Quote Originally Posted by hylander View Post

Then there is the question of whether or not each highlander made all his own stuff, or even if he actually own all pieces of hardware we now consider requisite. For example even the number of swords and targes collected after the Battle of Culloden were minimal compared to the number of muskets picked up by the British.
This is a very good point-- generally the Highlanders made only a few of the items associated with them at the time of the '45 Jacobite Rising. There was no blade making industry in either Scotland or England at this time, and blades were generally imported from Germany for the "schottiche" market. True, these were usually hilted in Scotland, but most were assembled in Glasgow, with only a few made up in Stirling or Inverness. The same is true of dirks, although there is an indication that imported blades were hilted in the Highlands (as opposed to blacksmithed blades, which would have been forged and hilted locally).

During the '45 very few Highlanders possessed targes, for the obvious reason that firearms were on the ascendancy on the battlefield. A targe could deflect a sword, but it couldn't stop a musket ball. Prince Charles's army was so short of targes that many had to be made in Perth and Edinburgh to outfit his men. While it has been impossible (as far as I am aware) to identify the makers of these targes, or even the targes they made, like most "military contract items" they were probably not overly decorated.

At Culloden, once the Highlanders ran out of powder they discarded their muskets and fought on with swords. When finally routed they fled with their swords, hence only those taken from the dead and dying were recovered from the field. Certainly 138 such swords (or at least their blades) were used to make a garden fence at Twickenham House, the London residence of the Duke of Cumberland, and remained in place for more than a century, before being finally removed and sold in the 1890s.