No More Learning

Once they loomed dimly through an
obscuring and distorting haze of prejudice; and no sooner had that
fog dispersed than they appeared bright with all the richest tints of
poetry. The time when a perfectly fair picture could have been painted
has now passed away. The original has long disappeared: no authentic
effigy exists; and all that is possible is to produce an imperfect
likeness by the help of two portraits, of which one is a coarse
caricature and the other a masterpiece of flattery.

Among the erroneous notions which have been commonly received concerning
the history and character of the Highlanders is one which it is
especially necessary to correct. During the century which commenced with
the campaign of Montrose, and terminated with the campaign of the young
Pretender, every great military exploit which was achieved on British
ground in the cause of the House of Stuart was achieved by the valour
of Gaelic tribes. The English have therefore very naturally ascribed to
those tribes the feelings of English cavaliers, profound reverence for
the royal office, and enthusiastic attachment to the royal family. A
close inquiry however will show that the strength of these feelings
among the Celtic clans has been greatly exaggerated.

In studying the history of our civil contentions, we must never forget
that the same names, badges, and warcries had very different meanings
in different parts of the British isles. We have already seen how little
there was in common between the Jacobitism of Ireland and the Jacobitism
of England. The Jacobitism of the Scotch Highlander was, at least in the
seventeenth century, a third variety, quite distinct from the other
two. The Gaelic population was far indeed from holding the doctrines of
passive obedience and nonresistance. In fact disobedience and resistance
made up the ordinary life of that population. Some of those very clans
which it has been the fashion to describe as so enthusiastically loyal
that they were prepared to stand by James to the death, even when he was
in the wrong, had never, while he was on the throne, paid the smallest
respect to his authority, even when he was clearly in the right. Their
practice, their calling, had been to disobey and to defy him. Some of
them had actually been proscribed by sound of horn for the crime of
withstanding his lawful commands, and would have torn to pieces without
scruple any of his officers who had dared to venture beyond the passes
for the purpose of executing his warrant. The English Whigs were accused
by their opponents of holding doctrines dangerously lax touching the
obedience due to the chief magistrate. Yet no respectable English Whig
ever defended rebellion, except as a rare and extreme remedy for rare
and extreme evils. But among those Celtic chiefs whose loyalty has been
the theme of so much warm eulogy were some whose whole existence from
boyhood upwards had been one long rebellion. Such men, it is evident,
were not likely to see the Revolution in the light in which it appeared
to an Oxonian nonjuror. On the other hand they were not, like the
aboriginal Irish, urged to take arms by impatience of Saxon domination.
To such domination the Scottish Celt had never been subjected. He
occupied his own wild and sterile region, and followed his own national
usages. In his dealings with the Saxons, he was rather the oppressor
than the oppressed. He exacted black mail from them: he drove away their
flocks and herds; and they seldom dared to pursue him to his native
wilderness. They had never portioned out among themselves his dreary
region of moor and shingle. He had never seen the tower of his
hereditary chieftains occupied by an usurper who could not speak Gaelic,
and who looked on all who spoke it as brutes and slaves; nor had his
national and religious feelings ever been outraged by the power
and splendour of a church which he regarded as at once foreign and
heretical.

The real explanation of the readiness with which a large part of the
population of the Highlands, twice in the seventeenth century, drew
the sword for the Stuarts is to be found in the internal quarrels which
divided the commonwealth of clans. For there was a commonwealth of
clans, the image, on a reduced scale, of the great commonwealth of
European nations. In the smaller of these two commonwealths, as in the
larger, there were wars, treaties, alliances, disputes about territory
and precedence, a system of public law, a balance of power. There was
one inexhaustible source of discontents and disputes. The feudal system
had, some centuries before, been introduced into the hill country, but
had neither destroyed the patriarchal system nor amalgamated completely
with it. In general he who was lord in the Norman polity was also
chief in the Celtic polity; and, when this was the case, there was no
conflict. But, when the two characters were separated, all the willing
and loyal obedience was reserved for the chief. The lord had only what
he could get and hold by force. If he was able, by the help of his own
tribe, to keep in subjection tenants who were not of his own tribe,
there was a tyranny of clan over clan, the most galling, perhaps, of
all forms of tyranny. At different times different races had risen to an
authority which had produced general fear and envy. The Macdonalds had
once possessed, in the Hebrides and throughout the mountain country of
Argyleshire and Invernessshire, an ascendancy similar to that which the
House of Austria had once possessed in Christendom. But the ascendancy
of the Macdonalds had, like the ascendancy of the House of Austria,
passed away; and the Campbells, the children of Diarmid, had become in
the Highlands what the Bourbons had become in Europe. The parallel might
be carried far. Imputations similar to those which it was the fashion to
throw on the French government were thrown on the Campbells. A peculiar
dexterity, a peculiar plausibility of address, a peculiar contempt
for all the obligations of good faith, were ascribed, with or without
reason, to the dreaded race. "Fair and false like a Campbell" became
a proverb. It was said that Mac Callum More after Mac Callum More had,
with unwearied, unscrupulous, and unrelenting ambition, annexed mountain
after mountain and island after island to the original domains of
his House. Some tribes had been expelled from their territory, some
compelled to pay tribute, some incorporated with the conquerors. At
length the number of fighting men who bore the name of Campbell was
sufficient to meet in the field of battle the combined forces of all
the other western clans, [324] It was during those civil troubles which
commenced in 1638 that the power of this aspiring family reached the
zenith. The Marquess of Argyle was the head of a party as well as the
head of a tribe. Possessed of two different kinds of authority, he
used each of them in such a way as to extend and fortify the other.
The knowledge that he could bring into the field the claymores of five
thousand half heathen mountaineers added to his influence among the
austere Presbyterians who filled the Privy Council and the General
Assembly at Edinburgh. His influence at Edinburgh added to the terror
which he inspired among the mountains. Of all the Highland princes whose
history is well known to us he was the greatest and most dreaded. It was
while his neighbours were watching the increase of his power with hatred
which fear could scarcely keep down that Montrose called them to arms.
The call was promptly obeyed. A powerful coalition of clans waged war,
nominally for King Charles, but really against Mac Callum More. It is
not easy for any person who has studied the history of that contest
to doubt that, if Argyle had supported the cause of monarchy, his
neighbours would have declared against it. Grave writers tell of the
victory gained at Inverlochy by the royalists over the rebels. But the
peasants who dwell near the spot speak more accurately. They talk of the
great battle won there by the Macdonalds over the Campbells.

The feelings which had produced the coalition against the Marquess
of Argyle retained their force long after his death. His son, Earl
Archibald, though a man of many eminent virtues, inherited, with the
ascendancy of his ancestors, the unpopularity which such ascendancy
could scarcely fail to produce. In 1675, several warlike tribes formed
a confederacy against him, but were compelled to submit to the superior
force which was at his command. There was therefore great joy from sea
to sea when, in 1681, he was arraigned on a futile charge, condemned to
death, driven into exile, and deprived of his dignities. There was great
alarm when, in 1685, he returned from banishment, and sent forth the
fiery cross to summon his kinsmen to his standard; and there was again
great joy when his enterprise had failed, when his army had melted away,
when his head had been fixed on the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, and when
those chiefs who had regarded him as an oppressor had obtained from the
Crown, on easy terms, remissions of old debts and grants of new titles.
While England and Scotland generally were execrating the tyranny of
James, he was honoured as a deliverer in Appin and Lochaber, in Glenroy
and Glenmore, [325] The hatred excited by the power and ambition of the
House of Argyle was not satisfied even when the head of that House had
perished, when his children were fugitives, when strangers garrisoned
the Castle of Inverary, and when the whole shore of Loch Fyne was laid
waste by fire and sword. It was said that the terrible precedent which
had been set in the case of the Macgregors ought to be followed, and
that it ought to be made a crime to bear the odious name of Campbell.

On a sudden all was changed. The Revolution came. The heir of Argyle
returned in triumph. He was, as his predecessors had been, the head, not
only of a tribe, but of a party. The sentence which had deprived him
of his estate and of his honours was treated by the majority of the
Convention as a nullity. The doors of the Parliament House were thrown
open to him: he was selected from the whole body of Scottish nobles
to administer the oath of office to the new Sovereigns; and he was
authorised to raise an army on his domains for the service of the Crown.
He would now, doubtless, be as powerful as the most powerful of his
ancestors. Backed by the strength of the Government, he would demand
all the long and heavy arrears of rent and tribute which were due to him
from his neighbours, and would exact revenge for all the injuries and
insults which his family had suffered. There was terror and agitation
in the castles of twenty petty kings. The uneasiness was great among the
Stewarts of Appin, whose territory was close pressed by the sea on one
side, and by the race of Diarmid on the other. The Macnaghtens were
still more alarmed. Once they had been the masters of those beautiful
valleys through which the Ara and the Shira flow into Loch Fyne. But the
Campbells had prevailed. The Macnaghtens had been reduced to subjection,
and had, generation after generation, looked up with awe and detestation
to the neighbouring Castle of Inverary. They had recently been promised
a complete emancipation. A grant, by virtue of which their chief would
have held his estate immediately from the Crown, had been prepared, and
was about to pass the seals, when the Revolution suddenly extinguished a
hope which amounted almost to certainty, [326]

The Macleans remembered that, only fourteen years before, their lands
had been invaded and the seat of their chief taken and garrisoned by
the Campbells, [327] Even before William and Mary had been proclaimed
at Edinburgh, a Maclean, deputed doubtless by the head of his tribe, had
crossed the sea to Dublin, and had assured James that, if two or three
battalions from Ireland were landed in Argyleshire, they would be
immediately joined by four thousand four hundred claymores, [328]

A similar spirit animated the Camerons. Their ruler, Sir Ewan Cameron,
of Lochiel, surnamed the Black, was in personal qualities unrivalled
among the Celtic princes. He was a gracious master, a trusty ally, a
terrible enemy. His countenance and bearing were singularly noble.
Some persons who had been at Versailles, and among them the shrewd and
observant Simon Lord Lovat, said that there was, in person and manner, a
most striking resemblance between Lewis the Fourteenth and Lochiel;
and whoever compares the portraits of the two will perceive that there
really was some likeness. In stature the difference was great. Lewis, in
spite of highheeled shoes and a towering wig, hardly reached the middle
size. Lochiel was tall and strongly built. In agility and skill at his
weapons he had few equals among the inhabitants of the hills. He had
repeatedly been victorious in single combat. He was a hunter of great
fame. He made vigorous war on the wolves which, down to his time, preyed
on the red deer of the Grampians; and by his hand perished the last
of the ferocious breed which is known to have wandered at large in
our island. Nor was Lochiel less distinguished by intellectual than
by bodily vigour. He might indeed have seemed ignorant to educated
and travelled Englishmen, who had studied the classics under Busby at
Westminster and under Aldrich at Oxford, who had learned something about
the sciences among Fellows of the Royal Society, and something about the
fine arts in the galleries of Florence and Rome. But though Lochiel
had very little knowledge of books, he was eminently wise in council,
eloquent in debate, ready in devising expedients, and skilful in
managing the minds of men. His understanding preserved him from those
follies into which pride and anger frequently hurried his brother
chieftains. Many, therefore, who regarded his brother chieftains as mere
barbarians, mentioned him with respect. Even at the Dutch Embassy in St.
James's Square he was spoken of as a man of such capacity and courage
that it would not be easy to find his equal. As a patron of literature
he ranks with the magnificent Dorset. If Dorset out of his own purse
allowed Dryden a pension equal to the profits of the Laureateship,
Lochiel is said to have bestowed on a celebrated bard, who had been
plundered by marauders, and who implored alms in a pathetic Gaelic ode,
three cows and the almost incredible sum of fifteen pounds sterling. In
truth, the character of this great chief was depicted two thousand five
hundred years before his birth, and depicted,--such is the power of
genius,--in colours which will be fresh as many years after his death.
He was the Ulysses of the Highlands, [329]

He held a large territory peopled by a race which reverenced no lord,
no king but himself. For that territory, however, he owed homage to the
House of Argyle. He was bound to assist his feudal superiors in war,
and was deeply in debt to them for rent. This vassalage he had doubtless
been early taught to consider as degrading and unjust. In his minority
he had been the ward in chivalry of the politic Marquess, and had been
educated at the Castle of Inverary. But at eighteen the boy broke loose
from the authority of his guardian, and fought bravely both for Charles
the First and for Charles the Second. He was therefore considered by
the English as a Cavalier, was well received at Whitehall after the
Restoration, and was knighted by the hand of James. The compliment,
however, which was paid to him, on one of his appearances at the English
Court, would not have seemed very flattering to a Saxon. "Take care of
your pockets, my lords," cried his Majesty; "here comes the king of the
thieves. " The loyalty of Lochiel is almost proverbial: but it was
very unlike what was called loyalty in England. In the Records of the
Scottish Parliament he was, in the days of Charles the Second, described
as a lawless and rebellious man, who held lands masterfully and in high
contempt of the royal authority, [330] On one occasion the Sheriff of
Invernessshire was directed by King James to hold a court in Lochaber.
Lochiel, jealous of this interference with his own patriarchal
despotism, came to the tribunal at the head of four hundred armed
Camerons. He affected great reverence for the royal commission, but he
dropped three or four words which were perfectly understood by the pages
and armourbearers, who watched every turn of his eye. "Is none of my
lads so clever as to send this judge packing? I have seen them get up a
quarrel when there was less need of one. " In a moment a brawl began
in the crowd, none could say how or where. Hundreds of dirks were out:
cries of "Help" and "Murder" were raised on all sides: many wounds were
inflicted: two men were killed: the sitting broke up in tumult; and the
terrified Sheriff was forced to put himself under the protection of the
chief, who, with a plausible bow of respect and concern, escorted him
safe home. It is amusing to think that the man who performed this feat
is constantly extolled as the most faithful and dutiful of subjects
by writers who blame Somers and Burnet as contemners of the legitimate
authority of Sovereigns. Lochiel would undoubtedly have laughed
the doctrine of nonresistance to scorn. But scarcely any chief in
Invernessshire had gained more than he by the downfall of the House
of Argyle, or had more reason than he to dread the restoration of that
House. Scarcely any chief in Invernessshire, therefore, was more alarmed
and disgusted by the proceedings of the Convention.

But of all those Highlanders who looked on the recent turn of fortune
with painful apprehension the fiercest and the most powerful were the
Macdonalds. More than one of the magnates who bore that widespread name
laid claim to the honour of being the rightful successor of those
Lords of the Isles, who, as late as the fifteenth century, disputed the
preeminence of the Kings of Scotland. This genealogical controversy,
which has lasted down to our own time, caused much bickering among the
competitors. But they all agreed in regretting the past splendour of
their dynasty, and in detesting the upstart race of Campbell. The old
feud had never slumbered. It was still constantly repeated, in verse and
prose, that the finest part of the domain belonging to the ancient
heads of the Gaelic nation, Islay, where they had lived with the pomp of
royalty, Iona, where they had been interred with the pomp of religion,
the paps of Jura, the rich peninsula of Kintyre, had been transferred
from the legitimate possessors to the insatiable Mac Callum More. Since
the downfall of the House of Argyle, the Macdonalds, if they had not
regained their ancient superiority, might at least boast that they had
now no superior. Relieved from the fear of their mighty enemy in the
West, they had turned their arms against weaker enemies in the East,
against the clan of Mackintosh and against the town of Inverness.

The clan of Mackintosh, a branch of an ancient and renowned tribe which
took its name and badge from the wild cat of the forests, had a dispute
with the Macdonalds, which originated, if tradition may be believed, in
those dark times when the Danish pirates wasted the coasts of Scotland.
Inverness was a Saxon colony among the Celts, a hive of traders and
artisans in the midst of a population of loungers and plunderers, a
solitary outpost of civilisation in a region of barbarians. Though the
buildings covered but a small part of the space over which they now
extend; though the arrival of a brig in the port was a rare event;
though the Exchange was the middle of a miry street, in which stood a
market cross much resembling a broken milestone; though the sittings of
the municipal council were held in a filthy den with a roughcast wall;
though the best houses were such as would now be called hovels; though
the best roofs were of thatch; though the best ceilings were of bare
rafters; though the best windows were, in bad weather, closed with
shutters for want of glass; though the humbler dwellings were mere
heaps of turf, in which barrels with the bottoms knocked out served the
purpose of chimneys; yet to the mountaineer of the Grampians this city
was as Babylon or as Tyre. Nowhere else had he seen four or five hundred
houses, two churches, twelve maltkilns, crowded close together. Nowhere
else had he been dazzled by the splendour of rows of booths, where
knives, horn spoons, tin kettles, and gaudy ribands were exposed to
sale. Nowhere else had he been on board of one of those huge ships which
brought sugar and wine over the sea from countries far beyond the limits
of his geography, [331] It is not strange that the haughty and warlike
Macdonalds, despising peaceful industry, yet envying the fruits of that
industry, should have fastened a succession of quarrels on the people of
Inverness. In the reign of Charles the Second, it had been apprehended
that the town would be stormed and plundered by those rude neighbours.
The terms of peace which they offered showed how little they regarded
the authority of the prince and of the law. Their demand was that a
heavy tribute should be paid to them, that the municipal magistrates
should bind themselves by an oath to deliver tip to the vengeance of the
clan every burgher who should shed the blood of a Macdonald, and that
every burgher who should anywhere meet a person wearing the Macdonald
tartan should ground arms in token of submission. Never did Lewis the
Fourteenth, not even when he was encamped between Utrecht and Amsterdam,
treat the States General with such despotic insolence, [332] By the
intervention of the Privy Council of Scotland a compromise was effected:
but the old animosity was undiminished.

Common enmities and common apprehensions produced a good understanding
between the town and the clan of Mackintosh. The foe most hated and
dreaded by both was Colin Macdonald of Keppoch, an excellent specimen of
the genuine Highland Jacobite. Keppoch's whole life had been passed
in insulting and resisting the authority of the Crown. He had been
repeatedly charged on his allegiance to desist from his lawless
practices, but had treated every admonition with contempt. The
government, however, was not willing to resort to extremities against
him; and he long continued to rule undisturbed the stormy peaks of
Coryarrick, and the gigantic terraces which still mark the limits of
what was once the Lake of Glenroy. He was famed for his knowledge of all
the ravines and caverns of that dreary region; and such was the
skill with which he could track a herd of cattle to the most secret
hidingplace that he was known by the nickname of Coll of the Cows,
[333] At length his outrageous violations of all law compelled the Privy
Council to take decided steps. He was proclaimed a rebel: letters of
fire and sword were issued against him under the seal of James; and, a
few weeks before the Revolution, a body of royal troops, supported
by the whole strength of the Mackintoshes, marched into Keppoch's
territories. He gave battle to the invaders, and was victorious. The
King's forces were put to flight; the King's captain was slain; and this
by a hero whose loyalty to the King many writers have very complacently
contrasted with the factious turbulence of the Whigs, [334]

If Keppoch had ever stood in any awe of the government, he was
completely relieved from that feeling by the general anarchy which
followed the Revolution. He wasted the lands of the Mackintoshes,
advanced to Inverness, and threatened the town with destruction. The
danger was extreme. The houses were surrounded only by a wall which
time and weather had so loosened that it shook in every storm. Yet the
inhabitants showed a bold front; and their courage was stimulated by
their preachers. Sunday the twenty-eighth of April was a day of alarm
and confusion. The savages went round and round the small colony of
Saxons like a troop of famished wolves round a sheepfold. Keppoch
threatened and blustered. He would come in with all his men. He would
sack the place. The burghers meanwhile mustered in arms round the
market cross to listen to the oratory of their ministers. The day closed
without an assault; the Monday and the Tuesday passed away in intense
anxiety; and then an unexpected mediator made his appearance.

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.