7 minute read
La Belle Rebelle
ABOVE: Portrait of Lady Anne Mackintosh, Jacobite of the Clan Farquharson, by Allan Ramsay
A staunch Jacobite, Lady Anne Mackintosh helped rally the troops for the 1745 rising, despite her husband working on the side of the government
Words by GAVIN D SMITH
LEFT TO RIGHT:
‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’, Charles Edward Stuart; Invercauld Castle, near Braemar, Lady Anne’s birthplace
An attractive, sociable woman… One gets the impression, however, that every man who met her was a wee bit in love with Anne Mackintosh
Enter the term ‘Jacobite heroine’ into any internet search engine and the name ‘Flora MacDonald’ will pop up.
While Flora undoubtedly played a vital part in the escape of Prince Charles Edward Stuart – aka ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ – to France after the failure of the 1745-46 Jacobite rising, many other women were actively involved in the campaign to restore a Stuart monarch to the British throne, yet their stories are rarely told.
Of these now neglected women, none deserves the epithet ‘Jacobite heroine’ more than Lady Anne Mackintosh, whose story is remarkable.
The daughter of John Farquharson of Invercauld, a clan chief and a staunch Jacobite, Anne was born in 1723, near Braemar. In her book, Damn’ Rebel Bitches: The Women of the ’45, author Maggie Craig describes Anne as: “An attractive, sociable woman who’d had many suitors and admirers. One gets the impression, however, that every man who met her was a wee bit in love with Anne Mackintosh.”
At the age of 19, Anne married Aeneas (Angus) Mackintosh, chief of Clan Mackintosh, who was 20 years her senior. Angus was a captain in the Black Watch regiment, serving the Hanoverian establishment against which the Jacobite forces fought.
Craig writes: “One contemporary observer said that Anne was head over heels in love with her husband. At a distance of two and a half
centuries, however, he comes across as a rather weak character, who had great difficulty deciding which side of the fence he should be on.”
Nonetheless, when the Jacobite rising began in August 1745, Angus Mackintosh did his duty as a loyal government officer, while his wife was in no doubt as to which side she supported. With Prince Charles having arrived in Scotland from France and the rising in progress, Anne spent more than a fortnight riding through the countryside around the Mackintosh residence of Moy Hall, a dozen miles south of Inverness, raising troops for the Jacobite cause.
Craig writes that: “Her riding habit was of tartan cloth trimmed with lace and she wore the traditional blue bonnet of the Scottish fighting man on her head. She carried a bag of money – and a pair of pistols. If one of her husband’s tenants could not be charmed or bribed into volunteering, Anne Farquharson was more than prepared to use threats.”
During those two weeks, Anne recruited more than 300 men – a feat that earned her the lifelong nickname ‘Colonel Anne’. As a woman, she was unable to command the soldiers she had recruited in battle and therefore, placed them in the care of her husband’s cousin, Alexander MacGillivray of Dunmaglass. They duly fought at the Battle of Falkirk on 17 January 1746, which saw the Jacobite forces win the day.
A few weeks later, Prince Charles was staying at Moy Hall when word reached Anne Mackintosh via her mother-in-law that a force of 1,500 government troops, commanded by Lord Loudoun and including her husband, was preparing to mount a night raid on the hall. Their aim was to capture the prince and claim the lavish £30,000 bounty that had been placed on his head.
It may well be that the warning via Anne’s mother-in-law came initially from her husband, Angus, as he would certainly not have wanted the prince to be captured in his own home, where the prince was being harboured by Anne. It’s possible he didn’t want the prince captured at all, as his loyalty to the Hanoverians has always been in some doubt.
Once warned of Loudoun’s intentions, Anne Mackintosh came up with a ruse to confuse the government troops. She sent out five of her
LEFT TO RIGHT:
Portrait of the Duke of Cumberland, mid-18th century, by English School; the sun sets over Culloden Moor battlefield
servants, armed with guns, to run around near the soldiers, shouting various battle cries to make Loudoun and his men think they were about to come face to face with the main Jacobite army. Remarkably, the ploy worked, with the government troops fleeing in what became known as ‘The Rout of Moy’.
The following month, however, 300 members of Loudoun’s force were captured by the Jacobites, and among their number was Angus Mackintosh. Prince Charles released Mackintosh on parole into his wife’s custody, exclaiming: “He could not be in better security, or more honourably treated.”
The prince referred to Anne as ‘La Belle Rebelle’, though government propaganda portrayed her as an ugly Amazonian creature who
possessed nothing in the way of beauty at all. When Angus was handed over to his wife, she greeted him with the words: “Your servant, captain,” to which he replied: “Your servant, colonel.”
Roles were soon to be reversed, however, with Anne Mackintosh being arrested following the defeat of the Jacobite army at Culloden Moor on 16 April 1746. Anne was held prisoner in Inverness, though she seems to have been well treated and was allowed to visit friends.
After a while, Anne was released into the care of her mother-in-law and, ultimately, she and Angus resumed their married life together, presumably managing to put past differences behind them – if indeed those differences were as great as we’ve been led to believe.
As Euan Macpherson, author of The Last Jacobite Heroine, explained in The National newspaper (29 August 2020): “Today we live in a secular age where many people do not believe in the existence of God. This was not so in 18th-century Scotland, where attendance at church was high, and the minister was an important part of the community. To take an oath before God was something that could not be reneged on.
“When war broke out, Angus Mackintosh found himself trapped by his oath. He rode off to fight for King George. But tellingly, he did not ask anyone else to fight with him and he certainly did not raise his clan for the House of Hanover.”
A few years after the Jacobite defeat, Angus and Anne Mackintosh were introduced to the Duke of Cumberland at a ball in London. ‘Butcher Cumberland’, as he was known in the Highlands, had led the government forces during the rising and wreaked bloody revenge on those who had supported Prince Charles in the aftermath of Culloden. The duke asked Anne Mackintosh to dance to a ‘pro-government’ tune, and in return it is said she asked him to dance to one favoured by the Jacobites.
Angus and Anne remained a couple until his death in 1770, after which Anne moved to Leith, where she died in 1787, aged 64. Euan Macpherson declares that: “Anne is Scotland’s forgotten heroine. She lies in an unmarked grave in Leith. This remarkable woman took up the sword for king and country knowing she was doing so in defiance of her husband: she and her clansmen suffered enormously during the brutal aftermath.”
Flora MacDonald is commemorated in story and song, with a conspicuous monument to her name at her burial place of Kilmuir, in the north of Skye. Surely, Anne Mackintosh also deserves similar recognition for the important role she played in the Jacobite rising of 45/46, perhaps starting with some fitting commemoration at her final resting place? S
