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Donald MacAskil, 2003
Following the interesting article in November’s Newsletter about the events surrounding the skirmish known as The Rout of Moy’ I would like to acquaint readers with some details of the research I have been conducting over the past year in this area.
Possible new developments involving landfill sites and more probably a wind farm, have prompted me to positively identify historic sites in the neighbourhood of the Pass known as the Stairsneach nan Gaidheal (The Threshold of the Highlands) where the A9 crosses the march between Strathdearn and Strathnairn. The construction of the present A9 and the realignment of some forestry roads initially made map reading confusing. However, an abandoned fragment of Wade’s Road, once recognised, put the main features in their proper perspective.
General George Wade’s military road from Dunkeld to Inverness, completed in 1730, was part of a road system connecting Hanoverian Garrisons in the Highlands to the south. Ironically, fifteen years later it was used by the Jacobite army advancing south and in 1746 by most of them retreating north.
Prince Charles Edward Stuart’s presence at Moy Hall on Sunday 16th February, 1746, with a small guard ahead of the main body of his army, required that a watch be kept on the road to warn of the possible approach of enemy troops from Inverness. Donald Fraser, the Moy Blacksmith and a Captain in Lady Mackintosh’s Regiment, along with four companions, made their way north along Wade’s Road, through the Pass, taking up a position below the rocky outcrop of Creag an Eoin and close to a junction where a track branches off to the west. The terrain here is undulating with gravel hummocks and ridges separated by peaty hollows. Just north of the junction Wade’s Road rises over a hummock where it forms a horizon against the sky. Thus Fraser would have the necessary cover in daylight and he could observe movement on the road in darkness. This is the place where five Jacobites surprised and routed fifteen hundred Hanoverian troops from the Garrison at Inverness on the cold, dark, early morning of the 17th February, 1746. It is clearly marked on the original Ordinance Survey Map of 1875. The Information Board at the first layby on the dual carriageway going north does not indicate the actual site. Moving about 100 metres further north a large boulder sits on the verge directly opposite the skirmish site on Wade’s Road. It was placed there at my late father’s suggestion during the construction of the A9.
Both the ‘Rout’ site and the nearby old cairn on ‘The Grave of the Living Man’ are recorded on the Sites and Monuments Register (SMR) maintained by the Archaeological Section, Planning and Development, Highland Council, Glenurquhart Road, Inverness, IV3 SNX, and can be accessed by computer. It must be pointed out, or course, that these sites are just over the march and are actually in Strathnairn.
I remain actively engaged in the preservation of historic sites in this area including General Wade’s Road which is currently threatened by a proposed access road for the haulage of heavy equipment to a Wind Farm above Farr. 257 years on, I think a cairn to mark the site of ‘The Rout of Moy’ is long overdue.
Here’s Murdo’s account of the Rout, published in Strathdearn newsletter in November 2001:
The Rout of Moy
As Prince Charles Edward Stuart lay asleep at Moy Hall on the night of 16th/17th February 1746, Lord Loudoun, the Cormmander of the Hanoverian Garrison at Inverness, acting on a tip off, set out on the 12 mile journey with a column of 1500 men headed by the Laird of MacLeod. They marched in the darkness along General Wade’s Road, over the river Nairn and up towards the pass known as Stairsneach nan Gaidheal (Threshold of the Highlands).
The Prince, returning north, had arrived at Moy ahead of the main body of his army with a guard of just 50 clansmen who formed a close guard around the house. His hostess, Lady Anne Mackintosh (nee Farquharson of Inverauld) was a staunch Jacobite unlike her absent husband Angus, 22nd Mackintosh Chief, and head of Clan Chattan who, prudently covering all eventualities, had accepted a commission with the Hanoverians and served as a rather inactive Captain attached to the Inverness Garrison.
“Colonel Anne” as she became known, was just 22 years old when she raised over 700 of her husband’s clansmen for the Prince’s cause and 400 of them had fought in the centre of the front line at the Battle of Falkirk (17th January 1746) in the defeat of the Hanoverians.
As darkness fell on the 16th February she decided to supplement the guard at Moy Hall and sent out Donald Fraser the local blacksmith (who was also an officer in the Mackintosh Regiment) and four clansmen to watch the road from Inverness, and it was in the Stairsneach nan Gaidheal, two and a quarter miles away, that Fraser hatched his plan to surprise any intruders. He took up a position just before a local track from the west joins Wade’s Road. To the east stood some peat stacks in a hollow of boggy ground, on the other side a low gravel ridge extended to the west. Fraser probably placed two men among the neat stacks and the other two behind the ridge, with himself by the road, and waited intently.
As Loudoun’s men approached the pass in the frosty, moonless early hours of the 17th, shots rang out amid loud war cries calling invisible Camerons, Mackintoshes, Macdonalds, MacGillivrays and others to attack. Convinced that the whole Highland Army was at hand, the Hanoverians turned and fled back to Inverness. Some accounts say that Donald Ban MacCrimmon, piper to MacLeod, was probably shot dead at close range by Donald Fraser. He was apparently the only fatality. Ironically, he had been captured at the Battle of Inverurie on 23rd December 1745 but he was so revered by Highlanders that the Jacobite pipers refused to play again until he was released.
It should be pointed out that the Garrison troops were mostly inexperienced and drawn from the Highland Independent Companies hurriedly raised by Loudoun after the Battle of Prestonpans on 21st September 1745 where he had personally witnessed the ferocity of the Highland Army. Likewise the Laird of MacLeod had lost the Battle of lnverurie, so it would have been a nervous body of men who took the road to Moy.
Lady Anne had been alerted about Loudoun’s plan, possibly by her husband, which caused some commotion at Moy Hall. However, it is thought the message arrived about the same time (5am) as the action took place in the pass.
PS – Driving north from Moy on the A9 there is a brief account of the skirmish on a placard at the first lay-by on the left past the start of the dual carriageway. However, the action took place on Wade’s Road, 300 yards away to the north-west and through a belt of trees. This important event took place two months before the Battle of Culloden.