Ladies and gentlemen, buckle up for a new Outlander post. Sanity has prevailed, and we’re also getting to the part of the series where I have the most to talk about, so I am indeed starting a different thread rather than risk, this, the original, becoming the longest post on tumblr.com.
Right, straight to it. At the end of the previous post I said that the villain’s British uniform was actually pretty okay. That post was made after midnight, and I have since decided that my standards are slipping unacceptably. It’s “okay” as a random British Army officer’s coat in the 1740s. It’s not okay as the uniform of an officer specifically belonging to the 8th Dragoons, which is what he said he was. I present the actual show uniform, and what it should have looked like;
It’s sadly ironic, because for some reason when redcoats are depicted in TV and art during the ‘45 rising they’re very often given red uniforms with yellow facings. In reality the colour of the facings varied depending on which regiment the soldier belonged to. This time they’ve given the baddie blue facings when, actually, the yellow they so often otherwise go with would’ve been correct!
There are further issues with the uniform. The 8th Dragoons, who he supposedly belongs to, were known sometimes as the “crossbelt dragoons.” According to regimental legend they engaged a unit of Spanish cavalry at the battle of Almenar in 1710, where they attacked them so viciously they supposedly tore off and kept their crossbelts. Henceforth the waist belts were worn over the shoulders to commemorate the event.
Moving on, the 1745 uprising has now started and the hero has to engage in a Mulan-esq training drive with his sorry lot of highland vagabonds. There’s some good and bad stuff about this. Highlanders weren’t all natural-born warriors, most were just farmers. The hero is right when he points out that an army needs discipline and can’t just rely on wild charges. In reality the Jacobite army did have discipline. While often portrayed as a hairy bunch of savages milling about, highland regiments were drawn up and drilled in a very similar manner to their regular British opponents. Take this near-contemporary image of Culloden by the artist Paul Sandby. This is the Jacobite army just as the battle began, not the British.
The levies are equipped with farm implements, which is okay in some cases, but not enough muskets, which practically every one would have been armed with. The relucance of some is accurate – the clan system, essentially the same as the feudal system, conscripted men and gave them no choice whether or not they fought for Prince Charles.
Speaking of, 10/10 for portraying Charles as a wee shite of a man.
The hero struts about for a while in a rather silly leathery-looking coat, another concession to our modern love affair with leather in historical dramas. It’s really not that ideal a garment material, folks!
Throughout all this we miss many of the “traditional” beats that get struck when the ‘45 is portrayed in drama. Charles lands with just a few men and is told by dismissive clan chiefs to go home. He replies “I have come home.” The Stuart banner is raised at Glenfinnan, where support arrives seemingly against the odds. Charles doesn’t even have a horse to ride, but it given one belonging to a captured British officer. The fiery cross, a singed crucifix and the ancient highland symbol of impending war, is sent out among the clans, calling them to arms.
In a way it’s refreshing to not see all this endlessly repeated, but damn, they sure missed out all the good real-life actual drama. In contrast, the training the hero’s band gets is fairly lackluster.
On to the battle of Prestonpans. Fought just a few miles outside Edinburgh on September 21 1745, it saw the Jacobites facing off against the British forces then mustered in Scotland to defeat the rebellion. The Jacobites performed a night march to negate boggy ground in their front and outflank the British. The British were surprised by this, but successfully redeployed to face the Jacobites before the battle began. British moral soon collapsed in the face of the highland charge, and the “battle” was basically a route. Interestingly, the battlefield was bisected by a wooden wagon rail line to help facilitate the local mining work, a rail that many Jacobites tripped on as they charged through the light fog.
The battle in the show is almost unrecognisable to the real one. The Jacobites perform their flanking move, and then catch the British off-guard and unprepared in an impenetrably heavy fog. It is a common misconception that the flanking move went undetected, but in reality the British had fully redeployed by the time the charge began, and even had their artillery in place.
We do get a brief historical cameo from Scottish dragoon officer Gardiner. In the show he appears as an unnamed redcoat rider (the captions name him though) who slashes one of the heroes and is then shot by another. The reality of Gardiner’s stand is altogether more story-worthy. According to a primary source he was trying to rally his own dragoons, and when he saw the officers of a nearby infantry regiment falling he;
“Immediately quitted his horse, snatch’d up a half pike and took it upon him the command of the Foot, at whose head he fought, until he was brought down by three wounds, one in his shoulder with a ball, another in his forehead by a broad sword, and the third, which was the mortal stroke, in the hinder part of his head by a Lochaber axe; this was given him by a Highlander, who came behind him, when he was fetching a stroke at an officer, with whom he was engaged.”
Gardiner’s home was just a few minutes’ walk away from the battlefield, and he was buried in the local graveyard where eight of his children were already interred. Outlander does him a sorry disservice.
Mood.
So a Scottish nationalist from the 1960s who likes to give speeches on how great everything would’ve been if the “Scots” had “won” Culloden has burned her husband alive as a ritual sacrifice in order to go back in time to 1743, where she was promptly seized as a witch by the actual historic Scots and burned to death.
If you Google “Skye Boat Song” the first thing that comes up is the Outlander version.
The correct lyrics to the above, by the way, are “sing me a song of a cat that is long.”
Anyway, we’ve reached it folks,
The episode about Culloden
Well, sort of. The battle is split up into little flashback chunks that probably only amount to about 3 minutes. There’s not a whole lot to critique that hasn’t already been said. The main annoyance is how depictions of melees always split off into dozens of solo duels, but the savagery of the combat depicted just about makes up for it. The Jacobites definitely need more muskets and bayonets though.
It’s probably worth talking briefly about the battle’s realities, and the logistics of what happened at its height. Boggy ground and musket and cannon fire forced the oncoming Jacobite centre and right to meld together as they charged, resulting in their whole weight crashing into basically just one British regiment, Barrell’s, the 4th or King’s Own. Previously highlanders making contact with the regulars had been game over for the government side – massed panic and routing followed at Prestonpans, and almost at Falkirk. On this occasion, however, something different happened.
The King’s Own stood their ground. Both sides had reached deep levels of antipathy for one another. The Jacobites were cold, starving, soaked, exhausted and driven by the fact that victory seemed to be within their grasp. The regulars were disgusted by past defeats and determined to avenge themselves against people they thought of as barbarians. Both sides knew their opponents wouldn’t be taking prisoners.
For ten minutes, a frenzied, horrific melee ensued as the Jacobites drove like a wedge through Barrell’s and the neighbouring regiment, Munro’s. The former suffered 33% casualties, and very few of their wounded survived the brutal, slashing wounds of broadswords and Lochaber axes. Their regiment’s colours were momentarily lost, with one officer having his hand cleaved off defending them. The captain of Barrell’s grenadier company, a Scot by the name of Robert Kerr who was also a senior figure of Clan Kerr, impaled the first Jacobite to reach his company with his spontoon, and was then hacked in half by the strike of an axe. His men cited the desire to avenge him later as they fought.
Afterwards one soldier recalled ‘our lads fought more like Devils than Men.’ Another claimed ‘there was scarce a soldier or officer of Barrell’s or Munro’s which engaged, who did not kill one or two men each with their bayonets or spontoons.’ Another source wrote that ‘after the battle there was not a beyonet in this regiment but was either bloody or bent.’ A survivor from Barrell’s wrote how the regiment;
“Bravely repulsed those Boarders with dreadful slaughter, and convinced them that their Broadswords and Target is unequal to the Musket and Bayonet, when in the Hands of Veterans who are determined to use them.”
The stand of Barrell’s gave Cumberland time to bring up his second line and seal the emerging gap. The colours were retaken – the King’s Colour that was caught up in the midst of the horror that day remains in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.
Anyway, Outlander. The main event in the Culloden scenes are the hero and the villain catching sight of each other moodily across the battlefield.
Bayonets, bayonets everywhere!
Time spent reading a takedown of Outlander by someone with historical knowledge, a care apply to it and with wit aplenty: 10 minutes
Time spent actually watching a populist entertainment portrayal of history on a big budget: 0 minutes
Result happiness
So today is the 275th anniversary of the battle of Falkirk, a battle that occurred three months before Culloden and which the show completely misses out. Government forces were once against routed without a great deal of fighting actually being done. The battle took place during a thunderstorm so severe a senior British officer died from exposure. Another, who fled the battle using a horse he’d stolen from his artillery limbers, later committed suicide by slitting his wrists. Two of the most senior casualties were brothers Robert and Duncan Munro, both high-standing highland Scots and the former a British Army officer who were killed in the aftermath. Robert had been attacked by six Jacobites of Cameron of Lochiel’s regiment. Robert defended himself for some time with his half-pike and managed to kill two of the Jacobites. Another Jacobite then shot Robert with a pistol. He then finished Robert off with three sword blows to the head. Robert’s unarmed brother, Dr Duncan ran to his assistance but he too was killed by being shot and slashed.
The show makes the situation in Inverness just prior to Culloden pretty weird in order to shoehorn characters in. In April 1746 the town was firmly occupied by the Jacobites until mid afternoon on April 16, after Culloden. Despite this the main villain comes and goes (at least not wearing his uniform though) and supposedly British troops are seen purchasing food for the Duke of Cumberland’s birthday. That’d be like, I don’t know, Soviet soldiers being spotted in Berlin buying food as the Red Army bears down on the city in 1945. Immersion-breaking.
The fate of the Mackenzies as a clan is also fudged. As mentioned in the older thread, some of them backed the British government, as did the chief Kenneth Mackenzie, yet the chief here is shown visiting the Jacobites and choosing to die among them. In reality there were very few Mackenzies present at Culloden, because the majority were defeated by pro-Government Mackay and Sutherland highlanders in the battle of Littleferry two days before.
The involvement of the Frasers (the hero’s main clan) is also a bit off. The main Clan Fraser played no part in the 1745 rising. The Frasers of Lovat did, though again most of them missed Culloden. They were actually still marching from Inverness when they heard what had happened, and promptly turned around and went back to the town. There is even some suggestion that they betrayed the Jacobites by refusing to let fleeing survivors cross the Ness Bridge. Certainly their leader, Simon Fraser, went on to become a highly successful British Army officer.
Oh and fun fact, these stones on Culloden battlefield don’t actually mark mass clan graves. I can assure you bodies weren’t carefully sorted into clan groupings and properly buried afterwards. Great for tourists though, thanks Victorians for your terrible-as-ever faux history.
Of course, it couldn’t be a retelling of Culloden without the post-battle EXECUTIONS.
Prisoners were indeed executed, though the extent of it remains open to debate. I’d recommend Jonathan Oates’ Sweet William or the Butcher: The Duke of Cumberland and the ‘45 on the subject. We also see Jacobite flags being collected, which they were. These were burned on Edinburgh high street in front of cheering crowds.
Indeed, Lieutenant Wallace, indeed!
Speaking of, I’ve been enjoying the hero’s struggle against what appears to be a villainous version of Governor Swan from Pirates of the Caribbean.
And before I forget, at one point Louis XV (you know, the actual king of France) blackmails the female lead into having sex with him. I’m sure @qsy-complains-a-lot will approve.
I think I’m going to take a break for now, as watching this has pretty much given me anxiety. I’ll probably skip the next season and go on to the latest, which brings us to the American colonies in 1770. What fun!
