4

penetrated the length of Kilmartin in Glasry, slew eight hundred and ninety-five persons, without battle or skirmish; but, as no other historian has taken the least notice of such a circumstance, it is probably untrue. Whether or not there was any massacre, the unfortunate inhabitants certainly suffered severely enough to expiate the political faults of their superior; for the ravages of the royal army were extended through almost every peninsular limb of this vast district, and continued for no less a space than six weeks, namely from the 13th of December 1644 to the 28th or 29th of January 1645.

On making his escape from Inverary, the Marquis of Argyle went to Dumbarton, where he met a party of regular troops, which the Estates had recalled from England, for the suppression of the royalists, and which they now dispatched for his immediate assistance, under Major-general Baillie, one of their second-rate commanders. Intelligence soon after arriving that Montrose was quitting the country by its northern extremity, a plan was concerted by Argyle and Baillie, that while the former should raise his clan and follow him at a certain distance, the latter should lead his regular forces round the eastern extremity of the Highlands, and, coming up in his front, either overthrow him utterly, or at least drive him back in disorder for complete destruction by the advancing legions of Argyle. To give the greater efficacy to the clan army, Campbell of Auchinbreck, the cousin of the chief, and an experienced soldier, was called over from his duty in Ireland, to take a high command and principal direction in its tumultuary and irresolute bands; and Baillie, by consent of the Committee of Estates, granted for its assistance eleven

The

hundred of his own disciplined soldiers.5 scheme was good, and might have been attended with the desired success in other circumstances; but, as these circumstances stood, it only yielded the superior genius of Montrose opportunity to inflict another and still severer blow upon the retainers of his enemy.

Montrose was, about the last day of January, marching through Abertarf in the great glen of Albin, with the intention of attacking an army of northern Highlanders which he understood to have been collected in garrison at Inverness by the Earl of Seaforth, when he was overtaken by a breathless and way-worn Highlander, who surprised him with the intelligence that Argyle was following him through Lochaber, and had already begun to retaliate upon that district the flames and spoliation with which he had so recently visited the country of the Campbells. According to his usual custom, he had totally overlooked the possibility of such a circumstance; and he was now so much surprised at hearing of the advance of Argyle, that he refused at first to believe the fact. The Highlander who brought him the intelligence-by tradition reported to have been the celebrated bard of the Keppoch family, Ian Lom," but stated by Guthry to have been one "Allan MacIldowie of Lochaber,"-asseverated its truth with such warmth and apparent sincerity of expression, that the astonished general at last saw fit to act upon it. Yet such was his continued incredulity, that, while he gave orders for a march back to Lochaber, he caused the messenger to be detained a prisoner, and told him that the ropes were spun which should hang him, in case of his information proving false. The man answered, with the spirit of a partizan, that, if a

particular tower, which he named, and which was the last he had passed in a state of conflagration, should not be found destroyed on their return, he would no longer desire life.

The movement which Montrose determined upon in this emergency, was, both in its conception and execution, perhaps the most remarkable he ever performed. * His army was much diminished; the greater part of the Highlanders having gone home to deposit the spoils of Argyle. He scarcely mustered one half of the forces which report gave to his enemy. He was also aware that the man he had to oppose must be animated against him with all the feelings of the bitterest hatred and revenge. Yet, as he supposed it likely that Argyle had not resolved upon directly fighting him, but rather followed for the purpose of simply driving him forward to destruction at Inverness, he judged that, even with his inadequate forces, his best course would be to fall back upon him and endeavour to surprise his troops, a victory over whom at this crisis might cause the northern army to disperse of its own accord, while the eclat of such a triumph would probably encourage the loyal clans, thereby for ever relieved from the terror of Argyle, to join him in even greater numbers than hitherto. A thousand dangers and distresses were involved in the project; but these, together with the romantic character of the exploit, and the prospect which it presented of giving another blow to the hated Argyle, seem to have only recommended it with greater force to the enterprising genius of Mon

trose.

It is known to almost every body who has ever been in the Highlands of Scotland, that the distance between Kilcummin, in Abertarf, where

Montrose received his intelligence, and Inverlochy, in Lochaber, where he understood that Argyle had taken up his quarters, is about thirty miles, and that the way lies along that wonderful natural chasm, or furrow of the country, which the natives term the Great Glen of Albin, and which has lat terly formed the bed of the Caledonian Canal. Along this tract, although it was not then provided with the smooth military road which now renders it so convenient, Montrose had just come, on his way to the north; and he could easily have retraced his steps by the same route. There was, however, a reason for his not doing so. That way, he felt assured, must now be so completely possessed and watched by Argyle's scouts, that it would be totally impossible for him to make by it the insidious approach to Inverlochy, upon which he mainly calculated for the means of victory. It was necessary to adopt some more circuitous, some less obvious, some altogether unsuspected and unguarded path. Here lay the great difficulty of the enterprise. In a country so mountainous as the Highlands, the reader must be aware that there are not many tracts of ground calculated for the formation of roads; he is also aware, that, if there are at this day few roads to choose among in this wild region, there were still fewer at the time under review. To increase the difficulty, the few paths which the natives used amongst the hills, and which then formed the only roads, were now, by the nature of the season, obscured and obstructed by deep snow. Altogether, it seemed totally impossible that Montrose should advance upon Inverlochy by any other path than the peculiarly low and easy one which he had just traversed in a contrary direction.

"Contra audentior ito," however, had all along been the heart-motto of Montrose: he resolved at all hazards to assume a path of the nature described. Having first taken pains to acquaint himself with the route, and having sounded the resolution and ability of his men to endure the march, he gave orders that they should strike off to the south, up a narrow glen formed by the little river Tarf; that they should then climb over the hills of Lairie Thurard, and descend upon the wild vale at the head of the Spey; then, traversing Glenroy, that they should pass another mountainous tract; after which they would fall in upon the river Spean; and so along the skirts of Ben Nevis to Inverlochy. The tracks he pointed out, had hitherto been traversed almost exclusively by the wild deer, or by the scarcely less wild adventurers who hunted them. The heights which it skirted or overpassed, were as desert and lonely as the peaks of primeval chaos. The vast convulsed face of the country was as white and still as death, or only darkened in narrow black streaks by the irregular and far-extending lines of the marching soldiery. It must have been a scene of the greatest sublimity, to see these lonely human beings, so diminutive as compared to the wildernesses around them, hurrying and struggling on through hill and vale, and bank and pass; their arms either glancing fitfully and flickeringly under the low winter sun, or their persons obscured to a visionary and uncertain semblance by the snow. storm or the twilight; and all the while, the bloody purpose which animated them, and which gleamed in every face and eye, contrasting so strangely, in its transitory and unimportant nature, with the majestic and eternal solemnity of the mighty scene around them.