William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland
The Duke of Cumberland won Culloden and has been called the Butcher ever since. He was the third son of George II, made a soldier by preference rather than obligation, and was wounded leading the infantry at Dettingen at twenty-two. He lost the battle of Fontenoy in 1745 to Saxe, in a French victory that was widely admired, and was recalled to Britain when Charles Edward Stuart landed in Scotland. At Culloden in April 1746 he had some nine thousand regulars with artillery against a smaller, hungry Jacobite army drawn up on flat open moor unsuited to the Highland charge, and a new bayonet drill designed against the broadsword. The battle took under an hour. What followed is the reason for the name: wounded men killed on the field, prisoners executed, and months of burning and clearance through the glens intended to make a rising impossible again. Parliament voted him thanks and an income; a flower was named after him in England and a weed after him in Scotland. He commanded in Germany in the Seven Years' War, was beaten at Hastenbeck in 1757, and signed the Convention of Klosterzeven agreeing to disband his army and leave Hanover undefended. His father repudiated it and told him he had ruined his country and disgraced himself, and he resigned all his commands. He spent his last years as a political manager, and it was he who assembled the ministry of 1765. He died at forty-four, enormously fat and half blind, and the equestrian statue put up to him in Cavendish Square was taken down within a lifetime.
- Lived: 1721 CE – 1765 CE
- Nationality: British
- Roles: military
