The Battle of Culloden, featuring prominently in the novels Dragonfly in Amber and Voyager, took place on 16 April 1746 near Inverness in the Scottish Highlands. An exhausted Jacobite army under Charles Edward Stuart (‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’) was decisively defeated by the British government force under the Duke of Cumberland. The lost battle and the brutal reprisals that followed were effectively the end of the Jacobite rising of 1745 and of the Jacobite cause. The reprisals affected the real Simon Fraser (11th Lord Lovat, known as ‘The Fox’ and the grandfather of Jamie Fraser’s character in the Outlander novels) who fought with the Jacobites and was captured after the battle. In a big public spectacle, on 9 April 1747 Simon Fraser was the last person to be beheaded at the Tower of London. Just as he was about to be executed, one of the spectator galleries collapsed, and it is said Simon Fraser died laughing – allegedly giving rise to the expression ‘to laugh one’s head off’. In this map, the Frasers are listed in the lozenge on the right at number 5 and you can see where they lined up for battle if you follow the lower line showing ‘The Flight of the Highlanders’. They are in the Highlanders’ front line five up from the bottom.
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‘A plan of the battle of Culloden and the adjacent country, shewing the Incampment of the English Army at Narin and the March of the Highlanders in order to attack them by night’. John Finlayson, 1746. Shelfmark: EMS.s.156, National Library of Scotland. With grateful thanks to Chris Fleet, Map Curator – Access, Collections and Research, National Library of Scotland.