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Rex Whitworth
Surprisingly, this is the first full-length biography of the Duke of Cumberland whose memory is enshrined in, and tarnished by, the familiar sobriquet 'Butcher of Culloden'. Born in 1721, the third son of George II, then Prince of Wales, he was the first prince of the Hanoverian line to be born in England and to talk and think in the English idiom. Advanced to high military rank at an early age – he was major-general at 21 – he was wounded at Dettingen in 1743 and commended the Allied troops at Fontenoy in 1745. He was next despatched to Scotland to quell the Jacobite rising in support of 'Bonnie Prince Charlie'. His reputed barbarity after defeating the rebels at Culloden earned him the enduring nickname of 'Butcher', but General Whitworth argues that this is not supported by the surviving records and shows that Cumberland in fact did everything in his power by contemporary standards to curb the excesses of his over-zealous subordinates. Certainly the rest of his short life – he died 1765 – gives no indication that he was a man of excessive barbarity. His natural instinct for public service as the duty of a Prince aroused the jealousy of politicians and the accusations from Tory scribblers that he was set on establishing a German style military autocracy. Every step he took to reform a small standing army, chiefly by making the officers more professional, was wrongly interpreted as a step to that end. He preferred, as political friends, the more genial Fox and Sandwich to the jealousies and suspicions of the power-hungry Duke of Newcastle and the temperamental patriotism of the elder Pitt. It seemed a final mortification when, after reluctantly agreeing to defend his father's Electorate against the French at the head of a number of Princely German contingents, he gave way before a superior French army and concluded an armistice, which George II refused to ratify. Summoned home in disgrace, he sought the only way his personal honour could survive injustice by throwing up all his military appointements to retire, like Cincinnatus, to his country estate at Windsor. Employing discharged soldiers, he hugely embellished the park landscape and built up the most famous stud in the history of the British turf, taking a chief part in setting up the Jockey Club. His experience and advice were, however, found indispensable in the strategic direction of the Seven Years War (1756-63) and he ended his life in putting together for his despairing nephew, King George III, the first Rockingham ministry of 1765 which repealed the Stamp Act. He founded the Royal American Regiment (later 60th Rifles) and was the first military chief to send Regular Army units to India. Horace Walpole ranked him as one of the five greatest men of his time and Fortescue declared that, despite his faults, he was the ablest Prince of all his House. After taking a first class degree in Modern History at Balliol before the war, Rex Whitworth served in the Grenadier Guards during the war and retired from the army as a Major-General in 1970. From 1970 to 1981, he was Bursar and Official Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. He has made a special study of British military history in the mid-18th century. In 1958 his biography of Field-Marshal Earl Ligonier, Huguenot Commander-in-Chief, was published and met with considerable acclaim. Subsequently he wrote a short history of his Regiment, the Grenadier Guards, and a number of articles on Wolfe, Amherst and Cumberland. In 1988 he edited the Diary of a young officer of the Royal Artillery, James Wood 1745-1765. Now, after many years of personal research in contemporary documents, he has completed the first full-length biography of William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, 1721-1765.
Published by Leo Cooper, London 1992 Text and Illustration © 1992 Leo Cooper |
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