Before daylight on September 21, 1745, the Jacobite army moved across unfamiliar ground east of Edinburgh. Between the Highlanders and Sir John Cope’s government troops lay marshy country that seemed to protect the redcoats’ flank. Guided along a usable route during the night, Charles Edward Stuart’s force emerged where Cope had not expected it. In the dim morning, both armies hurried to face a battle that would be decided in minutes.
The Battle of Prestonpans was the first major clash of the Jacobite rising of 1745. It gave the insurgency a spectacular early victory, captured artillery and supplies, and convinced supporters that the Stuart cause might advance far beyond Scotland. It also showed how terrain, intelligence and speed could overturn apparent advantages in discipline and equipment.
A prince and a disputed crown
The Jacobite movement sought to restore the exiled Stuart dynasty. James Francis Edward Stuart, son of the deposed James II and VII, was recognized by supporters as the rightful king. In July 1745 his son Charles Edward Stuart landed in the Hebrides with only a small party. He raised his standard at Glenfinnan on August 19 and gathered Highland support despite the limited military aid available from France.
The British government was engaged in the War of the Austrian Succession, and many regular troops were overseas. Sir John Cope, commander-in-chief in Scotland, marched into the Highlands but failed to bring Charles’s growing force to battle. The Jacobites moved south. Edinburgh, apart from its castle, fell into their hands on September 17.
Cope brought his troops back by sea, landing at Dunbar. He then advanced west toward Edinburgh. The two forces met near Prestonpans in East Lothian, in a landscape shaped by fields, walls, coal workings, drainage ditches and the boggy ground of the Tranent marsh. None of those features was incidental. They governed how each commander could deploy.
The armies face each other
Cope’s force included infantry, dragoons and artillery. It was professionally organized, but many soldiers had little battle experience. The Jacobite army was built around Highland regiments with strong local and kinship ties, supported by men from other parts of Scotland. Exact totals vary among accounts, yet the armies were broadly comparable in size, each numbering only a few thousand.
On September 20 they maneuvered without fighting a general engagement. Cope initially used the marsh as a barrier. The Jacobites could see that a direct advance over poor ground would break their formations and expose them to cannon fire. A route around the obstacle was essential.
Local knowledge supplied it. Robert Anderson, familiar with the area, described a path through the marshy ground toward the government flank. During the night the Jacobite army shifted position. The movement was difficult enough to risk confusion, but it allowed the Highlanders to emerge on firmer ground east of Cope’s line.
The dawn attack
At about five in the morning, government pickets detected the Jacobite movement. Cope rapidly redeployed his army to face east. Artillery crews and cavalry moved into new positions while dawn slowly clarified the shapes ahead. The government line had little time to settle.
The Jacobites advanced in two lines. Their attack is often reduced to a romantic image of the “Highland charge,” but its effect depended on organization as well as momentum. Men closed the distance quickly, fired, and pressed into close combat before government firepower could stop them. On parts of the line, the redcoats delivered volleys. The struggle was real and lethal, but it was brief.
The government dragoons failed to halt the advance and withdrew. Infantry units were exposed as neighboring formations gave way. Once cohesion broke, retreat became flight. Historic Environment Scotland’s battlefield inventory describes the main action as lasting roughly ten to fifteen minutes. Cope escaped, but much of his army was killed, wounded or captured. Jacobite losses were far smaller, though exact figures differ by source.
Victory and restraint
The battlefield victory gave the Jacobites weapons, ammunition, baggage and prestige. It also produced hundreds of prisoners and wounded men. Contemporary and later accounts emphasize orders to treat captives and wounded soldiers with restraint. As with all accounts written around a partisan civil conflict, individual claims need comparison, but the Jacobites clearly had practical as well as political reasons to present themselves as a legitimate army rather than a raiding force.
Prestonpans immediately changed perceptions of the rising. A movement that had seemed improbable had defeated a government field army and controlled Scotland’s capital. Recruits and supplies became easier to obtain. The result embarrassed the government and magnified Charles’s reputation among supporters.
Yet the victory contained no guarantee of final success. The British state could draw on resources far beyond Scotland, and experienced troops would return from the European war. The Jacobite commanders now faced a strategic choice: consolidate in Scotland or invade England in the hope of attracting English Jacobites and French support.
From Prestonpans to Culloden
In November the Jacobite army crossed into England. It reached Derby in early December, closer to London than at any other point in the campaign. But promised support did not appear in sufficient numbers, and commanders feared that several government armies were closing in. The decision to retreat remains one of the rising’s great controversies.
The Jacobites won again at Falkirk in January 1746, but the campaign ended at Culloden on April 16. There, on different ground and under different conditions, a government army commanded by the Duke of Cumberland defeated Charles’s forces. Repression followed across the Highlands, and laws aimed to weaken the social and military structures associated with the rebellion.
Prestonpans therefore stands at the rising’s beginning, not as a prediction of its ending. Its lesson was tactical: good intelligence, concealed movement and a rapid attack could defeat a force that appeared better equipped. Its larger historical power came from what victory made possible—the march into England and the last serious Stuart attempt to recover the British throne.
The battlefield as evidence
Much of the battlefield has been altered by industry, roads and development, but its surviving landscape still explains the action. The marsh, wagonway, field boundaries and higher ground around Tranent help historians reconstruct what commanders could see and where troops could move. Maps and archaeology correct later stories that turn battle into a simple contest of courage.
Prestonpans also belongs to a civil war fought within Britain. Scots served on both sides; the Jacobite army itself was politically and socially varied. “Highlander” and “redcoat” are useful shorthand, but they cannot describe every motive or identity. The conflict joined dynastic legitimacy, religion, union, local obligation and European power politics.
Read the full Today in History: September 21 edition, visit our War & Conflicts archive, and explore the Battle of Vienna, the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, and the Battle of Marathon.
Sources and method. The chronology and terrain are based on the Historic Environment Scotland battlefield inventory, the UK National Archives battle-plan resource, and the Battle of Prestonpans Heritage Trust. Numbers and casualty estimates vary, so the article avoids false precision. No dialogue or individual emotion has been invented.
Editorial credit: Discover Today in History editorial team. Historical research and fact-checking completed for the September 21 edition.
