History of the Stewarts | Battles and Historic Events
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In the wake of the failures of 1715 Rising, the Jacobite movement in exile looked for other support. While the French had often turned a blind eye to the many Jacobites resident in France, Anglo-French relations had improved to the extent that in January 1717 both powers agreed a defensive military alliance. Denied French support, Jacobite diplomacy instead gained favour in Spain.
By the end of 1718 Spain was in military alliance with the Jacobites. Meeting in Madrid, Alberoni and the Jacobite general the Duke of Ormond (who from 1712 until being sacked by King George I in 1714, had held command of the British Army) planned a Spanish invasion of England with a diversionary landing in Scotland. Ormond leading 5,000 Spanish troops would land in the English West Country (where the Jacobites optimistically always believed they had firm support) intending to encourage a popular uprising against the Georgian regime. Meanwhile, the far smaller expedition to Scotland – with just 320 or so Spanish soldiers, but plentiful supplies of arms and munitions – would trigger a rising of clans in the western Highlands and Islands. Its objective was to pin British troops down in Scotland while inspiring a nation-wide rebellion.
The Spanish main force was delayed in sailing from Cadiz until 23 February 1719. However, on 18-19 March it was struck by a fierce Atlantic storm. The transports were scattered and limped back to ports on the western coast of the Iberian Peninsula. Although no ships were lost, the invasion was postponed and later cancelled. A general without an army, the Duke of Ormond was left stranded at Corunna, to be joined in early April by James III and VIII.
Given the loss of the main force, what was remarkable about the 1719 rising in Scotland was not its eventual failure, but the fact that it got underway at all. The Jacobite expeditionary force had two elements. Two frigates of the Spanish Navy, transporting the Spanish troops and military supplies, under the command of the Earl Marischal, appointed by Ormond to lead in Scotland, left San Sebastian on the Biscayan coast on 25 February. The second element sailed from Honfleur in Normandy aboard a hired merchantman on 8 March. This had been organised by James Keith, younger brother of the Earl Marischal. He enterprisingly had brought together as many of the leading Scots Jacobite exiles in France as time and Spanish money allowed. This discordant group included the Marquess of Tullibardine. He carried with him James Francis Edward Stuart’s commission from early 1717 appointing him commander-in-chief of any future military operations in Scotland.
Evading the patrolling Royal Navy warships and avoiding the storms that scattered the Spanish armada, remarkably, the French and Spanish elements of the expeditionary force joined on 30 March in the harbour of Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis, the pre-arranged rendezvous. A council of war next day, however, exposed factionalism and disagreement over strategy. Having declared his overall command, the Earl Marischal suggested that they should head to the mainland and take Inverness, declare a general uprising. The plan probably had a high chance of success, but the party from France, headed by Tullibardine and the Earl of Seaforth, the most powerful Jacobite magnate in north-west Scotland, opposed it. They argued for waiting on certain news that Ormond had landed in England. The debate continued next day, when Tullibardine revealed his commission as James III & VIII’s general in Scotland; confronted by which Marischal had no option but to relinquish command. But the two leaders already disliked each other and had rival followings, and so the expedition remained disunited.
However, it was agreed to sail to the Scottish mainland. On 13 April, the Jacobite expeditionary force landed in Kintail, on the shore of Loch Alsh near the medieval stronghold of Castle Eilean Donan. They probably numbered few more than 400 men: the Spanish infantry; the leading Jacobites and their servants and followers; and other Jacobite officers and adventurers.
For most of a month the expeditionary force consolidated the beachhead. With local clansmen –mostly the Earl of Seaforth’s MacKenzies – they established outposts further afield, including 13 miles south-east of the landing place, in the pass of Glenshiel, which commanded communications deeper inland. In further councils of war, however, prevarication and procrastination took over;- that the uprising could not become general until the fate of Ormond’s army was known. Taking the right course of action was made no easier by conflicting dubious reports of Ormond’s progress, and worrying news that government forces were gathering at Inverness.
The Jacobite situation became worse on the evening of 9 May, when Royal Navy warships anchored in Loch Alsh, a few miles from the beachhead. On 28 April, a squadron of five warships (with a sixth to follow) had been detached from the fleet readied to intercept the Spanish armada in the Western Approaches. The squadron was immediately to sail to the Western Isles and Highlands to oppose the Jacobite landings. Accordingly, on 10 May HMS Worcester, Enterprise and Flamborough bombarded Castle Eilean Donan and then landing parties seized the Castle, within which the Jacobites had placed their main magazine. The garrison of Spanish infantry was taken prisoner, and what gunpowder the Royal Navy had not seized, enabled the sailors to partly demolish the castle by explosion. During the 10th, HMS Flamborough’s crew also achieved the destruction of a secondary Jacobite arsenal on the shore of nearby Loch Duich.
With their remaining military supplies the Jacobites withdrew inland, but, with the Spanish frigates having left a few days before the British squadron arrived, they were isolated. At the beginning of June, the Jacobites in Kintail received encouraging (although in fact erroneous) news that Ormond had landed in England. On 4 June, Tullibardine finally ordered a general rising of the clans. The next day government forces, about 1230-strong, including British and Dutch regulars and Highlanders loyal to George I, commanded by Major-General Joseph Wightman marched from Inverness.
Glenshiel viewed westward from the River Shiel, at the narrowing in the pass known at the time of the battle as ‘the little glen’. The bluff, left of centre middle distance, rising steeply right (northward), was fortified and occupied as the centre of the Jacobite lines.
The Jacobite army of about 1400 men, mostly Highlanders, gathered to give battle at the narrowest point of the pass of Glenshiel, rightly considered a very defensible position. However, when Wightman’s troops with effective artillery support attacked the Jacobite lines uphill, on the evening of 10 June, most clansmen offered little resistance in a battle without hand to hand fighting. After three hours’ skirmishing most Highlanders had fled the battlefield. The Spanish infantry acting as the Jacobite rear guard withdrew to a high mountain summit above the pass.
The Spanish surrendered to Wightman next day, and the remaining Jacobites, including the leading figures, dispersed. They eventually returned to Continental exile. The short-lived rising was crushed at the battle of Glenshiel, and government forces encountered no further meaningful resistance. A few days after the battle the Marquess of Tullibardine, the erstwhile Jacobite general, reflected bitterly on ‘My Lord Marischal’s ill-conceived expedition’ . Ill-conceived or not, a generation would pass before the Jacobites managed to launch a similar armed rebellion.
Reference: The Battle of Glenshiel, Jonathon Worton
