HISTORY OF THE REBELLIONS IN SCOTLAND, FROM 1638 TILL 1660. CHAPTER I. RAVAGE OF ARGYLE, AND BATTLE OF INVERLOCHY. The war-tune of Donald the Black, The war-tune of Donald! The pipes and the banner Are up in the rendezvous at Inverlochy ! Translation of a Gaelic Poem. THOUGH Montrose had not yet by any means accomplished the object of his expedition to Scotland, and although the Estates found it still possible to check him with little more than the militia of the country, his victories had nevertheless, by proving them to be not infallible, wrought a considerable change in the aspect of their affairs. "Many," says Guthry, "who had formerly been violent in the popular cause, now began to talk moderately;" impressed, it would appear, with a respect for the loyal party which they had never before entertained. That loyal party, on the other hand, now found themselves at liberty to speak their sentiments with boldness, regarding the illegality and danger of the late movements of the Covenanting government, especially their unhallowed league with the English insurgents against a sovereign who had treated at least them with kindness and liberality. There were many neutral persons, moreover, who, having formerly submitted to the Estates purely because they conceived their power irresistible, now thought fit to incline towards the party whose prospects had lately received so unexpected a brightening. While Argyle was making merit with his constituents at Edinburgh for having terminated the campaign of 1644" without bloodshed," and while all unconcerned persons were laughing at so unsoldierly a virtue, Montrose was preparing in the centre of the Highlands for an enterprise still more daring and terrible than any he had yet undertaken. Being joined, in his retreat through that wild region, by a great portion of the clan Donald, by a portion of the Camerons, and by the Stewarts of Appin, whom his faithful friend Colkittoch had succeeded in raising for his service, he called a council of war to determine what quarters it would be advisable for the army to assume for the winter.' He himself proposed the low country as the only place where he conceived it would be possible to procure either quarters or provisions; others thought the Highlands more eligible on account of their comparative security. A third party suggested that no place could be better than the country of their common enemy Argyle. This last suggestion met the approbation of all present: the Irish ap proved of it as enabling them to avenge the ravages which a body of Campbells, as part of the Scottish Protestant army there established, had for years been exercising upon their own lands at home; the Highlanders delighted in it as tending to gratify their own justifiable feelings of revenge against an imperious and grasping clan; and, for Montrose, he rejoiced in the prospect of thus at once depressing his own personal enemy, and unfitting him for ever after thwarting, as he had already so often done, by his enormous territorial power, the policy of his royal master. It only remained to be inquired if Argyle's country, peninsulated as it was by the sea, and so remote from all other cultivated lands, would support an army during the winter. Montrose, to ascertain this point, called to the council Angus Macdonald, son of Allan Dhu Macdonald, of the sept of Glencoe, who, of all his men, was best acquainted with the district. Angus, being asked if there was abundance of food and lodging in Argyle, answered that, although "there was not a town nor half a town in all the country, yet there were plenty of houses to live in, and plenty of fat cattle to feed upon;" an answer which so completely satisfied Montrose, that he instantly gave orders for a march towards the devoted land in question. His army approached Argyle in two divisions. One, consisting chiefly of the Lochaber and Knoydart people, went, with John Muidartach, the captain of the Clanranald, by the head of Argyle. The other marched, under his own command, through Breadalbane, along the brink of Loch Tay, and through Glen Dochart, in a more latitudinal direction. The country on both tracts belonging, if not to Argyle himself, at least to his kinsmen and adherents, was unsparingly destroyed. As Montrose's own party marched through Breadalbane, it was joined by the clans of Macgregor and Maenab.2 When Argyle heard at Edinburgh of these movements and proceedings of the royal army, he hastened home to his own country, and exerted himself to raise his clan, apparently for the purpose of checking Montrose's progress. It does not appear that he apprehended the possibility of that general's breaking in upon his own country, the passes to which were so difficult and at the same time so important, that he had been heard to declare he would not have them known by any other than a friend for an hundred thousand crowns. He therefore took no measures for repelling the invasion which Montrose was meditating, but on the contrary lay secure in his own fancied inaccessibility, at Inverary, with his levies going on deliberately around him, when intelligence suddenly arrived, that the enemy was within two miles of his residence. He instantly took boat upon Loch Fyne, and, without waiting to concert any measures for the defence of the country, set sail for the Lowlands, leaving his numerous clan uncommanded, and their whole property exposed to the licence of the spoilers. Montrose took full advantage of the unprotected state of the country: he burnt every house, except the impregnable castles; slew, drove off, ate up, or otherwise destroyed, every four-footed beast; and utterly spoiled every thing in the shape of grain, goods, and furniture. The writer of the Red Book of Clanranald mentions, as a dreadful addition to the gross amount of ravage, that the party which went under the conduct of John Muidartach, and which |