Sometimes referred to as 'The Last Jacobite Victory', The Battle of Falkirk Muir was an opportunity to inflict a serious blow to the Hanoverian forces, but failure to capitilise on the Hanoverian rout meant that Hawley's army was in reasonable shape to continue its operations, and ultimately support the Duke of Cumberland at Culloden a few months later. It was a larger battle than Culloden, but far less decisive, and the Hanoverian casuaties at Falkirk Muir were a fifth of those sustained by the Jacobites at Culloden. Tellingly, at Culloden most of the Jacobites died during the retreat, which highlights why failure to pursue the fleeing Hanoverians at Falkirk Muir was such an important mistake.
There is a monument to the Battle of Falkirk Muir at the edge of the scarp that played such an important role in its outcome. The monment location has been added as a waypoint for the cache. It's a relatively small marker for such a notable conflict, the history books have always been more focused on Culloden than Falkirk Muir, for obvious reasons - it's decisiveness, and its position as the death of the Jacobite cause once and for all. This has led to Culloden, like Bannockburn, being marked with its own visitor centre.
Battle of Falkirk Muir - Monument
At the time this cache is being published however, an initiative is under way to create a visitor centre to mark the battle, the proposed location is also shown as a waypoint on the cache page.
If you want to learn more about the Battle of Falkirk Muir you can watch a video about it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O359XMwZh38&t=36s
It includes some re-enactment footage as well as some images of recovered battle artifacts.
A detailed written account of the battle is available here:
https://www.battlefieldsofbritain.co.uk/battle_falkirk_1746.html and a full battlefield inventory is available here:
http://data.historic-scotland.gov.uk/data/docs/battlefields/falkirkii_full.pdf
One of the legacies of the battle has been the debate as to the exact locations of the respective groups of troops. Various theories have arisen based on eyewitness accounts, and importantly, the lie of the land - geographical features that played a part in the battle. There has never been a full metal detector survey of the site, and because much of it is farmland and has been for centuries, it has never seen major building excavations of the type that tend to reveal items of archaelogical interest. Archaelogists believe there is likely to be a a significant number of battlefield artifacts beneath the top soil, still to be found.
If you are doing the series in order, this will be the final cache. I hope you have enjoyed your tour around the site of the Battle of Falkirk Muir.
