Inniskillings attempt to capture rebel brig, Alloa.

Prince Charles Edward Stuart, 1720 - 1788. Eldest Son of Prince James Francis Edward Stuart; by Allan Ramsay, circa 1745.

During the War of the Austrian Succession, King George II’s son, Prince William The Duke of Cumberland, was defeated at Fontenoy and following other setbacks in Flanders, the French encouraged Charles Edward ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ to lead a Jacobite revolt to take back the British crown for the Stuarts. He landed with a small band of his supporters on 25 July 1745 at Moidart in Inverness-shire. The Highlanders rose and following the Battle of Prestonpans on 2 October, his rebel force moved south and was in Derby by 15 December. However, at the approach of superior forces he turned back to Scotland where he laid siege to Stirling Castle with a view to securing Scotland north of the Firths of Clyde and Forth.

Blakeney’s Inniskillings marched north under General Wade to Newcastle-on-Tyne and then across the border into Scotland, arriving in Edinburgh by early January. Ironically, before the siege, in August 1745, General Blakeney* plus his ADC, Captain (later General) William Haviland, had been sent to ready the defences of Stirling and had to remain in the castle throughout the seige.

Lieutenant Colonel Leighton, commanding the Inniskillings in Edinburgh, took 300 men to assist two men-of-war in capturing a rebel brig in the Firth of Forth at Alloa where it was providing guns for the rebels besieging Stirling. On 21 January 1746, the Inniskillings, covered by fire from two sloops, landed. Due to a series of (unrecorded) mishaps the sloops were unable to provide supporting fire and the Inniskillings re-embarked without having achieved the capture of the rebel brig; however, the delay imposed on the rebel guns bound for Stirling delayed the rebels' siege preparations.

*
Brigadier General William Blakeney was the Colonel of what he always referred to as, 'His Majesty's Enniskillen Regiment of Foot'. He died aged 89 on 20 September 1791.