The wet, muddy peat moss difused the blood to water as quickly as it was spilled. Through the rainy grey first weeks of April over 80 of the strongest and most able Chisholms in Strathglass, the ancestral valley of the clan just west of Loch Ness, prepared for a last desperate battle. On April 16th they met with their fellows on the rolling hills of Culloden moor and together met their fate. Regular people. Fighting an English army.
About 30 were killed outright in the field. The rest were hunted with dogs. The commander of the English army, Edward Cornwallis, had orders to destroy. And that’s what they did. Properties were looted and burned, livestock was driven off, crops were destroyed, women and children were brutalized and families were burned alive in their homes. By April 19th only three of the men could be accounted for. And they were in chains. |
John Wesley
Writing about life, citizenship, and Nova Scotia. Archives
June 2020
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