrowed week by week. Our Battle of Culloden Targe and Battle of Falkirk Targe both commemorate these final campaigns.
Culloden: The End of the Rising
The Battle of Culloden on 16 April 1746 ended the Jacobite rising in less than an hour. It was fought on Drummossie Moor, flat, exposed ground that negated every advantage the Highland charge possessed. The Jacobite army was exhausted and hungry after a disastrous night march intended to surprise Cumberland's camp. The Highland regiments charged into murderous artillery fire and disciplined musket volleys; the new bayonet technique, specifically designed to counter the targe-and-sword combination, held the line when the charge finally reached it.
For a detailed account of this decisive engagement, see our dedicated guide to the Battle of Culloden. In less than sixty minutes, the Jacobite army was destroyed. Over a thousand clansmen died on the field; hundreds more were killed in the days and weeks that followed as Cumberland's troops swept through the Highlands. The Frasers, the Camerons, and the MacDonalds who had charged so bravely at Prestonpans lay dead on the moor, or were hunted through the glens by redcoat patrols.
Aftermath: The Destruction of Highland Scotland
The government's response to Culloden was not merely military victory, it was systematic suppression. The Disarming Act of 1746 stripped Highlanders of their weapons. The Dress Act banned Highland dress, the plaid, the kilt, and the tartan, outside of military service. The Heritable Jurisdictions Act abolished the clan chiefs' traditional legal powers, breaking the legal foundation of the clan system. Jacobite estates were forfeited to the Crown and administered by government commissioners who attempted to transform the Highland economy along Lowland lines.
The Clearances that followed in subsequent decades, as landlords replaced tenants with sheep in pursuit of agricultural profit, completed what Culloden had begun. The Highland way of life, built around the clan system, was dismantled within a generation. The Gaelic language, the bardic tradition, the complex web of kinship and obligation that had defined Highland society for centuries, all were eroded by legislation, economics, and deliberate cultural suppression.
Charles himself escaped, after five months of wandering through the Highlands and Islands, sheltered by loyal clansmen who refused to betray him despite a £30,000 reward on his head, he was finally evacuated to France in September 1746. He spent the rest of his life in exile, growing increasingly bitter and alcoholic, and died in Rome in 1788 without ever seeing Scotland again.
The Jacobite Legacy
The Jacobite cause failed in its immediate objective, the Stuart dynasty was never restored. But its legacy has been profound and enduring. The romantic mythology of the Forty-Five, Bonnie Prince Charlie, Flora MacDonald rowing the prince "over the sea to Skye," the loyal Highland clans dying for their king, captured the European imagination within a generation of Culloden.
Sir Walter Scott, writing in the early 19th century, transformed the Jacobite story into romantic literature that was devoured across Europe and America. His novels presented the Highlanders as noble, doomed warriors whose defeat was tragic rather than deserved, and in doing so, he helped create the romantic image of Scotland that persists to this day. When George IV visited Scotland in 1822, the first reigning monarch to do so since Charles II, Scott stage-managed a pageant of Highland costume and clan ritual that would have astonished the real Highland clansmen of 1745. But it planted the seed of the Highland heritage tourism industry that still flourishes today.
The Jacobite risings also had profound long-term consequences for Scottish national identity. The paradox is that the very defeat of the Highland cause, and the subsequent destruction of the clan system, produced, eventually, a romantic nostalgia for Highland culture that became central to how Scotland defined itself. The clans that were broken at Culloden became, within two generations, the symbols of a Scottish distinctiveness that could be celebrated within the British Empire rather than opposed to it. Highland regiments, recruited from the very clans that had fought against the British Crown at Culloden, became some of the most celebrated units in the British Army, their Highland dress restored by royal permission precisely because it was now safely historical rather than politically dangerous.
Jacobite Sites to Visit
For those who want to walk in the footsteps of the Jacobites, Scotland offers an extraordinary collection of historic sites. The Culloden battlefield, managed by the National Trust for Scotland, has an excellent visitor centre and the original clan graves, perhaps the most emotionally powerful heritage site in Scotland. Glenfinnan, where the standard was raised, stands at the head of one of the most beautiful glens in the Highlands. The Pass of Killiecrankie, managed by the National Trust for Scotland, preserves the dramatic landscape of the 1689 battle, including the spot where a soldier reputedly leapt 18 feet across the River Garry to escape the pursuing Highlanders.
Edinburgh's Stirling Castle tells the story of the '45 from the government side, while Fort Augustus (now a village at the southern end of Loch Ness) stands where Cumberland's forces mustered after Culloden. Blair Castle in Perthshire, seat of the Murray family whose members fought on both sides, is a magnificent Baronial castle with extraordinary Jacobite-era collections.
Our castle directory and clan directory can help you trace the specific places and families connected to the Jacobite risings. And if you are interested in the weapons and tactics that shaped these campaigns, our detailed guide to Highland weapons and warfare provides the complete context.
Why the Jacobite Cause Still Matters
The Jacobite risings were not simply military campaigns. They were a collision between two worlds: the Gaelic Highland culture of kinship, honour, and warrior tradition, and the emerging modern world of parliamentary government, commercial capitalism, and centralised state power. The Highlanders who charged at Culloden were not fighting only for a particular king, they were fighting for a way of life that Culloden's outcome would destroy.
That is why the story still resonates. The Jacobite cause has come to symbolise something that goes beyond dynastic politics, the tragedy of a culture overwhelmed by forces it could not control, the courage of people who fought for what they believed in against impossible odds, and the enduring power of loyalty and identity in the face of change. Whether your interest is military history, ancestral research, or simply the romance of a cause that nearly succeeded, the Jacobite risings offer one of history's most compelling stories.
Explore more of this extraordinary history through our guides to the Battle of Culloden and Bonnie Prince Charlie, and discover the clans and castles at the heart of this struggle through our clan directory and castle directory.