At 5.00am on the morning of 16th April, 1746 the beat of the drums summoned the army of King George to the march. There were almost 9,000 of them arrayed in sixteen battalions of foot, three regiments of horse, an artillery company and the Argyll Militia. It was not an English army but a government one and of the foot battalions three were lowland Scots, one Irish and the Argyll Militia was raised  from the Cambell lands in the west of Scotland. 
       The common soldier that made up the army's ranks came usually from the lowest levels of society and most of them had enlisted for economic reasons. Some had even been pressed into service. The soldier enlisted for a period of three years and for this received a bounty of four pounds sterling. For the privilege of risking his life in the king's service a soldier was paid sixpence a day and from this twopence was stopped to pay for his uniform and equipment. The basic rations he was allotted were inadequate and often inedible so more of his meagre wages went on food. He wore a wide-skirted heavy coat of scarlet similarly coloured breeches and white or grey gaiters above his black, buckled shoes. On his head there was a black three-cornered hat that gave little relief from sun or rain and round his neck was a constricting leather stock designed to ensure he kept his head up and facing forward. On his white belt were slung a cartridge pouch, a short curved sword and a 16 inch bayonet of fluted steel. Though the average soldier  was literate enough to write his own name he had had little schooling in anything other than the arts of war and for the footsoldier these were not particularly complicated. 
       He carried a Brown Bess musket that weighed just over five kilos, had a barrel just over a metre long and fired a 37 gram ball of lead from a bore of 0.735 inch. It was completely ineffective at anything over 300 paces and at distances less than that only an expert could expect to hit a reasonable target. Its effectiveness lay in the contolled fire of large groups of men 100 or even 200 discharging their weapons on command at the same time. The infantryman was expected to stand his ground as an enemy advanced, withstand his opponents artillery fire and musketry, then after volleys of his own fire go forward in tightly packed ranks with the bayonet. The key to this was the ability to maintain a disciplined tight formation, in either offence or defence, in the face of sometimes withering enemy fire. It was a lottery with survival as the only prize. 
       In the Duke of Cumberland's army that day were men who had stood solidly against the French roundshot at Fontenoy two years previously and joked that the approaching cannonballs looked like so many black puddings. Fontenoy had been a bloody defeat for the British but the men had aquitted themselves well. There were others in the army who had run like rabbits before the Highland charge at Falkirk just a few months before. As they moved off from their camp at Nairn, the three regiments of horse in column on the left, the sixteen battalions of foot in three columns between the cavalry on the left  and the sea on the right, the Argyll Militiamen slipping through the heather in skirmishing line ahead, perhaps both Fontenoy and Falkirk veterans prayed that this day would be different. 

       Of all Cumberland's men it was the artillery that would do the most execution that day. At 34 years of age Brevet Colonel William Bedford, commander of the ordnance was a dedicated, skillful gunner who had seen service at Carthagena, Dettingen and Fontenoy. His  artillerymen were better trained and more professional than anything the Highlanders had ever faced in their half century of sporadic rebellion against the crown. Bedford had ten 3 pounder cannon which he was to place in the front line by pairs. To the rear he kept some other three pounders and his cohorn mortars. The barrels of the 3 pounders were just over a metre long and into each was placed a pound and a half (675g) of powder. A 3 pound (1350g) ball of iron was then rammed home. Some powder was placed in the touchhole and the beast was ready to fire. After each shot, the barrel was swabbed out with a wet sponge to cool it down and the process began again. A roundshot could tear a man apart and do the same to the men in the ranks behind him. Sometimes the cannonballs bounced and did even greater execution. The muzzle velocity was not great and usually the roundshot could be seen coming. Against dispersed or dug-in troops the effect would have been negligible, against tightly packed ranks only a few hundred yards away they would prove devastating.

       The Jacobite army, though it contained a Regiment of Irishmen and Scots serving with the French and a few lowlanders romantic or foolish enough to follow Prince Charlie, was essentially an army of Highland clansmen. As such it was the last feudal gathering to take the field in the history of Britain. To the English officers of Cumberland's staff they must have seemed like the Zulus or Apaches in later wars; admired for their courage, feared for their skill in battle and despised for the primitive nature of their society. 
       The clan was a group of men with a common surname and, in theory at least, connected by ties of blood. The chief was their master and bore both the name and the purest blood of this extended family's common progenitor.They grew up in a harsh enviroment that geology had formed untold millenia before their birth, when the great icesheets had carved out the Highland glens  and bequeathed them a land of great defensive potential and little economic possibility. As the ice retreated most of the topsoil went with it, that remaining thin and poor. Simple animal husbandry was the only possible way to scratch a living from the land and the people became herders of hardy black cattle and goats. The thieving of these beasts was regarded as a noble profession for the clansmen to follow and the stories of martial glory and honour satisfied or discharged that were the stuff of the bards and storytellers' tales often had their genesis in the theft of livestock or other movables from neighbouring clans. 
       The chief had absolute power over his men, the power of  'pit and gallows', and there was no appeal against his judgement. Though by the 18th century the chief may have been educated at a university in Scotland or France, have spoken French, Latin and English as well as his native Gaelic, drunk claret at his table, it was his ability to protect his 'children' and lead them in battle that were the measure of the man. A chief's rent roll was calculated not in coin but in the number of broadswords that would follow him into battle. Already this system was an anachronism and only the difficulty of penetrating their Highland fastnesses had allowed it to go on for so long. Some of the chiefs had been lucky or prescient enough to sniff the direction of the prevailing wind and had hitched their banners to the government's flagstaff, most notably the Cambell Dukes of Argyll. Even today the Duke of Argyll is the foremost of Scotland's peers. 
       Duncan Forbes, the Lord President of the Council, who looked on his Highland neighbours with a condescension greatly softened by sympathy, once concluded that all the clans raised in a single body could have fielded over 32,000 broadswords; a daunting prospect for any government to face. Prince Charles never had more than 10,000 at any time during the '45 rising and usually he only had 4,000 or 5,000. The prospect of a united armies of the clans was, however, something that could never be. Like all tribal societies, ancient feuds, current jealousies and a tradition of perpetual strife made a mockery of any pretensions to unity. 

       On the morning of the 16th April 1746, as Cumberland's army advanced, the Jacobites had just returned from an abortive attempt at a surprise attack on the government camp at Nairn. They were cold and tired, none having slept the previous night. And they were hungry, the chaotic supply system of Prince Charles' army having left their rations back in Inverness. They were still a formidable foe. Sinewy, fast and strong they had spent their lives chasing deer, stealing cattle or fighting in the constant internecine feuds that bedevilled their race. Many had not wished to come out in rebellion but the common man had no right of refusal to a chief's command. Any that had been slow to respond to the call to arms would have had the roofs of their cottages burned by the chief. They wore the great plaid, a long sheet of woven wool wrapped around their thighs in the fashion of a skirt, and held at the shoulder by a brooch or pin. They carried  basket-hilted broadswords that could cleave a limb from the body or a skull to the neck. With a round targe, or shield, covered in bullhide they could sweep away a bayonet and leave its red-coated holder open to the downward thrusts of their swords. The wealthier men carried silver embroidered pistols, the poorer great Lochaber axes to hew the life from their enemies. All carried dirks, the vicious Highland dagger that could gut a man foolish enough to let it get close. They had one tactic - the charge. A wild flurry of screaming men in headlong attack, it must have been terrible indeed to stand against, but it could be used only one time. Once it was released there was no recalling it and when its force was spent it could not be mounted again.