On a cold drizzly day in April in the year of Our Lord 1746, two armies faced each other across a bleak moor near the town of Inverness in the north of Scotland. One of them was made up of what were, in effect, tribal levies who, ostensibly fighting to restore the Stuart dynasty to the throne of Britain, were actually making a last stand for their ancient way of life. The battle lasted for less than an hour and the outnumbered Highland clansmen were crushed by a storm of grapeshot and musketry fired by the redcoated government troops. It was the last battle ever fought on the soil of mainland Britain. The moor was called Drummossie, the clansmen Jacobites, and their leader Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Young Pretender. The Battle was called Culloden.
This full color print of the original painting by James Neal Madison depicts the final highland charge at Drummossie Muir during the Battle of Culloden, on April 16, 1746. Madison beautifully evokes the terrible reality of the struggle for the British throne that left 2,000 of the rebel clansmen dead at the feet of the government army, that had outnumbered them by two to one.