The History of England from the Accession of James II, Vol. 4

T >> Thomas Babington Macaulay >> The History of England from the Accession of James II, Vol. 4

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Hamilton fixed five o'clock in the morning of the thirteenth of
February for the deed. He hoped that, before that time, he should
reach Glencoe with four hundred men, and should have stopped all
the earths in which the old fox and his two cubs,-so Mac Ian and
his sons were nicknamed by the murderers,--could take refuge. But,
at five precisely, whether Hamilton had arrived or not, Glenlyon
was to fall on, and to slay every Macdonald under seventy.

The night was rough. Hamilton and his troops made slow progress,
and were long after their time. While they were contending with
the wind and snow, Glenlyon was supping and playing at cards with
those whom he meant to butcher before daybreak. He and Lieutenant
Lindsay had engaged themselves to dine with the old Chief on the
morrow.

Late in the evening a vague suspicion that some evil was intended
crossed the mind of the Chief's eldest son. The soldiers were
evidently in a restless state; and some of them uttered strange
cries. Two men, it is said, were overheard whispering. "I do
not like this job;" one of them muttered, "I should be glad to
fight the Macdonalds. But to kill men in their beds--" "We must
do as we are bid," answered another voice. "If there is any thing
wrong, our officers must answer for it." John Macdonald was so
uneasy that, soon after midnight, he went to Glenlyon's quarters.
Glenlyon and his men were all up, and seemed to be getting their
arms ready for action. John, much alarmed, asked what these
preparations meant. Glenlyon was profuse of friendly assurances.
"Some of Glengarry's people have been harrying the country. We
are getting ready to march against them. You are quite safe. Do
you think that, if you were in any danger, I should not have
given a hint to your brother Sandy and his wife?" John's
suspicions were quieted. He returned to his house, and lay down
to rest.

It was five in the morning. Hamilton and his men were still some
miles off; and the avenues which they were to have secured were
open. But the orders which Glenlyon bad received were precise;
and he began to execute them at the little village where he was
himself quartered. His host Inverriggen and nine other Macdonalds
were dragged out of their beds, bound hand and foot, and
murdered. A boy twelve years old clung round the Captain's legs,
and begged hard for life. He would do any thing; he would go any
where; he would follow Glenlyon round the world. Even Glenlyon,
it is said, showed signs of relenting; but a ruffian named
Drummond shot the child dead.

At Auchnaion the tacksman Auchintriater was up early that
morning, and was sitting with eight of his family round the fire,
when a volley of musketry laid him and seven of his companions
dead or dying on the floor. His brother, who alone had escaped
unhurt, called to Serjeant Barbour, who commanded the slayers,
and asked as a favour to be allowed to die in the open air.
"Well," said the Serjeant, "I will do you that favour for the
sake of your meat which I have eaten." The mountaineer, bold,
athletic, and favoured by the darkness, came forth, rushed on the
soldiers who were about to level their pieces at him, flung his
plaid over their faces, and was gone in a moment.

Meanwhile Lindsay had knocked at the door of the old Chief and
had asked for admission in friendly language. The door was
opened. Mac Ian, while putting on his clothes and calling to his
servants to bring some refreshment for his visitors, was shot
through the head. Two of his attendants were slain with him. His
wife was already up and dressed in such finery as the princesses
of the rude Highland glens were accustomed to wear. The assassins
pulled off her clothes and trinkets. The rings were not easily
taken from her fingers but a soldier tore them away with his
teeth. She died on the following day.

The statesman, to whom chiefly this great crime is to be
ascribed, had planned it with consummate ability: but the
execution was complete in nothing but in guilt and infamy. A
succession of blunders saved three fourths of the Glencoe men
from the fate of their chief. All the moral qualities which fit
men to bear a part in a massacre Hamilton and Glenlyon possessed
in perfection. But neither seems to have had much professional
skill; Hamilton had arranged his plan without making allowance
for bad weather, and this in a country and at a season when the
weather was very likely to be bad. The consequence was that the
fox earths, as he called them, were not stopped in time. Glenlyon
and his men committed the error of despatching their hosts with
firearms instead of using the cold steel. The peal and flash of
gun after gun gave notice, from three different parts of the
valley at once; that murder was doing. From fifty cottages the
half naked peasantry fled under cover of the night to the
recesses of their pathless glen. Even the sons of Mac Ian, who
had been especially marked out for destruction, contrived to
escape. They were roused from sleep by faithful servants. John,
who, by the death of his father, had become the patriarch of the
tribe, quitted his dwelling just as twenty soldiers with fixed
bayonets marched up to it. It was broad day long before Hamilton
arrived. He found the work not even half performed. About thirty
corpses lay wallowing in blood on the dunghills before the doors.
One or two women were seen among the number, and, a yet more
fearful and piteous sight, a little hand, which had been lopped
in the tumult of the butchery from some infant. One aged
Macdonald was found alive. He was probably too infirm to fly,
and, as he was above seventy, was not included in the orders
under which Glenlyon had acted. Hamilton murdered the old man in
cold blood. The deserted hamlets were then set on fire; and the
troops departed, driving away with them many sheep and goats,
nine hundred kine, and two hundred of the small shaggy ponies of
the Highlands.

It is said, and may but too easily be believed, that the
sufferings of the fugitives were terrible. How many old men, how
many women with babes in their arms, sank down and slept their
last sleep in the snow; how many, having crawled, spent with toil
and hunger, into nooks among the precipices, died in those dark
holes, and were picked to the bone by the mountain ravens, can
never be known. But it is probable that those who perished by
cold, weariness and want were not less numerous than those who
were slain by the assassins. When the troops had retired, the
Macdonalds crept out of the caverns of Glencoe, ventured back to
the spot where the huts had formerly stood, collected the
scorched corpses from among the smoking ruins, and performed some
rude rites of sepulture. The tradition runs that the hereditary
bard of the tribe took his seat on a rock which overhung the
place of slaughter, and poured forth a long lament over his
murdered brethren, and his desolate home. Eighty years later that
sad dirge was still repeated by the population of the valley.233

The survivors might well apprehend that they had escaped the shot
and the sword only to perish by famine. The whole domain was a
waste. Houses, barns, furniture, implements of husbandry, herds,
flocks, horses, were gone. Many months must elapse before the
clan would be able to raise on its own ground the means of
supporting even the most miserable existence.234

It may be thought strange that these events should not have been
instantly followed by a burst of execration from every part of
the civilised world. The fact, however, is that years elapsed
before the public indignation was thoroughly awakened, and that
months elapsed before the blackest part of the story found credit
even among the enemies of the government. That the massacre
should not have been mentioned in the London Gazettes, in the
Monthly Mercuries which were scarcely less courtly than the
Gazettes, or in pamphlets licensed by official censors, is
perfectly intelligible. But that no allusion to it should be
found in private journals and letters, written by persons free
from all restraint, may seem extraordinary. There is not a word
on the subject in Evelyn's Diary. In Narcissus Luttrell's Diary
is a remarkable entry made five weeks after the butchery. The
letters from Scotland, he says, described that kingdom as
perfectly tranquil, except that there was still some grumbling
about ecclesiastical questions. The Dutch ministers regularly
reported all the Scotch news to their government. They thought it
worth while, about this time, to mention that a collier had been
taken by a privateer near Berwick, that the Edinburgh mail had
been robbed, that a whale, with a tongue seventeen feet long and
seven feet broad, had been stranded near Aberdeen. But it is not
hinted in any of their despatches that there was any rumour of
any extraordinary occurrence in the Highlands. Reports that some
of the Macdonalds had been slain did indeed, in about three
weeks, travel through Edinburgh up to London. But these reports
were vague and contradictory; and the very worst of them was far
from coming up to the horrible truth. The Whig version of the
story was that the old robber Mac Ian had laid an ambuscade for
the soldiers, that he had been caught in his own snare, and that
he and some of his clan had fallen sword in hand. The Jacobite
version, written at Edinburgh on the twenty-third of March,
appeared in the Paris Gazette of the seventh of April. Glenlyon,
it was said, had been sent with a detachment from Argyle's
regiment, under cover of darkness, to surprise the inhabitants of
Glencoe, and had killed thirty-six men and boys and four
women.235 In this there was nothing very strange or shocking. A
night attack on a gang of freebooters occupying a strong natural
fortress may be a perfectly legitimate military operation; and,
in the obscurity and confusion of such an attack, the most humane
man may be so unfortunate as to shoot a woman or a child. The
circumstances which give a peculiar character to the slaughter of
Glencoe, the breach of faith, the breach of hospitality, the
twelve days of feigned friendship and conviviality, of morning
calls, of social meals, of healthdrinking, of cardplaying, were
not mentioned by the Edinburgh correspondent of the Paris
Gazette; and we may therefore confidently infer that those
circumstances were as yet unknown even to inquisitive and busy
malecontents residing in the Scottish capital within a hundred
miles of the spot where the deed had been done. In the south of
the island the matter produced, as far as can now be judged,
scarcely any sensation. To the Londoner of those days Appin was
what Caffraria or Borneo is to us. He was not more moved by
hearing that some Highland thieves had been surprised and killed
than we are by hearing that a band of Amakosah cattle stealers
has been cut off, or that a bark full of Malay pirates has been
sunk. He took it for granted that nothing had been done in
Glencoe beyond what was doing in many other glens. There had been
a night brawl, one of a hundred night brawls, between the
Macdonalds and the Campbells; and the Campbells had knocked the
Macdonalds on the head.

By slow degrees the whole truth came out. From a letter written
at Edinburgh about two months after the crime had been committed,
it appears that the horrible story was already current among the
Jacobites of that city. In the summer Argyle's regiment was
quartered in the south of England, and some of the men made
strange confessions, over their ale, about what they had been
forced to do in the preceding winter. The nonjurors soon got hold
of the clue, and followed it resolutely; their secret presses
went to work; and at length, near a year after the crime had been
committed, it was published to the world.236 But the world was
long incredulous. The habitual mendacity of the Jacobite
libellers had brought on them an appropriate punishment. Now,
when, for the first time, they told the truth, they were supposed
to be romancing. They complained bitterly that the story, though
perfectly authentic, was regarded by the public as a factious
lie.237 So late as the year 1695, Hickes, in a tract in which he
endeavoured to defend his darling tale of the Theban legion
against the unanswerable argument drawn from the silence of
historians, remarked that it might well be doubted whether any
historian would make mention of the massacre of Glencoe. There
were in England, he said, many thousands of well educated men who
had never heard of that massacre, or who regarded it as a mere
fable.238

Nevertheless the punishment of some of the guilty began very
early. Hill, who indeed can hardly be called guilty, was much
disturbed. Breadalbane, hardened as he was, felt the stings of
conscience or the dread of retribution. A few days after the
Macdonalds had returned to their old dwellingplace, his steward
visited the ruins of the house of Glencoe, and endeavoured to
persuade the sons of the murdered chief to sign a paper declaring
that they held the Earl guiltless of the blood which had been
shed. They were assured that, if they would do this, all His
Lordship's great influence should be employed to obtain for them
from the Crown a free pardon and a remission of all
forfeitures.239 Glenlyon did his best to assume an air of
unconcern. He made his appearance in the most fashionable
coffeehouse at Edinburgh, and talked loudly and self-complacently
about the important service in which he had been engaged among
the mountains. Some of his soldiers, however, who observed him
closely, whispered that all this bravery was put on. He was not
the man that he had been before that night. The form of his
countenance was changed. In all places, at all hours, whether he
waked or slept, Glencoe was for ever before him.240

But, whatever apprehensions might disturb Breadalbane, whatever
spectres might haunt Glenlyon, the Master of Stair had neither
fear nor remorse. He was indeed mortified; but he was mortified
only by the blunders of Hamilton and by the escape of so many of
the damnable breed. "Do right, and fear nobody;" such is the
language of his letters. "Can there be a more sacred duty than to
rid the country of thieving? The only thing that I regret is that
any got away."241

On the sixth of March, William, entirely ignorant, in all
probability, of the details of the crime which has cast a dark
shade over his glory, had set out for the Continent, leaving the
Queen his viceregent in England.242

He would perhaps have postponed his departure if he had been
aware that the French Government had, during some time, been
making great preparations for a descent on our island.243 An
event had taken place which had changed the policy of the Court
of Versailles. Louvois was no more. He had been at the head of
the military administration of his country during a quarter of a
century; he had borne a chief part in the direction of two wars
which had enlarged the French territory, and had filled the world
with the renown of the French arms; and he had lived to see the
beginning of a third war which tasked his great powers to the
utmost. Between him and the celebrated captains who carried his
plans into execution there was little harmony. His imperious
temper and his confidence in himself impelled him to interfere
too much with the conduct of troops in the field, even when those
troops were commanded by Conde, by Turenne or by Luxemburg. But
he was the greatest Adjutant General, the greatest Quartermaster
General, the greatest Commissary General, that Europe had seen.
He may indeed be said to have made a revolution in the art of
disciplining, distributing, equipping and provisioning armies. In
spite, however, of his abilities and of his services, he had
become odious to Lewis and to her who governed Lewis. On the last
occasion on which the King and the minister transacted business
together, the ill humour on both sides broke violently forth. The
servant, in his vexation, dashed his portfolio on the ground. The
master, forgetting, what he seldom forgot, that a King should be
a gentleman, lifted his cane. Fortunately his wife was present.
She, with her usual prudence, caught his arm. She then got
Louvois out of the room, and exhorted him to come back the next
day as if nothing had happened. The next day he came; but with
death in his face. The King, though full of resentment, was
touched with pity, and advised Louvois to go home and take care
of himself. That evening the great minister died.244

Louvois had constantly opposed all plans for the invasion of
England. His death was therefore regarded at Saint Germains as a
fortunate event.245 It was however necessary to look sad, and to
send a gentleman to Versailles with some words of condolence. The
messenger found the gorgeous circle of courtiers assembled round
their master on the terrace above the orangery. "Sir," said
Lewis, in a tone so easy and cheerful that it filled all the
bystanders with amazement, "present my compliments and thanks to
the King and Queen of England, and tell them that neither my
affairs nor theirs will go on the worse by what has happened."
These words were doubtless meant to intimate that the influence
of Louvois had not been exerted in favour of the House of
Stuart.246 One compliment, however, a compliment which cost
France dear, Lewis thought it right to pay to the memory of his
ablest servant. The Marquess of Barbesieux, son of Louvois, was
placed, in his twenty-fifth year, at the head of the war
department. The young man was by no means deficient in abilities,
and had been, during some years, employed in business of grave
importance. But his passions were strong; his judgment was not
ripe; and his sudden elevation turned his head. His manners gave
general disgust. Old officers complained that he kept them long
in his antechamber while he was amusing himself with his spaniels
and his flatterers. Those who were admitted to his presence went
away disgusted by his rudeness and arrogance. As was natural at
his age, he valued power chiefly as the means of procuring
pleasure. Millions of crowns were expended on the luxurious villa
where he loved to forget the cares of office in gay conversation,
delicate cookery and foaming champagne. He often pleaded an
attack of fever as an excuse for not making his appearance at the
proper hour in the royal closet, when in truth he had been
playing truant among his boon companions and mistresses. "The
French King," said William, "has an odd taste. He chooses an old
woman for his mistress, and a young man for his minister."247

There can be little doubt that Louvois, by pursuing that course
which had made him odious to the inmates of Saint Germains, had
deserved well of his country. He was not maddened by Jacobite
enthusiasm. He well knew that exiles are the worst of all
advisers. He had excellent information;
he had excellent judgment; he calculated the chances; and he saw
that a descent was likely to fail, and to fail disastrously and
disgracefully. James might well be impatient to try the
experiment, though the odds should be ten to one against him. He
might gain; and he could not lose. His folly and obstinacy had
left him nothing to risk. His food, his drink, his lodging, his
clothes, he owed to charity. Nothing could be more natural than
that, for the very smallest chance of recovering the three
kingdoms which he had thrown away, he should be willing to stake
what was not his own, the honour of the French arms, the grandeur
and the safety of the French monarchy. To a French statesman such
a wager might well appear in a different light. But Louvois was
gone. His master yielded to the importunity of James, and
determined to send an expedition against England.248

The scheme was, in some respects, well concerted. It was resolved
that a camp should be formed on the coast of Normandy, and that
in this camp all the Irish regiments which were in the French
service should be assembled under their countryman Sarsfield.
With them were to be joined about ten thousand French troops. The
whole army was to be commanded by Marshal Bellefonds.

A noble fleet of about eighty ships of the line was to convoy
this force to the shores of England. In the dockyards both of
Brittany and of Provence immense preparations were made. Four and
forty men of war, some of which were among the finest that had
ever been built, were assembled in the harbour of Brest under
Tourville. The Count of Estrees, with thirty-five more, was to
sail from Toulon. Ushant was fixed for the place of rendezvous.
The very day was named. In order that there might be no want
either of seamen or of vessels for the intended expedition, all
maritime trade, all privateering was, for a time, interdicted by
a royal mandate.249 Three hundred transports were collected near
the spot where the troops were to embark. It was hoped that all
would be ready early in the spring, before the English ships were
half rigged or half manned, and before a single Dutch man of war
was in the Channel.250

James had indeed persuaded himself that, even if the English
fleet should fall in with him, it would not oppose him. He
imagined that he was personally a favourite with the mariners of
all ranks. His emissaries had been busy among the naval officers,
and had found some who remembered him with kindness, and others
who were out of humour with the men now in power. All the wild
talk of a class of people not distinguished by taciturnity or
discretion was reported to him with exaggeration, till he was
deluded into a belief that he had more friends than enemies on
board of the vessels which guarded our coasts. Yet he should have
known that a rough sailor, who thought himself ill used by the
Admiralty, might, after the third bottle, when drawn on by artful
companions, express his regret for the good old times, curse the
new government, and curse himself for being such a fool as to
fight for that government, and yet might be by no means prepared
to go over to the French on the day of battle. Of the malecontent
officers, who, as James believed, were impatient to desert, the
great majority had probably given no pledge of their attachment
to him except an idle word hiccoughed out when they were drunk,
and forgotten when they were sober. One those from whom he
expected support, Rear Admiral Carter, had indeed heard and
perfectly understood what the Jacobite agents had to say, had
given them fair words, and had reported the whole to the Queen
and her ministers.251

But the chief dependence of James was on Russell. That false,
arrogant and wayward politician was to command the Channel Fleet.
He had never ceased to assure the Jacobite emissaries that he was
bent on effecting a Restoration. Those emissaries fully reckoned,
if not on his entire cooperation, yet at least on his connivance;
and there could be no doubt that, with his connivance, a French
fleet might easily convoy an army to our shores. James flattered
himself that, as soon as he had landed, he should be master of
the island. But in truth, when the voyage had ended, the
difficulties of his enterprise would have been only beginning.
Two years before he had received a lesson by which he should have
profited. He had then deceived himself and others into the belief
that the English were regretting him, were pining for him, were
eager to rise in arms by tens of thousands to welcome him.
William was then, as now, at a distance. Then, as now, the
administration was entrusted to a woman. Then, as now, there were
few regular troops in England. Torrington had then done as much
to injure the government which he served as Russell could now do.
The French fleet had then, after riding, during several weeks,
victorious and dominant in the Channel, landed some troops on the
southern coast. The immediate effect had been that whole
counties, without distinction of Tory or Whig, Churchman or
Dissenter, had risen up, as one man, to repel the foreigners, and
that the Jacobite party, which had, a few days before, seemed to
be half the nation, had crouched down in silent terror, and had
made itself so small that it had, during some time, been
invisible. What reason was there for believing that the multitude
who had, in 1690, at the first lighting of the beacons, snatched
up firelocks, pikes, scythes, to defend, their native soil
against the French, would now welcome the French as allies? And
of the army by which James was now to be accompanied the French
formed the least odious part. More than half of that army was to
consist of Irish Papists; and the feeling, compounded of hatred
and scorn, with which the Irish Papists had long been regarded by
the English Protestants, had by recent events been stimulated to
a vehemence before unknown. The hereditary slaves, it was said,
had been for a moment free; and that moment had sufficed to prove
that they knew neither how to use nor how to defend their
freedom. During their short ascendency they had done nothing but
slay, and burn, and pillage, and demolish, and attaint, and
confiscate. In three years they had committed such waste on their
native land as thirty years of English intelligence and industry
would scarcely repair. They would have maintained their
independence against the world, if they had been as ready to
fight as they were to steal. But they had retreated ignominiously
from the walls of Londonderry. They had fled like deer before the
yeomanry of Enniskillen. The Prince whom they now presumed to
think that they could place, by force of arms, on the English
throne, had himself, on the morning after the rout of the Boyne,
reproached them with their cowardice, and told them that he would
never again trust to their soldiership. On this subject
Englishmen were of one mind. Tories, Nonjurors, even Roman
Catholics, were as loud as Whigs in reviling the ill fated race.
It is, therefore, not difficult to guess what effect would have
been produced by the appearance on our soil of enemies whom, on
their own soil, we had vanquished and trampled down.