The Butcher: The Duke of Cumberland and the suppression of the 45

by W.A. Speck

On the 250th anniversary of the Jacobite Rebellion The Butcher, in a new paperback edition, deals with the response to the '45. Where there have been several studies of the uprising from the point of view of the rebels, few have approached it from that of the government and its supporters. When roused from the initial reluctance to take the rising seriously, supporters of the Hanoverian dynasty rallied to its defence and exposed adherents of the Stuarts as a small minority not only in England but even in Scotland.The result was to revenge the spectacular earlier successes of the Young Pretender's forces in the crushing defeat at Culloden. Cumberland's determination that there would not be a third rebellion to add to the '15 and '45 rightly earned him the title of "The Butcher".

Genres: History, Military History, 18th Century

230 pages, Hardcover

First published March 3, 1981

About the author

William Arthur Speck (born 1938) is a British historian specializing in late 17th and 18th-century British and American history.

Speck was educated at Bradford Grammar School and The Queen's College, Oxford, gaining a BA in 1960 and a D.Phil in 1966. He is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Leeds and a Special Professor in the School of English Studies at the University of Nottingham where he co-convenes an Interdisciplinary Eighteenth-Century Research Seminar.

Reviews

[Nedd Ludd · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good book full of very good information. Many citations and anecdotes, however I have to knock it down a star. I am writing a paper for my history class on the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. His thesis disagrees with mine so I have to knock off a star simply on principle.