Among the erroneous notions which have been commonly received concerning

the history and character of the Highlanders is one which it is

especially necessary to correct. During the century which commenced with

the campaign of Montrose, and terminated with the campaign of the young

Pretender, every great military exploit which was achieved on British

ground in the cause of the House of Stuart was achieved by the valour

of Gaelic tribes. The English have therefore very naturally ascribed to

those tribes the feelings of English cavaliers, profound reverence for

the royal office, and enthusiastic attachment to the royal family. A

close inquiry however will show that the strength of these feelings

among the Celtic clans has been greatly exaggerated.

In studying the history of our civil contentions, we must never forget

that the same names, badges, and warcries had very different meanings

in different parts of the British isles. We have already seen how little

there was in common between the Jacobitism of Ireland and the Jacobitism

of England. The Jacobitism of the Scotch Highlander was, at least in the

seventeenth century, a third variety, quite distinct from the other

two. The Gaelic population was far indeed from holding the doctrines of

passive obedience and nonresistance. In fact disobedience and resistance

made up the ordinary life of that population. Some of those very clans

which it has been the fashion to describe as so enthusiastically loyal

that they were prepared to stand by James to the death, even when he was

in the wrong, had never, while he was on the throne, paid the smallest

respect to his authority, even when he was clearly in the right. Their

practice, their calling, had been to disobey and to defy him. Some of

them had actually been proscribed by sound of horn for the crime of

withstanding his lawful commands, and would have torn to pieces without

scruple any of his officers who had dared to venture beyond the passes

for the purpose of executing his warrant. The English Whigs were accused

by their opponents of holding doctrines dangerously lax touching the

obedience due to the chief magistrate. Yet no respectable English Whig

ever defended rebellion, except as a rare and extreme remedy for rare

and extreme evils. But among those Celtic chiefs whose loyalty has been

the theme of so much warm eulogy were some whose whole existence from

boyhood upwards had been one long rebellion. Such men, it is evident,

were not likely to see the Revolution in the light in which it appeared

to an Oxonian nonjuror. On the other hand they were not, like the

aboriginal Irish, urged to take arms by impatience of Saxon domination.

To such domination the Scottish Celt had never been subjected. He

occupied his own wild and sterile region, and followed his own national

usages. In his dealings with the Saxons, he was rather the oppressor

than the oppressed. He exacted black mail from them: he drove away their

flocks and herds; and they seldom dared to pursue him to his native

wilderness. They had never portioned out among themselves his dreary

region of moor and shingle. He had never seen the tower of his

hereditary chieftains occupied by an usurper who could not speak Gaelic,

and who looked on all who spoke it as brutes and slaves; nor had his

national and religious feelings ever been outraged by the power

and splendour of a church which he regarded as at once foreign and

heretical.

The real explanation of the readiness with which a large part of the

population of the Highlands, twice in the seventeenth century, drew

the sword for the Stuarts is to be found in the internal quarrels which

divided the commonwealth of clans. For there was a commonwealth of

clans, the image, on a reduced scale, of the great commonwealth of

European nations. In the smaller of these two commonwealths, as in the

larger, there were wars, treaties, alliances, disputes about territory

and precedence, a system of public law, a balance of power. There was

one inexhaustible source of discontents and disputes. The feudal system

had, some centuries before, been introduced into the hill country, but

had neither destroyed the patriarchal system nor amalgamated completely

with it. In general he who was lord in the Norman polity was also

chief in the Celtic polity; and, when this was the case, there was no

conflict. But, when the two characters were separated, all the willing

and loyal obedience was reserved for the chief. The lord had only what

he could get and hold by force. If he was able, by the help of his own

tribe, to keep in subjection tenants who were not of his own tribe,

there was a tyranny of clan over clan, the most galling, perhaps, of

all forms of tyranny. At different times different races had risen to an

authority which had produced general fear and envy. The Macdonalds had

once possessed, in the Hebrides and throughout the mountain country of

Argyleshire and Invernessshire, an ascendancy similar to that which the

House of Austria had once possessed in Christendom. But the ascendancy

of the Macdonalds had, like the ascendancy of the House of Austria,

passed away; and the Campbells, the children of Diarmid, had become in

the Highlands what the Bourbons had become in Europe. The parallel might

be carried far. Imputations similar to those which it was the fashion to

throw on the French government were thrown on the Campbells. A peculiar

dexterity, a peculiar plausibility of address, a peculiar contempt

for all the obligations of good faith, were ascribed, with or without

reason, to the dreaded race. "Fair and false like a Campbell" became

a proverb. It was said that Mac Callum More after Mac Callum More had,

with unwearied, unscrupulous, and unrelenting ambition, annexed mountain

after mountain and island after island to the original domains of

his House. Some tribes had been expelled from their territory, some

compelled to pay tribute, some incorporated with the conquerors. At

length the number of fighting men who bore the name of Campbell was

sufficient to meet in the field of battle the combined forces of all

the other western clans, [324] It was during those civil troubles which

commenced in 1638 that the power of this aspiring family reached the

zenith. The Marquess of Argyle was the head of a party as well as the

head of a tribe. Possessed of two different kinds of authority, he

used each of them in such a way as to extend and fortify the other.

The knowledge that he could bring into the field the claymores of five

thousand half heathen mountaineers added to his influence among the

austere Presbyterians who filled the Privy Council and the General

Assembly at Edinburgh. His influence at Edinburgh added to the terror

which he inspired among the mountains. Of all the Highland princes whose

history is well known to us he was the greatest and most dreaded. It was

while his neighbours were watching the increase of his power with hatred

which fear could scarcely keep down that Montrose called them to arms.

The call was promptly obeyed. A powerful coalition of clans waged war,

nominally for King Charles, but really against Mac Callum More. It is

not easy for any person who has studied the history of that contest

to doubt that, if Argyle had supported the cause of monarchy, his

neighbours would have declared against it. Grave writers tell of the

victory gained at Inverlochy by the royalists over the rebels. But the

peasants who dwell near the spot speak more accurately. They talk of the

great battle won there by the Macdonalds over the Campbells.

The feelings which had produced the coalition against the Marquess

of Argyle retained their force long after his death. His son, Earl

Archibald, though a man of many eminent virtues, inherited, with the

ascendancy of his ancestors, the unpopularity which such ascendancy

could scarcely fail to produce. In 1675, several warlike tribes formed

a confederacy against him, but were compelled to submit to the superior

force which was at his command. There was therefore great joy from sea

to sea when, in 1681, he was arraigned on a futile charge, condemned to

death, driven into exile, and deprived of his dignities. There was great

alarm when, in 1685, he returned from banishment, and sent forth the

fiery cross to summon his kinsmen to his standard; and there was again

great joy when his enterprise had failed, when his army had melted away,

when his head had been fixed on the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, and when

those chiefs who had regarded him as an oppressor had obtained from the

Crown, on easy terms, remissions of old debts and grants of new titles.

While England and Scotland generally were execrating the tyranny of

James, he was honoured as a deliverer in Appin and Lochaber, in Glenroy

and Glenmore, [325] The hatred excited by the power and ambition of the

House of Argyle was not satisfied even when the head of that House had

perished, when his children were fugitives, when strangers garrisoned

the Castle of Inverary, and when the whole shore of Loch Fyne was laid

waste by fire and sword. It was said that the terrible precedent which

had been set in the case of the Macgregors ought to be followed, and

that it ought to be made a crime to bear the odious name of Campbell.

On a sudden all was changed. The Revolution came. The heir of Argyle

returned in triumph. He was, as his predecessors had been, the head, not

only of a tribe, but of a party. The sentence which had deprived him

of his estate and of his honours was treated by the majority of the

Convention as a nullity. The doors of the Parliament House were thrown

open to him: he was selected from the whole body of Scottish nobles

to administer the oath of office to the new Sovereigns; and he was

authorised to raise an army on his domains for the service of the Crown.

He would now, doubtless, be as powerful as the most powerful of his

ancestors. Backed by the strength of the Government, he would demand

all the long and heavy arrears of rent and tribute which were due to him

from his neighbours, and would exact revenge for all the injuries and

insults which his family had suffered. There was terror and agitation

in the castles of twenty petty kings. The uneasiness was great among the

Stewarts of Appin, whose territory was close pressed by the sea on one

side, and by the race of Diarmid on the other. The Macnaghtens were

still more alarmed. Once they had been the masters of those beautiful

valleys through which the Ara and the Shira flow into Loch Fyne. But the

Campbells had prevailed. The Macnaghtens had been reduced to subjection,

and had, generation after generation, looked up with awe and detestation

to the neighbouring Castle of Inverary. They had recently been promised

a complete emancipation. A grant, by virtue of which their chief would

have held his estate immediately from the Crown, had been prepared, and

was about to pass the seals, when the Revolution suddenly extinguished a

hope which amounted almost to certainty, [326]

The Macleans remembered that, only fourteen years before, their lands

had been invaded and the seat of their chief taken and garrisoned by

the Campbells, [327] Even before William and Mary had been proclaimed

at Edinburgh, a Maclean, deputed doubtless by the head of his tribe, had

crossed the sea to Dublin, and had assured James that, if two or three

battalions from Ireland were landed in Argyleshire, they would be

immediately joined by four thousand four hundred claymores, [328]

A similar spirit animated the Camerons. Their ruler, Sir Ewan Cameron,

of Lochiel, surnamed the Black, was in personal qualities unrivalled

among the Celtic princes. He was a gracious master, a trusty ally, a

terrible enemy. His countenance and bearing were singularly noble.

Some persons who had been at Versailles, and among them the shrewd and

observant Simon Lord Lovat, said that there was, in person and manner, a

most striking resemblance between Lewis the Fourteenth and Lochiel;

and whoever compares the portraits of the two will perceive that there

really was some likeness. In stature the difference was great. Lewis, in

spite of highheeled shoes and a towering wig, hardly reached the middle

size. Lochiel was tall and strongly built. In agility and skill at his

weapons he had few equals among the inhabitants of the hills. He had

repeatedly been victorious in single combat. He was a hunter of great

fame. He made vigorous war on the wolves which, down to his time, preyed

on the red deer of the Grampians; and by his hand perished the last

of the ferocious breed which is known to have wandered at large in

our island. Nor was Lochiel less distinguished by intellectual than

by bodily vigour. He might indeed have seemed ignorant to educated

and travelled Englishmen, who had studied the classics under Busby at

Westminster and under Aldrich at Oxford, who had learned something about

the sciences among Fellows of the Royal Society, and something about the

fine arts in the galleries of Florence and Rome. But though Lochiel

had very little knowledge of books, he was eminently wise in council,

eloquent in debate, ready in devising expedients, and skilful in

managing the minds of men. His understanding preserved him from those

follies into which pride and anger frequently hurried his brother

chieftains. Many, therefore, who regarded his brother chieftains as mere

barbarians, mentioned him with respect. Even at the Dutch Embassy in St.

James's Square he was spoken of as a man of such capacity and courage

that it would not be easy to find his equal. As a patron of literature

he ranks with the magnificent Dorset. If Dorset out of his own purse

allowed Dryden a pension equal to the profits of the Laureateship,

Lochiel is said to have bestowed on a celebrated bard, who had been

plundered by marauders, and who implored alms in a pathetic Gaelic ode,

three cows and the almost incredible sum of fifteen pounds sterling. In

truth, the character of this great chief was depicted two thousand five

hundred years before his birth, and depicted,--such is the power of

genius,--in colours which will be fresh as many years after his death.

He was the Ulysses of the Highlands, [329]

He held a large territory peopled by a race which reverenced no lord,

no king but himself. For that territory, however, he owed homage to the

House of Argyle. He was bound to assist his feudal superiors in war,

and was deeply in debt to them for rent. This vassalage he had doubtless

been early taught to consider as degrading and unjust. In his minority

he had been the ward in chivalry of the politic Marquess, and had been

educated at the Castle of Inverary. But at eighteen the boy broke loose

from the authority of his guardian, and fought bravely both for Charles

the First and for Charles the Second. He was therefore considered by

the English as a Cavalier, was well received at Whitehall after the

Restoration, and was knighted by the hand of James. The compliment,

however, which was paid to him, on one of his appearances at the English

Court, would not have seemed very flattering to a Saxon. "Take care of

your pockets, my lords," cried his Majesty; "here comes the king of the

thieves." The loyalty of Lochiel is almost proverbial: but it was

very unlike what was called loyalty in England. In the Records of the

Scottish Parliament he was, in the days of Charles the Second, described

as a lawless and rebellious man, who held lands masterfully and in high

contempt of the royal authority, [330] On one occasion the Sheriff of

Invernessshire was directed by King James to hold a court in Lochaber.

Lochiel, jealous of this interference with his own patriarchal

despotism, came to the tribunal at the head of four hundred armed

Camerons. He affected great reverence for the royal commission, but he

dropped three or four words which were perfectly understood by the pages

and armourbearers, who watched every turn of his eye. "Is none of my

lads so clever as to send this judge packing? I have seen them get up a

quarrel when there was less need of one." In a moment a brawl began

in the crowd, none could say how or where. Hundreds of dirks were out:

cries of "Help" and "Murder" were raised on all sides: many wounds were

inflicted: two men were killed: the sitting broke up in tumult; and the

terrified Sheriff was forced to put himself under the protection of the

chief, who, with a plausible bow of respect and concern, escorted him

safe home. It is amusing to think that the man who performed this feat

is constantly extolled as the most faithful and dutiful of subjects

by writers who blame Somers and Burnet as contemners of the legitimate

authority of Sovereigns. Lochiel would undoubtedly have laughed

the doctrine of nonresistance to scorn. But scarcely any chief in

Invernessshire had gained more than he by the downfall of the House

of Argyle, or had more reason than he to dread the restoration of that

House. Scarcely any chief in Invernessshire, therefore, was more alarmed

and disgusted by the proceedings of the Convention.

But of all those Highlanders who looked on the recent turn of fortune

with painful apprehension the fiercest and the most powerful were the

Macdonalds. More than one of the magnates who bore that widespread name

laid claim to the honour of being the rightful successor of those

Lords of the Isles, who, as late as the fifteenth century, disputed the

preeminence of the Kings of Scotland. This genealogical controversy,

which has lasted down to our own time, caused much bickering among the

competitors. But they all agreed in regretting the past splendour of

their dynasty, and in detesting the upstart race of Campbell. The old

feud had never slumbered. It was still constantly repeated, in verse and

prose, that the finest part of the domain belonging to the ancient

heads of the Gaelic nation, Islay, where they had lived with the pomp of

royalty, Iona, where they had been interred with the pomp of religion,

the paps of Jura, the rich peninsula of Kintyre, had been transferred

from the legitimate possessors to the insatiable Mac Callum More. Since

the downfall of the House of Argyle, the Macdonalds, if they had not

regained their ancient superiority, might at least boast that they had

now no superior. Relieved from the fear of their mighty enemy in the

West, they had turned their arms against weaker enemies in the East,

against the clan of Mackintosh and against the town of Inverness.

The clan of Mackintosh, a branch of an ancient and renowned tribe which

took its name and badge from the wild cat of the forests, had a dispute

with the Macdonalds, which originated, if tradition may be believed, in

those dark times when the Danish pirates wasted the coasts of Scotland.

Inverness was a Saxon colony among the Celts, a hive of traders and

artisans in the midst of a population of loungers and plunderers, a

solitary outpost of civilisation in a region of barbarians. Though the

buildings covered but a small part of the space over which they now

extend; though the arrival of a brig in the port was a rare event;

though the Exchange was the middle of a miry street, in which stood a

market cross much resembling a broken milestone; though the sittings of

the municipal council were held in a filthy den with a roughcast wall;

though the best houses were such as would now be called hovels; though

the best roofs were of thatch; though the best ceilings were of bare

rafters; though the best windows were, in bad weather, closed with

shutters for want of glass; though the humbler dwellings were mere

heaps of turf, in which barrels with the bottoms knocked out served the

purpose of chimneys; yet to the mountaineer of the Grampians this city

was as Babylon or as Tyre. Nowhere else had he seen four or five hundred

houses, two churches, twelve maltkilns, crowded close together. Nowhere

else had he been dazzled by the splendour of rows of booths, where

knives, horn spoons, tin kettles, and gaudy ribands were exposed to

sale. Nowhere else had he been on board of one of those huge ships which

brought sugar and wine over the sea from countries far beyond the limits

of his geography, [331] It is not strange that the haughty and warlike

Macdonalds, despising peaceful industry, yet envying the fruits of that

industry, should have fastened a succession of quarrels on the people of

Inverness. In the reign of Charles the Second, it had been apprehended

that the town would be stormed and plundered by those rude neighbours.

The terms of peace which they offered showed how little they regarded

the authority of the prince and of the law. Their demand was that a

heavy tribute should be paid to them, that the municipal magistrates

should bind themselves by an oath to deliver tip to the vengeance of the

clan every burgher who should shed the blood of a Macdonald, and that

every burgher who should anywhere meet a person wearing the Macdonald

tartan should ground arms in token of submission. Never did Lewis the

Fourteenth, not even when he was encamped between Utrecht and Amsterdam,

treat the States General with such despotic insolence, [332] By the

intervention of the Privy Council of Scotland a compromise was effected:

but the old animosity was undiminished.

Common enmities and common apprehensions produced a good understanding

between the town and the clan of Mackintosh. The foe most hated and

dreaded by both was Colin Macdonald of Keppoch, an excellent specimen of

the genuine Highland Jacobite. Keppoch's whole life had been passed

in insulting and resisting the authority of the Crown. He had been

repeatedly charged on his allegiance to desist from his lawless

practices, but had treated every admonition with contempt. The

government, however, was not willing to resort to extremities against

him; and he long continued to rule undisturbed the stormy peaks of

Coryarrick, and the gigantic terraces which still mark the limits of

what was once the Lake of Glenroy. He was famed for his knowledge of all

the ravines and caverns of that dreary region; and such was the

skill with which he could track a herd of cattle to the most secret

hidingplace that he was known by the nickname of Coll of the Cows,

[333] At length his outrageous violations of all law compelled the Privy

Council to take decided steps. He was proclaimed a rebel: letters of

fire and sword were issued against him under the seal of James; and, a

few weeks before the Revolution, a body of royal troops, supported

by the whole strength of the Mackintoshes, marched into Keppoch's

territories. He gave battle to the invaders, and was victorious. The

King's forces were put to flight; the King's captain was slain; and this

by a hero whose loyalty to the King many writers have very complacently

contrasted with the factious turbulence of the Whigs, [334]

If Keppoch had ever stood in any awe of the government, he was

completely relieved from that feeling by the general anarchy which

followed the Revolution. He wasted the lands of the Mackintoshes,

advanced to Inverness, and threatened the town with destruction. The

danger was extreme. The houses were surrounded only by a wall which

time and weather had so loosened that it shook in every storm. Yet the

inhabitants showed a bold front; and their courage was stimulated by

their preachers. Sunday the twenty-eighth of April was a day of alarm

and confusion. The savages went round and round the small colony of

Saxons like a troop of famished wolves round a sheepfold. Keppoch

threatened and blustered. He would come in with all his men. He would

sack the place. The burghers meanwhile mustered in arms round the

market cross to listen to the oratory of their ministers. The day closed

without an assault; the Monday and the Tuesday passed away in intense

anxiety; and then an unexpected mediator made his appearance.

Dundee, after his flight from Edinburgh, had retired to his country seat

in that valley through which the Glamis descends to the ancient castle

of Macbeth. Here he remained quiet during some time. He protested that

he had no intention of opposing the new government. He declared himself

ready to return to Edinburgh, if only he could be assured that he should

be protected against lawless violence; and he offered to give his word

of honour, or, if that were not sufficient, to give bail, that he would

keep the peace. Some of his old soldiers had accompanied him, and formed

a garrison sufficient to protect his house against the Presbyterians

of the neighbourhood. Here he might possibly have remained unharmed

and harmless, had not an event for which he was not answerable made his

enemies implacable, and made him desperate, [335]

An emissary of James had crossed from Ireland to Scotland with letters

addressed to Dundee and Balcarras. Suspicion was excited. The messenger

was arrested, interrogated, and searched; and the letters were found.

Some of them proved to be from Melfort, and were worthy of him. Every

line indicated those qualities which had made him the abhorrence of his

country and the favourite of his master. He announced with delight the

near approach of the day of vengeance and rapine, of the day when the

estates of the seditious would be divided among the loyal, and when many

who had been great and prosperous would be exiles and beggars. The King,

Melfort said, was determined to be severe. Experience had at length

convinced his Majesty that mercy would be weakness. Even the Jacobites

were disgusted by learning that a Restoration would be immediately

followed by a confiscation and a proscription. Some of them did not

hesitate to say that Melfort was a villain, that he hated Dundee and

Balcarras, that he wished to ruin them, and that, for that end, he had

written these odious despatches, and had employed a messenger who had

very dexterously managed to be caught. It is however quite certain that

Melfort, after the publication of these papers, continued to stand as

high as ever in the favour of James. It can therefore hardly be doubted

that, in those passages which shocked even the zealous supporters of

hereditary right, the Secretary merely expressed with fidelity the

feelings and intentions of his master, [336] Hamilton, by virtue of the

powers which the Estates had, before their adjournment, confided to him,

ordered Balcarras and Dundee to be arrested. Balcarras was taken and

confined, first in his own house, and then in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh.

But to seize Dundee was not so easy an enterprise. As soon as he

heard that warrants were out against him, he crossed the Dee with his

followers, and remained a short time in the wild domains of the House

of Gordon. There he held some communications with the Macdonalds and

Camerons about a rising. But he seems at this time to have known little

and cared little about the Highlanders. For their national character he

probably felt the dislike of a Saxon, for their military character the

contempt of a professional soldier. He soon returned to the Lowlands,

and stayed there till he learned that a considerable body of troops had

been sent to apprehend him, [337] He then betook himself to the hill

country as his last refuge, pushed northward through Strathdon and

Strathbogie, crossed the Spey, and, on the morning of the first of May,

arrived with a small band of horsemen at the camp of Keppoch before

Inverness.

The new situation in which Dundee was now placed, the new view of

society which was presented to him, naturally suggested new projects to

his inventive and enterprising spirit. The hundreds of athletic Celts

whom he saw in their national order of battle were evidently not allies

to be despised. If he could form a great coalition of clans, if he could

muster under one banner ten or twelve thousand of those hardy warriors,

if he could induce them to submit to the restraints of discipline, what

a career might be before him!

A commission from King James, even when King James was securely seated

on the throne, had never been regarded with much respect by Coll of the

Cows. That chief, however, hated the Campbells with all the hatred of a

Macdonald, and promptly gave in his adhesion to the cause of the House

of Stuart. Dundee undertook to settle the dispute between Keppoch and

Inverness. The town agreed to pay two thousand dollars, a sum which,

small as it might be in the estimation of the goldsmiths of Lombard

Street, probably exceeded any treasure that had ever been carried

into the wilds of Coryarrick. Half the sum was raised, not without

difficulty, by the inhabitants; and Dundee is said to have passed his

word for the remainder, [338]

He next tried to reconcile the Macdonalds with the Mackintoshes, and

flattered himself that the two warlike tribes, lately arrayed against

each other, might be willing to fight side by side under his command.

But he soon found that it was no light matter to take up a Highland

feud. About the rights of the contending Kings neither clan knew any

thing or cared any thing. The conduct of both is to be ascribed to local

passions and interests. What Argyle was to Keppoch, Keppoch was to the

Mackintoshes. The Mackintoshes therefore remained neutral; and their

example was followed by the Macphersons, another branch of the race of

the wild cat. This was not Dundee's only disappointment. The Mackenzies,

the Frasers, the Grants, the Munros, the Mackays, the Macleods, dwelt

at a great distance from the territory of Mac Callum More. They had no

dispute with him; they owed no debt to him: and they had no reason to

dread the increase of his power. They therefore did not sympathize with

his alarmed and exasperated neighbours, and could not be induced to join

the confederacy against him, [339] Those chiefs, on the other hand, who

lived nearer to Inverary, and to whom the name of Campbell had long been

terrible and hateful, greeted Dundee eagerly, and promised to meet him

at the head of their followers on the eighteenth of May. During the

fortnight which preceded that day, he traversed Badenoch and Athol, and

exhorted the inhabitants of those districts to rise in arms. He dashed

into the Lowlands with his horsemen, surprised Perth, and carried off

some Whig gentlemen prisoners to the mountains. Meanwhile the fiery

crosses had been wandering from hamlet to hamlet over all the heaths and

mountains thirty miles round Ben Nevis; and when he reached the trysting

place in Lochaber he found that the gathering had begun. The head

quarters were fixed close to Lochiel's house, a large pile built

entirely of fir wood, and considered in the Highlands as a superb

palace. Lochiel, surrounded by more than six hundred broadswords, was

there to receive his guests. Macnaghten of Macnaghten and Stewart of

Appin were at the muster with their little clans. Macdonald of Keppoch

led the warriors who had, a few months before, under his command, put

to flight the musketeers of King James. Macdonald of Clanronald was of

tender years: but he was brought to the camp by his uncle, who acted

at Regent during the minority. The youth was attended by a picked body

guard composed of his own cousins, all comely in appearance, and good

men of their hands. Macdonald of Glengarry, conspicuous by his dark

brow and his lofty stature, came from that great valley where a chain of

lakes, then unknown to fame, and scarcely set down in maps, is now

the daily highway of steam vessels passing and reprising between the

Atlantic and the German Ocean. None of the rulers of the mountains had a

higher sense of his personal dignity, or was more frequently engaged in

disputes with other chiefs. He generally affected in his manners and

in his housekeeping a rudeness beyond that of his rude neighbours, and

professed to regard the very few luxuries which had then found their way

from the civilised parts of the world into the Highlands as signs of the

effeminacy and degeneracy of the Gaelic race. But on this occasion he

chose to imitate the splendour of Saxon warriors, and rode on horseback

before his four hundred plaided clansmen in a steel cuirass and a coat

embroidered with gold lace. Another Macdonald, destined to a lamentable

and horrible end, led a band of hardy freebooters from the dreary

pass of Glencoe. Somewhat later came the great Hebridean potentates.

Macdonald of Sleat, the most opulent and powerful of all the grandees

who laid claim to the lofty title of Lord of the Isles, arrived at

the head of seven hundred fighting men from Sky. A fleet of long boats

brought five hundred Macleans from Mull under the command of their

chief, Sir John of Duart. A far more formidable array had in old times

followed his forefathers to battle. But the power, though not the

spirit, of the clan had been broken by the arts and arms of the

Campbells. Another band of Macleans arrived under a valiant leader, who

took his title from Lochbuy, which is, being interpreted, the Yellow

Lake, [340]

It does not appear that a single chief who had not some special cause to

dread and detest the House of Argyle obeyed Dundee's summons. There

is indeed strong reason to believe that the chiefs who came would have

remained quietly at home if the government had understood the politics

of the Highlands. Those politics were thoroughly understood by one able

and experienced statesman, sprung from the great Highland family of

Mackenzie, the Viscount Tarbet. He at this conjuncture pointed out to

Melville by letter, and to Mackay in conversation, both the cause and

the remedy of the distempers which seemed likely to bring on Scotland

the calamities of civil war. There was, Tarbet said, no general

disposition to insurrection among the Gael. Little was to be apprehended

even from those popish clans which were under no apprehension of being

subjected to the yoke of the Campbells. It was notorious that the ablest

and most active of the discontented chiefs troubled themselves not at

all about the questions which were in dispute between the Whigs and the

Tories. Lochiel in particular, whose eminent personal qualities made him

the most important man among the mountaineers, cared no more for James

than for William. If the Camerons, the Macdonalds, and the Macleans

could be convinced that, under the new government, their estates and

their dignities would be safe, if Mac Callum More would make some

concessions, if their Majesties would take on themselves the payment of

some arrears of rent, Dundee might call the clans to arms; but he would

call to little purpose. Five thousand pounds, Tarbet thought, would be

sufficient to quiet all the Celtic magnates; and in truth, though that

sum might seem ludicrously small to the politicians of Westminster,

though it was not larger than the annual gains of the Groom of the Stole

or of the Paymaster of the Forces, it might well be thought immense by

a barbarous potentate who, while he ruled hundreds of square miles, and

could bring hundreds of warriors into the field, had perhaps never had

fifty guineas at once in his coffers, [341]

Though Tarbet was considered by the Scottish ministers of the new

Sovereigns as a very doubtful friend, his advice was not altogether

neglected. It was resolved that overtures such as he recommended should

be made to the malecontents. Much depended on the choice of an agent;

and unfortunately the choice showed how little the prejudices of the

wild tribes of the hills were understood at Edinburgh. A Campbell was

selected for the office of gaining over to the cause of King William

men whose only quarrel to King William was that he countenanced the

Campbells. Offers made through such a channel were naturally regarded as

at once snares and insults. After this it was to no purpose that Tarbet

wrote to Lochiel and Mackay to Glengarry. Lochiel returned no answer to

Tarbet; and Glengarry returned to Mackay a coldly civil answer, in which

the general was advised to imitate the example of Monk, [342]

Mackay, meanwhile, wasted some weeks in marching, in countermarching,

and in indecisive skirmishing. He afterwards honestly admitted that the

knowledge which he had acquired, during thirty years of military service

on the Continent, was, in the new situation in which he was placed,

useless to him. It was difficult in such a country to track the enemy.

It was impossible to drive him to bay. Food for an invading army was not

to be found in the wilderness of heath and shingle; nor could supplies

for many days be transported far over quaking bogs and up precipitous

ascents. The general found that he had tired his men and their horses

almost to death, and yet had effected nothing. Highland auxiliaries

might have been of the greatest use to him: but he had few such

auxiliaries. The chief of the Grants, indeed, who had been persecuted

by the late government, and had been accused of conspiring with the

unfortunate Earl of Argyle, was zealous on the side of the Revolution.

Two hundred Mackays, animated probably by family feeling, came from the

northern extremity of our island, where at midsummer there is no night,

to fight under a commander of their own name: but in general the clans

which took no part in the insurrection awaited the event with cold

indifference, and pleased themselves with the hope that they should

easily make their peace with the conquerors, and be permitted to assist

in plundering the conquered.

An experience of little more than a month satisfied Mackay that there

was only one way in which the Highlands could be subdued. It was idle

to run after the mountaineers up and down their mountains. A chain of

fortresses must be built in the most important situations, and must be

well garrisoned. The place with which the general proposed to begin was

Inverlochy, where the huge remains of an ancient castle stood and still

stand. This post was close to an arm of the sea, and was in the heart of

the country occupied by the discontented clans. A strong force stationed

there, and supported, if necessary, by ships of war, would effectually

overawe at once the Macdonalds, the Camerons, and the Macleans, [343]

While Mackay was representing in his letters to the council at Edinburgh

the necessity of adopting this plan, Dundee was contending with

difficulties which all his energy and dexterity could not completely

overcome.

The Highlanders, while they continued to be a nation living under a

peculiar polity, were in one sense better and in another sense worse

fitted for military purposes than any other nation in Europe. The

individual Celt was morally and physically well qualified for war, and

especially for war in so wild and rugged a country as his own. He was

intrepid, strong, fleet, patient of cold, of hunger, and of fatigue. Up

steep crags, and over treacherous morasses, he moved as easily as the

French household troops paced along the great road from Versailles

to Marli. He was accustomed to the use of weapons and to the sight of

blood: he was a fencer; he was a marksman; and, before he had ever stood

in the ranks, he was already more than half a soldier.

As the individual Celt was easily turned into a soldier, so a tribe

of Celts was easily turned into a battalion of soldiers. All that was

necessary was that the military organization should be conformed to the

patriarchal organization. The Chief must be Colonel: his uncle or his

brother must be Major: the tacksmen, who formed what may be called the

peerage of the little community, must be the Captains: the company of

each Captain must consist of those peasants who lived on his land, and

whose names, faces, connections, and characters, were perfectly known to

him: the subaltern officers must be selected among the Duinhe Wassels,

proud of the eagle's feather: the henchman was an excellent orderly: the

hereditary piper and his sons formed the band: and the clan became at

once a regiment. In such a regiment was found from the first moment that

exact order and prompt obedience in which the strength of regular armies

consists. Every man, from highest to lowest, was in his proper place,

and knew that place perfectly. It was not necessary to impress by

threats or by punishment on the newly enlisted troops the duty of

regarding as their head him whom they had regarded as their head ever

since they could remember any thing. Every private had, from infancy,

respected his corporal much and his Captain more, and had almost adored

his Colonel. There was therefore no danger of mutiny. There was

as little danger of desertion. Indeed the very feelings which most

powerfully impel other soldiers to desert kept the Highlander to his

standard. If he left it, whither was he to go? All his kinsmen, all

his friends, were arrayed round it. To separate himself from it was to

separate himself for ever from his family, and to incur all the misery

of that very homesickness which, in regular armies, drives so many

recruits to abscond at the risk of stripes and of death. When these

things are fairly considered, it will not be thought strange that the

Highland clans should have occasionally achieved great martial exploits.

But those very institutions which made a tribe of highlanders, all

bearing the same name, and all subject to the same ruler, so formidable

in battle, disqualified the nation for war on a large scale. Nothing was

easier than to turn clans into efficient regiments; but nothing was more

difficult than to combine these regiments in such a manner as to form an

efficient army. From the shepherds and herdsmen who fought in the ranks

up to the chiefs, all was harmony and order. Every man looked up to his

immediate superior, and all looked up to the common head. But with the

chief this chain of subordination ended. He knew only how to govern, and

had never learned to obey. Even to royal proclamations, even to Acts of

Parliament, he was accustomed to yield obedience only when they were in

perfect accordance with his own inclinations. It was not to be expected

that he would pay to any delegated authority a respect which he was

in the habit of refusing to the supreme authority. He thought himself

entitled to judge of the propriety of every order which he received. Of

his brother chiefs, some were his enemies and some his rivals. It was

hardly possible to keep him from affronting them, or to convince him

that they were not affronting him. All his followers sympathized with

all his animosities, considered his honour as their own, and were

ready at his whistle to array themselves round him in arms against the

commander in chief. There was therefore very little chance that by any

contrivance any five clans could be induced to cooperate heartily with

one another during a long campaign. The best chance, however, was

when they were led by a Saxon. It is remarkable that none of the great

actions performed by the Highlanders during our civil wars was performed

under the command of a Highlander. Some writers have mentioned it as

a proof of the extraordinary genius of Montrose and Dundee that those

captains, though not themselves of Gaelic race or speech, should have

been able to form and direct confederacies of Gaelic tribes. But in

truth it was precisely because Montrose and Dundee were not Highlanders,

that they were able to lead armies composed of Highland clans. Had

Montrose been chief of the Camerons, the Macdonalds would never have

submitted to his authority. Had Dundee been chief of Clanronald, he

would never have been obeyed by Glengarry. Haughty and punctilious men,

who scarcely acknowledged the king to be their superior, would not have

endured the superiority of a neighbour, an equal, a competitor. They

could far more easily bear the preeminence of a distinguished stranger,

yet even to such a stranger they would allow only a very limited and a

very precarious authority. To bring a chief before a court martial, to

shoot him, to cashier him, to degrade him, to reprimand him publicly,

was impossible. Macdonald of Keppoch or Maclean of Duart would have

struck dead any officer who had demanded his sword, and told him to

consider himself as under arrest; and hundreds of claymores would

instantly have been drawn to protect the murderer. All that was left to

the commander under whom these potentates condescended to serve was to

argue with them, to supplicate them, to flatter them, to bribe them;

and it was only during a short time that any human skill could preserve

harmony by these means. For every chief thought himself entitled to

peculiar observance; and it was therefore impossible to pay marked

court to any one without disobliging the rest. The general found himself

merely the president of a congress of petty kings. He was perpetually

called upon to hear and to compose disputes about pedigrees, about

precedence, about the division of spoil. His decision, be it what it

might, must offend somebody. At any moment he might hear that his right

wing had fired on his centre in pursuance of some quarrel two hundred

years old, or that a whole battalion had marched back to its native

glen, because another battalion had been put in the post of honour. A

Highland bard might easily have found in the history of the year 1689

subjects very similar to those with which the war of Troy furnished the

great poets of antiquity. One day Achilles is sullen, keeps his tent,

and announces his intention to depart with all his men. The next day

Ajax is storming about the camp, and threatening to cut the throat of

Ulysses.

Hence it was that, though the Highlanders achieved some great exploits

in the civil wars of the seventeenth century, those exploits left no

trace which could be discerned after the lapse of a few weeks. Victories

of strange and almost portentous splendour produced all the consequences

of defeat. Veteran soldiers and statesmen were bewildered by those

sudden turns of fortune. It was incredible that undisciplined men should

have performed such feats of arms. It was incredible that such feats

of arms, having been performed, should be immediately followed by the

triumph of the conquered and the submission of the conquerors. Montrose,

having passed rapidly from victory to victory, was, in the full career

of success, suddenly abandoned by his followers. Local jealousies and

local interests had brought his army together. Local jealousies and

local interests dissolved it. The Gordons left him because they fancied

that he neglected them for the Macdonalds. The Macdonalds left him

because they wanted to plunder the Campbells. The force which had once

seemed sufficient to decide the fate of a kingdom melted away in a few

days; and the victories of Tippermuir and Kilsyth were followed by the

disaster of Philiphaugh. Dundee did not live long enough to experience

a similar reverse of fortune; but there is every reason to believe that,

had his life been prolonged one fortnight, his history would have been

the history of Montrose retold.

Dundee made one attempt, soon after the gathering of the clans in

Lochaber, to induce them to submit to the discipline of a regular army.

He called a council of war to consider this question. His opinion was

supported by all the officers who had joined him from the low country.

Distinguished among them were James Seton, Earl of Dunfermline, and

James Galloway, Lord Dunkeld. The Celtic chiefs took the other side.

Lochiel, the ablest among them, was their spokesman, and argued the

point with much ingenuity and natural eloquence. "Our system,"--such was

the substance of his reasoning, "may not be the best: but we were bred

to it from childhood: we understand it perfectly: it is suited to our

peculiar institutions, feelings, and manners. Making war after our own

fashion, we have the expertness and coolness of veterans. Making war

in any other way, we shall be raw and awkward recruits. To turn us into

soldiers like those of Cromwell and Turenne would be the business of

years: and we have not even weeks to spare. We have time enough to

unlearn our own discipline, but not time enough to learn yours." Dundee,

with high compliments to Lochiel, declared himself convinced, and

perhaps was convinced: for the reasonings of the wise old chief were by

no means without weight, [344]

Yet some Celtic usages of war were such as Dundee could not tolerate.

Cruel as he was, his cruelty always had a method and a purpose. He still

hoped that he might be able to win some chiefs who remained neutral;

and he carefully avoided every act which could goad them into open

hostility. This was undoubtedly a policy likely to promote the interest

of James; but the interest of James was nothing to the wild marauders

who used his name and rallied round his banner merely for the purpose of

making profitable forays and wreaking old grudges. Keppoch especially,

who hated the Mackintoshes much more than he loved the Stuarts, not only

plundered the territory of his enemies, but burned whatever he could not

carry away. Dundee was moved to great wrath by the sight of the blazing

dwellings. "I would rather," he said, "carry a musket in a respectable

regiment than be captain of such a gang of thieves." Punishment was of

course out of the question. Indeed it may be considered as a remarkable

proof of the general's influence that Coll of the Cows deigned to

apologize for conduct for which in a well governed army he would have

been shot, [345]

As the Grants were in arms for King William, their property was

considered as fair prize. Their territory was invaded by a party of

Camerons: a skirmish took place: some blood was shed; and many cattle

were carried off to Dundee's camp, where provisions were greatly needed.

This raid produced a quarrel, the history of which illustrates in the

most striking manner the character of a Highland army. Among those who

were slain in resisting the Camerons was a Macdonald of the Glengarry

branch, who had long resided among the Grants, had become in feelings

and opinions a Grant, and had absented himself from the muster of his

tribe. Though he had been guilty of a high offence against the Gaelic

code of honour and morality, his kinsmen remembered the sacred tie which

he had forgotten. Good or bad, he was bone of their bone: he was flesh

of their flesh; and he should have been reserved for their justice. The

name which he bore, the blood of the Lords of the Isles, should have

been his protection. Glengarry in a rage went to Dundee and demanded

vengeance on Lochiel and the whole race of Cameron. Dundee replied that

the unfortunate gentleman who had fallen was a traitor to the clan as

well as to the King. Was it ever heard of in war that the person of an

enemy, a combatant in arms, was to be held inviolable on account of his

name and descent? And, even if wrong had been done, how was it to be

redressed? Half the army must slaughter the other half before a finger

could be laid on Lochiel. Glengarry went away raging like a madman.

Since his complaints were disregarded by those who ought to right him,

he would right himself: he would draw out his men, and fall sword in

hand on the murderers of his cousin. During some time he would listen to

no expostulation. When he was reminded that Lochiel's followers were in

number nearly double of the Glengarry men, "No matter," he cried, "one

Macdonald is worth two Camerons." Had Lochiel been equally irritable and

boastful, it is probable that the Highland insurrection would have given

little more trouble to the government, and that the rebels would have

perished obscurely in the wilderness by one another's claymores.

But nature had bestowed on him in large measure the qualities of a

statesman, though fortune had hidden those qualities in an obscure

corner of the world. He saw that this was not a time for brawling: his

own character for courage had long been established; and his temper was

under strict government. The fury of Glengarry, not being inflamed

by any fresh provocation, rapidly abated. Indeed there were some who

suspected that he had never been quite so pugnacious as he had affected

to be, and that his bluster was meant only to keep up his own dignity

in the eyes of his retainers. However this might be, the quarrel was

composed; and the two chiefs met, with the outward show of civility, at

the general's table, [346]

What Dundee saw of his Celtic allies must have made him desirous to

have in his army some troops on whose obedience he could depend, and who

would not, at a signal from their colonel, turn their arms against their

general and their king. He accordingly, during the months of May

and June, sent to Dublin a succession of letters earnestly imploring

assistance. If six thousand, four thousand, three thousand, regular

soldiers were now sent to Lochaber, he trusted that his Majesty would

soon hold a court in Holyrood. That such a force might be spared

hardly admitted of a doubt. The authority of James was at that time

acknowledged in every part of Ireland, except on the shores of Lough

Erne and behind the ramparts of Londonderry. He had in that kingdom

an army of forty thousand men. An eighth part of such an army would

scarcely be missed there, and might, united with the clans which were in

insurrection, effect great things in Scotland.

Dundee received such answers to his applications as encouraged him

to hope that a large and well appointed force would soon be sent from

Ulster to join him. He did not wish to try the chance of battle before

these succours arrived, [347] Mackay, on the other hand, was weary

of marching to and fro in a desert. His men were exhausted and out of

heart. He thought it desirable that they should withdraw from the hill

country; and William was of the same opinion.

In June therefore the civil war was, as if by concert between the

generals, completely suspended. Dundee remained in Lochaber, impatiently

awaiting the arrival of troops and supplies from Ireland. It was

impossible for him to keep his Highlanders together in a state of

inactivity. A vast extent of moor and mountain was required to furnish

food for so many mouths. The clans therefore went back to their own

glens, having promised to reassemble on the first summons.

Meanwhile Mackay's soldiers, exhausted by severe exertions and

privations, were taking their ease in quarters scattered over the low

country from Aberdeen to Stirling. Mackay himself was at Edinburgh,

and was urging the ministers there to furnish him with the means

of constructing a chain of fortifications among the Grampians. The

ministers had, it should seem, miscalculated their military resources.

It had been expected that the Campbells would take the field in such

force as would balance the whole strength of the clans which marched

under Dundee. It had also been expected that the Covenanters of the

West would hasten to swell the ranks of the army of King William.

Both expectations were disappointed. Argyle had found his principality

devastated, and his tribe disarmed and disorganized. A considerable time

must elapse before his standard would be surrounded by an array such as

his forefathers had led to battle. The Covenanters of the West were in

general unwilling to enlist. They were assuredly not wanting in courage;

and they hated Dundee with deadly hatred. In their part of the country

the memory of his cruelty was still fresh. Every village had its own

tale of blood. The greyheaded father was missed in one dwelling, the

hopeful stripling in another. It was remembered but too well how the

dragoons had stalked into the peasant's cottage, cursing and damning

him, themselves, and each other at every second word, pushing from the

ingle nook his grandmother of eighty, and thrusting their hands into the

bosom of his daughter of sixteen; how the abjuration had been tendered

to him; how he had folded his arms and said "God's will be done"; how

the Colonel had called for a file with loaded muskets; and how in three

minutes the goodman of the house had been wallowing in a pool of

blood at his own door. The seat of the martyr was still vacant at the

fireside; and every child could point out his grave still green amidst

the heath. When the people of this region called their oppressor a

servant of the devil, they were not speaking figuratively. They believed

that between the bad man and the bad angel there was a close alliance on

definite terms; that Dundee had bound himself to do the work of hell on

earth, and that, for high purposes, hell was permitted to protect its

slave till the measure of his guilt should be full. But, intensely as

these men abhorred Dundee, most of them had a scruple about drawing

the sword for William. A great meeting was held in the parish church of

Douglas; and the question was propounded, whether, at a time when war

was in the land, and when an Irish invasion was expected, it were not a

duty to take arms. The debate was sharp and tumultuous. The orators on

one side adjured their brethren not to incur the curse denounced against

the inhabitants of Meroz, who came not to the help of the Lord against

the mighty. The orators on the other side thundered against sinful

associations. There were malignants in William's Army: Mackay's

own orthodoxy was problematical: to take military service with such

comrades, and under such a general, would be a sinful association. At

length, after much wrangling, and amidst great confusion, a vote was

taken; and the majority pronounced that to take military service would

be a sinful association. There was however a large minority; and, from

among the members of this minority, the Earl of Angus was able to raise

a body of infantry, which is still, after the lapse of more than a

hundred and sixty years, known by the name of the Cameronian Regiment.

The first Lieutenant Colonel was Cleland, that implacable avenger of

blood who had driven Dundee from the Convention. There was no small

difficulty in filling the ranks: for many West country Whigs, who did

not think it absolutely sinful to enlist, stood out for terms subversive

of all military discipline. Some would not serve under any colonel,

major, captain, serjeant, or corporal, who was not ready to sign

the Covenant. Others insisted that, if it should be found absolutely

necessary to appoint any officer who had taken the tests imposed in the

late reign, he should at least qualify himself for command by publicly

confessing his sin at the head of the regiment. Most of the enthusiasts

who had proposed these conditions were induced by dexterous management

to abate much of their demands. Yet the new regiment had a very peculiar

character. The soldiers were all rigid Puritans. 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. His situation was one which must have severely tried

the firmest nerves. Night had set in: he was in a desert: he had no

guide: a victorious enemy was, in all human probability, on his track;

and he had to provide for the safety of a crowd of men who had lost both

head and heart. He had just suffered a defeat of all defeats the

most painful and humiliating. His domestic feelings had been not less

severely wounded than his professional feelings. One dear kinsman had

just been struck dead before his eyes. Another, bleeding from many

wounds, moved feebly at his side. But the unfortunate general's courage

was sustained by a firm faith in God, and a high sense of duty to the

state. In the midst of misery and disgrace, he still held his head nobly

erect, and found fortitude, not only for himself; but for all around

him. His first care was to be sure of his road. A solitary light which

twinkled through the darkness guided him to a small hovel. The inmates

spoke no tongue but the Gaelic, and were at first scared by the

appearance of uniforms and arms. But Mackay's gentle manner removed

their apprehension: their language had been familiar to him in

childhood; and he retained enough of it to communicate with them. By

their directions, and by the help of a pocket map, in which the routes

through that wild country were roughly laid down, he was able to

find his way. He marched all night. When day broke his task was more

difficult than ever. Light increased the terror of his companions.

Hastings's men and Leven's men indeed still behaved themselves like

soldiers. But the fugitives from Ramsay's were a mere rabble. They had

flung away their muskets. The broadswords from which they had fled were

ever in their eyes. Every fresh object caused a fresh panic. A company

of herdsmen in plaids driving cattle was magnified by imagination into

a host of Celtic warriors. Some of the runaways left the main body and

fled to the hills, where their cowardice met with a proper punishment.

They were killed for their coats and shoes; and their naked carcasses

were left for a prey to the eagles of Ben Lawers. The desertion would

have been much greater, had not Mackay and his officers, pistol in hand,

threatened to blow out the brains of any man whom they caught attempting

to steal off.

At length the weary fugitives came in sight of Weems Castle. The

proprietor of the mansion was a friend to the new government, and

extended to them such hospitality as was in his power. His stores of

oatmeal were brought out, kine were slaughtered; and a rude and hasty

meal was set before the numerous guests. Thus refreshed, they again

set forth, and marched all day over bog, moor, and mountain. Thinly

inhabited as the country was, they could plainly see that the report of

their disaster had already spread far, and that the population was every

where in a state of great excitement. Late at night they reached Castle

Drummond, which was held for King William by a small garrison; and,

on the following day, they proceeded with less difficulty to Stirling,

[368]

The tidings of their defeat had outrun them. All Scotland was in a

ferment. The disaster had indeed been great: but it was exaggerated by

the wild hopes of one party and by the wild fears of the other. It was

at first believed that the whole army of King William had perished; that

Mackay himself had fallen; that Dundee, at the head of a great host of

barbarians, flushed with victory and impatient for spoil, had already

descended from the hills; that he was master of the whole country beyond

the Forth; that Fife was up to join him; that in three days he would

be at Stirling; that in a week he would be at Holyrood. Messengers were

sent to urge a regiment which lay in Northumberland to hasten across

the border. Others carried to London earnest entreaties that His Majesty

would instantly send every soldier that could be spared, nay, that he

would come himself to save his northern kingdom. The factions of the

Parliament House, awestruck by the common danger, forgot to wrangle.

Courtiers and malecontents with one voice implored the Lord High

Commissioner to close the session, and to dismiss them from a place

where their deliberations might soon be interrupted by the mountaineers.

It was seriously considered whether it might not be expedient to abandon

Edinburgh, to send the numerous state prisoners who were in the Castle

and the Tolbooth on board of a man of war which lay off Leith, and to

transfer the seat of government to Glasgow.

The news of Dundee's victory was every where speedily followed by the

news of his death; and it is a strong proof of the extent and vigour of

his faculties, that his death seems every where to have been regarded

as a complete set off against his victory. Hamilton, before he adjourned

the Estates, informed them that he had good tidings for them; that

Dundee was certainly dead; and that therefore the rebels had on the

whole sustained a defeat. In several letters written at that conjuncture

by able and experienced politicians a similar opinion is expressed. The

messenger who rode with the news of the battle to the English Court was

fast followed by another who carried a despatch for the King, and, not

finding His Majesty at Saint James's, galloped to Hampton Court. Nobody

in the capital ventured to break the seal; but fortunately, after the

letter had been closed, some friendly hand had hastily written on the

outside a few words of comfort: "Dundee is killed. Mackay has got to

Stirling:" and these words quieted the minds of the Londoners, [369]

From the pass of Killiecrankie the Highlanders had retired, proud

of their victory, and laden with spoil, to the Castle of Blair. They

boasted that the field of battle was covered with heaps of the Saxon

soldiers, and that the appearance of the corpses bore ample testimony to

the power of a good Gaelic broadsword in a good Gaelic right hand. Heads

were found cloven down to the throat, and sculls struck clean off just

above the ears. The conquerors however had bought their victory dear.

While they were advancing, they had been much galled by the musketry of

the enemy; and, even after the decisive charge, Hastings's Englishmen

and some of Leven's borderers had continued to keep up a steady fire. A

hundred and twenty Camerons had been slain: the loss of the Macdonalds

had been still greater; and several gentlemen of birth and note had

fallen, [370]

Dundee was buried in the church of Blair Athol: but no monument was

erected over his grave; and the church itself has long disappeared.

A rude stone on the field of battle marks, if local tradition can be

trusted, the place where he fell, [371] During the last three months of

his life he had approved himself a great warrior and politician; and his

name is therefore mentioned with respect by that large class of persons

who think that there is no excess of wickedness for which courage and

ability do not atone.

It is curious that the two most remarkable battles that perhaps were

ever gained by irregular over regular troops should have been fought

in the same week; the battle of Killiecrankie, and the battle of

Newton Butler. In both battles the success of the irregular troops was

singularly rapid and complete. In both battles the panic of the regular

troops, in spite of the conspicuous example of courage set by their

generals, was singularly disgraceful. It ought also to be noted that, of

these extraordinary victories, one was gained by Celts over Saxons, and

the other by Saxons over Celts. The victory of Killiecrankie indeed,

though neither more splendid nor more important than the victory of

Newton Butler, is far more widely renowned; and the reason is evident.

The Anglosaxon and the Celt have been reconciled in Scotland, and have

never been reconciled in Ireland. In Scotland all the great actions of

both races are thrown into a common stock, and are considered as making

up the glory which belongs to the whole country. So completely has the

old antipathy been extinguished that nothing is more usual than to

hear a Lowlander talk with complacency and even with pride of the

most humiliating defeat that his ancestors ever underwent. It would be

difficult to name any eminent man in whom national feeling and clannish

feeling were stronger than in Sir Walter Scott. Yet when Sir Walter

Scott mentioned Killiecrankie he seemed utterly to forget that he was

a Saxon, that he was of the same blood and of the same speech with

Ramsay's foot and Annandale's horse. His heart swelled with triumph

when he related how his own kindred had fled like hares before a smaller

number of warriors of a different breed and of a different tongue.

In Ireland the feud remains unhealed. The name of Newton Butler,

insultingly repeated by a minority, is hateful to the great majority

of the population. If a monument were set up on the field of battle, it

would probably be defaced: if a festival were held in Cork or Waterford

on the anniversary of the battle, it would probably be interrupted by

violence. The most illustrious Irish poet of our time would have thought

it treason to his country to sing the praises of the conquerors. One

of the most learned and diligent Irish archeologists of our time has

laboured, not indeed very successfully, to prove that the event of the

day was decided by a mere accident from which the Englishry could derive

no glory. We cannot wonder that the victory of the Highlanders should be

more celebrated than the victory of the Enniskilleners, when we consider

that the victory of the Highlanders is matter of boast to all Scotland,

and that the victory of the Enniskilleners is matter of shame to three

fourths of Ireland.

As far as the great interests of the State were concerned, it mattered

not at all whether the battle of Killiecrankie were lost or won. It is

very improbable that even Dundee, if he had survived the most glorious

day of his life, could have surmounted those difficulties which sprang

from the peculiar nature of his army, and which would have increased

tenfold as soon as the war was transferred to the Lowlands. It is

certain that his successor was altogether unequal to the task. During a

day or two, indeed, the new general might flatter himself that all

would go well. His army was rapidly swollen to near double the number of

claymores that Dundee had commanded. The Stewarts of Appin, who, though

full of zeal, had not been able to come up in time for the battle, were

among the first who arrived. Several clans, which had hitherto waited

to see which side was the stronger, were now eager to descend on the

Lowlands under the standard of King James the Seventh. The Grants

indeed continued to bear true allegiance to William and Mary; and the

Mackintoshes were kept neutral by unconquerable aversion to Keppoch.

But Macphersons, Farquharsons, and Frasers came in crowds to the camp at

Blair. The hesitation of the Athol men was at an end. Many of them

had lurked, during the fight, among the crags and birch trees of

Killiecrankie, and, as soon as the event of the day was decided, had

emerged from those hiding places to strip and butcher the fugitives

who tried to escape by the pass. The Robertsons, a Gaelic race, though

bearing a Saxon name, gave in at this conjuncture their adhesion to

the cause of the exiled king. Their chief Alexander, who took his

appellation from his lordship of Struan, was a very young man and a

student at the University of Saint Andrew's. He had there acquired a

smattering of letters, and had been initiated much more deeply into Tory

politics. He now joined the Highland army, and continued, through a long

life to be constant to the Jacobite cause. His part, however, in public

affairs was so insignificant that his name would not now be remembered,

if he had not left a volume of poems, always very stupid and often very

profligate. Had this book been manufactured in Grub Street, it would

scarcely have been honoured with a quarter of a line in the Dunciad. But

it attracted some notice on account of the situation of the writer. For,

a hundred and twenty years ago, an eclogue or a lampoon written by a

Highland chief was a literary portent, [372]

But, though the numerical strength of Cannon's forces was increasing,

their efficiency was diminishing. Every new tribe which joined the camp

brought with it some new cause of dissension. In the hour of peril, the

most arrogant and mutinous spirits will often submit to the guidance of

superior genius. Yet, even in the hour of peril, and even to the genius

of Dundee, the Celtic chiefs had gelded but a precarious and imperfect

obedience. To restrain them, when intoxicated with success and confident

of their strength, would probably have been too hard a task even for

him, as it had been, in the preceding generation, too hard a task for

Montrose. The new general did nothing but hesitate and blunder. One of

his first acts was to send a large body of men, chiefly Robertsons, down

into the low country for the purpose of collecting provisions. He seems

to have supposed that this detachment would without difficulty occupy

Perth. But Mackay had already restored order among the remains of his

army: he had assembled round him some troops which had not shared in the

disgrace of the late defeat; and he was again ready for action. Cruel as

his sufferings had been, he had wisely and magnanimously resolved not

to punish what was past. To distinguish between degrees of guilt was

not easy. To decimate the guilty would have been to commit a frightful

massacre. His habitual piety too led him to consider the unexampled

panic which had seized his soldiers as a proof rather of the divine

displeasure than of their cowardice. He acknowledged with heroic

humility that the singular firmness which he had himself displayed in

the midst of the confusion and havoc was not his own, and that he

might well, but for the support of a higher power, have behaved as

pusillanimously as any of the wretched runaways who had thrown away

their weapons and implored quarter in vain from the barbarous marauders

of Athol. His dependence on heaven did not, however, prevent him from

applying himself vigorously to the work of providing, as far as human

prudence could provide, against the recurrence of such a calamity as

that which he had just experienced. The immediate cause of his defeat

was the difficulty of fixing bayonets. The firelock of the Highlander

was quite distinct from the weapon which he used in close fight. He

discharged his shot, threw away his gun, and fell on with his sword.

This was the work of a moment. It took the regular musketeer two or

three minutes to alter his missile weapon into a weapon with which he

could encounter an enemy hand to hand; and during these two or three

minutes the event of the battle of Killiecrankie had been decided.

Mackay therefore ordered all his bayonets to be so formed that they

might be screwed upon the barrel without stopping it up, and that his

men might be able to receive a charge the very instant after firing,

[373]

As soon as he learned that a detachment of the Gaelic army was advancing

towards Perth, he hastened to meet them at the head of a body of

dragoons who had not been in the battle, and whose spirit was therefore

unbroken. On Wednesday the thirty-first of July, only four days after

his defeat, he fell in with the Robertsons near Saint Johnston's,

attacked them, routed them, killed a hundred and twenty of them, and

took thirty prisoners, with the loss of only a single soldier, [374]

This skirmish produced an effect quite out of proportion to the number

of the combatants or of the slain. The reputation of the Celtic arms

went down almost as fast as it had risen. During two or three days it

had been every where imagined that those arms were invincible. There was

now a reaction. It was perceived that what had happened at Killiecrankie

was an exception to ordinary rules, and that the Highlanders were

not, except in very peculiar circumstances, a match for good regular

soldiers.

Meanwhile the disorders of Cannon's camp went on increasing. He called

a council of war to consider what course it would be advisable to take.

But as soon as the council had met, a preliminary question was raised.

Who were entitled to be consulted? The army was almost exclusively a

Highland army. The recent victory had been won exclusively by Highland

warriors. Great chiefs, who had brought six or seven hundred fighting

men into the field, did not think it fair that they should be outvoted

by gentlemen from Ireland and from the low country, who bore indeed King

James's commission, and were called Colonels and Captains, but who were

Colonels without regiments and Captains without companies. Lochiel spoke

strongly in behalf of the class to which he belonged: but Cannon decided

that the votes of the Saxon officers should be reckoned, [375]

It was next considered what was to be the plan of the campaign. Lochiel

was for advancing, for marching towards Mackay wherever Mackay might be,

and for giving battle again. It can hardly be supposed that success

had so turned the head of the wise chief of the Camerons as to make

him insensible of the danger of the course which he recommended. But he

probably conceived that nothing but a choice between dangers was left to

him. His notion was that vigorous action was necessary to the very being

of a Highland army, and that the coalition of clans would last only

while they were impatiently pushing forward from battlefield to

battlefield. He was again overruled. All his hopes of success were

now at an end. His pride was severely wounded. He had submitted to the

ascendancy of a great captain: but he cared as little as any Whig for

a royal commission. He had been willing to be the right hand of Dundee:

but he would not be ordered about by Cannon. He quitted the camp, and

retired to Lochaber. He indeed directed his clan to remain. But the

clan, deprived of the leader whom it adored, and aware that he had

withdrawn himself in ill humour, was no longer the same terrible

column which had a few days before kept so well the vow to perish or to

conquer. Macdonald of Sleat, whose forces exceeded in number those of

any other of the confederate chiefs, followed Lochiel's example and

returned to Sky, [376]

Mackay's arrangements were by this time complete; and he had little

doubt that, if the rebels came down to attack him, the regular army

would retrieve the honour which had been lost at Killiecrankie. His

chief difficulties arose from the unwise interference of the ministers

of the Crown at Edinburgh with matters which ought to have been left

to his direction. The truth seems to be that they, after the ordinary

fashion of men who, having no military experience, sit in judgment on

military operations, considered success as the only test of the ability

of a commander. Whoever wins a battle is, in the estimation of such

persons, a great general: whoever is beaten is a lead general; and no

general had ever been more completely beaten than Mackay. William, on

the other hand, continued to place entire confidence in his unfortunate

lieutenant. To the disparaging remarks of critics who had never seen

a skirmish, Portland replied, by his master's orders, that Mackay was

perfectly trustworthy, that he was brave, that he understood war better

than any other officer in Scotland, and that it was much to be regretted

that any prejudice should exist against so good a man and so good a

soldier, [377]

The unjust contempt with which the Scotch Privy Councillors regarded

Mackay led them into a great error which might well have caused a great

disaster. The Cameronian regiment was sent to garrison Dunkeld. Of this

arrangement Mackay altogether disapproved. He knew that at Dunkeld

these troops would be near the enemy; that they would be far from all

assistance; that they would be in an open town; that they would be

surrounded by a hostile population; that they were very imperfectly

disciplined, though doubtless brave and zealous; that they were

regarded by the whole Jacobite party throughout Scotland with peculiar

malevolence; and that in all probability some great effort would be made

to disgrace and destroy them, [378]

The General's opinion was disregarded; and the Cameronians occupied the

post assigned to them. It soon appeared that his forebodings were just.

The inhabitants of the country round Dunkeld furnished Cannon with

intelligence, and urged him to make a bold push. The peasantry of

Athol, impatient for spoil, came in great numbers to swell his army.

The regiment hourly expected to be attacked, and became discontented and

turbulent. The men, intrepid, indeed, both from constitution and

from enthusiasm, but not yet broken to habits of military submission,

expostulated with Cleland, who commanded them. They had, they imagined,

been recklessly, if not perfidiously, sent to certain destruction.

They were protected by no ramparts: they had a very scanty stock of

ammunition: they were hemmed in by enemies. An officer might mount and

gallop beyond reach of danger in an hour; but the private soldier

must stay and be butchered. "Neither I," said Cleland, "nor any of my

officers will, in any extremity, abandon you. Bring out my horse, all

our horses; they shall be shot dead." These words produced a complete

change of feeling. The men answered that the horses should not be shot,

that they wanted no pledge from their brave Colonel except his word, and

that they would run the last hazard with him. They kept their promise

well. The Puritan blood was now thoroughly up; and what that blood was

when it was up had been proved on many fields of battle.

That night the regiment passed under arms. On the morning of the

following day, the twenty-first of August, all the hills round Dunkeld

were alive with bonnets and plaids. Cannon's army was much larger than

that which Dundee had commanded. More than a thousand horses laden with

baggage accompanied his march. Both the horses and baggage were probably

part of the booty of Killiecrankie. The whole number of Highlanders was

estimated by those who saw them at from four to five thousand men. They

came furiously on. The outposts of the Cameronians were speedily driven

in. The assailants came pouring on every side into the streets. The

church, however, held out obstinately. But the greater part of the

regiment made its stand behind a wall which surrounded a house belonging

to the Marquess of Athol. This wall, which had two or three days

before been hastily repaired with timber and loose stones, the soldiers

defended desperately with musket, pike, and halbert. Their bullets were

soon spent; but some of the men were employed in cutting lead from the

roof of the Marquess's house and shaping it into slugs. Meanwhile

all the neighbouring houses were crowded from top to bottom with

Highlanders, who kept up a galling fire from the windows. Cleland,

while encouraging his men, was shot dead. The command devolved on Major

Henderson.

In another minute Henderson fell pierced with three mortal wounds.

His place was supplied by Captain Munro, and the contest went on with

undiminished fury. A party of the Cameronians sallied forth, set fire to

the houses from which the fatal shots had come, and turned the keys in

the doors. In one single dwelling sixteen of the enemy were burnt alive.

Those who were in the fight described it as a terrible initiation for

recruits. Half the town was blazing; and with the incessant roar of

the guns were mingled the piercing shrieks of wretches perishing in the

flames. The struggle lasted four hours. By that time the Cameronians

were reduced nearly to their last flask of powder; but their spirit

never flagged. "The enemy will soon carry the wall. Be it so. We will

retreat into the house: we will defend it to the last; and, if they

force their way into it, we will burn it over their heads and our own."

But, while they were revolving these desperate projects, they observed

that the fury of the assault slackened. Soon the highlanders began to

fall back: disorder visibly spread among them; and whole bands began to

march off to the hills. It was in vain that their general ordered them

to return to the attack. Perseverance was not one of their military

virtues. The Cameronians meanwhile, with shouts of defiance, invited

Amalek and Moab to come back and to try another chance with the chosen

people. But these exhortations had as little effect as those of Cannon.

In a short time the whole Gaelic army was in full retreat towards Blair.

Then the drums struck up: the victorious Puritans threw their caps into

the air, raised, with one voice, a psalm of triumph and thanksgiving,

and waved their colours, colours which were on that day unfurled for the

first time in the face of an enemy, but which have since been proudly

borne in every quarter of the world, and which are now embellished with

the Sphinx and the Dragon, emblems of brave actions achieved in Egypt

and in China, [379]

The Cameronians had good reason to be joyful and thankful; for they had

finished the rear. In the rebel camp all was discord and dejection. The

Highlanders blamed Cannon: Cannon blamed the Highlanders; and the host

which had been the terror of Scotland melted fast away. The confederate

chiefs signed an association by which they declared themselves faithful

subjects of King James, and bound themselves to meet again at a

future time. Having gone through this form,--for it was no more,--they

departed, each to his home. Cannon and his Irishmen retired to the Isle

of Mull. The Lowlanders who had followed Dundee to the mountains shifted

for themselves as they best could. On the twenty-fourth of August,

exactly four weeks after the Gaelic army had won the battle of

Killiecrankie, that army ceased to exist. It ceased to exist, as the

army of Montrose had, more than forty years earlier, ceased to exist,

not in consequence of any great blow from without, but by a natural

dissolution, the effect of internal malformation. All the fruits of

victory were gathered by the vanquished. The Castle of Blair, which had

been the immediate object of the contest, opened its gates to Mackay;

and a chain of military posts, extending northward as far as Inverness,

protected the cultivators of the plains against the predatory inroads of

the mountaineers.

During the autumn the government was much more annoyed by the Whigs of

the low country, than by the Jacobites of the hills. The Club, which

had, in the late session of Parliament, attempted to turn the kingdom

into an oligarchical republic, and which had induced the Estates to

refuse supplies and to stop the administration of justice, continued

to sit during the recess, and harassed the ministers of the Crown by

systematic agitation. The organization of this body, contemptible as

it may appear to the generation which has seen the Roman Catholic

Association and the League against the Corn Laws, was then thought

marvellous and formidable. The leaders of the confederacy boasted that

they would force the King to do them right. They got up petitions and

addresses, tried to inflame the populace by means of the press and the

pulpit, employed emissaries among the soldiers, and talked of bringing

up a large body of Covenanters from the west to overawe the Privy

Council. In spite of every artifice, however, the ferment of the public

mind gradually subsided. The Government, after some hesitation, ventured

to open the Courts of justice which the Estates had closed. The Lords of

Session appointed by the King took their seats; and Sir James Dalrymple

presided. The Club attempted to induce the advocates to absent

themselves from the bar, and entertained some hope that the mob would

pull the judges from the bench. But it speedily became clear that there

was much more likely to be a scarcity of fees than of lawyers to take

them: the common people of Edinburgh were well pleased to see again a

tribunal associated in their imagination with the dignity and prosperity

of their city; and by many signs it appeared that the false and greedy

faction which had commanded a majority of the legislature did not

command a majority of the nation, [380]