THE BATTLE OF GLENLIVAT--CONCLUSION OF THE COUNT'S STORY.
The result of this skirmish was deemed a sure prognostic of victory
by the Catholic band, and so far encouraged the Lord Huntly, that,
after knighting Captain Kerr on the field, he resolved to attack
Argyle before that noble could be joined by his ally, John Lord
Forbes, who, with a considerable force, was hovering on the Lowland
frontier. At this very time Argyle was already on the march, and his
12,000 followers had poured through Glenlivat, whose mountains gave
back with countless reverberations the wild notes of the Highland
pipe, the Almayne fife, and Lowland drum, until he reached the rugged
banks of a small brook named by the Celts of the district
_Altconlachan_, when he could not conceal his astonishment on
beholding Huntly's little band of only 1500 men, advancing resolutely
through the lower grounds to attack him. These were chiefly
horsemen, well armed on all points; their lances and helmets shone in
the rising sun, and above their squadrons two great banners floated.
On the right was the azure standard of Huntly, charged with the three
boars'-heads of Gordon; on the left waved a pennon argent, with the
three escutcheons _gules_, the cognisance of the Hays, gained at
Luncarty under Kenneth III. In the full blaze of light, poured over
the dun mountains by the sun of a clear October morning, they were
advancing, with horses neighing, kettle-drums beating, and all their
burnished iron gleaming, Argyle became apprehensive that his
numerical superiority in infantry might not avail him against so
brilliant a band of mounted lairds and gentlemen.
The scene of these operations was a wild and pastoral glen; here and
there a few tall Scottish firs reared their solemn outlines against
the cloudless sky, with their dark and prickly foliage, and red
trunks glittering in dew, as the sun shone on them.
Halting by the margin of the brook, Argyle held a council of war, to
deliberate whether he should at once attack the Catholics, or keep
upon the mountains, which were inaccessible to Huntly's horse, and
remain there until Lord Forbes came up with his Lowland cavalry.
John Stuart, Earl of Athole, a brave and upright peer, a privy
councillor of James VI., and a lineal descendant of the high steward
of Scotland, now said--
"I would advise your lordships to wait the arrival of his Majesty,
who hath promised to join us with a large force; or at all events to
tarry until we are joined by the Frazers and M'Kenzies from the
north, and my Lord Forbes with the Forbeses, the Irvines, the
Leslies, and other horsemen from the Lowlands. We shall then be
certain of an almost bloodless victory."
This opinion, which was considered the most wise and judicious by the
more experienced chiefs of Argyle's army, was overborne by the
impetuosity of the young earl himself, and by old John Grant of
Gartenbeg, a fierce and treacherous baron, who led a thousand Grants
from Urquhart and the baronies of Corrimonie and Glenmorriston; and
who, in a furious and ferocious speech, urged an immediate attack.
The aspect of this venerable chieftain, in his shirt of mail and
scarlet tartan, with long white hair flowing under his cap of steel,
which had no other ornament than an eagle's feather and bunch of
brambles, together with that energetic harangue which he delivered,
with sword unsheathed and shield uplifted, bore all before it, and
Argyle prepared to engage, by disposing his army in order of battle
in two parallel columns, on the acclivity of a hill between Glenlivat
and Glenrinnes.
The right wing was composed of the M'Intoshes and M'Leans, under
M'Intosh and Sir Lauchlan M'Lean of Duairt.
The left was formed by the Grants, M'Neils, and M'Gregors, under
Grant of Gartenbeg, near whom rode Kenneth Logie as an aid, or
esquire. He contemplated the coming strife with gloomy joy, for his
dreams of death and revenge were about to be fulfilled.
"My heart is empty now," thought he; "and the sooner it is cold the
better." He had no desire to live, and, after seeking and slaying
Gordon, had resolved to perish on the battle-field. The centre and
vanguard was composed of 4000 Campbells, under Argyle's kinsman, the
Laird of Auchinbreck. They carried the earl's banner, and his badges
as Great Master of the Household and High Justiciar of the kingdom.
Half of these Campbells carried arquebusses; the remainder carried
bows, targets, and two-handed claymores.
Argyle in person led the reserve, which consisted of 5000 warriors of
the Ebudæ and western tribes of Lorn, all clad in their native
tartans, with targets of burnished brass, battle-axes of steel, and
short Highland bows. More than a hundred war-pipes were pouring the
wild _piobrachds_ of the various clans from flank to flank, as
Huntly's little band approached them.
_His_ vanguard consisted of 300 gentlemen on horseback, clad in
bright armour, led by the Earl of Errol, Sir Patrick Gordon of
Auchindoune, the Lairds of Gicht and Bonnitoun, Sir Thomas Kerr, and
Halbert Gordon of the Moated Tower. In front of this small column
were three fieldpieces under Sir Andrew Gray, afterwards colonel of
the Scottish troops in Bohemia.
Gordon of Cluny led the right wing, Gordon of Abergeldie the left,
and Huntly the main body. He had no reserve. In full armour, with a
scarf of the Gordon tartan over his cuirass, with his visor up and
his sword brandished, he rode along the line.
"My brave clansmen," he exclaimed, "and you, my comrades and most
illustrious allies of the house of Errol, remember that this day no
alternative is left us but victory or death--glory or extermination!
We are not here to fight for our lives only, but for the existence of
our families, our estates, our honour, and what is dearer than all
beside, the church of our forefathers, and, with that church, the
souls of our children, and the souls of all their posterity. In the
name of God and the blessed Virgin, charge! _a Gordon! a Gordon!_"
Led on by the Lord High Constable (though galled by an ill-directed
fire from the arquebussiers of Argyle), Huntly's vanguard of knights
rushed with uplifted swords upon the first column of the Calvinists,
who received them on their targets, and a furious combat took place.
These gentlemen were in full armour, while the poor clansmen were
only in their homespun tartan, and thus fought at great disadvantage;
but their tremendous claymores cut through many a head and helmet,
while every thrust pierced a coat-of-mail, or sliced away a yard of
good horseflesh; thus many a steed recoiled frantically on the main
body, bleeding and riderless.
Over the heads of these combatants, the cannoniers of Sir Andrew Gray
fired briskly on the yellow standard, according to a treacherous
arrangement made secretly between Huntly and Campbell of Lochnell,
who bore a mortal enmity to Argyle, for having slain his brother
Campbell of Calder in 1592; and, being next heir to the earldom, he
saw with ambitious hope and joy the ordnance fire on that peculiar
banner which marked the post of his chief; but, lo! a misdirected
shot raked the ranks of Lochnell himself, and that deep-witted
duinewassal was the first whom it cut in two. The next ball killed
M'Neil of Barra, and the third wounded John Grant of Corriemonie.
From the brow of a steep eminence, the M'Leans poured volley after
volley with their arquebusses on Huntly's desperate troop, until Sir
Patrick Gordon of Auchindoune dashed up, and fell amongst them with a
few horsemen; but then the M'Leans slung their fire-arms behind them,
and repelled the troopers by the claymore, embowelling the horses by
dirk and skene-dhu, and slaying the riders as they were tumbled prone
to the earth; and there died the brave Auchindoune, pierced by fifty
wounds. His knights fought blindly in a dark cloud; for the smoke of
the cannon and arquebusses filled the whole glen, while their reports
rang among the mountain peaks with a thousand echoes.
In dark sreen tartans, bare-legged and bare-armed, with their targets
slung behind them, and their claymores swayed by both hands, the
Campbells poured down in thousands like a torrent upon the devoted
band of Huntly, whose daring horsemen broke into two bodies, one led
by himself, the other by the high constable, who was severely
wounded, and desperately they fought, with all the fury that Highland
valour, feudal hatred, and religious rancour could inspire; and thus
for two hours the battle raged in that narrow glen, till Argyle,
observing that his main body wavered, ordered John Grant of
Gartenbeg, with his column, consisting of a thousand men of his own
name, to "advance and sweep the Catholics from the field."
Clad in scarlet tartan, with helmets and cuirasses of steel, and
targets of burnished brass, this body, which had not been engaged
otherwise than suffering from the cannonade, was advancing to end the
contest, when their leader, who in secret was an ally of Huntly, and
a well-wisher to the Catholic cause, threw his target over his
shoulder, sheathed his claymore, and cried--
"To the mountains! to the mountains!" on which the Grants, with the
whole left wing, gave way, and retired _en masse_ towards the hills.
Thus Kenneth Logie, who had long curbed his impatience, found himself
alone, and in one moment more was involved among the advancing tide
of Huntly's desperate horsemen, who, fighting every foot of the way,
with the earl's torn banner fluttering above them, were hewing a
passage over a field strewed with clansmen, whose tartans were
drenched in blood. Nothing could surpass the bravery on both sides;
one fighting for glory--the other for their lives, honour, and
religion.
In the heat of the conflict, Lord Huntly had his horse shot under
him, and Halbert Gordon, who, with all his faults, was brave as a
lion, quickly slew Campbell of Auchinbreck, and remounted the earl on
that gentleman's steed. At that moment, Kenneth Logie, who, with the
coolness of a spectator, had been watching the conflict, reserving
his strength and his wrath for Gordon, uttered a wild yell of rage
and grief, and rushed upon him. They both wore open helmets, and,
recognising each other, encountered at once, bridle to bridle, and
hand to hand, with a savage and sombre fury, which rendered them
quite oblivious of the battle that raged like a storm around them.
They had not a breath for insult or invective; their teeth were set;
their eyes were full of fire; they both hovered on the brink of
eternity, and each saw nothing but his enemy.
"For _her_ sake, blessed Lord, direct my hand!" prayed Kenneth, and
it seemed as if that voiceless prayer had been heard; for at the very
moment his sword passed through the breast of Gordon, who fell
forward across the saddle of his victor.
"Dog!" exclaimed the latter, seizing him relentlessly by the throat;
"dog, and son of a dog, dost thou repent her death?"
"I do," gasped Gordon, almost choked in his blood; "sorely I do; but
that fatal bullet was for thee--for thee--and not for her!"
"Would to Heaven thine aim had been more true! Lily," cried Kenneth,
looking upward, "I have avenged thee."
"And thus I avenge myself!" exclaimed Gordon, as, with the last
energy apparently of life, he twice buried his dagger in the body of
Kenneth, and they fell together from their horses on the slippery
field.
Gordon was supposed to be dead--but evil spirits do not pass so
readily from among us.
Kenneth was borne away by a few of the Campbells; but he seemed to be
in a dying state.
By this time Argyle, notwithstanding the vast superiority of his
forces, had lost the battle, and Huntly was victorious. Disheartened
by the treachery of the Grants and Lochnell, the Calvinists gave way
in every direction; and though the brave M'Leans did all that mortal
men could do to retrieve the falling fortune of the day, Huntly's
horsemen drove them pell-mell beyond the rugged brook of
Altconlachan, from whence the clansmen retreated to those steep
mountains, up which mailed troopers could never pursue them. There,
in the obscurity of the night, far down below in Glenlivat, they
heard the trumpets sounding, as they summoned the Hays and the
Gordons around their leaders, and all dismounted to kneel on that
bloody field, where they solemnly sang _Te Deum Laudamus_.
Argyle left his two cousins Lochnell and Auchinbreck, the Laird of
Barra, and five hundred men, dead in the valley; while Huntly lost
only the Knight of Auchindoune, the Laird of Gicht, and a score or
two of troopers.
Such was the Highland battle of Balrinnes or Glenlivat, which struck
terror into the Scottish Protestants, and where Argyle lost his
famous yellow banner, which was borne with other trophies into the
Garioch, and placed on the summit of Huntly's castle of Strathbogie.
Abandoned by the Campbells in their hurried retreat, and left almost
dying among the mountains that overlook the Livat, Kenneth found
shelter in the hut of a poor old Highland crone, whose medical
treatment, however kindly meant, aggravated the deadly nature of his
wounds; and, as he had no wish to live, two months after the battle
he sought his native place, but to die; and, however like romance the
last episode of this story may be, I must only rehearse the event as
it was narrated to me.
John Shool, the sexton of Logie Kirk, on entering the old
burial-ground one cold and bitter morning in December, for the
purpose of digging a grave, found a horse, with the bridle trailing
between its legs, cropping the grass among the mounds and tombs; and
he was still more startled--if any thing can startle one whose
occupation is so horrible--on finding an armed man lying on the flat
stone which covers fair Lily's grave. His rigid arms were spread
over it, and his cold cheek rested on the letters of her name. The
old carle turned him over, and uttered a cry of astonishment and pity
on recognising Kenneth Logie of the Forest!
John averred, that when first found his lips were pressed upon the
frost-covered gravestone. Some persons thought that this might be
the sexton's fancy, or the position was accidental.
He looked calm and placid, and, as the winter sunshine fell upon his
blanched face, and the morning wind lifted the dark locks of his dewy
hair, it seemed to the old gravedigger as if poor Kenneth smiled.
He was buried there, and the stone which bears the inscription
(already given), with the sword and cross, marks the place where he
lies; the defaced tomb beside it covers the grave of Lily Donaldson.*
* A large cairn marked, or still marks, the place where Lily fell by
the hand of Halbert Gordon. The stronghold of his family was pulled
down many years ago, and the materials were used in the erection of
other edifices; the deep wide Moat is still traceable on the farm
called Parks-of-Coldstone. It surrounds an area of an acre; but the
morass has long since been drained.
The flowers of many a summer have strewed their leaves above these
graves; but at this hour the memory of those lovers is as fresh in
Cromar as if they had been buried only yesterday.
Gordon did not die; but, leaving Scotland for ever, entered, as a
Catholic, the service of the Emperor, and assuming his mother's name
and designation, as Halbert Cunninghame of the Boortree-haugh, soon
rose to honour and distinction. After the fashion of some of the
Scoto-Imperialists, he spelt his name in a foreign manner, and as
"Albrecht Count of Kœningheim" it will be frequently found in the
pages of the _Svedish Intelligencer_, and the works of Famiano
Strada, the Jesuit.
Book the Eleventh.