Why the Jacobite story runs so deep

Stand on the moor at Culloden on a wet April afternoon and the Jacobite story stops being abstract. The battle fought here on 16 April 1746 lasted under an hour. It was the last pitched battle on British soil, and the ground itself is now a war grave, with clan stones marking where the dead of particular families were buried.

But Culloden is the end of a much longer argument. When James VII was deposed in 1688, the question of who held the legitimate right to the throne split families across the Highlands for the better part of sixty years. There were serious risings in 1689, 1715 and 1745, with smaller attempts such as the 1719 landing at Eilean Donan in between. The Highlands became the stage for nearly all of them, not because Highlanders were uniquely rebellious, but because the region's kinship structures, geography and distances from London made it the most practical place to raise an army.

Clans: loyalty, kinship and hard choices

Clan was never simply romance and tartan. It was a working system of land, obligation and law, in which the chief acted as landlord, judge and military leader at once. Below him sat tacksmen who held and sub-let land, then tenants, then cottars with little more than a patch of ground and grazing rights. When a chief decided to come out for the Prince, it was rarely a free choice for those at the bottom of that structure.

Nor did the Highlands move as one. The Campbells largely stood with the government, while the MacLeods, MacKenzies, Grants and Munros either stayed out, split, or hedged carefully. The Macdonalds, Camerons, Macphersons, Frasers and Stewarts generally came out, though even within a single name different branches chose differently.

One of the sharpest examples is Moy Hall, south-east of Inverness. Lady Mackintosh raised men for the government while her husband was away fighting for the Jacobites, and in February 1746 she saw off a government attempt to seize the Prince at Moy in what became known as the Rout of Moy. Families really did divide, and the resulting bitterness outlasted the fighting.

The strongholds that still stand

What survives of Jacobite-era Scotland is often a fragment: a tower, a stretch of wall, a grassy platform where something once stood. That is part of the appeal. A short tour of the region's strongholds tells the story in three dimensions.

• Glenfinnan Monument — where the standard was raised on 19 August 1745, at the head of Loch Shiel, with the famous railway viaduct nearby.
• Culloden battlefield — grave markers, clan stones, the Leanach cottage and a visitor centre that sets out the campaign street by street.
• Ruthven Barracks — a government garrison built after 1719, burned by Jacobite forces in 1746 as the rising collapsed.
• Eilean Donan Castle — a Mackenzie stronghold, destroyed by government ships in 1719 and rebuilt in the twentieth century.
• Urquhart Castle — a ruined fortress above Loch Ness, useful for understanding how a medieval castle worked long before the risings.
• Fort George — built near Inverness after Culloden as a permanent base, and still in military use today.
• Dunvegan Castle on Skye — seat of the MacLeods, who kept out of the 1745 rising and paid a price in reputation for it.
• Kilchurn Castle on Loch Awe — a Campbell power base, a reminder that the winning side built castles too.

Everyday life behind the walls

Life in a Highland tower house was close, smoky and crowded. Cattle often occupied the ground floor, with the hall above and sleeping quarters higher still. Heating came from peat, light from oil lamps and candles, and food from oats, bere barley, kale, dairy, salted fish and whatever cattle could be spared. Hospitality was a duty rather than a courtesy; refusing a traveller food was a real failing.

Gaelic was the everyday language, and song carried history as effectively as any written record. Waulking songs lightened the work of finishing cloth, and ceilidhs kept genealogy, satire and news circulating through the winter months. Women frequently ran estates while men were away, managing stores of meal, paying rents and deciding who could be spared.

After 1746 the government moved to dismantle the system itself. Heritable jurisdictions were abolished, chiefs lost their judicial powers, and the Disarming Act banned the carrying of weapons and the wearing of Highland dress, a prohibition not lifted until 1782. Highland society did not collapse overnight, but the foundations of the old world were being pulled away.

Visiting: practical notes

• Travel by car. Public transport exists but is thin. Expect single-track roads with passing places, and pull in rather than expecting others to reverse.
• Book ahead in summer. Culloden's visitor centre, Urquhart Castle and Eilean Donan all get busy from June to August.
• Time your trip. April, May, September and October give you softer light, fewer people and a better chance of dry weather.
• Pack for four seasons. Waterproof jacket, spare layers and boots that cope with bog. Midges are at their worst on still evenings from June to August, so bring repellent and consider a head net.
• Allow more time than you think. Inverness to Glenfinnan is roughly two hours in good conditions; adding Skye turns a day trip into a proper journey.

Reading the landscape

The best way to understand the Jacobite Highlands is on foot. Walking the old military roads built by government forces through the glens, or following a track to an abandoned township, you can still make out lazy beds, enclosure walls and the outlines of long houses. The ground tells you where people lived, what they grew and which routes armies took.

Treat these places with the seriousness they deserve. Many are graves, and the clan stones at Culloden are not photo props. Walk quietly, take your litter home, and leave the ruins as you found them. The story is complicated, and the Highlands are all the more rewarding for it.