The 'Fog Of War' extended to many aspects of the battle, including the extent of the casualities on both sides. Estimates vary but it's thought the Jacobites got off lightly with around 50 dead and 80 wounded. The Hanoverians sustained 70 dead and 300 wounded. These sound like comparitively small numbers for armies of 8000 and 7000 respectively - the Jacobean fatality rate of 0.006% in particular, is strikingly small for a pitched battle.
Eyewitness accounts suggest the figures could be significantly higher. A Jacobean officer named James Johnstone, of Edinburgh, was sent to guard the enmired Hanoverian cannons, captured after the Hanoverians had fled the battlefield. His account of walking through the darkness to the cannons in the area of what is now Summerford Park, is quite chilling.
"The sergeant carried a lantern; but the light was soon extinguished, and by that accident we immediately lost our way, and wandered a long time at the foot of the hill, among heaps of dead bodies, which their whiteness rendered visible…To add to the disagreeableness of our situation from the horror of the scene, the wind and the rain were full in our faces. I even remarked a trembling and strong agitation in my horse, which constantly shook when it was forced to put its feet on the heaps of dead bodies and to climb over them…..on my return to Falkirk I felt myself relieved from an oppressive burden: but the horrid spectacle I had witnessed was for a long time, fresh in my mind."
As was typical of battles of this period, great pits were dug the following day and the naked bodies, stripped bare in the night by the locals, or victorious clansmen, were laid to rest. A little copse of trees beside Dumyat Drive nearby, is thought to mark one of these burial pits, and another burial pit lies close to the present Falkirk High Station.
