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Battle of Prestonpans
Part of Jacobite Rising
Jacobite forces at the Battle of Prestonpans
Date September 21, 1745 Location Prestonpans (near Edinburgh), Scotland Result Government Army
Combatants
Government	Jacobites
Commanders
John Cope	Charles Edward Stuart
Strength
ca. 2300 men	ca. 2500 men
Casualties
300 killed, 500 wounded, 1500 captured	30 killed, 70 wounded

Second Jacobite Rising
Highbridge – Prestonpans – 1st Carlisle – Clifton – 2nd Carlisle – Inverurie – Falkirk – Fort William – Culloden

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 is also known as the Battle of Gladsmuir. The battle was fought at Prestonpans, Lothian, Scotland. The victory was a huge morale boost for the Jacobites, and a heavily mythologized version of the story entered art and legend.

Contents 1 The road to Prestonpans 2 The Hanoverian respond 3 The battle 4 Cope exonerated at court-martial 5 The battle in art and legend 6 The second Jacobite rising continues 7 Notes 8 References 9 External links

In the summer of 1745, Prince Charles Edward Stuart, commonly known as "Bonnie Prince Charlie", mounted a campaign to take Scotland with an eye towards reclaiming what he considered to be his throne. Against long odds, and aided by the early support of Donald Cameron of Lochiel, XIX chief of Clan Cameron,^[1] his party of ten raised an army which eventually numbered over 2000 Scots as they marched to Glenfinnan and then to Edinburgh.

Sir John Cope, the general commanding government forces in Scotland, was commanded to raise forces to stop the rising. He did so, but the vast majority of his recruits had no experience whatsoever, and he was hampered by a variety of other issues including the sickness of his principal cavalry officer. Despite this, the 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. ^[2]

Charles's army took Edinburgh with little or no fighting on the 16th of September; Cope, travelling by ship from Aberdeen, arrived too late to challenge them.

On 20 September Cope's forces encountered Charles's advance guard. Cope decided to stand his ground and engage the Jacobite army. He drew up his army with a ditch to their front, and the park walls around Preston House protecting their right flank. Charles's Lieutenant General, Lord George Murray, knew the area well, and during the night he moved the Jacobite army across the ditch far to the left of Cope's army.^[3] Cope kept fires burning and moved his forces during the night as the Highlanders advanced under cover of darkness.

At the crack of dawn on 21 September 1745, Cope's dragoons beheld the spectacle of 1,400 charging Highlanders accompanied "by wild Highland war cries and the bloodcurdling skirl of the pipes....".^[2]

Cope's inexperienced army fled, despite Cope and his officers attempting to force them to charge at pistol point. Cope's army had faced to its left to meet the Jacobites, but the ditch and park walls were now blocking their retreat. The "battle" was over in five minutes with hundreds of government troops killed or wounded and 1500 held prisoner. The Highlanders suffered only around 100 troops killed or wounded. The wounded and prisoners were given the best care possible, to the Jacobites' merit.

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, 50 miles 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 proceeding 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.^[4]

Subsequent public perception of the battle in general and General Cope in particular has been influenced by Adam Skirving's popular songs. Skirving was a local farmer who did not see the battle itself, but visited the battlefield later that afternoon where he was, by his own account, mugged by the victors. Skirving wrote two songs, "Johnnie Cope", and "Tranent Muir"; the former is quite well-known, and is a short, catchy, and mostly historically inaccurate insult to Cope. While Cope's troops fled the battle, he himself did not; nor is it true that he slept the night before. Poet Robert Burns later wrote his own words to the song, but these are not as well-known as Skirving's.

"Tranent Muir", on the other hand, is a long and graphically violent description of the battle, and some of the events depicted are historically accurate. Myrie and Gardiner, mentioned in verses seven and eight, did in fact die in the battle. Lieutenant Smith, described in verse nine as fleeing the battle in dread, challenged Skirving to a duel after the song was published.^[2]

The battle highly boosted the morale of Stuart's supporters, and more recruits were soon gained. At this point, the war was on Stuart's side but this would eventually change at the Battle of Culloden, near Inverness.

1. ^ Cameron
2. ^ ^{a b c} Brander
3. ^ Thomasson
4. ^ Marguiles

• Brander, Michael (1988). Scottish and Border Battles and Battles. Random House. ISBN 0-517-52500-3. 
• Cameron, Donald (1746). Letter to Prince Charles Edward Stuart. Clan Cameron Archives. Letter. Retrieved on August 25, 2005.
• Margulies, Martin B.. Unlucky or Incompetent? History's Verdict on General Sir John Cope. History Scotland Magazine. Retrieved on August 25, 2005.
• Tomasson, Katherine & Buist, Francis (1967). Battles of the '45. Pan. 

• Battle maps at the National Library of Scotland
• Ascanius; or, the Young Adventurer