The unjust and absurd Act of
Incapacitation
was carried
by seventy-four voices to twenty-four.
by seventy-four voices to twenty-four.
Macaulay
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. At length the passage
was effected; and the troops found themselves in a valley of no great
extent. Their right was flanked by a rising ground, their left by the
Garry. Wearied with the morning's work, they threw themselves on the
grass to take some rest and refreshment.
Early in the afternoon, they were roused by an alarm that the
Highlanders were approaching. Regiment after regiment started up and got
into order. In a little while the summit of an ascent which was about a
musket shot before them was covered with bonnets and plaids. Dundee
rode forward for the purpose of surveying the force with which he was
to contend, and then drew up his own men with as much skill as their
peculiar character permitted him to exert. It was desirable to keep the
clans distinct. Each tribe, large or small, formed a column separated
from the next column by a wide interval. One of these battalions might
contain seven hundred men, while another consisted of only a hundred
and twenty. Lochiel had represented that it was impossible to mix men
of different tribes without destroying all that constituted the peculiar
strength of a Highland army, [363]
On the right, close to the Garry, were the Macleans. Next to them were
Cannon and his Irish foot. Then came the Macdonalds of Clanronald,
commanded by the guardian of their young prince. On the left were other
bands of Macdonalds. At the head of one large battalion towered the
stately form of Glengarry, who bore in his hand the royal standard
of King James the Seventh, [364] Still further to the left were the
cavalry, a small squadron consisting of some Jacobite gentlemen who had
fled from the Lowlands to the mountains and of about forty of Dundee's
old troopers. The horses had been ill fed and ill tended among the
Grampians, and looked miserably lean and feeble. Beyond them was Lochiel
with his Camerons. On the extreme left, the men of Sky were marshalled
by Macdonald of Sleat, [365]
In the Highlands, as in all countries where war has not become a
science, men thought it the most important duty of a commander to set
an example of personal courage and of bodily exertion. Lochiel was
especially renowned for his physical prowess. His clansmen looked big
with pride when they related how he had himself broken hostile ranks and
hewn down tall warriors. He probably owed quite as much of his influence
to these achievements as to the high qualities which, if fortune had
placed him in the English Parliament or at the French court, would have
made him one of the foremost men of his age. He had the sense however to
perceive how erroneous was the notion which his countrymen had formed.
He knew that to give and to take blows was not the business of a
general. He knew with how much difficulty Dundee had been able to keep
together, during a few days, an army composed of several clans; and he
knew that what Dundee had effected with difficulty Cannon would not be
able to effect at all. The life on which so much depended must not be
sacrificed to a barbarous prejudice. Lochiel therefore adjured Dundee
not to run into any unnecessary danger. "Your Lordship's business,"
he said, "is to overlook every thing, and to issue your commands. Our
business is to execute those commands bravely and promptly. " Dundee
answered with calm magnanimity that there was much weight in what his
friend Sir Ewan had urged, but that no general could effect any thing
great without possessing the confidence of his men. "I must establish
my character for courage. Your people expect to see their leaders in the
thickest of the battle; and to day they shall see me there. I promise
you, on my honour, that in future fights I will take more care of
myself. "
Meanwhile a fire of musketry was kept up on both sides, but more
skilfully and more steadily by the regular soldiers than by the
mountaineers. The space between the armies was one cloud of smoke. Not
a few Highlanders dropped; and the clans grew impatient. The sun however
was low in the west before Dundee gave the order to prepare for action.
His men raised a great shout. The enemy, probably exhausted by the toil
of the day, returned a feeble and wavering cheer. "We shall do it now,"
said Lochiel: "that is not the cry of men who are going to win. " He
had walked through all his ranks, had addressed a few words to every
Cameron, and had taken from every Cameron a promise to conquer or die,
[366]
It was past seven o'clock. Dundee gave the word. The Highlanders dropped
their plaids. The few who were so luxurious as to wear rude socks of
untanned hide spurned them away. It was long remembered in Lochaber that
Lochiel took off what probably was the only pair of shoes in his clan,
and charged barefoot at the head of his men. The whole line advanced
firing. The enemy returned the fire and did much execution. When only a
small space was left between the armies, the Highlanders suddenly flung
away their firelocks, drew their broadswords, and rushed forward with a
fearful yell. The Lowlanders prepared to receive the shock; but this was
then a long and awkward process; and the soldiers were still fumbling
with the muzzles of their guns and the handles of their bayonets when
the whole flood of Macleans, Macdonalds, and Camerons came down. In two
minutes the battle was lost and won. The ranks of Balfour's regiment
broke. He was cloven down while struggling in the press. Ramsay's men
turned their backs and dropped their arms. Mackay's own foot were
swept away by the furious onset of the Camerons. His brother and nephew
exerted themselves in vain to rally the men. The former was laid dead on
the ground by a stroke from a claymore. The latter, with eight wounds
on his body, made his way through the tumult and carnage to his uncle's
side. Even in that extremity Mackay retained all his selfpossession.
He had still one hope. A charge of horse might recover the day; for
of horse the bravest Highlanders were supposed to stand in awe. But he
called on the horse in vain.
Belhaven indeed behaved like a gallant gentleman: but his troopers,
appalled by the rout of the infantry, galloped off in disorder:
Annandale's men followed: all was over; and the mingled torrent of
redcoats and tartans went raving down the valley to the gorge of
Killiecrankie.
Mackay, accompanied by one trusty servant, spurred bravely through the
thickest of the claymores and targets, and reached a point from which
he had a view of the field. His whole army had disappeared, with
the exception of some Borderers whom Leven had kept together, and of
Hastings's regiment, which had poured a murderous fire into the Celtic
ranks, and which still kept unbroken order. All the men that could be
collected were only a few hundreds. The general made haste to lead them
across the Carry, and, having put that river between them and the enemy,
paused for a moment to meditate on his situation.
He could hardly understand how the conquerors could be so unwise as to
allow him even that moment for deliberation. They might with ease have
killed or taken all who were with him before the night closed in. But
the energy of the Celtic warriors had spent itself in one furious rush
and one short struggle. The pass was choked by the twelve hundred beasts
of burden which carried the provisions and baggage of the vanquished
army. Such a booty was irresistibly tempting to men who were impelled to
war quite as much by the desire of rapine as by the desire of glory. It
is probable that few even of the chiefs were disposed to leave so rich
a price for the sake of King James. Dundee himself might at that moment
have been unable to persuade his followers to quit the heaps of spoil,
and to complete the great work of the day; and Dundee was no more.
At the beginning of the action he had taken his place in front of his
little band of cavalry. He bade them follow him, and rode forward. But
it seemed to be decreed that, on that day, the Lowland Scotch should in
both armies appear to disadvantage. The horse hesitated. Dundee turned
round, and stood up in his stirrups, and, waving his hat, invited them
to come on. As he lifted his arm, his cuirass rose, and exposed the
lower part of his left side. A musket ball struck him; his horse sprang
forward and plunged into a cloud of smoke and dust, which hid from both
armies the fall of the victorious general. A person named Johnstone was
near him and caught him as he sank down from the saddle. "How goes the
day? " said Dundee. "Well for King James;" answered Johnstone: "but I am
sorry for Your Lordship. " "If it is well for him," answered the dying
man, "it matters the less for me. " He never spoke again; but when, half
an hour later, Lord Dunfermline and some other friends came to the spot,
they thought that they could still discern some faint remains of life.
The body, wrapped in two plaids, was carried to the Castle of Blair,
[367]
Mackay, who was ignorant of Dundee's fate, and well acquainted with
Dundee's skill and activity, expected to be instantly and hotly pursued,
and had very little expectation of being able to save even the scanty
remains of the vanquished army. He could not retreat by the pass: for
the Highlanders were already there. He therefore resolved to push across
the mountains towards the valley of the Tay. He soon overtook two or
three hundred of his runaways who had taken the same road. Most of them
belonged to Ramsay's regiment, and must have seen service. But they were
unarmed: they were utterly bewildered by the recent disaster; and the
general could find among them no remains either of martial discipline or
of martial spirit.
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. At length the passage
was effected; and the troops found themselves in a valley of no great
extent. Their right was flanked by a rising ground, their left by the
Garry. Wearied with the morning's work, they threw themselves on the
grass to take some rest and refreshment.
Early in the afternoon, they were roused by an alarm that the
Highlanders were approaching. Regiment after regiment started up and got
into order. In a little while the summit of an ascent which was about a
musket shot before them was covered with bonnets and plaids. Dundee
rode forward for the purpose of surveying the force with which he was
to contend, and then drew up his own men with as much skill as their
peculiar character permitted him to exert. It was desirable to keep the
clans distinct. Each tribe, large or small, formed a column separated
from the next column by a wide interval. One of these battalions might
contain seven hundred men, while another consisted of only a hundred
and twenty. Lochiel had represented that it was impossible to mix men
of different tribes without destroying all that constituted the peculiar
strength of a Highland army, [363]
On the right, close to the Garry, were the Macleans. Next to them were
Cannon and his Irish foot. Then came the Macdonalds of Clanronald,
commanded by the guardian of their young prince. On the left were other
bands of Macdonalds. At the head of one large battalion towered the
stately form of Glengarry, who bore in his hand the royal standard
of King James the Seventh, [364] Still further to the left were the
cavalry, a small squadron consisting of some Jacobite gentlemen who had
fled from the Lowlands to the mountains and of about forty of Dundee's
old troopers. The horses had been ill fed and ill tended among the
Grampians, and looked miserably lean and feeble. Beyond them was Lochiel
with his Camerons. On the extreme left, the men of Sky were marshalled
by Macdonald of Sleat, [365]
In the Highlands, as in all countries where war has not become a
science, men thought it the most important duty of a commander to set
an example of personal courage and of bodily exertion. Lochiel was
especially renowned for his physical prowess. His clansmen looked big
with pride when they related how he had himself broken hostile ranks and
hewn down tall warriors. He probably owed quite as much of his influence
to these achievements as to the high qualities which, if fortune had
placed him in the English Parliament or at the French court, would have
made him one of the foremost men of his age. He had the sense however to
perceive how erroneous was the notion which his countrymen had formed.
He knew that to give and to take blows was not the business of a
general. He knew with how much difficulty Dundee had been able to keep
together, during a few days, an army composed of several clans; and he
knew that what Dundee had effected with difficulty Cannon would not be
able to effect at all. The life on which so much depended must not be
sacrificed to a barbarous prejudice. Lochiel therefore adjured Dundee
not to run into any unnecessary danger. "Your Lordship's business,"
he said, "is to overlook every thing, and to issue your commands. Our
business is to execute those commands bravely and promptly. " Dundee
answered with calm magnanimity that there was much weight in what his
friend Sir Ewan had urged, but that no general could effect any thing
great without possessing the confidence of his men. "I must establish
my character for courage. Your people expect to see their leaders in the
thickest of the battle; and to day they shall see me there. I promise
you, on my honour, that in future fights I will take more care of
myself. "
Meanwhile a fire of musketry was kept up on both sides, but more
skilfully and more steadily by the regular soldiers than by the
mountaineers. The space between the armies was one cloud of smoke. Not
a few Highlanders dropped; and the clans grew impatient. The sun however
was low in the west before Dundee gave the order to prepare for action.
His men raised a great shout. The enemy, probably exhausted by the toil
of the day, returned a feeble and wavering cheer. "We shall do it now,"
said Lochiel: "that is not the cry of men who are going to win. " He
had walked through all his ranks, had addressed a few words to every
Cameron, and had taken from every Cameron a promise to conquer or die,
[366]
It was past seven o'clock. Dundee gave the word. The Highlanders dropped
their plaids. The few who were so luxurious as to wear rude socks of
untanned hide spurned them away. It was long remembered in Lochaber that
Lochiel took off what probably was the only pair of shoes in his clan,
and charged barefoot at the head of his men. The whole line advanced
firing. The enemy returned the fire and did much execution. When only a
small space was left between the armies, the Highlanders suddenly flung
away their firelocks, drew their broadswords, and rushed forward with a
fearful yell. The Lowlanders prepared to receive the shock; but this was
then a long and awkward process; and the soldiers were still fumbling
with the muzzles of their guns and the handles of their bayonets when
the whole flood of Macleans, Macdonalds, and Camerons came down. In two
minutes the battle was lost and won. The ranks of Balfour's regiment
broke. He was cloven down while struggling in the press. Ramsay's men
turned their backs and dropped their arms. Mackay's own foot were
swept away by the furious onset of the Camerons. His brother and nephew
exerted themselves in vain to rally the men. The former was laid dead on
the ground by a stroke from a claymore. The latter, with eight wounds
on his body, made his way through the tumult and carnage to his uncle's
side. Even in that extremity Mackay retained all his selfpossession.
He had still one hope. A charge of horse might recover the day; for
of horse the bravest Highlanders were supposed to stand in awe. But he
called on the horse in vain.
Belhaven indeed behaved like a gallant gentleman: but his troopers,
appalled by the rout of the infantry, galloped off in disorder:
Annandale's men followed: all was over; and the mingled torrent of
redcoats and tartans went raving down the valley to the gorge of
Killiecrankie.
Mackay, accompanied by one trusty servant, spurred bravely through the
thickest of the claymores and targets, and reached a point from which
he had a view of the field. His whole army had disappeared, with
the exception of some Borderers whom Leven had kept together, and of
Hastings's regiment, which had poured a murderous fire into the Celtic
ranks, and which still kept unbroken order. All the men that could be
collected were only a few hundreds. The general made haste to lead them
across the Carry, and, having put that river between them and the enemy,
paused for a moment to meditate on his situation.
He could hardly understand how the conquerors could be so unwise as to
allow him even that moment for deliberation. They might with ease have
killed or taken all who were with him before the night closed in. But
the energy of the Celtic warriors had spent itself in one furious rush
and one short struggle. The pass was choked by the twelve hundred beasts
of burden which carried the provisions and baggage of the vanquished
army. Such a booty was irresistibly tempting to men who were impelled to
war quite as much by the desire of rapine as by the desire of glory. It
is probable that few even of the chiefs were disposed to leave so rich
a price for the sake of King James. Dundee himself might at that moment
have been unable to persuade his followers to quit the heaps of spoil,
and to complete the great work of the day; and Dundee was no more.
At the beginning of the action he had taken his place in front of his
little band of cavalry. He bade them follow him, and rode forward. But
it seemed to be decreed that, on that day, the Lowland Scotch should in
both armies appear to disadvantage. The horse hesitated. Dundee turned
round, and stood up in his stirrups, and, waving his hat, invited them
to come on. As he lifted his arm, his cuirass rose, and exposed the
lower part of his left side. A musket ball struck him; his horse sprang
forward and plunged into a cloud of smoke and dust, which hid from both
armies the fall of the victorious general. A person named Johnstone was
near him and caught him as he sank down from the saddle. "How goes the
day? " said Dundee. "Well for King James;" answered Johnstone: "but I am
sorry for Your Lordship. " "If it is well for him," answered the dying
man, "it matters the less for me. " He never spoke again; but when, half
an hour later, Lord Dunfermline and some other friends came to the spot,
they thought that they could still discern some faint remains of life.
The body, wrapped in two plaids, was carried to the Castle of Blair,
[367]
Mackay, who was ignorant of Dundee's fate, and well acquainted with
Dundee's skill and activity, expected to be instantly and hotly pursued,
and had very little expectation of being able to save even the scanty
remains of the vanquished army. He could not retreat by the pass: for
the Highlanders were already there. He therefore resolved to push across
the mountains towards the valley of the Tay. He soon overtook two or
three hundred of his runaways who had taken the same road. Most of them
belonged to Ramsay's regiment, and must have seen service. But they were
unarmed: they were utterly bewildered by the recent disaster; and the
general could find among them no remains either of martial discipline or
of martial spirit.
