by John Prebble
Their pride, and their fierce fighting tradition were not enough to make them regular soldiers. In May 1689, the Privy Council transferred ‘the best sixteen men in Bargany's Regiment’ to Argyll's, therein to serve as sergeants, corporals or senior drummers. They were Lowlanders, with Lowland names like Hendrie, Dalyell, Purdie, Mitchell and Barber. They were rough, experienced men, determined to transform savages into foot-soldiers by the unrelenting use of blasphemy and threat, drill-book and halberd. But before any of the Campbells could be taught how to poise their muskets or advance their pikes, to tie their breeches below the knee and keep their hair in a poke, they had to swear a soldier's oath of loyalty. This they did upon the Bible or upon the dirk, upon whatever moved them to greatest reverence.
I do sincerely promise and swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to their Majesties King William and Queen Mary, and to be obedient in all things to their Majesties, or to the Commander-in-chief appointed by their Majesties for the time being; and will behave myself obediently to my superior officers in all that they shall command me for their Majesties' service. And I do further swear that I will be a true, faithful and obedient soldier, in every way performing my best endeavours for their Majesties' service, obeying all orders and submitting to all such rules and articles of war as are, or shall be established by their Majesties. So help me God.
By this oath all officers and men were inextricably bound to do what they were told, when and where they were told. There was no qualification, and no appeal against it on grounds of conscience or conviction. So that they might know, without any doubt, what those articles were that they swore to obey without question, the sixty-nine Laws and Ordinances Touching Military Discipline were read aloud at the head of each company once a month, and were presumably translated into the Gaelic for those who had no English. By Article Nine, the giving of advice, intelligence or warning to the enemy was punishable by death. Article Sixteen authorized death for refusal to obey an order. Article Nineteen authorized death for murder and wilful killing. Article Twenty authorized death for theft and robbery. And the irony of Article Thirty-seven may have been remembered by Glenlyon's men and Drummond's, when they fell-to in a snowstorm one February dawn in Glencoe.
If any shall presume to beat or abuse his host, or the wife, child, or servant of his host where he is quartered, he shall be put in irons for it. And if he does it a second time he shall be further punished, and the party wronged shall have amends made him. And whoever shall force a woman to abuse her, whether she belong to the enemy or not, shall suffer death for it.
Due to the reluctance of the Privy Council to advance sufficient money (the regiment's pay alone was more than £16,000 sterling a year) it was two years before the Campbells were fully equipped and uniformed. For nearly twelve months the Earl of Argyll bore the cost out of his own purse, and complained bitterly about it. But by the end of 1691 all thirteen companies were better clothed than Hill's wretched men would ever be. The badges on their rough blue bonnets, an earl's coronet and the boar's head of Argyll, had been embroidered in London by William de Remon, a Huguenot exile. Geranium-red coats, faced with yellow, had replaced the tartan in which they had been hurriedly dressed when they were first mustered. Their loose breeches were grey, and tied with ribbons below the knee. Their stockings were yellow, and their black shoes were high-fronted and buckled with steel. Beneath their coats they wore long waistcoats of tartan, and in the first winter of their service some of them were issued with plaids instead of greatcoats. With the exception of this tartan cloth, which was made in Glasgow, most of their clothing was sent from London. That is to say, it was sent when Quartermaster John MacUre could bully the clothiers into making it, and the shipmasters into carrying it to Leith.
The old Highland weapons, broadsword, dirk and target, were set aside with the clansmen's saffron shirts and belted plaids. The Argylls were armed like any Lowland or English regiment. Of the sixty Private Sentinels in each company, twenty were pikemen and the rest were musketeers. The pike, a defensive weapon and obsolescent, was from thirteen to eighteen feet long, and tipped with a flat spear-head. The muskets, barrels burnished and the stocks a cherry-brown, were eventually all flintlocks, for the Highlanders despised the cumbersome and inefficient matchlock. Each man carried a hanger on his left side, a short, cross-hilted sword in a black leather scabbard. On the right of his belt was his patrontash, a stiff cartridge-box containing twelve rounds of powder and ball wrapped in cylinders of paper. On his left buttock hung a bayonet, not the old plug weapon which was rammed into the muzzle, and with which Mackay's men had been desperately struggling when Dundee's swordsmen came down upon them at Killiecrankie. This was the new dagger-blade, with a hilt that could be locked on the barrel, leaving the musket free for firing. Finally, each soldier had a grey knapsack for his ammunition bread, his spare shoes and coarse linen shirt. He slung it over his shoulder, or hung it from his musket when on the march.
Argyll was childishly pleased with his regiment when he saw it drawn up on parade at Perth or Stirling, blue, scarlet and yellow, the crimson sashes and golden gorgets of the officers, the foam of lace at their throats, the sun on the points of the pikes and the curved blades of the sergeants' halberts. In three ranks, the grenadier company stood alone by honour and by privilege. The rest of the battalion was formed in line, with Argyll's own company on the right wing, then his lieutenant-colonel's, then the major's, and so on to Glenlyon's, the most junior company, on the left. When the drums beat a ruffle, the pikemen marched from their companies to the centre of the line and the colours were broken at their head. Officers and sergeants swept off their hats in salute, and the drums beat again.
‘I can assure your lordship,’ Argyll told Melville, ‘carce any new regiment can be in better order than mine.’ In the beginning he did his best to make it so, and it was at his expense that the Surgeon was supplied with vitriol, camomile and liquorice, camphor, sassafras and jallop, basil, lemon, and oil of rhubarb, all sent from Glasgow in stout wooden boxes. Now he wanted his men to be put to work, with himself at their head. ‘I am concerned that I should not be with my regiment where His Majesty is to expose himself.’
But in the months that followed Major Duncanson and Quartermaster MacUre were less sanguine. There was a limit to the Earl's generosity, and to the extent to which he thought he should support the King's soldiers. They were short of pay and without food. Some time in the summer of 1691 they threw down their arms and refused to serve any longer, unless they were given bread immediately. John MacUre saved the honour of Clan Campbell and the dignity of the Earl of Argyll. On his own credit, he borrowed £735 5s. 9d. sterling from Edinburgh moneylenders, and bought the soldiers enough to eat. He borrowed another £100 when that was gone, and when he could borrow no more, and could not repay what he had already borrowed, the moneylenders had him thrown into the Canongate Tolbooth. He was still in prison a year later, writing unhappy letters to the Privy Council, complaining of ‘my great ruin by the loss of my employment and the disorder of my affairs’. The Earl, who was then in Flanders or sweet Peggy's arms, did little to help his loyal servant. He had spent £12,000 sterling of his own money on the regiment's pay, clothing and weapons, and the King had yet to repay him. Compared with this, John MacUre's misfortune may have seemed slight.
The Argyll men were in action before the first ten companies had been fully mustered, though they were too late to join Mackay at Killiecrankie. Under Campbell of Auchinbreck, they were sent to sea as marines, and off Kintyre they captured an Irish ship that was attempting to carry men and horses to Thomas Buchan. To his great satisfaction, John Campbell of Airds was ordered away with his company to retake Castle Stalker, but the Appin men were out in force between Loch Creran and Glen Duror. Airds had to wait nine months until Stewart of Ardshiel surrendered the castle to the Earl of Argyll and all his regiment. In the King's name, and in Clan Diarmaid's cause, the regiment then harried the Macleans who had repossessed lands lost
to the Campbells fifteen years before. Transported by the Lamb and the Dartmouth, Captain Pottinger's men-of-war, the soldiers went ashore on Mull and the Isles of Treshnish, and although they wore red coats and fought beneath the King's colours, they shouted their old clan slogan ‘Cruachan!’ as they repaid the Macleans for the Atholl Raid. Tarbat was uneasy about the use of Royal troops in the settlement of private quarrels, but John Hill thought that the Earl of Argyll had acted ‘generously and self-denyingly, minding none of his own concerns, but the King's only’.
In December 1691, when Stair's orders mobilized the Army, Argyll's was the only reliable regiment in the Western Highlands. Since the departure of the Cameronians for Flanders, it was also one of the best in Scotland. In its first year it had lost forty men by desertion, but its morale was now high. It was fully clothed and fully armed, though here and there a man may still have needed a poke for his hair, cording for his bonnet, or a scabbard for his hanger. It was adequately and regularly fed, it had recently been paid. It was also in its own country, and turned toward Clan Donald.
On 29 December, as a result of express orders sent to the Earl by the King two weeks before, seven companies marched for Dunstaffnage under the command of Major Duncanson. There, on the coast of Lorn, boats were waiting to take them up Loch Linnhe to Fort William.
4
MURDER UNDER TRUST
‘I will ask Ardkinglas to receive you as a lost sheep’
THE captain of the night brought John Hill the news. A Highland gentleman had been passed over the moat and through the Main Guard, and was now outside the Governor's door, asking for him. Twenty-four hours from the end of the year, MacIain had come at last to Inverlochy.
It was snowing heavily. For more than a week the weather had been unusually bad and this night was the worst yet, bitterly cold, with a rising wind and the snow driven into great banks against the walls. The calls of the night-watch were muffled, and each man kept to the shelter of the embrasures. A huge fire cracked and hissed by the main gate, and there was another by the sally-port. Across the parade, snow was quickly filling the hoof-prints of MacIain's garron and the marks of his gillies' feet leading to the south-east ravelin. In the Governor's room candles were lit and a peat-fire burned. Alasdair MacDonald appeared in the doorway like a giant from the Feinn, snow on his bonnet, his plaid and his hair, his eyes proud above the fierce curl of his moustache. He wore trews and boots, his famous buff coat and a wide belt with broadsword and hanging pistols. He and Hill had not met for thirty years, and the Governor must have searched the old brown face for some warming memory of the young man he had once known. MacIain greeted him courteously but briefly, and before he would take a chair or a glass of wine he explained why he was there.
‘I have come,’ he said, ‘to swear the oath. Will you administer it, that I may have King William's indemnity?’
Hill was astonished, and then he was angry, as much with his own helplessness as with the MacDonald's obstinate pride. He knew that MacIain was no fool, and understood as well as any man that he had no power to administer the oath. He said so, sharply, as if he were talking to a child. I am a soldier, he said. You are a soldier, agreed MacIain, implying that there would be no shame in submitting to him, you are the Governor of Lochaber. Hill shook his head. The words of the Proclamation had been plain enough for a boy to understand. The oath must be taken in the presence of the Sheriffs, or their deputies, of the respective shires where any of the said persons shall live.
‘I cannot administer the oath to you!’ said Hill impatiently, ‘You must go before Campbell of Ardkinglas at Inveraray.’
MacIain said nothing, but his silence and the bitterness in his face spoke for him. He could not take the oath before a Campbell sheriff in a Campbell town, where he had been imprisoned and men of his name had been hanged. Suddenly Hill could no longer be angry with him, understanding the obstinate man's pride, and forgiving him the childish attempt to avoid the full humiliation of submission. Ardkinglas was a good man, the Governor pleaded gently, there would be no shame in submitting before him, did MacIain not understand that? Did he not undertand the dangers he risked, for his people as well as himself, by coming to Fort William and not Inveraray, with little more than twenty-four hours before the time ran out? The Proclamation of August had made that risk brutally clear: Such as shall continue obstinate and incorrigible after this gracious offer of mercy, shall be punished as traitors and rebels to the utmost extremity of the Law. There was more that Hill could have said, had his duty and his honour permitted, of the soldiers marching on Inverness and Inverlochy, of Stair's savage and unequivocal threats. ‘The MacDonalds will fall in this net… this is the proper season to maul them… the Highlanders cannot escape us, nor carry their wives, bairns and cattle to the mountains…’
MacIain was about to fall into that net, and although Hill could say nothing of it, the tone of his voice was enough to make the chief uneasy. His expression softened, and behind it Hill may have seen the fear that had been there all the time. The Governor sat down at his desk, pulling paper, quill and ink-horn before him. He looked up at the stiff buff coat, the bonnet held in a tight fist, the melted snow beading on tartan and leather. The time was short, said Hill, the weather bad, and he doubted that MacIain would reach Inveraray before the first hour of the New Year. ‘But,’ he smiled kindly, ‘I will ask Ardkinglas to receive you as a lost sheep.’ And he began to write.
When the letter was finished, folded and sealed, MacIain thrust it inside his coat and tugged down his bonnet. Hill took his arm. ‘Now I must hasten you away.’ Throwing a cloak over his shoulders, he walked with the chief to the Main Guard, and there shook his hand and wished him God speed. He watched by the fire as the old MacDonald rode off, legs out-thrust from the tiny pony, the gillies running softly. In a few seconds they were lost in the darkness and the snow. Hill could not even see the lights and the cottages of Maryburgh across the moat. He went back to his room, with a prayer for God's mercy on this lost ram of an erring flock.
MacIain and his gillies travelled slowly over the drove-road to Ballachulish, eight miles through a wild, white darkness. It was still not dawn when they came down by Callart. Across the leaden water of Loch Leven, MacIain could see a prick of light from his house at Carnoch half a mile away. He turned from it, westward to the ferry. Ashore at Ballachulish he sent one of the gillies to Glencoe with word for his wife and sons, telling them where he was going and why, urging them to keep in good heart, for he carried John Hill's letter in his coat and there was time yet before the old year ended.
The way he had chosen to reach Inveraray was not the shortest. In summer he would have gone southward from Laroch, up Gleann an Fiodh where the Norsemen had built their great camp, and then over a thin ridge to Glen Creran and Benderloch. But even a stag would not pass that way in winter. He went by Appin along the shore of Loch Linnhe. Before noon on Wednesday, 31 December, he came to the narrows of Loch Creran where there was a ferry between two points of land, each called Rubha Garbh, the rugged cape. To his right across the loch, on the white aird of Benderloch, MacIain could see the black pencil of Barcaldine Castle, one of seven defensive keeps built long before by the Campbells in Appin. To his left, and also across the water, was the narrow pass of Gleann Saloch, full of wind and snow. This would take him down to Loch Etive where, if their old promise of mutual succour meant anything now, he might get a cup of wine and the warmth of a fire from Archibald Campbell of Inverawe. He was an old man, he had been twenty-four hours and more without sleep, most of which he had spent in the open in bitter weather, and he was still far from Inveraray.
Roused from his bothy, the Appin boatman took the MacDonalds over Loch Creran. They were stumbling ashore through the frozen mud and snow when a patrol of red-coats ran toward them from the aird, their muskets unslung. They were Thomas Drummond's grenadiers, from the advance company of the four hundred Argylls whom Duncanson was taking to Inverlochy. Hostile, suspicious of men with heather in
their bonnets, and nervous as all recruits on their first campaign, they would not listen to MacIain's protests, and shook their heads at the letter he pulled from his coat. They took him two miles down the aird to Barcaldine Castle where Drummond was at breakfast. The Lowlander was equally indifferent to Hill's letter, though he read it. He told his men to put MacIain's gillies in a hole beneath the castle. The chief was locked in a narrow garde-robe, where he stayed for twenty-four hours in what must have been cruel agony for a man of his size and age. Drummond had no authority to ignore Hill's letter entirely, for the Governor would soon be his commanding officer, but a day was long enough to satisfy his spite and self-importance. The old year was gone when he finally released the MacDonalds.
It was perhaps noon of 1 January when MacIain passed through Gleann Saloch to the Bonawe Ferry, and another snowstorm was thickening in the Pass of Brander, three miles to the south-west. Now and then the unrelenting wind lifted the clouds from the white scalp of Ben Cruachan. MacIain may have stopped at Inverawe House, but he was probably unwilling to trust any wayside Campbell now, and had fading hopes in Ardkinglas's clemency. He and his men took what rest they could afford in empty shielings, and paused at isolated cottages for bread and a dram. If they saw any more of Duncanson's companies they kept out of sight themselves. They went through the Pass of Brander and its snowstorm, following a narrow track above the furious river. In this weather the garron and the patient gillies could travel no more than a mile or two in an hour, and their strength was weakened by each. At nightfall they skirted the head of Loch Awe and the scattered lights of Campbell townships. Out on the water, Breadalbane's castle of Kilchurn was a snow-headed rock. Moving more and more slowly, they kept on throughout the night, down the shore of Loch Awe for five miles, and then southward across the high hills to Loch Fyne. Here the land was like a white, wrinkled blanket, each fold smoking with snow, and no clear division between earth and sky. At dawn on the second of January, three days after they had left Glencoe for Inverlochy, they came down through the bare timber plantations of Glen Aray to the Campbell capital.