Author Description

"Highland soldiers were Britain's earliest colonial levies, first raised to police their own hills, then expended in imperial wars. The Gaelic people of the 18th century, three percent only of the population, nonetheless supplied the Crown with sixty-five regiments, as well as independent companies, militia and volunteers. Contrary to romantic belief, the Highlander was rarely a willing soldier, his songs lament the day he put on a red coat. He was often recruited by threat, sold by the chiefs he trusted. Promises made to him were cynically broken, his pride was outraged by the lash, by contempt for his fierce attachment to his language and dress. The family he hoped to protect by enlistment was frequently evicted in his absence and replaced by sheep. Mutinies were thus inevitable. This is the first account of them, much of it in the words of the soldiers and their officers. It begins with the noble revolt of the Black Watch at Finchley in 1743 and ends with the mutiny of starving Fencibles on Glasgow Green in 1804. It tells how the Seaforths stood in defiance on Arthur's Seat for three days until their demands were met, how Atholl Highlanders held Portsmouth for a week until they received their promised discharge. Angered by brutal floggings, Argyll Fencibles closed Edinburgh Castle and threatened the security of Scotland. Refusing to march into England against the terms of their enlistment, Strathspey men defied their officers from the walls of Linlithgow Palace, and soldiers of the Black Watch and Fraser's fought a bloody battle in Leith, dying by musket and bayonet rather than abandon their native dress. It is a subject that has been curiously ignored by historians. John Preeble properly sees it as essential to an understanding of the destruction of the Highland clans, the story of which he began in Culloden, continued in The Highland Clearances and Glencoe, and now completes in this book."--Book jacket.