THE CAMERON VERSION, CULLODEN

Royal arms of Scotland
The Cameron men threw down their firearms in disgust, grasped their trusted swords and Lochaber axes tightly, pulled their tartan kilts high to the groin and with the unearthly snarl of a Highland yell coming deep from within, disappeared into the black gunpowder smoke soon after the Mackintoshes. The sons of the hound had come to get meat.
The Hanoverians were blinded by the smoke as well, nevertheless, they could most definitely hear the Highlander's charge. The Royal Artillery immediately changed from ball to grape-shot. "No powder was ladled into the barrels this time, but a paper case rammed home and containing charge, leaden balls, nails and old iron." "In mid-field, Appin Stewarts and Camerons collided with Clan Chattan, and for a moment the charge halted. Or perhaps it was halted by the first murderous discharge of grape, the balls and the iron whispering and whistling their killing way. Father stumbled over son, brother over brother in the sudden slaughter. Then the charge came on, but now the Appin men and Camerons swung to the right like animals shying in alarm, and they drove for the left of the Royal line..."
Just as the Camerons were nearing Barrell's and Munro's regiments, on the aforementioned Royal left flank, Lochiel went down. It is said that while advancing at the head of his regiment that he had just fired his pistol and was in the act of drawing his sword when the grape-shot broke both of his ankles. One account has him leaning up on his elbows in the dirt, fifty yards from the action, watching his clan engage the enemy.
"Barrell's and Munro's had held their fire until the bobbing, yelling faces were within twenty yards of them, and then there was time for one volley only from each rank." One Hanoverian soldier later remarked "We had some hundreds of them breathless on the ground. They rallied, and before our left could load (they) came again like lions to the charge, sword in hand..." The furious "leaping, kilted" Highlanders were then upon them. First and foremost, the nearby artillery units were taken out of action. "Sergeant Bristow, at his guns between these battalions, fired grape from both, one discharge and then he was chopped down by a Cameron sword, as were Bombardier Paterson and Gunner Edward Hust. All three crawled beneath the wheels of their guns, with terrible wounds from which they were not to die until two months later." Even their new bayonet training, a technique in which thrusts were directed not at the Highlander in front of them, rather at the one to the right, did not adequately prepare the Hanoverian soldiers for such an onslaught. "They climbed over their dead, which soon lay four deep, and they hacked at the muskets with such maniacal fury that far down the line men could hear the iron clang of sword on barrel."
"The fight was confused and bitter and the (Hanoverian) line swayed, Barrell's lion standard of blue dipping at the center. Lord Robert Kerr, captain of the grenadiers, received the first charging Cameron on the point of his spontoon, but then a second cut him through the head to chin. Stewarts and Camerons flooded through the gap of the guns and cut at the grenadiers of Munro's as well as Barrell's. Some ran to the rear where Lieutenant-Colonel Rich of Barrell's was standing on foot. He held out his slender sword to parry the swing of a broadsword, and both hand and sword were cut from his wrist." A captain of Munro's later recounted that "I thank God I escaped free, but my coat has six balls through it. In the midst of this action the officer that led on the Camerons called to me to take quarter, which I refused and bid the rebel scoundrel advance. He did, and fired at me, but providentially missed his mark. I then shot him dead and took his pistol and dirk..."
Lord George Murray was there along with the Camerons. His "spirited" horse took him past the Hanoverian battalion guns, to the rear of the Royals, where he dismounted and fought his way back to the Camerons. Realizing that they needed reinforcements, he and his broken sword would soon run across the moor, screaming for the second line to advance. "The attack was made with the greatest courage, order and bravery, amidst the hottest fire of small arms and continued fire of cannon with grape-shot, on their flanks, front and rear. They ran upon the points of the bayonets, hewed down the soldiers with their broadswords and drove them back..." Barrell's regiment was "in reality completely beat aside."
In the meanwhile Wolfe's flanking regiment continued it's enfilade firing (which had already decimated the Athollmen to the Cameron's right) into the assembled Camerons and Stewarts of Appin. "Still more of Barrell's platoons fell back to form with Semphill's (in the second line) and the ground between the first and second line began to fill with clansmen."
"For a moment, and it was a very short moment, it seemed as though the Camerons were to sweep Barrell's away. They broke into and through it's center, striking down four officers there...in this close confusion, where a man had no room to swing a sword or to lunge with the bayonet, the clansmen stabbed and thrust with the dirks in their left hands." "...such was the impetuosity of the onset, that they (Barrell's and Munro's) would have been entirely cut to pieces had they not been immediately supported by two regiments from the second line, on the approach of which they retired behind the regiments on the right..."
(TRUTH IS BARRELL'S HELD THEIR GROUND AND TURNED THE TIDE)
In this seemingly short period of time the Camerons and Stewarts reportedly delivered upon Munro's 19 dead and 63 wounded. Barrell's did much worse, with 120 dead or wounded later recorded.
(TRUTH IS 50 DEAD 259 WOUNDED)
"...although it was on it's left that the Royal Army suffered the greatest loss, the figures were nothing against the dead and dying of Lord Murray's clans."
One Hanoverian soldier recounted the action against the Camerons and Stewarts and his English colonel's words: "He bid the men push home with their bayonets, and was so well obeyed that hundreds perished on their points." "After breaking through these two regiments on their right, the Highlanders (Camerons and Stewarts) passing by the two field-pieces which had annoyed them in front, hurried forward to attack the left of the second line. They were met by a tremendous fire of grape-shot from the three field pieces on the left of the second line, and by a discharge of musketry from Bligh's and Semphill's regiments, which carried havoc through their ranks, and made them at first recoil; but, maddened by despair, and utterly regardless of their lives, they rushed upon an enemy whom they felt but could not see amid the cloud of smoke in which the assailants were buried."
"[The Camerons] literally hurled themselves upon the enemy regiments...and endured the terrible assaults of grape-shot and musketry from the two regiments on the left of Cumberland's second line (Semphill's and Bligh's)." Trapped between the Hanoverian first and second lines, the Camerons who would stay and fight were eventually "systematically shot and cut down." "...at last the fury slackened. One by one, and then in twos and threes, and finally in tens, the Stewarts and Camerons fell back, running, or walking with heads turned in defiance."
To their left Clan Chattan, some of whom had also reached the Royal line, was decimated and on the far left wing the MacDonalds, who repeatedly stopped within one hundred yards of the Hanoverian line, were shot dead without ever coming into contact with the enemy. Lord Murray, who by this point had taken command into his own hands, was attempting to advance with reinforcements from the rear, but the battle was, for all intensive purposes, already decided.
The retreating Camerons paused before Lochiel, who was probably being closely attended to by his brother Dr. Archibald. Surrounded by a curtain of clansmen, he was lifted among the procession. "Nothing could excel the love of the Camerons for their Lochiel...for, being wounded in the very height and fury of the battle, two of them took hold of his legs, a third supported his head, while the rest posted themselves round him as an impregnable bulwark..."
In the meanwhile Alexander MacLachlan of Coruanan, performing his hereditary family duty, would stop and tear Lochiel's banner from its pole, saving it from being burnt along with many other regimental colors. It would be 131 years before this banner, held in trust by the MacLachlans, would be returned to Achnacarry.
"Now was the moment for the Argyll men. They stood up behind the dry-stone wall and fired a volley into the flank of the exhausted, staggering retreat. They loaded calmly and fired three more volleys, and then they drew their broadswords. They yelled `Cruachan!' They climbed over the wall and rushed upon the Camerons, but they did not have it all their own way." Citing extremely reduced numbers among Lochiel's regiment and severity of their preceding action, the Campbells thought it safe enough to risk direct confrontation with one of their immortal enemies. In regards to the physical engagement with Clan Cameron, it may be said with certainty that the Highlanders exchanged even amounts of casualties, ending with the Camerons demoralizing the "malicious" Campbells by killing their Commander, Colin Campbell of Ballimore. Lochiel was safely brought from the field.
"The tartan tide was ebbing back all over the moor, and when it passed beyond the three score yards at which a musket was effective, the Royal line stopped it's volleying, although Belford's gunners kept up the grape. The east wind was still blowing strongly, but the rain and the sleet had long since stopped, and the sky which had been steel- grey was now a sulphurous yellow from the smoke. Along the ranks the subalterns and sergeants cried `Rest on your Arms!'