Bonnie Dundee lights the flame
On 24 May 1689, John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee, raised the royal standard for the exiled King James VII and II on Dundee Law, the volcanic hill that dominates the city of Dundee. It was the opening act of the first Jacobite rising — a conflict that would echo through Scottish history for the next sixty years.
Dundee was a professional soldier of extraordinary talent and magnetic personality. He had served in the Dutch and French armies before returning to Scotland, where he earned a fearsome reputation enforcing the government's policy against Covenanting Presbyterians in the southwest — a period known as the "Killing Time." To the Covenanters he was "Bluidy Clavers." To the Highland clans who rallied to his standard, he was the champion of their exiled king.
The political situation was stark. William of Orange and his wife Mary had taken the British throne in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and James VII had fled to France. Most of Lowland Scotland accepted the new regime. But in the Highlands, loyalty to the Stuarts ran deep. Dundee rode north and west, calling the clans to arms. The Camerons under Lochiel, the MacDonalds of Clanranald, Glengarry, and Keppoch, and the Stewarts of Appin answered his call. By midsummer he had assembled a Highland army of around 2,500 men.
The campaign reached its climax on 27 July at the Pass of Killiecrankie in Perthshire, where Dundee's Highlanders destroyed a government army in one of the most devastating charges in military history. But Dundee was struck by a musket ball at the moment of victory and died on the field. Without his leadership, the rising lost its direction and collapsed. The first Jacobite rising demonstrated both the terrifying power of the Highland charge and the fatal vulnerability of a cause that depended on a single charismatic leader — a pattern that would repeat itself at Culloden fifty-seven years later.