How Historically Accurate Is Outlander?

Outlander is the historical drama / romance / sci-fi novel and now a TV series set mostly in the Scottish Highlands featuring an English woman who is transported back in time from 1945 to is 1743 when the series starts now of course if you know anything about history you'll realize that this date is just two years before the start of the 1745 Jacobite rising and the series does indeed cover the Jacobite rising of 1745 at Great Lengths in several episodes so I thought I'd have a look at this and specifically at its portrayal of the Jacobite army now obviously Outlander is a TV series with I think two three seasons at the moment so there's obviously a lot of footage to go through but I've specifically selected episode 10 from season 2 which is untitled Preston pants so the start of the rebellion and if you guys really do enjoy this one then let me know in the comments below and I might do the same for the next episode in the line which is sort of the middle phase of the rebellion and the one after that which is covering the Battle of Culloden so does Outlander accurately portray the Jacobite risings let's take a look so first of all just to highlight this is obviously set to 1743 although this episode is 1745 so the Jacobite risings there are several ones but this one is only looking at the 1745 rising and the historical accuracy within that first all I have to say I was quite impressed with the portrayal of the army in general especially the one that Jamie commands before they meet up with the larger army because often you have the kind of romantic image of the Jacobite army where the rule we're in beautiful Tartans and in played they've all got blue bonnets on with the nice white cards they're all carrying colleges and muskets and broad swords and they all look you know like the classic romantic image of a Highlander whereas probably the majority of the Highland section of the Jacobite armies throughout the rebellions would have been poor people and this is because of the Highland clan system and how this worked so at the top of the clan system you have the chief select colum Mackenzie is an example of a chief they're the he would have only him the tax men he would go out and collect the taxes and the rents from the sub-tenants there would be sub tenants to those sub tenants and the very bottom of the pile you had the Coty's and obviously it's a pyramid system so you only have one chief you have a few tax men then more sub tenants sub-tenants ela sub-tenants and people who were basically owned less and less and are reliant on the people further up in the chain and obviously the Coty's if the chief says or he would get his tax men to go out and and force it that I want you you your sons to come out and join the Highland army then that's what they would do and the chief would provide them with weapons or if he didn't and they would be using their farming implements and you can really see that here with how they've come dressed as well in the more the poorer clothing I think that's an accurate portrayal of what the army would look like all large parts of the Highland army from the highlands specifically as well I quite enjoyed the distinction between these various groups of the clan system within the army so obviously you have Angus and his friend there they are from a higher one so I think they're probably taxmen if they're not taxed me and they'll probably be well and better off sub-tenants and they are the ones who go around and they collect the rents from the tenant so I'm pretty sure they're the tax men in the clan and they obviously are a bit better armed they have broad swords they both have charges as well and they really have a different kind of interaction with the Coty's but what I did have to say is that I really enjoyed this scene which is obviously after the Battle of Preston pans where they've both lost a friend and that makes them sort of equal in each other's eyes because he you know Angus will say ah don't run off and they didn't run and that's kind of where that comes from so I thought that was a really nice scene and it was a good look at the Highland clan system and the social structure of the army really that related to the clan system that was effectively in place until after the Battle of Culloden when the Duke of Cumberland and the British Army and to a great extent destroyed the clan system and that way of life for better or worse one thing I would comment on the Battle of Preston pounds as it's portrayed in Outlander is that you see in the battle scene and and quite correctly actually that they take off the larger part of the Phillimore which is you obviously have the kilts which is the lower part but you also have the kind of strap if you will of the tartan that goes over the shoulder and this is called the Phillimore is the large tartan in Gallic but they did accurately take that off you see them taking the top part off so that they can run unencumbered but one thing I did notice was that not a lot of them were carrying charges when they had broad swords so as I explained earlier there were many poorer men but you see a lot of the main characters so you see what's-his-face columns brother you see charging in Dougal with a broadsword but no Tosh I would expect there to be a lot more charges the shields as this was their only real method of defense and us there was such a melee minded attacker then they would really need something to defend themselves with especially against the bayonets and as well we have accounts of people I think there was a gentleman in Perth who was employed by the Jacobite army we still have the records and he made hundreds and hundreds of charges and Taj's they were a bit more in the higher end of what people could afford but we know that there was that guy and there were probably many more who were employed by the Jacobites to make charges for their army and this one actually in the bottom right is the special charge of Bonnie Prince Charlie himself Charles Edward Stuart with some very fascist looking insignias on them wonderful new that anyway and the one in the top left corner is from a higher up ill but you could also make a charge just with four different planks of wood in the right formation and going green against each other and potentially even putting leather on the outside if you wanted to make it a bit stronger so it wasn't that expensive to make so I would have expected a few more of those so that's a bit of a nitpick and then again you do see in this image here Jamie clearly has a charge there are charges around it's just I would have expected to see a couple more there although that's not really a massive thing and of course you could argue this was just the part of the battle that they were showing without that many charges so I actually thought the battle itself was really really close to the historical details that we know about the Battle of Preston plans so first of all when the half the bog between each other and then and the British camp this actually was the case before the Battle of Preston pans and it was also the case that the Jacobites at 4:00 a.m. in the morning went on this March to go sort of around the ball go through a pass through the bog to reach the other side and then charge into the British camp starting around 6:00 a.m. I think the only small difference between how its portrayed in Outlander and how it was in in in real history is that there wasn't a farmer son who comes and tells him about that like there isn't a show but it was actually one of the generals of the Jacobite army was born and raised right around Preston pants and he knew the way through the marshy the marshy bulk that was there so he was the one who led them through other than that I think it's very accurate sort of the kind of surprise attack through the mist and attacking that position there I thought that was really well done now another thing that I really enjoyed and think they do really well actually in Outlander is showing kind of the distinction between the aims of the actual soldiers in the Highland army in the Jacobite army and Bonnie Prince Charlie himself you see obviously the scene with Dula where he's coming in and threatening the British a sharp contrast to the prince asking Jaime to ask his wife to care for the British wounded before he cares for the Jacobite wounded because he felt obviously that he was the king of both the subjects of England and Scotland and that was his aim so there is an interesting distinction there that whether people were supporting the Jacobites to make Scotland an independent nation now it's very difficult to say there's very many different reasons why people supported the Jacobites and some quite opposite reasons which are interesting or whether it was just that the Jacobites were kind of the ones causing a fuss they were the kind of rebels so that's what people latched onto to show that discontent whether they were actually supporting the Jacobites themselves or rather they were just against the Hanoverian British / English government in connection with Scotland is quite a big issue and I think the show does well to show that kind of distinction now of course they a lot of the people fighting for the Jacobites were against the Act of Union which was in 1707 essentially brought England and Scotland together into one nation many of the Jacobites themselves wanted Scotland to be independent of England and so much as that they'd have their own Parliament would be able to decide their own laws now that had been changed in 1707 under Queen Anne however whether many of them wanted Scotland to go fully independent again is difficult to say although clearly the bonny Prince doesn't want that to happen he wanted to capture the London because London was the seat of the British government and he really just wants to put himself and his family the Stewart's onto the British throne rather than making Scotland an independent nation or trying to secede from England or anything like that he simply wants to march down and that's why he marched into England he'd captured large parts of parts of Scotland Inverness Edinburgh and not the castle at Perth for example he'd all captured these cities in Scotland so it wasn't so much that he was invading to make Scotland a free country it was he was invading through Scotland to then go on to England to London and to become the King of England Scotland and Ireland normally and this is an interesting distinction that you see with him trying to win over the English because that's one of his main aims is that when he comes through scalding nose in the highlands he's got a lot of support the lowlands less so because the people were more Presbyterian they were more in favor but he thinks in northern England in areas like Northumberland Lancashire and southwest earning as well cornwall there are many Catholics it's not clear-cut this religious distinction but he knows that he hopes that he's gonna get support there which is why he says ten for the English first because then he's hoping to win them on sight to show I am your King and that they'll come to his cause but the Scottish you know they are completely the other side of that a lot of them wouldn't have been fighting for that reason in fact I think a lot of the Highland clans who went on really a lot of them especially lower down maybe some of the higher up Chiefs did grasp the higher political situation but I think a lot of them just went because it was like a big cattle raiding expedition you know if they're one that would get a lot out of it that kind of thing maybe a bit cynical but I think the show does well as well in their portrayal of Bonnie Prince Charlie and especially the war Council now the war Council is very fractious in the show you know arguments between some of the major leaders and I think this was one of the main reasons that Bonnie Prince Charlie 's campaign ultimately failed in 1745 because of the fractious nature of the council dumain councilmembers here are also shown in the show very well are John O'Sullivan and Lord George Murray and these two were actually his biggest really advisers and on a quick reading of history you kind of associate that John O'Sullivan was the bad commander and Lord George Murray was the good commander but when you read more into it you get a much more complex picture for example John O'Sullivan was an Irishman but he'd gone out into French service to fight under the French who had an Irish Regiment up behind the Irish Brigade and he actually fought at the Battle of Fontenoy in 1745 and this was actually for once a French victory against the British and their allies and it's also one of the reasons that the French didn't invest as much into the Jacobite rising of 1745 because Fontenoy been such a great victory that didn't need the kind of decoy that the Jacobite rising turned out to be to function as well and this obviously meant because he had served with the French a professional army and fought against the British that he had really good understanding and experience of commanding a an actual army a working eighteenth-century army with firearms artillery cavalry and that does come across in the show however of course the army that Bonnie Prince Charlie had did have those elements he did at one point get artillery he also had regiments that defected from the government and in the lowlands he had some really quite professional units of men that joined his cause as well as cavalry that were raised from the lowlands but not all of his army was like that and the other commander Lord George Murray had a much better understanding of how to use and fight with a Highland army which was a large part of the Jacobite army especially when he first landed so at Preston Patton's mostly there were Highlanders there supporting him because he just come through the highlands which was where he had many clans who were loyal to him he had a much better idea of how these fought so for example when they're arguing about going through the bog he understands that being bogged down in with a highland charge is the end of a Highlander which is one of the main reasons it failed at Culloden now he himself had actually also fought but this time with the British when he was a young man I think he joined up when he was 18 in the early 1700s and he had fought in Flanders but in 1715 when he heard there was a Jacobite rising in Scotland he and his brothers left and joined the Jacobite rising and so he had experience fighting there as well as in the 1719 rebellion which is little less known although I make a video about that at some point in the future so he had a good military understanding as well but from a very different kind of perspective than John O'Sullivan and also you see very interesting distinction in this council between the Irish Jacobites who were very at several prominent Irishmen who were in support of him and the Scottish Jacobites who were representing a larger part of the army now the Irish what they wanted was like what Bonnie Prince Charlie wanted was to retake the thrones of England and Scotland which he would do through Scotland and into England and then Ireland was attached to that because the Irish obviously were being persecuted because of their Catholic belief which adds another religious dimension to the conflict and they really hope that if Bonnie friends Charlie came to the throne the Stuart's had always flirted with Catholicism and they were less repressive towards Catholics than the current regime which the especially in Ireland they weren't happy with it all so really what Johnny Sullivan wanted was for the prince the Stewart's to get back onto the throne and then to take over England Scotland Ireland as the king of all three and then lessened their restrictions on Catholics whereas the Scots what they were more hoping was T for the point of France obviously to win for Scotland to become more independent whether completely or not probably not completely but they wanted him to be their King and really what they wanted was the repeal of the Act of Union of 1707 so there were different goals and a lot of the Scots who fought for Bonnie Prince Charlie were Protestant Episcopalian which was another distinction but I'm gonna have to make a video about all of this because it's incredibly complicated and I'm trying to simplify it here but there's an also another tactical disagreement which I think shows the different characters of John O'Sullivan and Lord George Murray which is where John O'Sullivan says since when did a Scotsman shy away from a bit of mud especially when there's an enemy waiting for him on the other side and - that Lord Jordan or Jamie even replies since when does an irish-born officer dismissed the dangers of buggy ground to an infantry assault again looking at the different sort of ideas of how one would fight of course john o'sullivan thinking more with a professional army whereas realistically they didn't have a completely professional army at president pans it was more a Highland army with all of the cutters and different sorts of troops melon mined in infantry as well I think that the show accurately or fairly accurately in one way portrays Bonnie Prince Charlie because there's so much romanticism around him you can hear in many of the songs by the quarries for example sort of all singing his praises and you can see in many of the portraits as well it's that it's the Bonnie Prince Charlie you know he's just this young lad this gallant hero and all the these big burly Highlanders are also of you know fighting for him that kind of thing and it's very easy to get carried away in that myth you know that this kind of romantic lost cause and whereas really one could easily view him as being really an idiot because he made some incredibly stupid decisions he wasn't well prepared he arrived in Scotland with hardly any men huh not a great plan he had hardly any tactical knowledge or experience at all and he tried to conquer a kingdom and lost and not only did he lose you know thousands of men were killed because of him but the whole Highland clan system was utterly destroyed and the Highlands were ravaged by British troops and I think it took a long time for the Highlands to become as populated because after the risings many of the Highlanders he'd fought for him had their land confiscated many of them were left to die out in the cold and hundreds of thousands emigrated from the highlands and were replaced instead with sheep and crofters so that's one very cynical view and I think the show goes more in that direction that he's kind of this pompous fool which I think there is definitely merit to it definitely doesn't fall into the trap of over romanticizing him maybe it goes a bit far in the other direction and I think perhaps he deserves a bit more credit than he gets in the show but as well if you look at what he's they've clearly gone after that kind of aesthetic they've clearly looked very well at the source material and and I think they generally did a very good job in his portrayal I'm not so sure about what Jeremy is wearing here with Jeremy Jamie what Jamie is wearing here with this kind of leather fashion but all in all I think they did a very good job at portraying this or at everyone so this has been a very rambling video honestly I don't know if many people have made it this far but if you have I don't know right thank God in the comments so thank you very much for watching this has been my video on the episode of Outlanders be more of a ramble about the Jacobite risings if I'm honest but it's something that really interests me and ever since making that Highlander video and seeing that people were interested in this kind of thing I thought well why not you know it's one of the things one of the earliest periods of history that interested me and so I've come up with quite a bit of knowledge on it down the years and I'll probably make some more in the future so thank you very much for watching I have been history with Alba and I hope you all have an excellent day

Channel: History With Hilbert

Views: 184,541

Rating: 4.9360676 out of 5

Keywords: Outlander, Jamie, Clare, Outlander Culloden, Battle of Culloden, Jacobite, Bonnie Prince Charlie, Outlander Historically Accurate, How Historically Accurate Is Outlander?, Outlander Real History, Charles Edward Stuart, Outlander Accuracy, Jacobite Rising 1745, Battle of Prestonpans, Outlander Full, Outlander Prestonpans, Dougall, Outlander Season 2, Outlander Season 2 Episode 10, Ye Jacobites By Name, Scottish History, British History, 18th Century History

Id: SQvM_MAQL54

Length: 18min 28sec (1108 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 07 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Encalista]

History nerd here and loving the accurate representation provided. Thanks!