Inverlochy Castle and Achnacarry

A summary of Clan Cameron and repeated raiding led by the Macintosh.

Inverlochy Castle (Inbhirlochie) was built in the 1200s by the Comyns of Badenoch. There is a legend it was sited on the remains of a Pictish fort dating back at least a further five hundred years. The Comyn estate here extended to Glen Loy and Loch Arkaig and through to the disputed west coast margins. It was a frontier against the intentions of the Lords of the Isles, and the northern clans near Inverness with a traditional fealty to the Mormaers and Earls of Moray, and clans such as the Macintoshes and eventually Clan Chattan.

Inverlochy Castle when built by the Comyns was a bastion against the Lord of the Isles as well as unfriendly and avaricious neighbours. To the north the province of Moray’s importance as part of the kingdom of Scotland was demonstrated during the years of major warfare between 1296 and 1340. The province was relatively untouched by direct fighting and Royal led English armies penetrated Moray on only three occasions in 1296, 1303 and 1335, and significant English occupation occurred only in 1296–97.  Read More

Remember, remember – – – September 1396

 

Remember, remember – – – September 1396. None of this Guido Fawkes stuff in England, but the Royal Tournament Battle of the North Inch at Perth, where currently Mrs G is on a ladies away trip. Least said soonest mendit. King Robert 3 arranged the former.

This being possibly the only cleaving of skulls that Clan Chatton emerged victorious from.

That doyen of contemporary Scottish News – – – The National – – – covers this best – – –

https://www.thenational.scot/…/14862358.back-in-the-day-th…/

It is possible to dismiss the idea this was an internal Chattan spat between the Davidsons and the rest. Much more likely it was round 2 of the Battle of Invernahavon just up to road to to the fords of the Lochy near Fort William whew I used to live – only Fort William did not exists until Hanovarian times and the power base was firstly Comyn, then Chattan and then Cameron. The sniping away at each other between Cameron and Chatton, cattle raiding, heads in wells, raping and looting, relentlessly up and down the Great Glen, lasted 400 years until Culloden when MacBeans helped the Cameron get the wounded Locheil off the battlefield and to France where he died in 1747. The Camerons did charge with the Mackintosh regt there. Erstwhile Chieftain Capt Donald MacBean of KInkyle , saddled with the debts of old Aeneas, did have one of his daughters marry to Cameron of Kinlochleven though after his death. Which just about settled things. Did you know that Cameron is in Gaelic ‘Camus Sron’ – colloquially- ‘beaky nosed’.

Ignore the historical rubbish from Wattie Scott. t has as much accuracy as Will Shakespeare. They were selling books, poems and plays, not historic fact.

Back in the Day: The truth about the most famous – and certainly most bizarre – clan battle in Scottish history

William McBane of the Macintosh Regt died en route Tilbury

William McBane of the Macintosh Regt died en route Tilbury (Thames estuary) probably of wounds or typhus prior to transportation. This barely 2 months after Culloden. Starvation, disease, lack of clothes and lack of all medical aid was a policy designed to rid the Hanovarians of as many of their prisoners as possible. It is said that soldiers tasked with checking the prisoners refused to go below decks such was the stench of illness and filth. Those for interrogation who were too ill to walk were hoisted out of the holds in a bosun’s chair and sent below in the same manner.

 

Scotland, Defending the Nation

Scotland, Defending the Nation

Very Interesting and likely superb second book by Christopher Fleet and the National Library of Scotland – ” Scotland, Defending the Nation.” – a book of military maps throughout the ages. For students of Culloden it includes the military map drawn up by a French Officer who fought at Culloden, and includes two manoevres by the Hanovarians, the reinforcement of their right wing, mid battle, and the flanking movement at the Culwhiniac Enclosure where Major Gillies ‘Mor’ MacBean fell mortally wounded. This map not published beforeRead More
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