History of England, from the Accession of James II - (Volume 3, Chapter 13) — Chapter XIII, Part 12

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]