ROB'S NARROW ESCAPE.
The Duke of Montrose began to despair of ever capturing Rob Roy or of
conquering his men; but he distributed among his tenantry a great
number of muskets, bayonets, and swords, with plenty of ammunition,
that they might be able to defend themselves if attacked; but all
these military stores fell into the hands of the enemy, for Rob,
MacAleister, Greumoch, Coll, and other MacGregors, by a systematic
series of attacks or visits in the night, disarmed all the tenants in
succession; so the duke gained nothing by the arrangement.
Another insurrection for the House of Stuart was expected in the
Highlands; and as the MacGregors, by their conflicts, raids, and
depredations, had collected a great quantity of weapons, more than
were requisite for their personal equipment. Rob Roy had all these
carefully oiled, packed in well-greased cowhides, and buried in
secret places, where perhaps many of them remain undiscovered to this
day.
The MacGregors daily became more daring, and sometimes drove away the
cattle from the parks, beneath the very windows of Buchanan House,
where the duke resided. The practice of "lifting," as it was termed,
the cattle of a hostile clan was then, and for many years after,
common in the Highlands; and as the feud between Rob and his grace
was of the most bitter nature, he carried the system to the utmost
extent.
The duke's rental was principally payable in kind. Thus Killearn had
established large granaries for storing up corn, meal, butter,
cheese, &c., at a place called Moulin and elsewhere, which he deemed
secure. Yet at all these storehouses Rob Roy appeared regularly,
when least expected, and demanded supplies of grain, meal, or cheese
for the use of his family, his followers, or for the poor people of
the district, who were all devoted to him, for he was deemed the
friend and father, protector and champion, of all who were
necessitous, unfortunate, or oppressed.
For the quantities thus taken he regularly gave signed receipts,
which stated that he took these goods as a return in some part for
the property of which the duke had so unjustly deprived him; and at
times he frequently compelled the Montrose tenantry to convey the
goods thus appropriated to his house at Portnellan, or wherever they
were required.
In his desperation, Montrose resolved to attempt the capture of Rob
in person, and applied to the Privy Council for authority to raise a
body of horse and foot militia among his own dependants, supposing
probably that they would be better suited to a warfare among the
mountains than the troops of the line.
It is said that the duke had such a dread of the greater or more
active enmity of Rob Roy that, singularly enough, "_his name_ was
intentionally omitted, and the act was expressed in general terms, as
being one to repress sorners, robbers, and broken men--to raise the
hue-and-cry after them, to recover goods stolen by them, and to seize
their persons."
In consequence of the state of society which then existed in the
Highlands, where the people dwelt in tribes or communities and in
sequestered glens, which were separated by great mountain ridges, by
pathless forests, while deep defiles or narrow passes formed the only
access to the country, sudden raids and onslaughts, if vigorously
conducted, could be easily made, with great peril, however, and with
certain subsequent vengeance.
The two bodies of horse and foot now mustered and armed by Montrose
were composed of men entirely devoted to him, and more or less
antagonistic to the MacGregors, at whose hands they had all suffered
severely. They wore the duke's livery--blue coats faced with red,
with trews of the Grahame tartan, and each wore in his bonnet a
laurel leaf. There was not a man among them but had something to
revenge, in the shape of a farm burned, a kinsman slain, or a herd
carried off; so the measures now put in force against him compelled
Rob Roy to be more than ever wary, for although hitherto most
fortunate in all his achievements and escapes, he could not hope to
be always so.
Selecting a time when many of the MacGregors were absent at distant
fairs, on a dusky evening in the November of 1717, it was resolved to
beat up Rob's quarters.
Assisted by a few of the horse grenadiers of MacDougal (now a
lieutenant-colonel), the duke's militia, led by a gentleman named
Colonel Grahame, a brave and determined fellow, who had served under
Charles XII. in his war with Russia, passed rapidly and unseen
through the pass of Aberfoyle, and about midnight reached the house
and clachan of Portnellan, at the head of Loch Katrine.
There was no moon, and all was dark and still; not even a dog barked,
when the house, which was thatched with heather, was completely
surrounded on all sides by men with muskets loaded and bayonets
fixed. The dragoons were led by the only unwilling member of the
expedition--Willie Gemmil, now a sergeant.
The cottages wherein MacAleister, Greumoch, and others dwelt,
adjoined the house of Rob, and formed a kind of small square, in the
centre of which was a patch of ground, cultivated as a kitchen
garden, and common to the whole community.
These cottages were built as such edifices are still constructed in
the Highlands. The smoothed face of a rock made the floor; several
large boulders of black whin formed the corners of the gables, and a
few courses of turf plastered with clay made up the walls. On the
rough pine _cabers_ of the roof lay the thatch, composed of fern with
its root ends outwards, and tied with ropes of twisted heather.
As these humble edifices burned like a heap of straw, Colonel Grahame
said,--
"Fire all these thatched roofs at once, and smoke the rascals out
like foxes. Then shoot down every one who comes forth!"
"Nay, nay, colonel," said an old officer, a quartermaster named James
Stewart; "under favour, sir, I will have no hand in such butcherly
work. Our orders are----"
"To seize or destroy Rob Roy at all hazards!"
"Yes; but we have not King William's sign-manual in our pockets to
make another Glencoe at the head of Loch Katrine," retorted the
quartermaster.
"Sirrah--do you dispute my orders?" began the colonel, furiously,
when Sergeant Gemmil approached and said,--
"Please your honours, to fire the cottages would rouse the whole
country on us, as if the fiery cross went through it; and we should
all be cut to pieces, horse and man, before we could escape by
Aberfoyle, or the pass of Loch Ard."
"Egad, you are right, sergeant; so let us beat up this rogue's
quarters more quietly," replied Grahame.
Though the house was humble, being merely a cottage with stone walls,
the door was strong; but it was soon dashed open by a musket butt;
then all shrunk back, with their bayonets at the charge, expecting
MacGregor, like a baited lion, to spring forth upon them sword in
hand, for all dreaded the length and strength of his arm; but instead
there appeared only three women trembling in their night-dresses.
One of these, an aged woman, was Rob's mother; the others were Helen
MacGregor and her foster-sister, who, when she married, had come with
her from her father's house of Comar, which stood on the eastern
slope of Ben Lomond.
On Colonel Grahame imperiously demanding "where Robert MacGregor
Campbell was?" they assured him that he and all his followers were
absent; and that if this was doubted, the house might be searched.
"Absent--where?" said Grahame, biting his long leather gauntlet with
undisguised vexation.
Ere the ladies could speak, a scout or spy named MacLaren--the same
person whom Rob had met at the inn of Chapelerroch--arrived,
breathlessly, to inform the colonel that on the preceding evening he
had seen MacGregor with a chosen party of his men at a change-house,
or wayside tavern, near Crianlarich in Strathfillan.
"You are sure of this?" said the colonel, sternly and suspiciously.
"Sure as that I now address you, sir."
"If this be true, you shall have ten guineas; but woe to you, rascal,
if you deceive us! Sergeant Gemmil, look to this fellow, and if he
attempts to give us the slip before we reach Strathfillan shoot him
down."
Leaving the farmhouse untouched, for to fire it would have defeated
the object in view, the colonel's party, guided by the spy, proceeded
up Glengyle, from thence across the Braes of Balquhidder, and just as
day began to brighten the mountain peaks, they found themselves at
the lonely change-house of Crianlarich, which stood in a sequestered
and pastoral part of Strathfillan.
Rob Roy, as the spy informed them, was then in the house; but his
men, to the number of twenty, occupied a barn which adjoined it. In
that place they feared no surprise, and kept no watch; thus, Colonel
Grahame, when he dismounted and approached the barn, on peeping
through one of the air openings in the wall, saw the MacGregors lying
asleep on some bundles of straw, with their swords, shields, and
muskets beside them.
"You are right, fellow," said he to MacLaren, to whom he gave at once
the promised guineas. "There are twenty rogues asleep here, and we
shall cut them off to a man; but the master thief must be taken
before we rouse his followers. Then I shall hang the keeper of this
tavern, and burn it down, without studying the scruples of our
quartermaster," he added, with a dark frown at Mr. Stewart.
A dismounted trooper applied the heel of his heavy jackboot to the
door of the house, and with a single kick made it fly open.
Softly though the troop had approached the dwelling, by riding on the
grass or heather, Rob had heard them, and was up, clad, and armed,
with his target braced upon his left arm, at the moment the door was
broken open.
He put forth his bonnet upon the point of a stick, and in the grey
twilight of the morning twenty muskets were discharged at it. Then,
before the soldiers could reload, he sprang upon them with a shout,
and cut down two. The noise of the volley having brought all his men
to their feet, they rushed from the barn and assailed the Grahames in
the rear, driving them and the horse grenadiers pell-mell round the
house, and severely wounding several of them.
"To the hills! to the hills! and follow me!" shouted Rob, as he slung
his shield on his back, and dashed off at his utmost speed towards
the mountains.
Under a fire of muskets and carbines, he and his men crossed unhurt a
torrent that foamed through the valley, and seeking a path, where few
infantry and certainly no cavalry could follow, they began a
leisurely retreat up the mountains towards the head of Loch Lomond.
Exasperated by this sudden and unlooked-for escape, Colonel Grahame
ordered the horse to make a detour, and the infantry to follow in
direct pursuit.
Then began a desultory skirmish, in which the MacGregors had all the
advantage; for their tartans blended with the dun-coloured heather
and green ferns, while the militia were fatally conspicuous in their
blue uniforms. Thus, several were shot, and MacAleister threw the
spy, MacLaren, into a mill-race, near the House of Comar, where he
was swept away and drowned.
After this, "the Grahames thought proper to withdraw," and thus ended
another attempt to capture Rob Roy.
To avenge this defeat, and the capture of his factor, it is related
in the "Domestic Annals of Scotland," that the Duke of Montrose got
all his farmers in the Lennox armed and mounted, for the purpose of
attacking Rob; but Glune-dhu, the nephew of the latter, with the
MacGregors of Glengyle, attacked his grace's men, and surrounded and
disarmed them. Of this encounter we are unable to furnish the
details; but, unfortunately for our hero, the next attempt had a very
different result.