Prestonpans, 21 September 1745

The battle, stage by stage

1. 17–19 September 1745

   Cope comes back by sea

   Charles Edward Stuart landed in the Hebrides in July 1745 and raised his standard at Glenfinnan on 19 August. Sir John Cope, the government's commander in Scotland, marched north to meet him but avoided the Jacobites in the Highlands and went on to Inverness and Aberdeen, leaving the road south open; Edinburgh fell without a fight on 17 September (though the castle held out). Cope shipped his army from Aberdeen, landed at Dunbar on 17–18 September, and on the 19th marched west by East Linton to camp west of Haddington. The Jacobites, camped at Duddingston outside Edinburgh, resolved to meet him; by the Battle of Prestonpans Trust's account, Charles agreed to command from the second line. Unit positions on this stage are schematic.

2. 20 September, afternoon and evening

   Face to face across the bog

   Cope turned off the Haddington road toward the coast to avoid the enclosures and coal pits around Tranent, and drew up on open stubble east of Preston. The Jacobites marched from Duddingston and in the early afternoon took the ridge west of Tranent, looking down on the redcoats. Between them lay a marsh, the Tranent meadow, with a broad drainage ditch: neither side could attack across it. Cope shifted his line several times and settled facing south, his right on the park walls of Preston and Bankton, his left on the marsh. About 50 of Lochiel's Camerons held Tranent churchyard until Cope's guns drove them out; the main army moved into the fields east of Tranent, while the Atholl Brigade stayed to the west to watch the road. Positions shown are those of the evening and are approximate.

3. Night of 20–21 September

   The Riggonhead path

   Robert Anderson of Whitburgh, a local man who had hunted over the marsh, told the Jacobite command of a firm track through it. Lord George Murray persuaded Charles to use it and attack Cope's open eastern flank. In the dark, by different accounts from midnight or from about 3 or 4 a.m., the army filed east along the ridge and down through a narrow defile near Riggonhead farm, south of Seton, three abreast and in silence, the MacDonald regiments of the Duke of Perth's wing leading; the Atholl Brigade came back from the west to follow. The route Cope's pickets failed to watch is drawn schematically: the defile itself has been destroyed by opencast mining and the new town of Blindwells now covers much of the ground.

4. 21 September, about 4–5 a.m.

   Dawn: the Jacobites east of Cope

   Coming out onto the plain west of Seton, the Jacobite columns turned to form two lines facing west: on the right the Duke of Perth with Clanranald, Glengarry and Keppoch (about 850 men), on the left Lord George Murray with Perth's regiment, the Appin Stewarts and the Camerons (about 900), and behind them about 500–600 men under Charles and Lord Nairne. A miscalculation left a gap between the wings. Cope's pickets raised the alarm and his army wheeled to face east into the mist: dragoons on both flanks, six light guns and six mortars on the right. Battlefield archaeology (Pollard and Ferguson, GUARD, 2009–10) puts this line, on limited evidence, several hundred meters east of where older histories placed it, near Seton West Mains.

5. 21 September, about 5–6 a.m.

   The Highland charge

   The Jacobites came on fast, firing at close range and then closing with swords. Cope's makeshift gun crews fled before firing, and officers, among them Lieutenant-Colonel Whitefoord, fired the guns themselves; the gunners ran back into Gardiner's dragoons, who broke. Hamilton's dragoons on the left, their commanding officer shot early on by the Inventory's account, also fled. The infantry, its flanks bare, fired at least one volley; then Murray's wing rolled up the exposed right and the line collapsed. Inventory and eyewitness accounts put the fighting at between about four and fifteen minutes.

6. 21 September, morning

   Rout and the death of Colonel Gardiner

   The redcoats fled west, and many were cut down or surrendered against the walls of Preston House and Bankton House; some escaped by the lane on the west side of Bankton, later called Johnnie Cope's Road. Colonel James Gardiner, whose home Bankton was, tried to rally a party of foot and was cut down beneath a thorn tree near his own house; he died before noon, by most accounts at Tranent manse (another account says on a mattress in his own garden). The thorn tree's position is approximate.

7. 21–22 September 1745

   Aftermath

   The Jacobites took Cope's guns, his baggage at Cockenzie and his military chest. Government losses are given as roughly 150 to 500 killed and about 850 to 1,500 taken prisoner (counts range from about 500 to 1,700); Jacobite losses were light, about 30 to 50 killed and perhaps 70 to 80 wounded. Surgeons came from Edinburgh to treat the wounded of both sides. Cope rode south with the surviving dragoons and reached Berwick with about 450 men, a flight mocked in the song 'Hey, Johnnie Cope'; a board of inquiry later cleared him. Charles spent the night at Pinkie House and returned to Edinburgh. In November the Jacobite army invaded England.