1500-1799 | Battlefield butchery | Burning villages | Civilians slaughtered | Collective punishments | Prisoners murdered | Punitive operations | Scotland | Wounded killed

‘PERFIDIOUS’ HIGHLANDERS ‘MUST PERISH BY SWORD OR FAMINE’

ByAlisdare Hickson

16 APRIL 1746 During the autumn of 1745, Jacobite rebels, led by ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie,’ and desiring to replace the Hanoverian king George II with the prince’s catholic father, James Stuart, marched on London, reaching as far south as Derby before they retreated to Scotland. The rebellion was motivated by a range of complex issues,…

1500-1799 | Scotland

Scottish reformer Thomas Muir sentenced to transportation for 14 years

ByAlisdare Hickson

31 August 1793 On 31 August 1793, Thomas Muir, ‘the father of Scottish democracy’, was sentenced to be ‘transported beyond the seas… (to a penal colony in Australia) for the space of fourteen years’.  He was convicted of ‘wickedly and feloniously exciting… disloyalty and disaffection to the King and the established government.’1 Specifically he had…

Executions | Scotland

23 AUGUST

ByAlisdare Hickson

SCOTTISH REBEL WILLIAM WALLACE STRANGLED, CASTRATED AND DISEMBOWELED [ 23 August 1305 ] Today in 1305, William Wallace, the legendary Scottish rebel, was found guilty of refusing to recognise English rule. He was drawn behind horses for five miles, then strangled, castrated, disemboweled while still, although barely, alive before being finally beheaded and quartered. His…

1500-1799 | Battlefield butchery | Burning towns and cities | Burning villages | Civilians slaughtered | Crimes against women | Rape | Scotland

10 APRIL

ByAlisdare Hickson

HENRY VIII’S ORDERS – ‘BURN EDINBURGH’ – ‘PUT ALL TO FIRE AND SWORD’ 10 April 1544 The popular Ladybird History of the Kings and Queens of England acclaims Henry VIII ‘as the right kind of king needed by England at the beginning of the Sixteenth Century.’ The country had benefited from the fact that he…