Working The Trapline — Rangers, Outlaws & Jacobites

Gary Zaboly posted a detail from what he described as a much larger piece that will feature in his and Tim Todish’s forthcoming second volume in their Rangers of the French & Indian War series. The first volume covered Rogers Rangers; the second, if I understand correctly, will move south and cover some of the mounted Ranger outfits that operated from Virginia to Georgia.

I have long admired Zaboly’s work. He goes to considerable lengths to be accurate in his historical depictions. I’m eager to discover the caper here. The Ranger seems to be observing tracks….

*

Speaking of Rangers down Virginny way… Patrick O’Donnell was a guest on Jack Murphy’s The Team House Podcast. Murphy was a Ranger and Green Beret, so this is his lineage. If you haven’t read the book yet, this is a good, deep dive.

*

A while back, I posted on the outlaw country of the Winding Stair in Arkansas/Oklahoma. Here’s a smokin’ live version of the Winding Stair Mountain Blues.

*

Diana Gabaldon — author of the Outlander books — plugged the work of Scottish author and historian Maggie Craig. I bit, and picked up her non-fiction work on the Jacobite ’45.

I put Damn’ Rebel Bitches on the nightstand and am enjoying it quite a lot. Craig’s style is characterized as “racy” and it’s a swashbuckling read, but she’s done the digging into the boggy ground of Jacobite history.

I particularly appreciate the story of Col. Anne Mackintosh, who, in defiance of her anti-Jacobite husband, raised 300 troops for Bonnie Prince Charlie. While her husband was in Hanoverian service away from their estate at Mor Hall, she hosted the Prince and his retinue. When British troops moved out of Inverness on a raid to capture the Prince, she got the intel and sent out five(!) of her household to fire their muskets, shout Clan war cries, and crash about in the brush to convince the Brits that there was a formidable Jacobite force between them and their target, giving time for the Prince to skedaddle.

It worked even better than that. The government force turned tail and sprinted back to Inverness in what became known as the Rout of Mor. You could readily pick a fight with a British officer after that by alluding to the embarrassing incident.

Later, Lord Mackintosh was captured by Jacobites and remanded into his wife’s custody. She greeted him, “Your servant, Captain.” He greeted her, “Your servant, Colonel.” Good stuff.

*

The raid that rescued four Israeli hostages in Gaza was quite an operation…

Times of Israel:

Four Israeli hostages were rescued alive from Hamas captivity Saturday in a daring daylight operation in the central Gaza Strip, the military announced.

Noa Argamani, 26, Almog Meir Jan, 21, Andrey Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 40, had been abducted from the Supernova music festival near the community of Re’im on the morning of October 7, when some 3,000 Hamas-led terrorists killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostages in a murderous rampage in southern Israel.

Officers of police’s elite Yamam counter-terrorism unit, along with Shin Bet agents, simultaneously raided two Hamas-controlled multi-story buildings in the heart of central Gaza’s Nuseirat, a joint statement said. Argamani was rescued at one site, while Meir Jan, Kozlov, and Ziv were at the second location…

…Yamam Chief Inspector Arnon Zmora, who commanded the rescue team at the building where three hostages were being held, was critically wounded by Hamas fire. He was brought to an Israeli hospital, but died shortly after. The Hamas guards were killed in the exchange.