Over at the SUN site there’s a lively debate going on about just how essential Sir Winston Churchill was to the victory of the British People’s Army against Nazism. It’s good to revisit controversial historical figures and see if the conventional wisdom that paints them in dull monochrome can be transformed into the vivid colours of real historical experience.
My contribution to the debate is The Prince William, Duke of Cumberland the victor of Culloden, a battle which he won in little more than an hour. That’s some going you’ll have to agree.
William Augustus, born in 1721 was the third son of George II and Caroline of Ansbach. He was created the Duke of Cumberland in 1726 and commanded the British, Hanoverian, Austrian and Dutch forces at the Battle of Fontenoy.
These days the only people who know much about him are the ones who chose to dwell on what they see as his nasty side. To judge a man’s life by the actions of a few days when he was only twenty five rather obscures both the span of his whole career and his more durable historical contribution to the creation of modern Britain.
Isn’t it rather one sided and narrow minded to focus on his order to execute the wounded on the field of battle after the fighting had ended or his, to our modern minds, harsh decision to deprive prisoners of food, water and medical aid? Ordering troops to commit acts of large scale rape and murder of a civilian population might not be how we like nation builders to behave but in the eighteenth century there was no Geneva Convention or Channel 4 News and they played by different rules.
There is so much on the plus side of His Grace the Duke of Cumberland. His victory allowed the destruction of feudalism in the Scottish Highlands. The barony courts were swept aside and every man and woman was entitled to the rights granted to them by Magna Carta. The tenants farmers and cotters no longer had to worry about being called into military service by a clan chief they had not been able to elect. Management of the land became much more efficient as long established practices were replaced with modern methods which allowed millions of people to be kept warm by sheep’s wool and dozens of others to accumulate the capital to develop the industry which made Scotland famous.
As if that was not enough you can still travel through parts of Scotland on the roads that the British People’s Army built to link the forts and barracks which still generate so much tourist traffic to this day. It’s easy to understand why, despite being given the sobriquet “Butcher Cumberland” by a handful of resentful begrudgers so many of his contemporaries nicknamed him “Sweet William”.
Liam redux 
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