In the early hours of the morning on 1 May 1690, Sir Thomas Livingstone led a small detachment ofWilliamite troops, no more than 1,200 men, down toward the haughs of Cromdale.There, the Williamites prepared to mount a surprise attack on the camp of the unsuspecting Jacobite army of 1,500 men. Livingstone’s swift attack, which combined mounted dragoons with regular infantry, swept across the bridges over the Spey and led to a complete rout of the Scottish Jacobite army. Cromdale was a resounding victory for the Williamites and the last major battle of the HighlandWar; the Jacobite commanders, Major-General Thomas Buchan and Brigadier Alexander Cannon, failed to rally the clans to gather in any significant number for the remainder of the conflict.
Yet, despite Cromdale’s importance as a Williamite victory and as the final engagement of the war, the Jacobites continued to pose a threat, as evidenced by the Williamite army’s subsequent campaigns in the Western Isles and the highlands. Cromdale was not the end of the Highland War, as many historians such as Bruce Lenman,Tim Harris, or Daniel Szechi have either argued or implied.What followed Cromdale, instead, was a shift to a new phase of the Highland War, one in which the Jacobites were thoroughly pushed, for the most part, into a defensive posture.This article is the fourth and final part of the Highland War series and will offer an overview of the last campaigns of the conflict. But before relating the significant Williamite offensive on the highlands that followed Cromdale, we must first understand the backdrop against which this took place.
After Killiecrankie
In the last part of this series, we delved into the battle of Killiecrankie and briefly explored the longer-term ramifications of that engagement. The defeat of the Williamites initially caused a large-scale panic, but the government in Edinburgh and its commander-in-chief, Major-General Hugh Mackay, managed to recover swiftly. The Jacobite army had at Killiecrankie lost their commanderin-chief, Viscount Dundee, but this did not harm the vitality of their cause. More clans rallied to appear under the Jacobite banner for the subsequent battle of Dunkeld, on 21 August 1689. The Macleans, Camerons of Lochiel, MacDonalds of Clanranald, Glengarry and Glencoe, MacAlisters of Loup, and MacNeills were joined by the Macgregors of Glengyle, the Invermoriston Grants, Stuarts of Appin, Frasers, MacFarlanes, and Gordons of Strathdon, Glenlivet and Glenbucket. Many of the latter had already
