Dunrobin Massacre (Napoleon's World)

The Dunrobin massacre was an event on April 4, 1860 in Scotland during the Sutherland Wars at the end of the Second Clan Rebellion, in which forces loyal to King David V attacked Dunrobin Castle, stronghold of Clan Sutherland, and indiscriminately killed nearly 250 people inside, including the 73 year-old Earl of Sutherland and his son, their wives and many of their daughters, as well as most castle servants, guards, attendants and other members of Clan Sutherland before burning the castle to the ground. The event was such a crippling blow to the Sutherlands that the previously mighty and belligerent clan abruptly sued for peace and the title of Earl of Sutherland fell to the orphaned nine-year-old Cromartie, who was immediately brought to Inverness as a ward of the King and as collateral against any other belligerent Highlander clans seeking to rise against the King.

Along with the previous battle and massacre at Golspie, the Dunrobin massacre marked the final blow of the Royalists against the rebelling clans and reaffirmed the control of the Chattans over the Highlands. However, the "Slaughter of the Innocents" at Dunrobin, as well as the wanton execution of unarmed prisoners at Golspie a few weeks earlier, forever sullied the image of the royal Mackintoshes and eroded what little trust they had with the Highlands, and only deepened the feuds between the Chattans and their enemies beyond Inverness. Within years, conflict and killing would return to the Highlands, and a series of clan rebellions in the late 1870's and 1880's would eventually cause the overthrow of the Mackintoshes and Chattans by the Spaldings in 1889.