13/11/2023
On this day in 1715 - Jacobite and Government forces fought each other at the Battle of Sheriffmuir.
Following the ascension of George I in 1714, supporters of the exiled King James Stuart - believing he should have been king after the death of his half sister Queen Anne - campaigned to restore the Stuarts to the British throne. This became the 1715 Rising: the second of four Jacobite uprisings. The Jacobites were led by the Earl of Mar, who was previously a government supporter but did not approve of George taking the throne of Britain, and it was he who raised the Jacobite standard in Scotland in September 1715 👑
Sheriffmuir was the most significant battle during the 1715 Rising and saw ~7,000 Jacobites go up against ~3,000 Government troops. The battle’s result was inconclusive with both sides claiming victory, but the Jacobite army in Scotland never managed to gain momentum after the battle. Not even the arrival of King James Stuart was able to change the course of the war, and he left Scotland less than two months later.
At the same time as events at Sheriffmuir were unfolding, the Northumbrian Jacobites under the theoretical leadership of General Thomas Forster, but the actual, on the ground leadership of James Radcliffe, 3rd Earl of Derwentwater and Brigadier Mackintosh, were holding their own at Preston until one day later on 14 November, when they were forced to surrender, ending the Rising in England.