"Culloden" Topic

Did the Jacobites have a chance to win at Culloden and how?

I think they would have needed a lot of luck to win in the position they took. The failed night attack meant the army was tired, and supplies had been a problem. Also the Scots command was rather divided, and demoralised after the retreat from Derby.
The Government army was a mixed bag, but had a lot more experienced soldiers in its ranks, and a much more cogent command structure.
Its telling to see how badly the Gvt C-in-C did in the Seven Years War against the French a decade later.

It would have been a long series of bad die rolls for Cumberland's forces to have lost IMHO.

Only if the Government Forces had not shown up. Jacobites were in an absolute mess by this point. Watched last week – for the 100th time – Peter Watkins 1964 docudrama on the Battle of Culloden – if you have not seen it – you must – it is posted on You Tube.

Yes, I love the docudrama. I would like to think that Jacobites had a chance but pretty unlikely. Maybe if they had immediately charged all at once rather than take the artillery pounding, hesitate and then charged later.

How about not having a battle at all?
Disappear and go guerrilla.

Don't do the night march and choose a better position would be the absolute minimum requirements.

They had found a better position, but Charlie vetoed it because it was poor ground for a highland charge.

I'm a fan of the old 1964 film, based largely on John Prebble's classic and superbly written "Culloden" book, but there have been a bunch of more modern reconstructions of the historical battle by scholars (Stuart Reid, Frank McLynn, Christopher Duffy, Jeremy Black) -- and some of them are more sympathetic or at least non-partisan to the Jacobite cause than earlier writers.

My take away is that the Jacobites *could* have won at Culloden had the battle been managed more thoughtfully, but it would have been a costly or indecisive victory even more than Falkirk, and so probably wouldn't have changed history. Think Isandhlwana (but without wiping out the redcoats).

The strategy and tactical decisions made before and during the historical battle were just a cascading failure all around, when you consider it. Just about everything that the Jacobites could have done wrong, they did wrong. How do you correct from that?