No More Learning

Dundee, after his flight from Edinburgh, had retired to his country seat
in that valley through which the Glamis descends to the ancient castle
of Macbeth. Here he remained quiet during some time. He protested that
he had no intention of opposing the new government. He declared himself
ready to return to Edinburgh, if only he could be assured that he should
be protected against lawless violence; and he offered to give his word
of honour, or, if that were not sufficient, to give bail, that he would
keep the peace. Some of his old soldiers had accompanied him, and formed
a garrison sufficient to protect his house against the Presbyterians
of the neighbourhood. Here he might possibly have remained unharmed
and harmless, had not an event for which he was not answerable made his
enemies implacable, and made him desperate, [335]

An emissary of James had crossed from Ireland to Scotland with letters
addressed to Dundee and Balcarras. Suspicion was excited. The messenger
was arrested, interrogated, and searched; and the letters were found.
Some of them proved to be from Melfort, and were worthy of him. Every
line indicated those qualities which had made him the abhorrence of his
country and the favourite of his master. He announced with delight the
near approach of the day of vengeance and rapine, of the day when the
estates of the seditious would be divided among the loyal, and when many
who had been great and prosperous would be exiles and beggars. The King,
Melfort said, was determined to be severe. Experience had at length
convinced his Majesty that mercy would be weakness. Even the Jacobites
were disgusted by learning that a Restoration would be immediately
followed by a confiscation and a proscription. Some of them did not
hesitate to say that Melfort was a villain, that he hated Dundee and
Balcarras, that he wished to ruin them, and that, for that end, he had
written these odious despatches, and had employed a messenger who had
very dexterously managed to be caught. It is however quite certain that
Melfort, after the publication of these papers, continued to stand as
high as ever in the favour of James. It can therefore hardly be doubted
that, in those passages which shocked even the zealous supporters of
hereditary right, the Secretary merely expressed with fidelity the
feelings and intentions of his master, [336] Hamilton, by virtue of the
powers which the Estates had, before their adjournment, confided to him,
ordered Balcarras and Dundee to be arrested. Balcarras was taken and
confined, first in his own house, and then in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh.
But to seize Dundee was not so easy an enterprise. As soon as he
heard that warrants were out against him, he crossed the Dee with his
followers, and remained a short time in the wild domains of the House
of Gordon. There he held some communications with the Macdonalds and
Camerons about a rising. But he seems at this time to have known little
and cared little about the Highlanders. For their national character he
probably felt the dislike of a Saxon, for their military character the
contempt of a professional soldier. He soon returned to the Lowlands,
and stayed there till he learned that a considerable body of troops had
been sent to apprehend him, [337] He then betook himself to the hill
country as his last refuge, pushed northward through Strathdon and
Strathbogie, crossed the Spey, and, on the morning of the first of May,
arrived with a small band of horsemen at the camp of Keppoch before
Inverness.

The new situation in which Dundee was now placed, the new view of
society which was presented to him, naturally suggested new projects to
his inventive and enterprising spirit. The hundreds of athletic Celts
whom he saw in their national order of battle were evidently not allies
to be despised. If he could form a great coalition of clans, if he could
muster under one banner ten or twelve thousand of those hardy warriors,
if he could induce them to submit to the restraints of discipline, what
a career might be before him!

A commission from King James, even when King James was securely seated
on the throne, had never been regarded with much respect by Coll of the
Cows. That chief, however, hated the Campbells with all the hatred of a
Macdonald, and promptly gave in his adhesion to the cause of the House
of Stuart. Dundee undertook to settle the dispute between Keppoch and
Inverness. The town agreed to pay two thousand dollars, a sum which,
small as it might be in the estimation of the goldsmiths of Lombard
Street, probably exceeded any treasure that had ever been carried
into the wilds of Coryarrick. Half the sum was raised, not without
difficulty, by the inhabitants; and Dundee is said to have passed his
word for the remainder, [338]

He next tried to reconcile the Macdonalds with the Mackintoshes, and
flattered himself that the two warlike tribes, lately arrayed against
each other, might be willing to fight side by side under his command.
But he soon found that it was no light matter to take up a Highland
feud. About the rights of the contending Kings neither clan knew any
thing or cared any thing. The conduct of both is to be ascribed to local
passions and interests. What Argyle was to Keppoch, Keppoch was to the
Mackintoshes. The Mackintoshes therefore remained neutral; and their
example was followed by the Macphersons, another branch of the race of
the wild cat. This was not Dundee's only disappointment. The Mackenzies,
the Frasers, the Grants, the Munros, the Mackays, the Macleods, dwelt
at a great distance from the territory of Mac Callum More. They had no
dispute with him; they owed no debt to him: and they had no reason to
dread the increase of his power. They therefore did not sympathize with
his alarmed and exasperated neighbours, and could not be induced to join
the confederacy against him, [339] Those chiefs, on the other hand, who
lived nearer to Inverary, and to whom the name of Campbell had long been
terrible and hateful, greeted Dundee eagerly, and promised to meet him
at the head of their followers on the eighteenth of May. During the
fortnight which preceded that day, he traversed Badenoch and Athol, and
exhorted the inhabitants of those districts to rise in arms. He dashed
into the Lowlands with his horsemen, surprised Perth, and carried off
some Whig gentlemen prisoners to the mountains. Meanwhile the fiery
crosses had been wandering from hamlet to hamlet over all the heaths and
mountains thirty miles round Ben Nevis; and when he reached the trysting
place in Lochaber he found that the gathering had begun. The head
quarters were fixed close to Lochiel's house, a large pile built
entirely of fir wood, and considered in the Highlands as a superb
palace. Lochiel, surrounded by more than six hundred broadswords, was
there to receive his guests. Macnaghten of Macnaghten and Stewart of
Appin were at the muster with their little clans. Macdonald of Keppoch
led the warriors who had, a few months before, under his command, put
to flight the musketeers of King James. Macdonald of Clanronald was of
tender years: but he was brought to the camp by his uncle, who acted
at Regent during the minority. The youth was attended by a picked body
guard composed of his own cousins, all comely in appearance, and good
men of their hands. Macdonald of Glengarry, conspicuous by his dark
brow and his lofty stature, came from that great valley where a chain of
lakes, then unknown to fame, and scarcely set down in maps, is now
the daily highway of steam vessels passing and reprising between the
Atlantic and the German Ocean. None of the rulers of the mountains had a
higher sense of his personal dignity, or was more frequently engaged in
disputes with other chiefs. He generally affected in his manners and
in his housekeeping a rudeness beyond that of his rude neighbours, and
professed to regard the very few luxuries which had then found their way
from the civilised parts of the world into the Highlands as signs of the
effeminacy and degeneracy of the Gaelic race. But on this occasion he
chose to imitate the splendour of Saxon warriors, and rode on horseback
before his four hundred plaided clansmen in a steel cuirass and a coat
embroidered with gold lace. Another Macdonald, destined to a lamentable
and horrible end, led a band of hardy freebooters from the dreary
pass of Glencoe. Somewhat later came the great Hebridean potentates.
Macdonald of Sleat, the most opulent and powerful of all the grandees
who laid claim to the lofty title of Lord of the Isles, arrived at
the head of seven hundred fighting men from Sky. A fleet of long boats
brought five hundred Macleans from Mull under the command of their
chief, Sir John of Duart. A far more formidable array had in old times
followed his forefathers to battle. But the power, though not the
spirit, of the clan had been broken by the arts and arms of the
Campbells. Another band of Macleans arrived under a valiant leader, who
took his title from Lochbuy, which is, being interpreted, the Yellow
Lake, [340]

It does not appear that a single chief who had not some special cause to
dread and detest the House of Argyle obeyed Dundee's summons. There
is indeed strong reason to believe that the chiefs who came would have
remained quietly at home if the government had understood the politics
of the Highlands. Those politics were thoroughly understood by one able
and experienced statesman, sprung from the great Highland family of
Mackenzie, the Viscount Tarbet. He at this conjuncture pointed out to
Melville by letter, and to Mackay in conversation, both the cause and
the remedy of the distempers which seemed likely to bring on Scotland
the calamities of civil war. There was, Tarbet said, no general
disposition to insurrection among the Gael. Little was to be apprehended
even from those popish clans which were under no apprehension of being
subjected to the yoke of the Campbells. It was notorious that the ablest
and most active of the discontented chiefs troubled themselves not at
all about the questions which were in dispute between the Whigs and the
Tories. Lochiel in particular, whose eminent personal qualities made him
the most important man among the mountaineers, cared no more for James
than for William. If the Camerons, the Macdonalds, and the Macleans
could be convinced that, under the new government, their estates and
their dignities would be safe, if Mac Callum More would make some
concessions, if their Majesties would take on themselves the payment of
some arrears of rent, Dundee might call the clans to arms; but he would
call to little purpose. Five thousand pounds, Tarbet thought, would be
sufficient to quiet all the Celtic magnates; and in truth, though that
sum might seem ludicrously small to the politicians of Westminster,
though it was not larger than the annual gains of the Groom of the Stole
or of the Paymaster of the Forces, it might well be thought immense by
a barbarous potentate who, while he ruled hundreds of square miles, and
could bring hundreds of warriors into the field, had perhaps never had
fifty guineas at once in his coffers, [341]

Though Tarbet was considered by the Scottish ministers of the new
Sovereigns as a very doubtful friend, his advice was not altogether
neglected. It was resolved that overtures such as he recommended should
be made to the malecontents. Much depended on the choice of an agent;
and unfortunately the choice showed how little the prejudices of the
wild tribes of the hills were understood at Edinburgh. A Campbell was
selected for the office of gaining over to the cause of King William
men whose only quarrel to King William was that he countenanced the
Campbells. Offers made through such a channel were naturally regarded as
at once snares and insults. After this it was to no purpose that Tarbet
wrote to Lochiel and Mackay to Glengarry. Lochiel returned no answer to
Tarbet; and Glengarry returned to Mackay a coldly civil answer, in which
the general was advised to imitate the example of Monk, [342]

Mackay, meanwhile, wasted some weeks in marching, in countermarching,
and in indecisive skirmishing. He afterwards honestly admitted that the
knowledge which he had acquired, during thirty years of military service
on the Continent, was, in the new situation in which he was placed,
useless to him. It was difficult in such a country to track the enemy.
It was impossible to drive him to bay. Food for an invading army was not
to be found in the wilderness of heath and shingle; nor could supplies
for many days be transported far over quaking bogs and up precipitous
ascents. The general found that he had tired his men and their horses
almost to death, and yet had effected nothing. Highland auxiliaries
might have been of the greatest use to him: but he had few such
auxiliaries. The chief of the Grants, indeed, who had been persecuted
by the late government, and had been accused of conspiring with the
unfortunate Earl of Argyle, was zealous on the side of the Revolution.
Two hundred Mackays, animated probably by family feeling, came from the
northern extremity of our island, where at midsummer there is no night,
to fight under a commander of their own name: but in general the clans
which took no part in the insurrection awaited the event with cold
indifference, and pleased themselves with the hope that they should
easily make their peace with the conquerors, and be permitted to assist
in plundering the conquered.

An experience of little more than a month satisfied Mackay that there
was only one way in which the Highlands could be subdued. It was idle
to run after the mountaineers up and down their mountains. A chain of
fortresses must be built in the most important situations, and must be
well garrisoned. The place with which the general proposed to begin was
Inverlochy, where the huge remains of an ancient castle stood and still
stand. This post was close to an arm of the sea, and was in the heart of
the country occupied by the discontented clans. A strong force stationed
there, and supported, if necessary, by ships of war, would effectually
overawe at once the Macdonalds, the Camerons, and the Macleans, [343]

While Mackay was representing in his letters to the council at Edinburgh
the necessity of adopting this plan, Dundee was contending with
difficulties which all his energy and dexterity could not completely
overcome.

The Highlanders, while they continued to be a nation living under a
peculiar polity, were in one sense better and in another sense worse
fitted for military purposes than any other nation in Europe. The
individual Celt was morally and physically well qualified for war, and
especially for war in so wild and rugged a country as his own. He was
intrepid, strong, fleet, patient of cold, of hunger, and of fatigue. Up
steep crags, and over treacherous morasses, he moved as easily as the
French household troops paced along the great road from Versailles
to Marli. He was accustomed to the use of weapons and to the sight of
blood: he was a fencer; he was a marksman; and, before he had ever stood
in the ranks, he was already more than half a soldier.

As the individual Celt was easily turned into a soldier, so a tribe
of Celts was easily turned into a battalion of soldiers. All that was
necessary was that the military organization should be conformed to the
patriarchal organization. The Chief must be Colonel: his uncle or his
brother must be Major: the tacksmen, who formed what may be called the
peerage of the little community, must be the Captains: the company of
each Captain must consist of those peasants who lived on his land, and
whose names, faces, connections, and characters, were perfectly known to
him: the subaltern officers must be selected among the Duinhe Wassels,
proud of the eagle's feather: the henchman was an excellent orderly: the
hereditary piper and his sons formed the band: and the clan became at
once a regiment. In such a regiment was found from the first moment that
exact order and prompt obedience in which the strength of regular armies
consists. Every man, from highest to lowest, was in his proper place,
and knew that place perfectly. It was not necessary to impress by
threats or by punishment on the newly enlisted troops the duty of
regarding as their head him whom they had regarded as their head ever
since they could remember any thing. Every private had, from infancy,
respected his corporal much and his Captain more, and had almost adored
his Colonel. There was therefore no danger of mutiny. There was
as little danger of desertion. Indeed the very feelings which most
powerfully impel other soldiers to desert kept the Highlander to his
standard. If he left it, whither was he to go? All his kinsmen, all
his friends, were arrayed round it. To separate himself from it was to
separate himself for ever from his family, and to incur all the misery
of that very homesickness which, in regular armies, drives so many
recruits to abscond at the risk of stripes and of death. When these
things are fairly considered, it will not be thought strange that the
Highland clans should have occasionally achieved great martial exploits.

But those very institutions which made a tribe of highlanders, all
bearing the same name, and all subject to the same ruler, so formidable
in battle, disqualified the nation for war on a large scale. Nothing was
easier than to turn clans into efficient regiments; but nothing was more
difficult than to combine these regiments in such a manner as to form an
efficient army. From the shepherds and herdsmen who fought in the ranks
up to the chiefs, all was harmony and order. Every man looked up to his
immediate superior, and all looked up to the common head. But with the
chief this chain of subordination ended. He knew only how to govern, and
had never learned to obey. Even to royal proclamations, even to Acts of
Parliament, he was accustomed to yield obedience only when they were in
perfect accordance with his own inclinations. It was not to be expected
that he would pay to any delegated authority a respect which he was
in the habit of refusing to the supreme authority. He thought himself
entitled to judge of the propriety of every order which he received. Of
his brother chiefs, some were his enemies and some his rivals. It was
hardly possible to keep him from affronting them, or to convince him
that they were not affronting him. All his followers sympathized with
all his animosities, considered his honour as their own, and were
ready at his whistle to array themselves round him in arms against the
commander in chief. There was therefore very little chance that by any
contrivance any five clans could be induced to cooperate heartily with
one another during a long campaign. The best chance, however, was
when they were led by a Saxon. It is remarkable that none of the great
actions performed by the Highlanders during our civil wars was performed
under the command of a Highlander. Some writers have mentioned it as
a proof of the extraordinary genius of Montrose and Dundee that those
captains, though not themselves of Gaelic race or speech, should have
been able to form and direct confederacies of Gaelic tribes. But in
truth it was precisely because Montrose and Dundee were not Highlanders,
that they were able to lead armies composed of Highland clans. Had
Montrose been chief of the Camerons, the Macdonalds would never have
submitted to his authority. Had Dundee been chief of Clanronald, he
would never have been obeyed by Glengarry. Haughty and punctilious men,
who scarcely acknowledged the king to be their superior, would not have
endured the superiority of a neighbour, an equal, a competitor. They
could far more easily bear the preeminence of a distinguished stranger,
yet even to such a stranger they would allow only a very limited and a
very precarious authority. To bring a chief before a court martial, to
shoot him, to cashier him, to degrade him, to reprimand him publicly,
was impossible. Macdonald of Keppoch or Maclean of Duart would have
struck dead any officer who had demanded his sword, and told him to
consider himself as under arrest; and hundreds of claymores would
instantly have been drawn to protect the murderer. All that was left to
the commander under whom these potentates condescended to serve was to
argue with them, to supplicate them, to flatter them, to bribe them;
and it was only during a short time that any human skill could preserve
harmony by these means. For every chief thought himself entitled to
peculiar observance; and it was therefore impossible to pay marked
court to any one without disobliging the rest. The general found himself
merely the president of a congress of petty kings. He was perpetually
called upon to hear and to compose disputes about pedigrees, about
precedence, about the division of spoil. His decision, be it what it
might, must offend somebody. At any moment he might hear that his right
wing had fired on his centre in pursuance of some quarrel two hundred
years old, or that a whole battalion had marched back to its native
glen, because another battalion had been put in the post of honour. A
Highland bard might easily have found in the history of the year 1689
subjects very similar to those with which the war of Troy furnished the
great poets of antiquity. One day Achilles is sullen, keeps his tent,
and announces his intention to depart with all his men. The next day
Ajax is storming about the camp, and threatening to cut the throat of
Ulysses.

Hence it was that, though the Highlanders achieved some great exploits
in the civil wars of the seventeenth century, those exploits left no
trace which could be discerned after the lapse of a few weeks. Victories
of strange and almost portentous splendour produced all the consequences
of defeat. Veteran soldiers and statesmen were bewildered by those
sudden turns of fortune. It was incredible that undisciplined men should
have performed such feats of arms. It was incredible that such feats
of arms, having been performed, should be immediately followed by the
triumph of the conquered and the submission of the conquerors. Montrose,
having passed rapidly from victory to victory, was, in the full career
of success, suddenly abandoned by his followers. Local jealousies and
local interests had brought his army together. Local jealousies and
local interests dissolved it. The Gordons left him because they fancied
that he neglected them for the Macdonalds. The Macdonalds left him
because they wanted to plunder the Campbells. The force which had once
seemed sufficient to decide the fate of a kingdom melted away in a few
days; and the victories of Tippermuir and Kilsyth were followed by the
disaster of Philiphaugh. Dundee did not live long enough to experience
a similar reverse of fortune; but there is every reason to believe that,
had his life been prolonged one fortnight, his history would have been
the history of Montrose retold.

Dundee made one attempt, soon after the gathering of the clans in
Lochaber, to induce them to submit to the discipline of a regular army.
He called a council of war to consider this question. His opinion was
supported by all the officers who had joined him from the low country.
Distinguished among them were James Seton, Earl of Dunfermline, and
James Galloway, Lord Dunkeld. The Celtic chiefs took the other side.
Lochiel, the ablest among them, was their spokesman, and argued the
point with much ingenuity and natural eloquence. "Our system,"--such was
the substance of his reasoning, "may not be the best: but we were bred
to it from childhood: we understand it perfectly: it is suited to our
peculiar institutions, feelings, and manners. Making war after our own
fashion, we have the expertness and coolness of veterans. Making war
in any other way, we shall be raw and awkward recruits. To turn us into
soldiers like those of Cromwell and Turenne would be the business of
years: and we have not even weeks to spare. We have time enough to
unlearn our own discipline, but not time enough to learn yours. " Dundee,
with high compliments to Lochiel, declared himself convinced, and
perhaps was convinced: for the reasonings of the wise old chief were by
no means without weight, [344]

Yet some Celtic usages of war were such as Dundee could not tolerate.
Cruel as he was, his cruelty always had a method and a purpose. He still
hoped that he might be able to win some chiefs who remained neutral;
and he carefully avoided every act which could goad them into open
hostility. This was undoubtedly a policy likely to promote the interest
of James; but the interest of James was nothing to the wild marauders
who used his name and rallied round his banner merely for the purpose of
making profitable forays and wreaking old grudges. Keppoch especially,
who hated the Mackintoshes much more than he loved the Stuarts, not only
plundered the territory of his enemies, but burned whatever he could not
carry away. Dundee was moved to great wrath by the sight of the blazing
dwellings. "I would rather," he said, "carry a musket in a respectable
regiment than be captain of such a gang of thieves. " Punishment was of
course out of the question. Indeed it may be considered as a remarkable
proof of the general's influence that Coll of the Cows deigned to
apologize for conduct for which in a well governed army he would have
been shot, [345]

As the Grants were in arms for King William, their property was
considered as fair prize. Their territory was invaded by a party of
Camerons: a skirmish took place: some blood was shed; and many cattle
were carried off to Dundee's camp, where provisions were greatly needed.
This raid produced a quarrel, the history of which illustrates in the
most striking manner the character of a Highland army. Among those who
were slain in resisting the Camerons was a Macdonald of the Glengarry
branch, who had long resided among the Grants, had become in feelings
and opinions a Grant, and had absented himself from the muster of his
tribe. Though he had been guilty of a high offence against the Gaelic
code of honour and morality, his kinsmen remembered the sacred tie which
he had forgotten. Good or bad, he was bone of their bone: he was flesh
of their flesh; and he should have been reserved for their justice. The
name which he bore, the blood of the Lords of the Isles, should have
been his protection. Glengarry in a rage went to Dundee and demanded
vengeance on Lochiel and the whole race of Cameron. Dundee replied that
the unfortunate gentleman who had fallen was a traitor to the clan as
well as to the King. Was it ever heard of in war that the person of an
enemy, a combatant in arms, was to be held inviolable on account of his
name and descent? And, even if wrong had been done, how was it to be
redressed? Half the army must slaughter the other half before a finger
could be laid on Lochiel. Glengarry went away raging like a madman.
Since his complaints were disregarded by those who ought to right him,
he would right himself: he would draw out his men, and fall sword in
hand on the murderers of his cousin. During some time he would listen to
no expostulation. When he was reminded that Lochiel's followers were in
number nearly double of the Glengarry men, "No matter," he cried, "one
Macdonald is worth two Camerons. " Had Lochiel been equally irritable and
boastful, it is probable that the Highland insurrection would have given
little more trouble to the government, and that the rebels would have
perished obscurely in the wilderness by one another's claymores.
But nature had bestowed on him in large measure the qualities of a
statesman, though fortune had hidden those qualities in an obscure
corner of the world. He saw that this was not a time for brawling: his
own character for courage had long been established; and his temper was
under strict government. The fury of Glengarry, not being inflamed
by any fresh provocation, rapidly abated. Indeed there were some who
suspected that he had never been quite so pugnacious as he had affected
to be, and that his bluster was meant only to keep up his own dignity
in the eyes of his retainers. However this might be, the quarrel was
composed; and the two chiefs met, with the outward show of civility, at
the general's table, [346]

What Dundee saw of his Celtic allies must have made him desirous to
have in his army some troops on whose obedience he could depend, and who
would not, at a signal from their colonel, turn their arms against their
general and their king. He accordingly, during the months of May
and June, sent to Dublin a succession of letters earnestly imploring
assistance. If six thousand, four thousand, three thousand, regular
soldiers were now sent to Lochaber, he trusted that his Majesty would
soon hold a court in Holyrood. That such a force might be spared
hardly admitted of a doubt. The authority of James was at that time
acknowledged in every part of Ireland, except on the shores of Lough
Erne and behind the ramparts of Londonderry. He had in that kingdom
an army of forty thousand men. An eighth part of such an army would
scarcely be missed there, and might, united with the clans which were in
insurrection, effect great things in Scotland.
Dundee received such answers to his applications as encouraged him
to hope that a large and well appointed force would soon be sent from
Ulster to join him. He did not wish to try the chance of battle before
these succours arrived, [347] Mackay, on the other hand, was weary
of marching to and fro in a desert. His men were exhausted and out of
heart. He thought it desirable that they should withdraw from the hill
country; and William was of the same opinion.

In June therefore the civil war was, as if by concert between the
generals, completely suspended. Dundee remained in Lochaber, impatiently
awaiting the arrival of troops and supplies from Ireland. It was
impossible for him to keep his Highlanders together in a state of
inactivity. A vast extent of moor and mountain was required to furnish
food for so many mouths. The clans therefore went back to their own
glens, having promised to reassemble on the first summons.

Meanwhile Mackay's soldiers, exhausted by severe exertions and
privations, were taking their ease in quarters scattered over the low
country from Aberdeen to Stirling. Mackay himself was at Edinburgh,
and was urging the ministers there to furnish him with the means
of constructing a chain of fortifications among the Grampians. The
ministers had, it should seem, miscalculated their military resources.
It had been expected that the Campbells would take the field in such
force as would balance the whole strength of the clans which marched
under Dundee. It had also been expected that the Covenanters of the
West would hasten to swell the ranks of the army of King William.
Both expectations were disappointed. Argyle had found his principality
devastated, and his tribe disarmed and disorganized. A considerable time
must elapse before his standard would be surrounded by an array such as
his forefathers had led to battle. The Covenanters of the West were in
general unwilling to enlist. They were assuredly not wanting in courage;
and they hated Dundee with deadly hatred. In their part of the country
the memory of his cruelty was still fresh. Every village had its own
tale of blood. The greyheaded father was missed in one dwelling, the
hopeful stripling in another. It was remembered but too well how the
dragoons had stalked into the peasant's cottage, cursing and damning
him, themselves, and each other at every second word, pushing from the
ingle nook his grandmother of eighty, and thrusting their hands into the
bosom of his daughter of sixteen; how the abjuration had been tendered
to him; how he had folded his arms and said "God's will be done"; how
the Colonel had called for a file with loaded muskets; and how in three
minutes the goodman of the house had been wallowing in a pool of
blood at his own door. The seat of the martyr was still vacant at the
fireside; and every child could point out his grave still green amidst
the heath. When the people of this region called their oppressor a
servant of the devil, they were not speaking figuratively. They believed
that between the bad man and the bad angel there was a close alliance on
definite terms; that Dundee had bound himself to do the work of hell on
earth, and that, for high purposes, hell was permitted to protect its
slave till the measure of his guilt should be full. But, intensely as
these men abhorred Dundee, most of them had a scruple about drawing
the sword for William. A great meeting was held in the parish church of
Douglas; and the question was propounded, whether, at a time when war
was in the land, and when an Irish invasion was expected, it were not a
duty to take arms. The debate was sharp and tumultuous. The orators on
one side adjured their brethren not to incur the curse denounced against
the inhabitants of Meroz, who came not to the help of the Lord against
the mighty. The orators on the other side thundered against sinful
associations. There were malignants in William's Army: Mackay's
own orthodoxy was problematical: to take military service with such
comrades, and under such a general, would be a sinful association. At
length, after much wrangling, and amidst great confusion, a vote was
taken; and the majority pronounced that to take military service would
be a sinful association. There was however a large minority; and, from
among the members of this minority, the Earl of Angus was able to raise
a body of infantry, which is still, after the lapse of more than a
hundred and sixty years, known by the name of the Cameronian Regiment.
The first Lieutenant Colonel was Cleland, that implacable avenger of
blood who had driven Dundee from the Convention. There was no small
difficulty in filling the ranks: for many West country Whigs, who did
not think it absolutely sinful to enlist, stood out for terms subversive
of all military discipline. Some would not serve under any colonel,
major, captain, serjeant, or corporal, who was not ready to sign
the Covenant. Others insisted that, if it should be found absolutely
necessary to appoint any officer who had taken the tests imposed in the
late reign, he should at least qualify himself for command by publicly
confessing his sin at the head of the regiment. Most of the enthusiasts
who had proposed these conditions were induced by dexterous management
to abate much of their demands. Yet the new regiment had a very peculiar
character. The soldiers were all rigid Puritans. One of their first acts
was to petition the Parliament that all drunkenness, licentiousness, and
profaneness might be severely punished. Their own conduct must have been
exemplary: for the worst crime which the most extravagant bigotry could
impute to them was that of huzzaing on the King's birthday. It was
originally intended that with the military organization of the corps
should he interwoven the organization of a Presbyterian congregation.
Each company was to furnish an elder; and the elders were, with the
chaplain, to form an ecclesiastical court for the suppression of
immorality and heresy. Elders, however, were not appointed: but a noted
hill preacher, Alexander Shields, was called to the office of chaplain.
It is not easy to conceive that fanaticism can be heated to a higher
temperature than that which is indicated by the writings of Shields.
According to him, it should seem to be the first duty of a Christian
ruler to persecute to the death every heterodox subject, and the first
duty of every Christian subject to poniard a heterodox ruler. Yet there
was then in Scotland an enthusiasm compared with which the enthusiasm
even of this man was lukewarm. The extreme Covenanters protested against
his defection as vehemently as he had protested against the Black
Indulgence and the oath of supremacy, and pronounced every man who
entered Angus's regiment guilty of a wicked confederacy with malignants,
[348]

Meanwhile Edinburgh Castle had fallen, after holding out more than two
months. Both the defence and the attack had been languidly conducted.
The Duke of Gordon, unwilling to incur the mortal hatred of those at
whose mercy his lands and life might soon be, did not choose to batter
the city. The assailants, on the other hand, carried on their
operations with so little energy and so little vigilance that a constant
communication was kept up between the Jacobites within the citadel
and the Jacobites without. Strange stories were told of the polite and
facetious messages which passed between the besieged and the besiegers.
On one occasion Gordon sent to inform the magistrates that he was going
to fire a salute on account of some news which he had received from
Ireland, but that the good town need not be alarmed, for that his guns
would not be loaded with ball. On another occasion, his drums beat a
parley: the white flag was hung out: a conference took place; and
he gravely informed the enemy that all his cards had been thumbed to
pieces, and begged them to let him have a few more packs. His friends
established a telegraph by means of which they conversed with him across
the lines of sentinels. From a window in the top story of one of the
loftiest of those gigantic houses, a few of which still darken the High
Street, a white cloth was hung out when all was well, and a black
cloth when things went ill. If it was necessary to give more detailed
information, a board was held up inscribed with capital letters so large
that they could, by the help of a telescope, be read on the ramparts of
the castle. Agents laden with letters and fresh provisions managed, in
various disguises and by various shifts, to cross the sheet of water
which then lay on the north of the fortress and to clamber up the
precipitous ascent. The peal of a musket from a particular half moon was
the signal which announced to the friends of the House of Stuart that
another of their emissaries had got safe up the rock. But at length the
supplies were exhausted; and it was necessary to capitulate. Favourable
terms were readily granted: the garrison marched out; and the keys were
delivered up amidst the acclamations of a great multitude of burghers,
[349]

But the government had far more acrimonious and more pertinacious
enemies in the Parliament House than in the Castle. When the Estates
reassembled after their adjournment, the crown and sceptre of Scotland
were displayed with the wonted pomp in the hall as types of the absent
sovereign. Hamilton rode in state from Holyrood up the High Street as
Lord High Commissioner; and Crawford took his seat as President.
Two Acts, one turning the Convention into a Parliament, the other
recognising William and Mary as King and Queen, were rapidly passed and
touched with the sceptre; and then the conflict of factions began, [350]

It speedily appeared that the opposition which Montgomery had organized
was irresistibly strong. Though made up of many conflicting elements,
Republicans, Whigs, Tories, zealous Presbyterians, bigoted Prelatists,
it acted for a time as one man, and drew to itself a multitude of those
mean and timid politicians who naturally gravitate towards the stronger
party. The friends of the government were few and disunited. Hamilton
brought but half a heart to the discharge of his duties. He had always
been unstable; and he was now discontented. He held indeed the highest
place to which a subject could aspire. But he imagined that he had only
the show of power while others enjoyed the substance, and was not sorry
to see those of whom he was jealous thwarted and annoyed. He did not
absolutely betray the prince whom he represented: but he sometimes
tampered with the chiefs of the Club, and sometimes did sly in turns to
those who were joined with him in the service of the Crown.

His instructions directed him to give the royal assent to laws for the
mitigating or removing of numerous grievances, and particularly to a law
restricting the power and reforming the constitution of the Committee of
Articles, and to a law establishing the Presbyterian Church Government,
[351] But it mattered not what his instructions were. The chiefs of the
Club were bent on finding a cause of quarrel. The propositions of
the Government touching the Lords of the Articles were contemptuously
rejected. Hamilton wrote to London for fresh directions; and soon a
second plan, which left little more than the name of the once despotic
Committee, was sent back. But the second plan, though such as would
have contented judicious and temperate reformers, shared the fate of the
first. Meanwhile the chiefs of the Club laid on the table a law which
interdicted the King from ever employing in any public office any person
who had ever borne any part in any proceeding inconsistent with the
Claim of Right, or who had ever obstructed or retarded any good design
of the Estates. This law, uniting, within a very short compass, almost
all the faults which a law can have, was well known to be aimed at the
new Lord President of the Court of Session, and at his son the new Lord
Advocate. Their prosperity and power made them objects of envy to every
disappointed candidate for office. That they were new men, the first of
their race who had risen to distinction, and that nevertheless they had,
by the mere force of ability, become as important in the state as the
Duke of Hamilton or the Earl of Argyle, was a thought which galled the
hearts of many needy and haughty patricians. To the Whigs of Scotland
the Dalrymples were what Halifax and Caermarthen were to the Whigs of
England. Neither the exile of Sir James, nor the zeal with which Sir
John had promoted the Revolution, was received as an atonement for old
delinquency. They had both served the bloody and idolatrous House.
They had both oppressed the people of God. Their late repentance might
perhaps give them a fair claim to pardon, but surely gave them no right
to honours and rewards.

The friends of the government in vain attempted to divert the attention
of the Parliament from the business of persecuting the Dalrymple family
to the important and pressing question of Church Government. They said
that the old system had been abolished; that no other system had been
substituted; that it was impossible to say what was the established
religion of the kingdom; and that the first duty of the legislature
was to put an end to an anarchy which was daily producing disasters and
crimes. The leaders of the Club were not to be so drawn away from
their object. It was moved and resolved that the consideration of
ecclesiastical affairs should be postponed till secular affairs had
been settled. The unjust and absurd Act of Incapacitation was carried
by seventy-four voices to twenty-four. Another vote still more obviously
aimed at the House of Stair speedily followed. The Parliament laid claim
to a Veto on the nomination of the judges, and assumed the power
of stopping the signet, in other words, of suspending the whole
administration of justice, till this claim should be allowed. It was
plain from what passed in debate that, though the chiefs of the Club
had begun with the Court of Session, they did not mean to end there.
The arguments used by Sir Patrick Hume and others led directly to the
conclusion that the King ought not to have the appointment of any great
public functionary. Sir Patrick indeed avowed, both in speech and in
writing, his opinion that the whole patronage of the realm ought to be
transferred from the Crown to the Estates. When the place of Treasurer,
of Chancellor, of Secretary, was vacant, the Parliament ought to submit
two or three names to his Majesty; and one of those names his Majesty
ought to be bound to select, [352]

All this time the Estates obstinately refused to grant any supply till
their Acts should have been touched with the sceptre. The Lord High
Commissioner was at length so much provoked by their perverseness that,
after long temporising, he refused to touch even Acts which were in
themselves unobjectionable, and to which his instructions empowered
him to consent. This state of things would have ended in some great
convulsion, if the King of Scotland had not been also King of a much
greater and more opulent kingdom. Charles the First had never found any
parliament at Westminster more unmanageable than William, during this
session, found the parliament at Edinburgh. But it was not in the power
of the parliament at Edinburgh to put on William such a pressure as the
parliament at Westminster had put on Charles. A refusal of supplies at
Westminster was a serious thing, and left the Sovereign no choice except
to yield, or to raise money by unconstitutional means, But a refusal of
supplies at Edinburgh reduced him to no such dilemma. The largest sum
that he could hope to receive from Scotland in a year was less than
what he received from England every fortnight. He had therefore only
to entrench himself within the limits of his undoubted prerogative,
and there to remain on the defensive, till some favourable conjuncture
should arrive, [353]

While these things were passing in the Parliament House, the civil war
in the Highlands, having been during a few weeks suspended, broke forth
again more violently than before. Since the splendour of the House of
Argyle had been eclipsed, no Gaelic chief could vie in power with the
Marquess of Athol. The district from which he took his title, and of
which he might almost be called the sovereign, was in extent larger than
an ordinary county, and was more fertile, more diligently cultivated,
and more thickly peopled than the greater part of the Highlands. The men
who followed his banner were supposed to be not less numerous than all
the Macdonalds and Macleans united, and were, in strength and courage,
inferior to no tribe in the mountains. But the clan had been made
insignificant by the insignificance of the chief. The Marquess was the
falsest, the most fickle, the most pusillanimous, of mankind. Already,
in the short space of six months, he had been several times a Jacobite,
and several times a Williamite. Both Jacobites and Williamites regarded
him with contempt and distrust, which respect for his immense power
prevented them from fully expressing. After repeatedly vowing fidelity
to both parties, and repeatedly betraying both, he began to think that
he should best provide for his safety by abdicating the functions
both of a peer and of a chieftain, by absenting himself both from the
Parliament House at Edinburgh and from his castle in the mountains, and
by quitting the country to which he was bound by every tie of duty and
honour at the very crisis of her fate. While all Scotland was waiting
with impatience and anxiety to see in which army his numerous retainers
would be arrayed, he stole away to England, settled himself at Bath, and
pretended to drink the waters, [354] His principality, left without a
head, was divided against itself. The general leaning of the Athol men
was towards King James. For they had been employed by him, only four
years before, as the ministers of his vengeance against the House of
Argyle. They had garrisoned Inverary: they had ravaged Lorn: they had
demolished houses, cut down fruit trees, burned fishing boats, broken
millstones, hanged Campbells, and were therefore not likely to be
pleased by the prospect of Mac Callum Mores restoration. One word from
the Marquess would have sent two thousand claymores to the Jacobite
side. But that word he would not speak; and the consequence was, that
the conduct of his followers was as irresolute and inconsistent as his
own.

While they were waiting for some indication of his wishes, they were
called to arms at once by two leaders, either of whom might, with some
show of reason, claim to be considered as the representative of the
absent chief. Lord Murray, the Marquess's eldest son, who was married to
a daughter of the Duke of Hamilton, declared for King William. Stewart
of Ballenach, the Marquess's confidential agent, declared for King
James. The people knew not which summons to obey. He whose authority
would have been held in profound reverence, had plighted faith to both
sides, and had then run away for fear of being under the necessity of
joining either; nor was it very easy to say whether the place which he
had left vacant belonged to his steward or to his heir apparent.

The most important military post in Athol was Blair Castle. The
house which now bears that name is not distinguished by any striking
peculiarity from other country seats of the aristocracy. The old
building was a lofty tower of rude architecture which commanded a
vale watered by the Garry. The walls would have offered very little
resistance to a battering train, but were quite strong enough to keep
the herdsmen of the Grampians in awe. About five miles south of this
stronghold, the valley of the Garry contracts itself into the celebrated
glen of Killiecrankie. At present a highway as smooth as any road in
Middlesex ascends gently from the low country to the summit of the
defile. White villas peep from the birch forest; and, on a fine summer
day, there is scarcely a turn of the pass at which may not be seen some
angler casting his fly on the foam of the river, some artist sketching
a pinnacle of rock, or some party of pleasure banqueting on the turf
in the fretwork of shade and sunshine. But, in the days of William
the Third, Killiecrankie was mentioned with horror by the peaceful and
industrious inhabitants of the Perthshire lowlands. It was deemed the
most perilous of all those dark ravines through which the marauders
of the hills were wont to sally forth. The sound, so musical to modern
ears, of the river brawling round the mossy rocks and among the smooth
pebbles, the dark masses of crag and verdure worthy of the pencil of
Wilson, the fantastic peaks bathed, at sunrise and sunset, with light
rich as that which glows on the canvass of Claude, suggested to our
ancestors thoughts of murderous ambuscades and of bodies stripped,
gashed, and abandoned to the birds of prey. The only path was narrow and
rugged: a horse could with difficulty be led up: two men could hardly
walk abreast; and, in some places, the way ran so close by the precipice
that the traveller had great need of a steady eye and foot. Many years
later, the first Duke of Athol constructed a road up which it was just
possible to drag his coach. But even that road was so steep and so
strait that a handful of resolute men might have defended it against
an army; [355] nor did any Saxon consider a visit to Killiecrankie as a
pleasure, till experience had taught the English Government that the
weapons by which the Highlanders could be most effectually subdued were
the pickaxe and the spade.

The country which lay just above this pass was now the theatre of a
war such as the Highlands had not often witnessed. Men wearing the same
tartan, and attached to the same lord, were arrayed against each other.
The name of the absent chief was used, with some show of reason, on both
sides. Ballenach, at the head of a body of vassals who considered him as
the representative of the Marquess, occupied Blair Castle. Murray, with
twelve hundred followers, appeared before the walls and demanded to be
admitted into the mansion of his family, the mansion which would one day
be his own. The garrison refused to open the gates. Messages were sent
off by the besiegers to Edinburgh, and by the besieged to Lochaber,
[356] In both places the tidings produced great agitation. Mackay and
Dundee agreed in thinking that the crisis required prompt and strenuous
exertion. On the fate of Blair Castle probably depended the fate of all
Athol. On the fate of Athol might depend the fate of Scotland. Mackay
hastened northward, and ordered his troops to assemble in the low
country of Perthshire. Some of them were quartered at such a distance
that they did not arrive in time. He soon, however, had with him the
three Scotch regiments which had served in Holland, and which bore the
names of their Colonels, Mackay himself, Balfour, and Ramsay. There
was also a gallant regiment of infantry from England, then called
Hastings's, but now known as the thirteenth of the line. With these old
troops were joined two regiments newly levied in the Lowlands. One of
them was commanded by Lord Kenmore; the other, which had been raised on
the Border, and which is still styled the King's own Borderers, by
Lord Leven. Two troops of horse, Lord Annandale's and Lord Belhaven's,
probably made up the army to the number of above three thousand men.
Belhaven rode at the head of his troop: but Annandale, the most factious
of all Montgomery's followers, preferred the Club and the Parliament
House to the field, [357]

Dundee, meanwhile, had summoned all the clans which acknowledged his
commission to assemble for an expedition into Athol. His exertions were
strenuously seconded by Lochiel. The fiery crosses were sent again in
all haste through Appin and Ardnamurchan, up Glenmore, and along Loch
Leven. But the call was so unexpected, and the time allowed was so
short, that the muster was not a very full one. The whole number of
broadswords seems to have been under three thousand. With this force,
such as it was, Dundee set forth. On his march he was joined by succours
which had just arrived from Ulster. They consisted of little more than
three hundred Irish foot, ill armed, ill clothed, and ill disciplined.
Their commander was an officer named Cannon, who had seen service in
the Netherlands, and who might perhaps have acquitted himself well in a
subordinate post and in a regular army, but who was altogether unequal
to the part now assigned to him, [358] He had already loitered among the
Hebrides so long that some ships which had been sent with him, and which
were laden with stores, had been taken by English cruisers. He and his
soldiers had with difficulty escaped the same fate. Incompetent as he
was, he bore a commission which gave him military rank in Scotland next
to Dundee.

The disappointment was severe. In truth James would have done better
to withhold all assistance from the Highlanders than to mock them by
sending them, instead of the well appointed army which they had asked
and expected, a rabble contemptible in numbers and appearance. It was
now evident that whatever was done for his cause in Scotland must be
done by Scottish hands, [359]

While Mackay from one side, and Dundee from the other, were advancing
towards Blair Castle, important events had taken place there. Murray's
adherents soon began to waver in their fidelity to him. They had an old
antipathy to Whigs; for they considered the name of Whig as synonymous
with the name of Campbell. They saw arrayed against them a large number
of their kinsmen, commanded by a gentleman who was supposed to possess
the confidence of the Marquess. The besieging army therefore
melted rapidly away. Many returned home on the plea that, as their
neighbourhood was about to be the seat of war, they must place their
families and cattle in security. Others more ingenuously declared that
they would not fight in such a quarrel. One large body went to a brook,
filled their bonnets with water, drank a health to King James, and then
dispersed, [360] Their zeal for King James, however, did not induce them
to join the standard of his general. They lurked among the rocks and
thickets which overhang the Garry, in the hope that there would soon
be a battle, and that, whatever might be the event, there would be
fugitives and corpses to plunder.

Murray was in a strait. His force had dwindled to three or four hundred
men: even in those men he could put little trust; and the Macdonalds
and Camerons were advancing fast. He therefore raised the siege of
Blair Castle, and retired with a few followers into the defile of
Killiecrankie. There he was soon joined by a detachment of two hundred
fusileers whom Mackay had sent forward to secure the pass. The main body
of the Lowland army speedily followed, [361]

Early in the morning of Saturday the twenty-seventh of July, Dundee
arrived at Blair Castle. There he learned that Mackay's troops were
already in the ravine of Killiecrankie. It was necessary to come to
a prompt decision. A council of war was held. The Saxon officers were
generally against hazarding a battle. The Celtic chiefs were o£ a
different opinion. Glengarry and Lochiel were now both of a mind.
"Fight, my Lord" said Lochiel with his usual energy; "fight immediately:
fight, if you have only one to three. Our men are in heart. Their
only fear is that the enemy should escape. Give them their way; and be
assured that they will either perish or gain a complete victory. But
if you restrain them, if you force them to remain on the defensive,
I answer for nothing. If we do not fight, we had better break up and
retire to our mountains. " [362]

Dundee's countenance brightened. "You hear, gentlemen," he said to his
Lowland officers; "you hear the opinion of one who understands Highland
war better than any of us. " No voice was raised on the other side. It
was determined to fight; and the confederated clans in high spirits set
forward to encounter the enemy.

The enemy meanwhile had made his way up the pass. The ascent had been
long and toilsome: for even the foot had to climb by twos and threes;
and the baggage horses, twelve hundred in number, could mount only one
at a time. No wheeled carriage had ever been tugged up that arduous
path. The head of the column had emerged and was on the table land,
while the rearguard was still in the plain below.