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The Nitpicker’s Guide to Ancient Warfare: Operations

Am half-way through Chapter 7 of 10. Publication is aimed for end September, assuming I can get the interior art sorted by then.
 
It was, obviously, more complicated than I laid out, but the choice of the battlefield was idiotic.

Actually I think I might have a correction that strengthens your overall argument.

I do not know the battle in any depth so like anyone on the internet who wants to debate historians I just opened wikipedia.

Anyway the correction as such is that the site of the battle was pretty much taken out of Charlie's hands because whilst there was a more tactically favourable ground nearby the officers who had scouted it out disagreed over how advantageous it was due to some limitations of its geography but also the actual battle site was far more proximate to the main road leading to the Jacobite's sole logistics hub which they absolutely needed to keep their army in any semblance of fighting shape. Allowing themselves to be bypassed or abandoning their position entirely carried a very real risk of their whole army disintegrating.

The attempted night attack was based on their most successful engagement of the war so far and was in part a way to even the odds against a superior force. It failing then left them exposed, tired and faced with the same problem of fight or disintegrate.

Effectively Charile was not an idiot for choosing to fight at Culloden, he was an idiot for allowing the strategic situation to get so bad he no choice but to fight at Culloden because his other options all seemed more likely to end in disaster. Operational factors had stripped him of tactical options, as a General it was his job to not let that happen.
 
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Thanks. Many thanks. I can tidy up that section.
I really need to stress that this is just me browsing the wikipedia page.

If you've got actual serious historical sources for your interpretation please don't change anything, I just got curious about the battle so skimmed the wiki during my break and noticed there was a lot of page space given to why such a poor battlefield ended up being chosen and the conclusion seemed to be firmly it wasn't actually chosen as such so much as the army ended up pretty close to one of a couple potential battle locations it had scouted out before deciding to gamble on the night attack.

It wasn't just one terrible decision so much as the perceived only option as a result of previous bad decisions and factors beyond their control.
 
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