THE LAST HOUR OF DUNDEE.
Oh last and best of Scots! who did'st maintain
Thy country's freedom from a foreign reign;
New people fill the land, now thou art gone,
New gods the temples, and new kings the throne!
ARCHIBALD PITCAIRN.
Now the battle was over, and the fury of the conflict with the fierce
energies it excited had passed away together. In that narrow gorge
lay more than two thousand slain, and the broad round moon, as its
shining circle rose above the dark ridge of the far-off mountains,
poured its cold lustre on the distorted visages of the writhing
wounded, and more ghastly linaments of the pallid dead. While the
Highlanders were plundering the baggage and carousing on the
provisions of Mackay (who was then retreating to Stirling), Walter
Fenton rode to the house of Urrard, and repaired to the presence of
his leader.
Within a little wainscotted apartment, lighted by four long candles,
that flared in a brazen branch, stretched upon a low canopied bed lay
the great and terrible Dundee. On his proud heart of fierce impulses
and high aspirations, the hand of the grim monarch was now laid
surely and heavily. His fine features were sharpened, pale and
ghastly, by agony and approaching death. He breathed slowly. His
Monmouth wig was laid aside, and his own raven hair, which formed a
strong contrast with the whiteness of his skin, flowed over the
pillow like the tresses of a woman.
"Can this be Claverhouse?" thought Walter.
His bloodstained buff coat, his sword and helmet, lay near him on a
chair, and around the couch were Dunbarton, Finland, the great Sir
Evan of Locheil, Glengarry, Clanronald, Grant of Glenmorriston, and
other leaders, who leaned on their swords, conversed in low whispers,
and watched with unfeigned sorrow the ebbing life of the only man who
could lead them like Montrose.
The whole of his dying energies were now directed to one object, a
despatch to his exiled king, containing an account of the glories he
had gained in his cause, and the long career of service he had sealed
with his own gallant blood. Though every muscle of his face was
contracted at times with the agony he endured, when stretching from
bed to write at the low table beside it, supported by his brother
David Grahame, who was sheathed in steel, _à la Cuirassier_, he
finished this memorable and disputed letter with singular coolness,
appended his name, and instantly falling back, closed his eyes and
lay motionless, as if in death.
"He is gone," whispered the agitated Earl of Dunbarton to the stern
Locheil. "There lies the strongest pillar of the good old cause."
"_Hereditary right will face the rocks!_" replied the chieftain in
Gaelic, as he grasped his dirk; "cursed be the green scarf that
wrought this evil work to Scotland and to us!"
Their voices seemed to call back the fleeting spirit; and,
controlling the painful trembling of his limbs, Dundee opened his
bloodshot eyes, and looked slowly round him.
"Do not persist," said he to the surgeon, who approached. "I know
that all is over--let me die in peace. Approach, Mr. Fenton--unfurl
that standard;" and his wild dark eyes flashed with their old energy
at the sight of the Stadtholder's banner. "You will, at all risks,
bear this despatch and that trophy to the hands of King James, and
say they are the last--the best--the dying bequest of Dundee."
Walter's heart was full; he could only lay his hand upon his breast,
and bow a grateful assent.
"To Colonel Cannon I bequeath my baton and authority; let him use
them well in the King's service, if he would wish to die in peace
when he comes to lie _here_."
"Colonel Cannon!" muttered the Highland chiefs, as they drew
themselves up, exchanged glances of hauteur, and twisted their
mustachios.
"Be merciful to our prisoners," continued the sufferer in a voice
more weak and quavering, and stopping often to take breath; "be
merciful to them, for they are our countrymen. Release and bid them
return to their homes in peace; say that such was the last wish of
Dundee. Many have styled me merciless in my time, sirs, and bitterly
will they speak of my spirit when it is far beyond the reach of
mortal malevolence. I have done fierce and stern things, but I have
been hurried to do them by an irrevocable destiny, and a tide of
circumstances incident to these our troubled times. Every iota of
what I have done was fore-ordained--hah! do not your Presbyterians
tell us so? But grateful--deeply grateful is the conviction to my
passing spirit, that my friends will ever remember my name with
honour, and my foes with fear. I feel more bitterness in dying after
a victory than I could have endured by a defeat; for _it_ would have
made life worthless, and death welcome. Oh, may this day's great
achievement be an omen of future success, and a second Restoration!
Go, my comrades; continue in that path of earthly glory which I must
quit for ever; and let ye who survive to behold our beloved King fail
not to tell him--that--that John Grahame of Claverhouse--with his
last breath blessed him--and--died."
Falling back, he immediately expired, just as daylight (which at that
season scarcely passed away) brightened in the east.
All started and bent over him; but the fierce spirit of that
remorseless cavalier had fled for ever, and his magnificent features,
as the rigidity and pallor of death overspread them, assumed the
aspect of a beautiful marble statue. A groan that burst from the
lips of his brother, as he knelt down and closed his eyes; the heavy
sobs of a few aged Highlanders; and the low wail of a lament, as the
pipers of Glengarry poured it to the mountain-wind and echoing woods
of Urrard, were the only sounds heard within that gloomy chamber,
where the terror of the Presbyterians--the idol of the cavaliers, and
the last hope of James, lay prostrate, to rise no more. Though by
one faction styled the _last and best of Scots_--by the other, a
murderer and outlaw; yet, by the cause for which he died, and the
manner of his death, he closed in glory a life of singular ferocity
and turbulence.
His remains were hurriedly interred in the rural kirk of Blair Athol;
and the cause of King James was buried with him. His brother assumed
his title; but died in great obscurity in France in 1700. The buff
coat of Dundee, bearing the mark of the fatal ball, and stained with
his blood, together with his helmet and other relics, are still
preserved in the ducal castle of Blair.
Remembering the dying desire of their leader on the day after the
battle, the Highland chiefs liberated all the prisoners on parole of
honour not to serve against the King, Colonel Fergusson of
Craigdarroch (notwithstanding all the exertions of his generous rival
Finland) "being excepted," says Captain Crichton, in his Memoirs, "on
account of his more than ordinary zeal for the new establishment."
In those days the uncertain means of communication between towns, and
the great deficiency of certain information of public events, caused
many strange and varying rumours of the Highland war to be circulated
in the Lowlands, where the only newspaper was the _Caledonius
Mercurius_, which had been published occasionally since the
Restoration. But the astounding intelligence of the victory at
Killycrankie, and the fall of Dundee, spread like wildfire through
the low country, to which he had so long been a terror and scourge.
The defeat of Cannon at the Haughs of Cromdale, and the utter
prostration of James's banner in the north, was soon followed by his
disaster at the Boyne, in Ireland, where the loss of a decisive
battle compelled him again to seek refuge in France.
Poor Lilian, at home in the then secluded capital of Scotland, heard
of those stirring events at long intervals; and to her they were a
source of deep interest, and of many a sigh and hour of tears; but of
Walter she heard no tidings. Whether he lay mouldering in the Pass
of Killycrankie, among the haughs of Cromdale, or was wandering among
the wildest fastnesses of the north, with the doom of proscription
and treason hanging over him, she knew not; and time in no way
soothed or alleviated the agonies of her suspense. On the return of
Colonel Fergusson, whose apostacy had opened an easy path to
preferment under the new order of affairs, she learned some faint
rumours of his departure to France with the other officers of
Dundee--for that horizon where the sun of the exiled Jacobites was
setting--the lonely palace of St. Germain. Though the tidings fell
like ice on the heart of the poor girl, any certainty was preferable
to suspense; and with her good Aunt Grisel, she could only weep for
the poor youth they loved so well, and pray and hope for happier
times. To lighten the solitude his absence caused, she could not
even hope for a letter; all intercourse with the court of the exiled
King being proscribed under pain of banishment and death; and thus
slowly the melancholy summer of 1690 passed on.
With the accession of William, and total subversion of the old high
church party, all the sourness and severity of Presbyterian
discipline (which at times compelled the proudest peers to endure a
rebuke on the ignominious repentance-stool, or at least before a
congregation) was resumed by the overbearing clergy in full sway.
From the innate cavalier sentiments of her family, and the wavering
politics of Aunt Grisel, Lilian had never been a very rigid
Presbyterian; and now, looking upon the triumph of "the Kirk" as
having driven her lover into exile, she felt her heart further than
ever removed from Presbytery. She had still to endure the
persecution of Clermistonlee, who, having in a few months spent all
the Revolution had enabled him to extort by fines from his old
cavalier friends, was now more reduced and desperate than ever; and,
as a last shift, was compelled to dispose of his tower of Clermiston
for a trifling sum to his more cautious gossip Mersington; and though
the gaming-table replenished his exchequer at times, gaunt starvation
stared him hourly in the face.
Though the native kindness and exceeding gentleness of Lilian's
manner had always given this indefatigable suitor some hope of
ultimate success, he soon found that, besieging her whenever she went
abroad, and keeping spies upon her when at home--pestering her with
presents, and letters the most flattering and submissive his
ingenuity and skill could indite, did not bring him nearer the summit
of his wishes. As his funds waxed lower, his perseverance increased;
and he brought a new ally into the field, in the person of our old
friend Mr. Ichabod Bummel, whose zeal for the Revolution had procured
him an incumbency in the city, where, every Sunday, he had the
felicity of preaching in a pulpit of his own, quoting that immortal
work the _Bombshell_, railing at the exiled King, and all other
"bloody-minded massmongers," and "dinging" many successive bibles to
"blads" in the true Knox-like energy of his discourse. This meddling
preacher, after the abduction of Lilian, and the scandalous reports
the kirk party had so industriously circulated concerning it, had
long deemed it, in his own phraseology, "a shameful and malapert
fact, unseemly to men, and abominable in the sight of Heaven, that
these twain should remain unwedded;" and by his influence,
Clermistonlee was duly cited before the kirk session. Resistance was
in vain, for now the clergy had succeeded to the Council's iron rod;
and temporal proscription and spiritual excommunication invariably
followed delay.
Clad in a sack of coarse white canvass, and on his knees before a
staring congregation of stern Presbyterians, he "confessit his
manifold sins and enormities," as the records of the kirk show, "and
was rebukit by the godlie Mr. Bummel for the space of ane hour, being
comparit to ane owle in ye desart;" and it appears that the minister,
in his ire, made such direct reference to the abduction of Lilian, in
language so pointed, so coarse, and unseemly, that, overwhelmed with
shame and horror, the poor girl, unable to bear the scornful scrutiny
and malevolent glances of her own sex, sank down in the gloomiest
recesses of the old family pew, and swooned.
This event, together with the cruel inuendos industriously circulated
by the gallants and gossips of the city, was her crowning misfortune;
from that hour her peace was blighted, and her fair fame blotted for
ever. Her friends pitied and acquaintance shunned her. She endured
the most intense grief and bitterness of soul that a sensitive and
delicate woman could feel; for even the very children of the Whig
faction pelted her sedan when it entered the city, and called her "My
Lord's leman," "Clermistonlee's minion," and the "Deil's dearie."
The united effects of grief, shame, mortification, and insulted
pride, were soon visible on her health; her cheek grew blanched and
thin, her eyes dim; and though she did not weep, her sorrows lay
deeper, and the canker-worm preyed upon her suffering heart. And not
the least offensive to her feelings were those offerings of
friendship which were mingled with condolence, when Lady Drumsturdy
and others advised her to think seriously of the long and assiduous
attentions of Clermistonlee; in short, "_after all that had taken
place_," to receive him as her husband; that being in their opinion
the only way to restore her forfeited honour.
The inuendo concealed under this odious advice provoked the anger of
Lilian, whose concern was increased by perceiving that Lady Grisel
and her own bosom friend and gossip Annie, were beginning to be of
the same opinion. Their countenance, and the hope of Walter's
return, had alone sustained her so long; but now a sense of utter
desolation sank upon her soul, and her brain reeled with the terrible
thoughts that oppressed it.