History of England, from the Accession of James II - (Volume 3, Chapter 13) — Chapter XIII, Part 8

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.