Clan Mackintosh · 1746
The Rout of Moy
Five men routed fifteen hundred — and Bonnie Prince Charlie slept on undisturbed at Moy Hall.
Draft entry · awaiting review
In February 1746, with the rising past Derby and turning back, Charles Edward Stuart was lodged at Moy Hall, seat of the chief of the Mackintoshes south of Inverness. The chief himself was a captain in a government regiment. His twenty-year-old wife, Anne Farquharson — 'Colonel Anne' — had raised the Mackintosh men for the prince in his absence.
Word reached Inverness that the prince was at Moy with a small bodyguard. Lord Loudon mustered fifteen hundred men under cover of darkness and set out to seize him.
Anne Mackintosh got word. Her father's blacksmith, Donald Fraser, and four others were sent ahead to a wooded stretch of road and posted in the heather at intervals. When Loudon's column came up Fraser fired and shouted — and the four others, hidden in the dark some distance off, fired and shouted in different directions, calling Cameron, MacDonald, Mackintosh slogans into the wind. Loudon's men, persuaded the whole rebel army was on them, broke. The advance collapsed back to Inverness in disorder.
One man — Donald Ban MacCrimmon, the MacLeod piper — was killed in the brief firing. He had marched south playing a lament he had composed himself, knowing he would not return. The piece, 'Cha till mi tuilleadh' — 'I shall return no more' — survives.
The prince, asleep at Moy Hall, woke in the morning to a story.