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The Battle of Prestonpans was the first significant conflict in the second Jacobite Rising. The battle took place on September 21, 1745. The Jacobite army loyal to James Francis Edward Stuart and led by his son Charles Edward Stuart defeated the army loyal to the Hanoverian George II led by Sir John Cope. It was initially known as the Battle of Gladsmuir - but was fought at Prestonpans, East Lothian, Scotland on that town's borders with Tranent, Cockenzie and Port Seton. The victory was a huge morale boost for the Jacobites, and a heavily mythologized version of the story entered art and legend.
The road to Prestonpans
In the summer of 1745, Charles Edward Stuart, commonly known as 'Bonnie Prince Charlie' or 'the Young Pretender', mounted a campaign to take Scotland and England with an eye towards reclaiming what he considered to be his father's two kingdoms (Great Britain, formally united in 1707, and Ireland). Against long odds, and aided by the early support of Donald Cameron of Lochiel, XIX chief of Clan Cameron, his party of ten raised an army which eventually numbered over 2000 Scots as they marched to Glenfinnan and then to Edinburgh.
The Hanoverian response
Sir John Cope, the general commanding government forces in Scotland, was commanded to raise forces to stop the rising. He raised the recruits but the vast majority had no experience whatsoever, and he was hampered by a variety of other issues including the sickness of his principal cavalry officer. Despite this, his officers apparently believed that the rebels would never attack a single force including both infantry and cavalry. They assured locals during their march that there would be no battle.
Charles's army took Edinburgh with little or no fighting on the 16th of September; Cope, travelling by ship from Aberdeen, arrived at Dunbar too late to challenge them.
The Battle
On 20 September Cope's forces encountered Charles' advance guard. Cope decided to stand his ground and engage the Jacobite army. He drew up his army facing south with a marshy ditch to their front, and the park walls around Preston House protecting their right flank. The Highlanders' Lt. Anderson was a local farmer's son who knew the area well and convinced Charles's Lieutenant General, Lord George Murray of an excellent route through the marshlands. Commencing at 4 a.m. he moved the entire Jacobite force walking three abreast along the Riggonhead Defile far to the west of Cope's army. Cope kept fires burning and posted pickets during the night as the Highlanders were making their move.
At the crack of dawn on 21 September 1745, Cope's dragoons beheld the spectacle of 1,400 Highlanders charging through the early mist making "wild Highland war cries and with the bloodcurdling skirl of the pipes....".
Cope's inexperienced army wheeled round from facing south to facing east in great haste but could only fire their cannon and muskets once before the Highlanders were upon them. They then fled despite Cope and his officers attempting to force them to charge at pistol point. Cope's army facing east to confront the Jacobites had the ditch and walls of Preston House behind them blocking their panicked retreat. Cope rallied his men, but could only lead about two hundred stragglers up a side lane (Johnnie Cope's Road) to reorganize in an adjacent field, where they refused further engagement. Cope and his aide-de-camp had no choice but to travel southwards to Lauder and Coldstream and then on to the safety of Berwick-upon-Tweed the following day. Colonel Gardiner, a senior Hanoverian commander who stayed at Bankton House close by the scene of battle, was mortally wounded in a final heroic skirmish that included Sir Thomas Hay of Park who fought by his side and survived. Colonel Gardiner's fatal wounds were inflicted beneath a white thorntree of which a portion is today in Edinburgh's Naval and Military Museum. He was taken to The Manse at Tranent where he died in the arms of the Minister's daughter during the night. The Colonel became the unchallenged hero of the day and an obelisk to his memory was raised in the mid 19th century.
The battle was over in less than 10 minutes with hundreds of government troops killed or wounded and 1500 taken prisoner. The Hanoverian baggage train at Cockenzie was captured with only a single shot fired and it contained £5000, many muskets and ammunition. The Highlanders suffered less than 100 troops killed or wounded. The wounded and prisoners were given the best care possible at Prince Charles' insistence. A cairn to their memory was erected in 1953 close by the battle site and a coal bing using the remains of the area's coal shale shaped as a pyramid now provides a vantage point for today's visitors to the site to gain the fullest appreciation of the battle as it unfolded through interpretation boards.
Cope exonerated at court-martial
Despite the cowardice of his inexperienced troops and the humiliating fact that Cope had to report his overwhelming defeat personally to the garrison commander at Berwick-upon-Tweed, 50 miles (80 km) away, the frequent accusations that Cope himself fled the battlefield appear to be incorrect. Cope and his officers were exonerated at court-martial. Martin B. Margulies, writing in History Scotland magazine, notes:
The Report of the Board's proceedings was published in 1749. Anyone who scrutinizes it closely can only conclude that the Board was correct. What emerges from the pages is not, perhaps, the portrait of a military genius but one of an able, energetic and conscientious officer, who weighed his options carefully and who anticipated - with almost obsessive attention to detail - every eventuality except the one which he could not have provided for in any case: that his men would panic and flee.
The second Jacobite rising continues
The battle greatly boosted the morale of all Stuart supporters, and more recruits were soon gained in Scotland. At this point, the campaign was going the Stuart's way. The Prince's army advanced as far as Derby by December 1745 unimpeded, using the most skilled generalship. However in Derby the Council of Chiefs resolved at Exeter House to proceed no further since they had been deliberately misled to believe a major Hanoverian army stood between them and London. They conducted a skilled retreat with a further victory at Falkirk before finally meeting total defeat at the Battle of Culloden, near Inverness.
Website; Battle of Prestonpans Heritage Trust
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