Culloden Battlefield

In 1746, this sleepy meadow less than ten miles east of Inverness witnessed the culmination of the Jacobite Rising in what is to this day the last great battle to have been fought on British soil. The Battle of Culloden ended Bonnie Prince Charlie's ill-fated crusade and devastated his beleaguered volunteer army of Stuart-sympathizing clansmen. The consequences of their defeat were grave for many Highlanders, even those who had not collaborated directly in the rebellion. The Duke of Cumberland, commander of the English loyalist forces, punctuated his decisive victory with a brutal assimilation program intended to destabilize clan allegiances, enfeeble Gaelic cultural institutions and subdue, once and for all, a region perceived to be both backward and insurrectionary. A state-of-the-art visitors' center tells the story of the complicated conflict from both Jacobite and English perspectives.