On 10 June 1719 government troops under Major General Joseph Wightman attacked a Jacobite army of Highland clansmen and Spanish regulars entrenched in the pass of Glen Shiel, in the western Highlands of Scotland. After some three hours of fighting the clansmen were driven off and scattered, and the next day the Spaniards surrendered, ending the Spanish-backed rising.
Battle of Glen Shiel
10 June 1719 · 307 years ago
Spain's Jacobite gamble
Historic Environment Scotland (HES) traces the rising to the war between Spain and Britain that broke out in 1718, and writes that Spain saw in a Jacobite rising a way to increase the pressure on the British government. HES and W. K. Dickson, who edited the Duke of Ormonde's letters in 1895, both put 5,000 troops aboard the fleet that sailed from Cádiz in March 1719 to invade England with Ormonde; a storm ruined it.1
A much smaller expedition under George Keith, the Earl Marischal, landed on the shores of Loch Alsh on 13 April and set up its headquarters at Eilean Donan Castle. Earlier, at Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis, the Marquess of Tullibardine had produced his commission as lieutenant general and taken over command of the troops, the Earl Marischal keeping only the ships. When Tullibardine proposed sailing back to Spain, the Earl Marischal sent the two frigates home instead.2
In May British warships bombarded Eilean Donan and stormed it; HES and Dickson both list 343 barrels of powder taken.3
The fight in the pass
Wightman marched from Inverness on 5 June. The account of the action printed in the London Gazette under an Edinburgh dateline of 18 June says the King's forces "actually engaged" did not exceed 850 men, "besides the 120 Dragoons and 136 Highlanders". Dickson and HES give 850 infantry, 120 dragoons and some 130 Highlanders, with a battery of coehorn mortars, four of them in Dickson's and the Gazette's count.4
Figures for the Jacobites differ. The same Gazette account gives "1640 Highlanders, besides 300 Spaniards, and a Corps a-part of 500 Highlanders" posted on a hill to seize the baggage. Dickson, working from Tullibardine's letter to the Earl of Mar, reaches a total of about 1,120, with the Spanish regiment only some 200 strong. HES gives about 1,200 Highlanders plus between around 240 and 300 Spanish regulars.5
The Jacobites held the narrowest part of the glen. A barricade blocked the road, the Spaniards manned entrenchments on the hill north of the river, and Lord George Murray held a hill south of the river with an advanced party. The attack began at about five in the afternoon. Dickson and HES describe the opening: the mortars shelled Murray's hill, and the government left, Clayton's men with the Munros, needed more than one attempt to drive his men off.6
The government right then climbed the north slope against Seaforth's men on the far left of the Jacobite line. Seaforth was wounded and his men gave way, although Rob Roy MacGregor's men had been sent up to help them; Rob Roy's men and others then followed. The Gazette account says the rebels were "driven from Rock to Rock, our Men chacing them before them for above three Hours, till we gained the Top of the Hill"; James Keith, on the Jacobite side, also speaks of a fight of about three hours. The Spaniards held longest and then withdrew up the mountain; HES dates their orderly retreat to around eight in the evening, if not before.7
In a despatch dated "Glenshell, June 11, 8 a-Clock in the Morning", Wightman reported that "a warm Dispute was maintained till past Eight, when it pleased God to give us an entire Victory over them".8
Surrender in the morning
That night, Keith writes, the Jacobite leaders weighed that they had neither provisions nor ammunition, and "it was resolved, that the Spaniards shou'd surrender, and the Highlanders disperse". Keith and Dickson name the Spanish commander Don Nicolas Bolano.9
Wightman's despatch of 11 June reports that a Spanish officer had come with a proposal to surrender as prisoners at discretion, which he granted, and that "they are to come into our Camp at Two a-Clock this Afternoon". The Gazette account says the troops marched the next morning to Glenshiel, "where about Two in the Afternoon the Spaniards surrendred Prisoners at Discretion". Keith's version is that "next morning the Spaniards surrender'd on condition their baggage shou'd not be plunder'd, and every body else took the road he liked best". Dickson adds a remark of his own: "It was a sorry celebration of James's birthday".10
Counting the cost
The Gazette account counts 21 men killed and 121 wounded on the government side, officers included; Dickson calls these the official numbers, and HES gives the same. On 11 June Wightman had judged them "not to exceed 150, Officers included".11
Wightman named one officer killed, Captain Downes of Colonel Montagu's regiment. Dickson writes that one English officer was killed, Downes, but he also quotes a letter of 13 June from Provost Hossack of Inverness: "Captain Downes and two Lieutenants of Montagu's were killed". The Highland Historic Environment Record counts three officers, one British and two Dutch, and eighteen men killed on the government side.12
HES calls Jacobite losses unknown but between 10 and 100. The Highland record says they were even lighter than the government's.13
On 17 June Wightman wrote from his camp that he had the Spanish prisoners with him, "the whole Number, Officers included, is 274"; Dickson and Millar also give 274 Spanish prisoners.14
An end and a beginning
The Gazette account says Wightman's troops "came up with the Rebels on the 10th", Keith writes "the tenth of June", and the French title of Lieutenant John Henry Bastide's plan of the battle in the Royal Collection gives "Le 10.me Iuin 1719". Dickson states that in his book the dates of events in Great Britain are Old Style. Millar notes that Dr Hill Burton and Dr Taylor gave 11 June, and argues that Bastide's plan, "apparently drawn upon the spot, should settle this matter".15
Older histories also disagreed on the result. Dickson notes that Sir Walter Scott had the government troops compelled to retreat and that Hill Burton called the result doubtful; he answers that the accounts of Keith and Tullibardine "entirely confirm Wightman's despatches. The Jacobites were routed".16
HES calls Glen Shiel the only battle of the Jacobite risings in which the Jacobites did not charge but waited for the enemy to come on, which helps explain the low casualties. HES also counts it as the first recorded use of coehorn mortars in a British field engagement. Traces of the stone breastworks survive on Spanish Hill, and HES lists the battlefield in its Inventory of Historic Battlefields. HES suggests that the defeat may have lulled the government into a false sense of security before the rising of 1745, told in our article on Prestonpans and our article on Culloden.17
Battle of Sablat, 1619: Buquoy's trap in South Bohemia
10 June 1619 · 407 years ago
Early in the Thirty Years' War, Bucquoy's Imperial army caught Ernst von Mansfeld's Protestant force near Záblatí in southern Bohemia as it moved to aid the siege of České Budějovice. Mansfeld was beaten and lost his baggage, and the siege had to be lifted.
Read the full story of Battle of Sablat, 1619: Buquoy's trap in South Bohemia ›Also on this day
1861: at Big Bethel, or Bethel Church, in Virginia, Confederate troops under Colonel John B. Magruder drove off an attack by Union troops. Magruder reported only one man killed on his side, Private Henry L. Wyatt of the North Carolina regiment, and the Dictionary of North Carolina Biography calls Wyatt the only Southern soldier to lose his life in the day's fighting.18
