Claverhouse

[90] See the sixth canto of "The Lady of the Lake."

The tinchel was the name given to the circle of hunters which, gradually narrowing, hemmed the deer into a small space, where they could be easily slaughtered.

[91] Mackay complains bitterly in his Memoirs of "the unconcerned method of the Government in matters which touch them nearest as to their general safety, each being for his particular, and fixed upon his private projects, so as neither to see nor be concerned for anything else."

[92] "When in front of Blair Castle their real destination was disclosed to them by Lord Tullibardine [the heir of Athole did not assume this style till 1695]. Instantly they rushed from their ranks, ran to the adjoining stream of Banovy, and, filling their bonnets with water, drank to the health of King James; and then, with colours flying and pipes playing, 'fifteen hundred of the men of Athole, as reputable for arms as any in the kingdom' [Mackay's words], put themselves under the command of the Laird of Ballechin and marched off to join Lord Dundee." Stewart's "Sketches of the Highlanders of Scotland," i. 67. But this is not strictly true. They joined neither Ballechin nor Dundee, but went off on their own account to the mountains to watch the issue of events.

[93] Probably Dundee wrote more confidently than he felt. He owned that Murray might "have more to do to believe" Melfort's assurance than James's; but, in fact, there was too good reason to disbelieve both. From the first letter written from Struan it appears that the despatch from James which had fallen into Hamilton's hands was much more temperate and conciliatory than the earlier one brought to the Convention by Crane. Dundee had not seen this despatch; and it is possible that he described it rather as his own good sense urged him to believe it must have been, than as it really was. The letters to himself, which he summarises for Murray's benefit, must have been those acknowledged in the postscript to Melfort of June 28th. It is, as we shall presently see, certain that about this time James was induced to assume, as he had before assumed when it was too late, the virtue of toleration. How much of these promises Dundee really believed, it is impossible to say. The history of our own time has shown, and is every day showing, that neither wisdom nor experience will always avail to prevent a man from believing that which it is his interest to believe.

[94] Memoirs of Balcarres and of Lochiel.

[95] I have given the modern style of these regiments as they were before the last freak of the War Office. What they may be now, I do not know; nor is the knowledge important, for the style I have used will probably be most familiar to my readers. "My Uncle Toby," it will be remembered, was of Leven's regiment. There exists a letter from Schomberg to Lord Leven, especially commending to the latter's care a gentleman of the name of Le Fevre. See the "Leven and Melville Papers."

[96] Mackay says in his Memoirs that he left Edinburgh with two troops of horse, and four of dragoons. It is certain that only the former were engaged at Killiecrankie. But the general's narrative is throughout extremely confused, and sometimes barely intelligible. Perhaps the larger force was that he had counted on having; or the four troops of dragoons may have been those he ordered to follow from Stirling.

Alexander Hamilton, who commanded the artillery in the Covenanter's army with which Leslie and Montrose made the famous passage of the Tyne in 1640. From Burton's description of them they can hardly have been very dangerous, at least to the enemy. "They seem to have been made of tin for the bore, with a coating of leather, all secured by tight cordage. A horse could carry two of them, and it was their merit to stand a few discharges before they came to pieces." "History of Scotland," vi. 302.

[97] It is said that one of Dundee's arguments against attacking in the pass was, that it did not become brave soldiers to engage a foe at disadvantage, an argument which I should imagine Dundee was much too sensible a man to employ to Highlanders. Had his force been sufficient for him to close up the mouth of the pass after the Lowlanders had entered, it is hard to imagine he would have lost the chance of catching Mackay in such a trap. But his force was too small to divide: while the nature of the ground would of course have told as much against those who made as against those who met a charge, besides inevitably offending the jealous point of honour which forbad one clan to take precedence of another. It may be, too, that Dundee was not very well served by his scouts. Mackay certainly seems to have got well on his way through the pass before the other knew that he had entered it. See the "Life of Mackay," and the "Rebellions in Scotland."

[98] Memoirs of Lochiel.

[99] For long afterwards the battle was known among the Highlanders as the battle of Renrorie.

[100] Mackay's Memoirs: "a quart de conversion" is his own phrase for this change of front.

[101] "Sketches of the Highlanders."

[102] Among the Nairne Papers is what purports to be a copy of Dundee's speech. It has been contemptuously rejected by some writers as a manifest forgery, on the ground that no Highlander would have understood a word of it. But there were Dundee's own officers and men to be addressed; and, moreover, his language would have been perfectly intelligible to some, at least, of the chiefs, who would have conveyed its purpose to their men. It was still the fashion for a general to harangue his troops before leading them into action, and it was a fashion particularly in vogue among the Highlanders. I see no reason, therefore, to doubt the general authenticity of this speech. Exactly as it stands in the Nairne Papers probably Dundee did not deliver it; the style being somewhat more grandiloquent than he was in the habit of employing. But its general purpose, which I have endeavoured to give in a paraphrase, seems to be very much what such a man would have said at such a moment. The authority for Mackay's speech will be found in his own despatch to Lord Melville after the battle.

[103] It was the disastrous experience of this day that led Mackay to devise a plan of fixing the bayonet to the musket so that each could be used, as now, without interfering with the other.

[104] "History of the Rebellions in Scotland." Even the men who had stood by Lord Murray joined in the slaughter. He did his best to keep them quiet, but was forced to own afterwards to Mackay that he had not been very successful. "It cannot be helped," he wrote, "of almost all country people, who are ready to pillage and plunder whenever they have occasion." See the Bannatyne edition of Dundee's Letters, &c.

[105] Mackay's opinion was that "the English commonalty were to be preferred in matter of courage to the Scots."

[106] One tradition, for a long while current among the Lowlands, declares him to have been shot by one of his own men in the pay of William Livingstone, who afterwards married Lady Dundee; Livingstone having been for some weeks a close prisoner in Edinburgh with the other disaffected officers of his regiment. Lady Dundee, the story goes on to say, was aware of his intentions, and on the following New Year's day sent "the supposed assassin a white night-cap, a pair of white gloves, and a rope, being a sort of suit of canonicals for the gallows, either to signify that she esteemed him worthy of that fate, or that she thought the state of his mind might be such as to make him fit to hang himself." Another tradition makes Dundee fall by a shot fired from the window of Urrard House, in which a party of Mackay's men had lodged themselves. He was watering his horse at the time at a pond called the Goose-Dub, where the Laird of Urrard's geese were wont to disport themselves. This story is evidently part of the old nurse's prophecy mentioned on page 3. For these and many other anecdotes of the battle, see the "History of the Rebellions in Scotland." I have taken my account of Dundee's death from the memoirs of Balcarres and Lochiel, and from the depositions, printed by Napier, of certain witnesses examined afterwards at Edinburgh, among them being an officer of Kenmure's regiment, who was carried prisoner into the castle after the battle and heard Johnstone's story. As for the letter said to have been written by Dundee to James after the battle, and now among the Nairne Papers, there is more to be said for it than some have allowed. Macaulay, alluding to it as dated the day after the battle, calls it as impudent a forgery as Fingal. But in fact it bears no date at all: the handwriting is declared on the best authority to be beyond question contemporary; and there is no absolute proof that Dundee did not live long enough at least to dictate an account of his victory to James. It is tolerably certain that he would have done so had his strength permitted him. But in a letter written from Dublin in the following November by James to Ballechin, there is no mention of any letter from Dundee, and his death is there alluded to as having occurred at the beginning of the action. This, of course, is not conclusive; James's actual words are, "the loss you had ... at your entrance into action," which need not imply instant death. On the whole, however, the balance of evidence seems to me to prove that Dundee died where he fell, and that the letter is not genuine, though certainly no forgery of Macpherson's. Those who are still curious on a point which is, after all, of no very great importance, will find it amply discussed in a note to the edition of Dundee's letters published for the Bannatyne Club, and in an appendix to Napier's third volume. A stone still marks the spot where Dundee is said to have fallen, and was seen by Captain Burt less than fifty years after the battle.