From: "Andy" <as-AT-spelthorne.ac.uk>
Date: Mon, 22 Feb 1999 16:00:32 +0000
Subject: Re: Redcoats


> From:          "Dave Coull" <d.y.coull-AT-dundee.ac.uk>

> In a message a couple of weeks ago 
> 
> Andy wrote :
> 
> >> In an earlier life I was a redcoat
> 
> and I replied
> 
> >Oh well we might have been on the same side then.
> >Joining the papist supporters of a prince who was
> >raised and educated in Rome doesn't sound like 
> >me at all.
> 
> Now, I don't  _really_  think I would have been a "redcoat"
>    -   despite my deep suspicion of anything connected
> with the Roman Catholic church, I reckon if I'd been around 
> at the time, my impulse would have been to say "a plague 
> on both your houses"   -   but I've been thinking about this, 
> and I've decided that a history lesson is needed. Anybody 
> who doesn't like history lessons can just stop reading now. 

Remember this was a Hoddle-esque revelation that I had been evil in a 
previous life.

> Lots of people have been known to wear red coats.
> The staff at Butlins holiday camps, for instance. 

That dwarfish person  in Don't Look Back/Now??? with Donald 
Sutherland.


> But from the context of Andy's remark, it seems clear 
> that he was using "redcoat" in a very narrow sense,
> namely those troops who defeated the Jacobites
> at the Battle of Culloden in 1746.

Yup.

> It is also clear from
> Andy's remark that he was making the very common 
> mistake of thinking that those troops were English,
> and that the battle was an "English" victory over "Scots".

Nope, weren't the Campbells prime movers in this one as well?

 
> (1) the Battle of Culloden was a battle in a "British"
> civil war which took place in the context of a wider
> European conflict with France
> 
> (2) A major element in people deciding which
> side to support in that conflict was religion. 
> Although most of the Jacobites were in fact 
> Episcopalian, they were  _perceived_  by 
> their enemies as being dominated by Catholics.
> The majority of Scots were Presbyterian
> and opposed to the Jacobites.
> 
> (3) There were English troops on both sides 
> in the battle
> 
> (4) There were Scottish troops  on both sides 
> in the battle
> 
> (5) There were Gaelic-speaking highlanders 
> on both sides in the battle
> 
> (6) The majority of troops on the Jacobite side
> did not come from Gaelic-speaking areas
> of Scotland, but from areas of the North-East
> where Episcopalianism was strong.

Now I'd thought these were mostly exiles at the time - didn't know 
that. Good lesson though - what's the best highland history book 
that's a good read??

And what does the y in your name stand for? I can only think of 
Yorick or Yves.

> (7) Although it was a "British" civil war, it was
> also a "Scottish" civil war. The great majority 
> of the troops  _on both sides_  were Scottish 
> (that is, most of the "victors", as well as
> most of the "vanquished", were Scottish)

Hence my trivialising it - the' red-coats' in the sense of the 
colorification of the English state kind of ended up on top.

> (8) The reason that the battle is remembered 
> as a terrible defeat for Gaelic culture 
> is because of what happened _afterwards_ , 
> over a period of years, with Butcher Cumberland's 
> bloody suppression. Despite the fact that 
> many highlanders had fought on the Hanoverian 
> side, this suppression was aimed quite 
> indiscriminately at a whole culture. Ironically, 
> the chief instruments of suppression were 
> themselves Gaelic speaking highlanders
>    -   the units which became the Highland 
> regiments of the British Army which still exist.

I used to live in Colchester, and elements of the Black Watch have 
been redressing the balance for years. 
_as