William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, was only 23 when, early in 1745, he was appointed the British Army’s Captain General. Launched into battle almost immediately, his defeat at Fontenoy was not discreditable, but in its aftermath he quickly found the demands of coalition warfare taxing. The outbreak of the Jacobite Rebellion in Scotland then thrust upon him the conflicting priorities of home defence or continental campaigning; eventually almost the entire British contingent in the Low Countries was withdrawn.

Once home, Cumberland pursued the retreating Jacobites out of England before unexpectedly finding himself required to take the field in Scotland. His conduct of the 1746 campaign, culminating in the final overthrow of the Jacobite army at Culloden, has always proved controversial.

Cumberland returned to the Low Countries in 1747 to lead a heterogeneous army against the French. He was defeated at the Battle of Laffelt. When the allies’ deteriorating military situation led to the onset of peace, Cumberland was kept fully apprised of the negotiations conducted at Aix-la-Chapelle.

Cumberland was the British Army’s foremost figure of the middle years of the eighteenth century. With the publication of this edition of his letters, new light is shed on the exercising of command during the War of the Austrian Succession.

Alastair Massie worked at the National Army Museum between 1991 and 2018 and was latterly its Head of Research. He received his DPhil from the University of Oxford for his thesis on the political, diplomatic and military aspects of British involvement in the war in the Low Countries, 1744-48.

Dr Jonathan Oate’s doctorate in History (Reading, 2001) focused on responses to the Jacobite rebellions of 1715 and 1745. Subsequently, he has had six books and over thirty articles published on a variety of aspects of the Jacobite campaigns, with more planned for the future. He also has had books published about true crime, local and family history.