Scotland 2015 - Day 10 - August 25, 2015

Today was the day to get our Scottish history lesson.  We in American should consider ourselves lucky because our national history is so relatively short - like we only have eight or nine wars to have to study - whereas Great Britain has had oodles of wars to study in school.  And luckily we don't have kings and queens to muddle up our history.

Today we went to the Culloden Battlefield which is near the city of Inverness.  

The battle that happened here ended the Jacobite Rebellion.

Hear ia a brief history of that rebellion.

In 1688 King James VII was driven out of England because he was catholic.....  wars, arguments, marriages, political manueverings.....a new king from Germany became king of Britain....grumblings, fighting, etc.  Many of the Highland Scots wanted the monarch to be of the House of Stuart, and they stared calling themselver Jacobites.  Jacobites is a form of  the name James after the James VII who left England and went to France....more grumblings and fighting.  Enter the grandson of James VII who was born in Rome in 1720 - his name was Prince Charles Edward Louis John  Casiir Silvester Maria Stuart.  This is Bonnie Prince Charlie who you may know from the Skye Boat Song - google it on youtube.  From the time he was an infant the Bonnie Prince was raised to believe he was the one who would lead a revolution and would return the Stuart Family to the monarchy.

He started making alliances, getting promises of money and support from France - alll the stuff you need for a rebellion.  All of this culminated on April 16 (Ray' birthday), 1746 in a humongus battle on the Culloden Moor.  It was the government troops (Red Coats) against the Jacobites, and in a word, the Jacobites lost the battle - in 1 1/2 hours.  The British ruled supreme and the clan system in the Scottish Highlands was nearly decimated because of the loss of life and by the actions of the British government after the battle.  The American colonists were lucky they won because if they hadn't the British would probably have treated them the same as they had treated the Highlanders.  I learned all of this in the four hours we spent at this museum and battlefield.

The soldiers had to run through fields like this.

Monument

Not a good house to be livng in during the battle

After all the fighting, we were hungry and got lunch at TESCO (like Fred Meyer) and ate lunch on the grass at the edge of the parking lot.

Now we headed toward the Isle of Skye passing by

Loch Ness and a museum of sorts which documented the history of the people who have tried to find Nessie.  It was actually pretty good.

and by

and the Eillen Donan castle

Fun pictures of the day

How Scotland has outsourced traffic flaggers

The illusive Highland Hairy Coo

Tomorrow we start exploring the Isle of Skye