Buthcher Cumberland
Willian Augustus, The Duke of Cumberland
The aftermath of the battle was brutal and earned the victorious general the nickname "Butcher" Cumberland.
The morning following the Battle of Culloden, Cumberland issued a written order reminding his men of "the public orders of the rebels yesterday was to give us no quarter".
Cumberland alluded to the belief that such orders had been found upon the bodies of fallen Jacobites.
In the days and weeks that followed, versions of the alleged orders were published in the Newcastle Journal and the Gentleman's Journal.
Today only one copy of the alleged order to "give no quarters" exists.
It is however considered to be nothing but a poor attempt of forgery, for it is neither written nor signed by Murray, and it appears on the bottom half of a copy of a declaration published in 1745. In any event, Cumberland's order was not carried out for two days, after which contemporary accounts report then that for the next two days the moor was searched and all those wounded were put to death.
In the aftermath of the battle, Government troops felt justified in giving no quarter to the wounded lying upon the moor.
The Jacobites' aborted night attack in the early hours of 16 April would no doubt have been as merciless.
Jacobite officers ordered their men to use only swords, dirks and bayonets, to overturn tents locate "a swelling or bulge in the fallen tent, there to strike and push vigorously".
Indiscriminate killing is said to have gone on for days, with all men bearing arms hanged on location and their women raped.
Families fled from their scorched hovels and were left to starve.
In total, over 20,000 head of livestock, sheep, and goats were driven off and sold at Fort Augustus where the soldiers split the profits
-- lancer
