The War on Bagpipes: Wiping a Single Instrument Off the Urban Map

The bagpipe is possibly the only musical instrument to have been labeled a tool of warfare.

In 1746, after wiping a field clear of rebellious Jacobites at the Battle of Culloden, the British government collected a handful of supposed POWs and put them on trial in York. Included in the group was James Reid, a Scottish man about whom not much is known except that he played the bagpipes.