Badass Lasses 001: The Rout of Moy & Colonel Anne
Rebellion is often represented in stories by the actions of men. However, the privilege of men throughout history did not preclude women from affecting change, sometimes in surprising ways. But who were those women? They were more than the reports of their actions. Colonel Anne was one such woman, who tried to change the fate of one of the most famed Scottish rebellions: The last Jacobite uprising.
Around the ides of February 1746, in the midst of the 1745-6 Jacobite uprising against the Hanoverian crown, Colonel Anne Mackintosh hosted the leader of the uprising, Charles Edward Stuart, aka Bonnie Prince Charlie, at Lochmoy (also referred to as two words, Loch Moy), within her husband’s home at Moy House. Charles Edward Stuart hoped to stake a claim to the British throne in his exiled father’s name. But previous rebellions led by the Jacobites (supporters of the Stuarts) had split Scotland and led to political, social, and economic strife.
On that evening near Loch Moy, the prince had with him a small retinue, including a guard of about thirty to fifty men. Laird Angus Mackintosh, Anne’s husband and chief of the Mackintosh clan, was away from home fulfilling his duty as a captain in the Black Watch—a regiment of Scottish soldiers in service to the English government. Meanwhile, Lord Loudoun, whose regiment (including the Black Watch) was encamped at nearby Inverness, planned to catch the Bonnie Prince in hopes of not only claiming the £30,000 bounty on the prince’s head, but also crushing the Jacobites’ hope of seeing a Stuart on the English throne once more. Loudoun may have felt assured of his success, with almost two thousand men, including an advance guard of seventy led by Laird MacLeod, and the suspicion that no one at Moy knew he was coming, but Colonel Anne would not succumb to Loudoun’s scheme.
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To map out the strategic and circumstantial events of that night in February is a task that requires a combination of secondary and primary sources, some of which disagree on the details, the timing, who said and did what, and who was really responsible for warning Colonel Anne so she could save her prince. But to map out her character, who she was as a woman, as a person, as a rebel, requires more than looking at the facts and conjecture, but rather imagining the connecting strands. Everything that happened in Scotland—particularly in the Highlands—during, leading up to, and even after Anne’s young-adulthood provides insight into who she was beyond what she did. We begin our journey to understand Colonel Anne Mackintosh at her and Angus’s home.
Built in the classical style, Moy House was situated between Inverness—the seat of administrative power in the Scottish Highlands—and Lady Anne Mackintosh’s birth home, Invercauld House, where she was born 22 years earlier into Clan Farquharson. Her parents, John and Margaret (née Murray), were known Jacobites. John had fought in the 1715 Jacobite uprising, and had been imprisoned for his efforts. By 1720, however, he was not only free but also held the offices of Burgess of Perth and of Inverness; he’d add two more to that list eight years later: Stirling (near Bannockburn) and Queensferry.
Though Moy House was scourged by fire some 200 years after Colonel Anne saved the Bonnie Prince, its ruined walls still stand, and a new house was constructed on the land. Also preserved are the cantilevered staircase in the hall (along with a molded ceiling), a ceiling rose in the drawing room, and a fireplace with elaborate reliefs in brass thought to represent the Hanoverians. It would have been a fitting home for one dedicated to the English crown, and in fact the house was owned for over a century by Clan Campbell of Cawdor, who supported the British government during the Jacobite uprisings. That Colonel Anne, a Jacobite whose contributions to the 1745 uprising had a significant impact on her cause, should live there and help the Bonnie Prince in that house, is ironic. Clan Campbell was known for its allegiance to the British, and Lord Loudoun himself was a Campbell. But by the late 19th century, the house would reportedly contain a sword that had belonged to Charles I and a gold watch once owned by Mary Queen of Scots (both Stuarts).
Colonel Anne was not alone in her sympathies. Some sources suggest it was Anne’s mother-in-law who sent a messenger to warn those at Moy House of Loudoun’s movements; others hint that the mother-in-law, in residence at Inverness, was informed of Loudoun’s movements by her son Angus. In fact, following the attempt by Loudoun’s men to capture the Bonnie Prince, Charles Edward Stuart reportedly commended Angus for sending word of Loudoun’s plans. One primary source wrote that the prince thought highly of Angus for such an act of devotion. The subtext of this suggestion is that either Angus was a semi-closeted Jacobite himself or that his love for his wife superseded his loyalty to the British—or both. The love between Anne and Angus can be understood from a few facts that survived the centuries and battles.
Anne and Angus were both 18 or 19 years old when they married. In the mid-eighteenth century, particularly in the Scottish Highlands, evidence points to women marrying at an average age of 25 or 26, and men marrying, on average, in their late twenties. While it’s not impossible that two people would marry at much younger ages, and in the Highlands there was an earlier tradition of noble youths marrying in their teens, nor is it impossible that two would marry at the same or close to the same age (they were both born in 1723 but the months of their births are unknown), this suggests a fondness between them to initiate their married lives earlier than average. Furthermore, it was custom for a woman to retain her birth name, but Anne is referred to as Lady Anne Mackintosh, not Lady Anne Farquharson.
However, let not the notion that there is an exception to every rule disprove the love between Anne and Angus. In early 1744, Angus was welcomed by John Campbell, or Lord Loudoun, to support the Hanoverian government. We cannot know whether he was pressured into joining to prove his loyalty in a time when public acknowledgment of one’s Jacobite ties were sufficient for suspicion of treason. Some sources suggest that Angus and Anne needed the money, and with people already emigrating from the Highlands due to increasing rents and taxes, and the shift from runrig agriculture (farming designed to feed the tenants and lairds of the land) to crofts (a style of farming designed to produce income), it’s possible the Mackintosh coffers felt the squeeze. There was a condition to Angus’s joining as a captain of the Black Watch—he had to raise his own company. In order to help her husband, or perhaps to gain money they needed to keep their lands or maybe even fund the Jacobite cause, or maybe to allay suspicions of their true allegiance to the Stuarts, Anne helped her husband raise the company he needed. Dressed in men’s clothing, Anne convinced 97 men to join the 100 her husband needed to become a captain of the Black Watch. Some sources suggest she paid them. Others suggest she threatened them at sword- or gunpoint. Regardless of her persuasion tactics, the fact that she took this on and succeeded in raising so many men both suggest her love for Angus and foreshadow the hundreds she would later raise for the Bonnie Prince.
Even though she raised troops of such numbers, she wasn’t permitted to fight on the battlefield; even so, this went beyond the call-to-action for female Jacobites, who might have acted as spies or simply supported the male members of their family or clan. Anne went to the men of Clans Farquharson and Mackintosh, and in August of 1745, her troops joined Clan Chattan at Glenfinnan. They continued to fight under the Bonnie Prince’s standard, leading up to the Scottish victory at the Battle of Prestonpans on September 21, 1745. While Anne’s men fought for the Stuart dynasty, Angus—we may imagine under duress if we subscribe to the narrative that Angus was, in his heart of hearts, a Jacobite—and the Black Watch fought for the Hanoverian dynasty. Angus was taken prisoner in the wake of Prestonpans, and then given into his wife’s custody. The pair then exchanged words that, whether or not uttered, have come to represent love beyond loyalty.
“You’re servant, Captain,” Anne said.
“Your servant, Colonel,” Angus replied.
The nickname of “Colonel Anne” stuck then to Lady Anne Mackintosh née Farquharson.
Is it possible that Angus’ words were spoken in resentment? Could it be that he harbored anger for his wife’s stubborn loyalties to the Stuarts? Might Anne have taken custody of her husband to save face? Without more primary sources, there is always room for a sliver of doubt, but even secondary sources acknowledge the more probable relationship between them as one that was loving and adoring. Furthermore, what are we, centuries later, left to presume when Angus was stationed with Loudoun in Inverness on the same night he decided to try to capture the Bonnie Prince from Moy? Does not the narrative of his secret loyalty to the Stuarts fit the notion that it was his mother who found out Loudoun’s plan? Angus might have known the Bonnie Prince was staying at his home and sent word to his mother, who could then send a message to Anne. Maybe Angus did this to protect his wife, but when Loudoun told his men they were going to prevent an attack, Angus would have had little reason to think Anne’s life was in peril. Even more, if Anne did raise 97 men for Angus by threat of violence, it’s conceivable he might not have worried much for her safety due to her capabilities.
We may never know where Angus’ true heart lay, but we know that it’s likely he and Anne revered one another. Love was not expected in marriage, but it was welcome for the harmony of both parties. Of course, Anne would have been expected to uphold her duties as a wife and lady of a manor, but beyond this, what were the roles of women circa the mid-eighteenth century?
They had more power than we often give them credit for in looking back through time. True, Scotland was a patriarchal society, governed by laws made by men and the Church. But it was also a society in which everyone was expected to contribute. For some women, this meant agriculturally. Even a woman of Anne’s social status would have been expected to participate in bringing in the harvest. Scottish women of the mid-eighteenth century were not overtaken by sensibilities and swooning onto fainting couches. They were encouraged to be strong and participatory even in a world of men. For a woman to take on too much power or agency was dangerous; in the years leading up to the Jacobite uprising of 1745-6, it was still possible for one to be tried as a witch. This was less a matter of religious concern than it was a matter of controlling women who tried to take too much power into their own hands, and despite the prevalence of Christian belief and adherence to either Catholicism or the Church of England, myths and legends were still regarded as containing some truth in Scotland among the populace at the time, particularly in the Highlands. Colonel Anne walked a fine line exercising her power, and might not have been as powerful as she was without the protection of her socio-economic status and the love and faithfulness of her husband. We may wonder whether or not Anne and Angus ever argued in private over her actions. Was Angus at all concerned that Anne’s decision to raise troops for the Jacobites—and her ability to do so—would land her in hot water with the British? Or did he encourage her to do what he could not due to his position in the Black Watch? Perhaps Anne acted first and asked permission second, and Angus, loving her as he seems to have, had no recourse but to protect her. Or maybe the two of them conspired together to raise soldiers to fight for the Bonnie Prince, and Angus’s joining the Black Watch was a proactive part of a plan they forged together. We cannot know, but is it not possible that a woman brave enough to raise soldiers for a rebel cause would have the agency within her own marriage to take part in forming such a strategy?
We know it’s possible Angus might have warned his mother of the movement of Loudoun’s troops against the Bonnie Prince in hopes or expectation that she would send word to Anne, the subtext being an expectation that Anne would do everything in her power to preserve the prince’s safety and freedom. And we know Angus’ mother sent a messenger on to Moy House to warn Anne Loudoun was coming.
Multiple primary and secondary sources credit such a task to Lachlan Macintosh, a fifteen-year-old boy. We may imagine Lachlan leaving the city, the space between its buildings gaping wider and wider until he was surrounded by the wilds of the Highlands. He would have had to navigate in the dark; the sun sets in Inverness between four and five o’clock in the middle of winter. Lachlan wouldn’t have even had much moonlight to guide him; the moon was waning and would be new in a matter of days. The temperatures would have been low, falling anywhere from a possible extreme of -22 degrees Fahrenheit to an average of about 35 degrees; one source suggests it was particularly cold by the time Lachlan would arrive at Moy House. Depending on the route Lachlan took and the topography, he had between ten and fifteen miles to travel, a half-marathon with urgency to match that of the famed run in Greece in 490 B.C.E.
Lachlan not only had to make this distance in the cold, with the fate of the Jacobite rebellion and his clan on his shoulders, but he also had to remain unseen by Loudoun, MacLeod, and their men. Some sources suggest Loudoun may have hidden the true nature of their march, only telling his men there could be an attack and they should be prepared. For some distance, Lachlan managed to keep far enough away from Loudoun and his men, but for about two to three miles, he had to fall in step with the column of soldiers. The landscape provided no alternate route. With Loudoun’s men in a heightened state of alert, what might have happened to Lachlan if he’d been discovered? Would he be detained or shot on sight?
The company reached a crossroads, and Lachlan found his opportunity to circumvent the British soldiers. One road led through a more populated area, and Loudoun may have sensed that to march a couple thousand men through would result in word reaching Moy House as to his intent. Another reason that Loudoun may have chosen not to take that path was the road was, according to some sources, in a state of such disrepair that he perhaps thought it would cost him too much time to move his soldiers over it. Loudoun decided to leave thirty soldiers to guard the road, and Lachlan was able to give them the slip. He hid and waited until there was enough confusion as the smaller guard split from the column, and ran past them all the way to Moy House.
Centuries later, we may wonder what propelled Lachlan forward on his mission. The fear a 15-year-old boy must have felt when faced with such opposition should be great enough that history would have forgiven his resignation of his task. But something, perhaps loyalty to the Stuarts, perhaps growing up on stories of the 1715 Jacobite rebellion, perhaps loyalty to his clan, perhaps even the threat of a beating if he returned home unsuccessful gave him that intangible fortitude, that tenacity, which propelled the Highlanders to rise up multiple times in an attempt to put a Stuart back on the British throne.
To better understand the Jacobites and their cause, we must look at Britain before Anne’s birth. Though the Stuart line extends further back in time, troubles with a Stuart on the throne began in 1641, when King Charles I was rebuked by the Parliamentarians. They considered him a despot, an authoritarian, and they wouldn’t stand for it. England engaged in a civil war; politically, Scotland was split. The Covenanters (typically in the Lowlands) sided with the Parliamentarians against Charles I, but many in Scotland supported Charles I, of the Stuart dynasty, and he rallied that support in 1648. It wasn’t enough, however; Oliver Cromwell and the Parliamentarian-Covenanter alliance defeated Charles I. He was executed in 1649, and Cromwell defeated the Scots in the Battle of Dunbar in 1650.
Cromwell’s victories and the execution of the king did not end the civil unrest. Charles II managed to escape Cromwell and fled to France after a battle in Worcester in 1651. In 1653, Oliver Cromwell became the Lord Protector of the realm, and many in the Highlands—as well as in Ireland—suffered under his thumb. In 1660, Charles II reclaimed the British throne, and Britain entered the period known as the Restoration.
All was still not well, despite the end of the interregnum. England was at war with the Dutch and trying to assert its naval power. A plague hit London in 1665 followed by the Great Fire of London in 1666. The Anglo-Dutch wars would not end for another eight years. War, disease, and devastation are costly for any government; Britain was no exception. Yet it wasn’t all bad news. In 1679, the Act of Habeas Corpus was passed in London, guaranteeing the right of a trial to prisoners. Unfortunately for the Highlanders and sympathizers with the Stuart cause, this act would later be suspended for Scots during the Jacobite uprisings so that perceived traitors could be executed on sight, without trial or any due process. Could Anne and Angus have feared this fate for themselves? Or did they rest assured that persons of their social standing would only face imprisonment or house arrest?
In 1685, James II (or James VII of Scotland), was crowned king, and the Stuart dynasty continued. But his rule would be short—only three years—before he was forced to flee. His daughter, Mary, became the next monarch alongside her husband William of Orange. James II/VII fled to France like his father before him. In 1689, James attempted to take Ireland, but William defeated him in 1690 in the Battle of the Boyne. In 1701, the Act of Establishment was passed—this act would prevent any Catholics from ruling Britain. This is at the heart of the Jacobite cause; not only did the Scots hope to bring in a king who might be friendlier to them than the Hanoverians, but they wanted a Catholic on the throne.
Realization of these hopes would have seemed more distant when England and Scotland became Great Britain in the 1707 Act of Union. After Queen Anne’s (Anne was Mary’s sister and heir) death in 1714, this left the British throne to the Hanoverians since the next Stuarts in line for the throne were Catholic; therefore, Queen Anne would not consent to giving them the crown. The Bonnie Prince was William and Mary’s—and Queen Anne’s—nephew. The Jacobite Uprising of 1715 occurred in the year after George I of the House of Hanover became Great Britain’s king. This roughly 100-year history was a driving force behind the 1745-6 Jacobite uprising, and the frantic journey of Lachlan Mackintosh to warn Lady Anne that Loudoun was coming for the Bonnie Prince to squash the rebellion.
When Lachlan managed to get past Loudoun’s men, he warned the sentries who patrolled Moy House of the incoming force, which was, by that point, less than a mile away. What might those sentries have felt? They were but a few dozen men, soon to face a regiment of almost 2,000. How many of them thought of abandoning their prince to face capture?
By the time Lachlan reached the house, it was pre-dawn, about five a.m. The boy went into the kitchens, sweating despite the cold—for he must have run full out once he got past Loudoun’s men. There, he found Alexander Stewart, who served as footman to the Bonnie Prince. In a primary source, Alexander reported that he was asleep, his head on the table, when he woke to the feeling of someone tugging on his coat.
“For God’s sake,” Lachlan begged Alexander, “go and waken the prince.”
Upon learning of the threat to the prince’s person, Alexander woke and made his way upstairs. There, he encountered a guard and asked if the prince was awake. Hearing Alexander and the guard, the Bonnie Prince sent Alexander to summon the piperach, or pipe—bagpipes were used not only to boost morale, but to convey commands in the same way fife and drum corps were used. Alexander was then sent to the garret, or the highest room in Moy House, to keep watch before he would join the prince once more.
The prince and Colonel Anne were both reported to have left their chambers in a state of undress that has led to some speculation that there may have been a romantic involvement between them, but primary sources do not support this conjecture. This suggestion was also perhaps formed on the basis that another source states it was Anne who woke the prince to warn him, and that she stopped him from rushing out of bed and to instead wait for the right moment to leave. Or maybe these secondary sources, written by men, attempt to discredit Anne enough that her actions may still be laudable, but her character would not be. These unfounded claims are much akin to the notion that a woman’s power lies only in her sexuality and not in her intelligence or spirit.
I do not believe Colonel Anne had only her charms to recommend her; her care of the prince and patience to think before taking action—a common thread in primary sources—proves this. She needed more information before letting the prince run into the unknown. So it happened that a few of Loudoun’s men were captured by the sentries surrounding Moy House at this point. They revealed that Loudoun had told them to march from Inverness, though they knew not their destination.
“There’s an end to this,” the captured men reported Loudoun to have said, “we are certainly discovered.” The prisoners claimed that Loudoun’s men had made a hasty retreat to Inverness, which, as it would happen, was due to Colonel Anne’s foresight the night before to send a handful of men out around Moy House with muskets, which placed them all in danger of breaking the law that stipulated it was illegal to carry arms.
In 1723, the year both Anne and Angus were born, The Society of Improvers in the Knowledge of Agriculture in Scotland was created. There was a push to make agriculture in Scotland more profitable, whereas before agriculture was focused on sustaining the people who lived on the land. While tenants did have to pay rent to their lairds, often the chiefs of the clans, the cost to maintain clan estates weren’t so astronomical that rent was prohibitive. Some lairds would even trade in kind if a tenant didn’t have enough ready money to pay the rent. Whether this was due to kindness, kinship, or best lairdship practices may have differed from estate to estate. But by 1723, this practice of leniency and flexibility was already falling by the wayside. The shift from sustainable agriculture to profitable agriculture would contribute to the Highland Clearances, a period of emigration from Scotland that would extend well beyond the 1745-6 Jacobite uprising—and thus impact the erosion of Highland culture so espoused in the cries for freedom against Hanoverian rule.
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Two years later, in 1725, ten years after the unsuccessful 1715 Jacobite uprising, riots occurred in Glasgow. England increased taxes on malt produced in Scotland. This initiative intensified the financial strain on the Scottish people, and led to violence that would foretell of the 1745-6 uprising. The Disarming Act was also passed, which made it illegal for Highlanders to carry arms outside of their private homes. By the time the 1745-6 Jacobite uprising would take place, weapons and funds for arms would be so depleted that the final defeat of the Jacobites on Culloden muir in 1746 would take approximately one hour.
Other isolated incidents of violence—another riot and a subsequent lynching of one Captain John Porteous in 1736 for example—broke out in the years leading up to the Bonnie Prince’s journey from France to Scotland. Charles Edward Stuart tried once in 1744 to make the journey, but it failed due to foul weather and His Majesty’s Royal Navy. He finally made it to Loch nan Uamh, just west of Glenfinnan, with nothing more than eight others to support him. His funds and supplies had been aboard the Elisabeth, which returned to France after an attack by the British Navy. Without the support of the Jacobites, including Colonel Anne and the hundreds of men she gathered to fight in hopes of installing the Stuarts on the throne once more, the Bonnie Prince wouldn’t have even had an uprising. Perhaps that would have been better for the Highlanders. Would it have been less deadly, or would the skirmishes and riots have continued to eventually claim as many lives as were lost at Culloden and during other battles of the 1745-6 uprising? Would it have been worth silencing the heart’s cry for freedom from tyranny? Even if the Highlanders had won their revolution, would the Stuarts have treated the Highlanders any better than the Hanoverians did?
Either way, after a number of victories—Perth, Edinburgh, Prestonpans, and Falkirk Muir—the Jacobites would lose to the British, and Colonel Anne would be taken prisoner and held for six weeks under house arrest before being released to her husband. But, on that night in the middle of February 1746, regardless of what would happen a couple of months from then at Culloden, Lady Anne took swift action to ensure the Bonnie Prince retained his freedom during the Rout of Moy.
As the prince retired to his chambers to sleep, Lady Anne sent Donald Fraser—a local blacksmith who, according to one primary source, had gone to Moy House in hopes of seeing the prince—and four of her servants outside to join the sentries who were there to guard the Bonnie Prince. They went out of the house with loaded muskets. Lady Anne directed them to be stealthy; she didn’t even want the sentries to know they were there.
She reportedly told the small band they would prove a check on the guards. The five Fraser led would also witness any oncoming danger, in case the sentries did not take notice. Once past the guards, Fraser and his men were to make as much noise as they liked; Lady Anne intended the five men should be mistaken for greater numbers in the obscurity of darkness.
Fraser and the four servants surveyed the land around Moy House, covering a radius of about two miles. It was during their reconnaissance that they discovered MacLeod and his advance guard. Fraser didn’t hesitate; he raised his musket, aimed as best he could with it—for it was possible it was an outdated model due to the effects of the Disarming Act and he was a blacksmith, not a soldier—and fired. He reportedly hit a man in the side—a piper named Donald Ban MacCrimmon, who had the reputation of being the best piper in all of Scotland and the descendant of a long line of pipers in service to clan MacLeod. MacCrimmon had been captured once by the Jacobites, at Stirling, and the tale says that the Highland pipers refused to play so long as MacCrimmon was imprisoned, so respected was he for his musical talent. How did they feel after learning he lost his life during the Rout of Moy? Would they have had difficulty playing to rally and organize troops on the same side that delivered MacCrimmon’s demise?
After shooting the piper and injuring another man, Fraser reportedly began calling out to regiments of the Bonnie Prince’s army, “Advance, advance, my lads! Advance! I think we have the dogs now.”
One can only imagine being among the four servants Colonel Anne had sent out with Fraser. They must have overcome the fear of facing a force of 70 backed by about 1,500 with so few men, because they took action instead of freezing. They did not stay their weapons or quiet their voices. They called out battle cries of the invisible regiments. The steam from their breaths must have mixed with the smoke from the muskets. They fired on MacLeod’s men, a force fourteen times the size of their own. Primary and secondary sources make no mention of the work of the four servants who accompanied Fraser. Did they have military experience? Had they shot a musket before? Were they prepared for the kickback into their shoulder, the acrid stench of gunpowder, the billowing plumes of white smoke? Did they curse their mistress for sending them out to stalk the cold winter woods and moor under the leadership of the blacksmith? Was Fraser ready for the chaos of battle? It’s conceivable that they may have fought in the 1715 uprising, if they’d been lads when the Jacobites rose up against England then. But is it not more likely they would have heard about that uprising from their sires and grandsires? Would not those stories have told of the horrors of war, much the way I grew up listening to tales of trench warfare, the tommy gun, mustard gas, atom bombs, and Agent Orange in history class? Was the Brown Bess as devastating to the Highlanders, as fear-invoking, as the machine gun was two centuries later?
The regiments the blacksmith called commands to were not present, but it didn’t matter. In the confusion, MacLeod and his men thought they’d run afoul of an army, not a handful of servants and an artisan who’d happened into Moy House like a fanboy begging for a signature from a favorite celebrity. Perhaps Fraser might have expected at the least to be asked to fight at some point, but he wasn’t banking on it that night. We can only know that he must have been a loyal Jacobite for his eagerness to meet the prince, his willingness to lead Lady Anne’s servants, and his actions when met with MacLeod’s advance guard.
MacLeod’s men fired back but hit no one. From a distance, Loudoun and his column of soldiers saw the flash of musket fire, and tried to fire back. Did Angus see this exchange and worry for his wife’s safety? He wouldn’t have known if a messenger successfully circumvented Loudoun’s troops to reach Moy House from Inverness. What fear must have gripped his heart if Loudoun had been successful? Even if the prince and his wife had lived through such an event, his house might have been destroyed and his and Anne’s loyalty to the Hanoverian crown might have come under public scrutiny.
Thanks to Lady Anne and Fraser, none of that came to pass. If Loudoun’s men hit anyone, primary sources speculate it was MacLeod’s advanced guard who received the volley. MacLeod’s men managed to get MacCrimmon onto a cart—he hadn’t perished yet, perhaps, or maybe they didn’t want to leave his remains on the moor near Loch Moy. They retreated in a mess of disorganization like rats fleeing a flood, as did Loudoun’s men, all afraid they’d encountered the Bonnie Prince’s troops. They retreated all the way back to Inverness. The next day, about 200 men would desert Loudoun’s regiment. Were they irate that Loudoun had concealed the real reason for their march the night before? Were they frightened of the Jacobite forces? Maybe some of them were, at heart, sympathetic to the Bonnie Prince’s efforts to win the British throne. Unfortunately for Charles, he would never succeed, and would die in disappointment decades later, estranged from his father and brother for their continued allegiance and adoration for Rome and the Catholic Church, which the Bonnie Prince saw as an insurmountable hurdle to gaining the support they needed to take Britain back.
The morning after the Rout of Moy, on the shores of Loch Moy, the Bonnie Prince waited with some of his men. They were having a dram to soothe their nerves, warm their blood, or pass the time. Some sources state that by this point in the uprising, Charles Edward Stuart was often drunk. For a young man convinced God was on his family’s side, maybe it was taking too long to win the throne for his father. Or perhaps the deaths of both the British and Scottish, his would-be subjects, had started to erode his optimism. Regardless of the reason for the drink, the prince and his men received a message from Lady Anne that it was safe to return to Moy House. Alex Stewart writes the prince and his retinue stayed one more night at Moy House, and other sources suggest the prince wanted to go after Loudoun immediately, but Anne asked him to stay one more night. To gather his wits, to cool his head, to preserve his safety. Or maybe Anne wanted to protect Angus from battle.
What might Anne have thought in those two days? Did she know if her husband was alive and well, or did she worry he was among those shot? He reported to Loudoun and not MacLeod, but muskets weren’t known for their accuracy. Might she have worried he could have been injured by a stray musket ball? What courage would it take then, to persist as a known Jacobite, housing the Bonnie Prince for another night, when whatever protection against suspicion provided by Angus serving in the Black Watch might no longer be available?
The next day, Charles Edward Stuart did go to Inverness. Loudoun now not only suffered from the desertion of nearly one-seventh of his troops, but MacLeod and other military leaders in his regiment were convinced the prince had his whole army. Perhaps the distance between Inverness and Loch Moy suddenly felt too short. Loudoun made the decision to retreat from Inverness, and as the prince entered the city from one side, Loudoun and his men evacuated from the other. Upon taking Inverness without firing a single shot in the city’s bounds, the Bonnie Prince declared that Lady Anne Mackintosh, also known as Colonel Anne, be given yet another moniker: La Belle Rebelle. Not only was her beauty renowned throughout the Highlands and even so far as France, but she’d saved him during the Rout of Moy, and effectively handed him the seat of power in the Scottish Highlands.
Even though the Battle of Culloden would destroy any hopes the Bonnie Prince and his Jacobites—along with their French allies—held for seeing a Stuart on the British throne, they were hopeful a mere two months earlier after the Rout of Moy. It’s ironic that in one night, five men defeated 1,500, but on Culloden Moor, on April 16, 1746, the Duke of Cumberland and his 8,000 soldiers, 10 guns, and six mortars defeated the Jacobites, knocked the final breath out of the Highlander culture, killing and injuring 2,000 soldiers. The British took away their right to fair trial, to bear arms, to speak Gaelic (or Gàidhlig), and to wear kilts—but they could not take away the legends of the freedom fighters who stood up against them, like Colonel Anne.
After the 1745-6 uprising, the Bonnie Prince escaped with the help of another Scottish lady, Flora MacDonald. He fled to Rome, where his father still lived at the invitation of the Pope. Anne and Angus lived through the height of the Highland Clearances; they would have watched as clan members fled Scotland in the wake of acts of Parliament designed to unravel Highland culture and the increasing taxes and rents coupled with the decrease in sustaining agriculture. Anne and Angus both died childless years later, but they’re both immortal because of Colonel Anne’s, or La Belle Rebelle’s, actions during the last Jacobite uprising. Anne—and through other primary source contributors like Alexander Stewart—ensured that she would become as vibrant a legend to the Scots as the Highlanders who faced down a larger army, state-of-the-art muskets, and canon on Culloden muir. Perhaps it’s been easy for the world to forget who she was because she was a woman, or to suggest it wasn’t prowess or logic or courage that made her powerful, but sexual attraction; this is the narrative later secondary sources would have readers believe.
Colonel Anne was a woman who loved her husband. She was a woman who loved the Highland clans she represented. She was a woman who loved her faith and her country, and risked much in order to help Charles Edward Stuart in his star-crossed scheme to lead the Scots (and their allies from the continent) to victory. In effect, the Bonnie Prince thought he would lead the uprising to end all Jacobite uprisings—and he did; it just didn’t go the way he planned or hoped. But Lady Anne Mackintosh’s campaign to defend her prince and her home was a success against all odds because she was brave, strategic, calm, and powerful.
Colonel Anne was a badass lass.
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