The painting depicts a scene during the 1746 Battle of Culloden, in which a group of Jacobite Army troops charge against a line of British government soldiers.

[citation needed] The battle was fought on 16 April 1746, on Drummossie Moor near Inverness in the Scottish Highlands.

Swiss-born artist David Morier began working for the Duke of Cumberland in 1747, and continued to receive payments from him until 1767.

[2] The painting is unusual for the time in its close-up portrayal of violent hand-to-hand combat between two groups of ordinary soldiers.

[16] This may reflect Hanoverian anti-Jacobite propaganda, which sought to portray the Jacobite Highlanders as barbaric, backward and savage.

[17] It is known that all Jacobite Army soldiers were eventually armed with muskets,[19] but some employed the tactic of firing one shot, then dropping their firearm to engage in hand-to-hand combat with their broadswords and dirks.

[20] This tactic was known as the Highland charge; James Ray, who was present during the battle on the government side, wrote in his later book that this happened in the fighting the painting depicts.

The soldiers can be identified as grenadiers by the mitre caps they wear,[25] and would be the regiment's tallest, strongest and most experienced men.

[Note 5] Two walled farm enclosures were features of the southern end of the battlefield, where The King's Own regiment fought.