The clan held a strategic importance out of proportion to numbers due to the compact nature of their lands and ability to act as a cohesive unit; in contrast, many of their rivals were scattered across different areas and riven by internal feuds.

Despite considerable misgivings in launching the rebellion, Lochiel played an important role in the course of the rising, being among the most prominent of the Highland chiefs and commanding a regiment which was widely regarded as being the most elite and reliable component of the Jacobite army.

Upon escaping to France in late 1746, he was appointed Colonel of the Régiment d'Albanie, the Scottish Guards of the French Royal Army, and made a member of the Order of Saint Michael by Louis XV.

[6] Alexander was a Jesuit priest,[5][6][7] who was captured at the Battle of Culloden and died of disease and mistreatment awaiting trial; Archibald was the physician of Prince Charles and escaped with Lochiel in 1746, but was arrested when he returned to Scotland in 1753 and executed at Tyburn.

[12] Poverty was particularly marked in the Western Isles and Lochaber, made worse by fines imposed after the 1715 Rising; this led to abuses such as the secret and illegal sale of clan members into human trafficking and indentured servitude by MacDonald of Sleat and Norman MacLeod.

[13] Highland chiefs traditionally assigned the estate management of clan territory to tacksmen, generally relatives, who both trained and led local clansmen during military service in addition to their rent collecting duties.

[16] These reduced the power of Jacobite chiefs like Lochiel, Glengarry, Clanranald, Keppoch and Appin; combined with their dire financial position, by 1743 they were reportedly faced with "selling their land or conforming.

"[17] Largely dormant since 1719, the prospects for a Stuart restoration revived in 1740 when the War of the Austrian Succession again pitted Britain against King Louis XV of France, who sought ways to divert as much of the British Army as possible from the key battlefield in Flanders.

Lochiel and six colleagues, including his father-in-law Sir James Campbell, formed an association committing to a regime change war aimed at a Stuart restoration, but only with French military backing.

[18] In late 1743, Louis XV proposed a landing in England to restore the Stuarts; Prince Charles travelled to Dunkirk to join the invasion force but the plan was abandoned in March 1744 after the French fleet was severely damaged by winter storms.

The process took over three weeks and Lochiel finally did so only when Charles gave him a personal guarantee for "the full value of his estate should the rising prove abortive," and Glengarry provided a written undertaking to raise the Macdonalds.

'[23] It is often claimed the government forced him into it by ordering his arrest but there is little evidence this was a factor; warrants for Lochiel, Glengarry, Clanranald and others were issued in late June, a month before Charles landed and not executed.

[27] Strategy was determined by the War Council, dominated by the West Highland chiefs who provided the bulk of the Jacobite Army, including Lochiel, Keppoch, Young Clanranald, Glengarry and Stewart of Appin.

Despite this, on 1 February they abandoned Stirling and retreated north to Inverness, while Lochiel took his regiment to invest Fort William, still held by government troops, at the southern end of the Great Glen.

They abandoned the siege to rejoin the main army in time for the Battle of Culloden on 16 April; the Camerons suffered heavy losses attacking the government left, while Lochiel was severely wounded and carried off the field.

Numerous eulogies praising Lochiel were published in the years following his death; 19th-century literature is equally well disposed towards him, by the likes of Sir Walter Scott, Home, Campbell and Smibert, placing him a "Highland hero ... firmly in the Scottish pantheon".

'[47] To this day, it is a tradition that whenever the present Clan Cameron Chief enters on an official visit to Glasgow, the bells of the Tolbooth are rung to commemorate his forebear, and specifically his action in preventing the city being sacked by Prince Charles's troops in 1746.