Glen Shiel - The Battle of Glen Shiel

The Battle of Glen Shiel

The Battle of Glen Shiel took place on 10 June 1719 midway up the glen. It was fought between the British government and an alliance of Jacobites and Spaniards, and resulted in a victory for the British forces. It was the last close engagement of British and foreign troops on mainland British soil. The battle is sometimes considered an extension of the 1715 rising, but is more correctly a separate rebellion and was the only rising to be extinguished by a single military action. It is "Scotland's only battle site with contemporary remains still visible – including the stone dyke enclosure where the Jacobite munitions were stored".

The natural strength of the Jacobite position, which was positioned on easily defendable crags in the glen, had been increased by hasty fortifications. A barricade had been constructed across the road, and along the face of the hill on the north side of the river entrenchments had been thrown up. Here the main body was posted, consisting of a Spanish regiment, Clan Cameron of Lochiel with about 150 men, about 150 of Lidcoat’s and others, Rob Roy MacGregor with 40 men, 50 men of Clan Mackinnon and 200 from the Clan MacKenzie. British forces included 150 grenadiers under Major Milburn, Montagu’s Regiment, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Lawrence, a detachment of 50 men under Colonel Harrison, Huffel's Dutch Regiment, four companies of Amerongen's regiment from the Clan Fraser, Clan Ross and the Clan Sutherland, 80 men of Clan MacKay, Clayton’s Regiment, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Reading and about 100 men of the Clan Munro under George Munro of Culcairn.

One of the peaks on the northern side of the glen, Sgùrr nan Spàinteach (Peak of the Spaniards), derives its name from the 200 Spanish troops who fought a rearguard action on the side of the defeated Jacobite rebels and who retreated over the peak. This peak's parent mountain is Sgùrr na Ciste Duibhe, which means peak of the black chest. Irvine Butterfield writes that "although some of the coins they dropped were later found there is no mention that they fell from a black chest the black chest is in reality the deep hollow of the Allt Dearg on the south-west slope ."

The painting The Battle of Glenshiel 1719 by the Flemish painter Peter Tillemans (c. 1684–1734) shows the opposing forces in the glen; the figures in the foreground probably include Lord George Murray and Rob Roy MacGregor on the Jacobite side and General Joseph Wightman on the British side. This "highly accurate" painting, which hangs in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, was originally catalogued as The Battle of Killiecrankie, 1689.