Author: Purple Brolly

The Battle of Trafalgar was won under the inspired leadership of Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson and, after he was shot dead, Vice Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood. It took place on 21st October 1805 off the coast of Cape Trafalgar in south-west Spain and was both a show of naval supremacy and a dismissal of Napoleon’s plans to invade England.

Nelson, a brave patriot, sent the message to his side: “England expects that every man shall do his duty”. Sailing in HMS Victory, he led twenty-seven British ships and not one was lost. His French and Spanish opponents had two-thirds of their thirty-three ships either captured and plundered, or destroyed. The Battle took five hours and was distinguished by a daring new strategy, typical of Nelson’s style. Instead of going head-to-head along a line, he went at right angles in two columns.

The bicentennial was celebrated in 2005 by various events, including the A30 from Falmouth to London being dubbed ‘Trafalgar Way’. This was to mark the journey taken by the messenger who had the first news of the victory and Nelson’s death. Trafalgar Square in London was so named in 1830 and Nelson’s Column, standing 169ft. 3in. high, was completed in 1843.

(Image: Louis-Philippe Crépin (1772-1851) at Wikimedia Commons / Public domain)

Up to the early ninth century, the Scots and the Picts had not yet unified to form the country of Scotland, but the king of the Picts, Kenneth MacAlpin (in modern spelling), began the process and is generally regarded as the first king of Scotland. It is said that he killed his seven rivals to the throne in one fell swoop. King Kenneth I reigned from 843 until his death from disease in 858. He lived in Forteviot and  is buried on the isle of Iona.

Unfortunately, a sideways system of inheritance that prevailed in Scotland at that time meant that successive monarchs did not reign for very long, as they were either killed in battle or by skullduggery. An heir was not the child of the outgoing monarch, but the nephew or the brother or the uncle, since the family line ran through the female blood relatives rather than the wives.

After many kings had been slain, including King Donald II who reigned for just one year, eventually King Malcolm II changed the succession rules so that offspring were first in line. He remained on the throne for twenty-nine years from 1005 to 1034, though he was still killed in battle.

(Image of Scone Palace where Scottish monarchs were crowned: G. Laird at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)