Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/28

14 fast on the heels of the first news came that of the certain death of Dundee, which at once reassured the country; for, without him, the highlanders were regarded as comparatively innocuous, as a body without a head. And this was very near the truth; for the command had now fallen on the Irish officer Cannon, who, with his ragamuffin brigade, was not likely to remain long very formidable. In fact, he very soon managed to disgust the proud highland chieftains. Lochiel returned home, and many of the Celts, satisfied with their plunder, followed his example. Others, however, stimulated by the hope of similar good fortune, came rushing from their hills, adding, by their conflicting prejudices and wild insubordination, only to the weakness of the force. Cannon dispatched a party of the Robertsons into the lowland to collect cattle and provisions for his army; but Mackay came upon them at St. Johnstones, and killed one hundred and twenty of them, and took thirty prisoners. This revived the spirit of his troops, and infused new confidence through the country. In fact, Mackay was an excellent general, and was unremitting in his exertions to renew the courage and discipline of his troops. He had seen the fatal effect of the clumsy use of the bayonets at Killiecrankie, and he lost no time in having them made to screw upon the muskets, so that these could be fired with them ready fixed.

And very soon he had need of all his generalship. The ministers at Edinburgh had ordered him to garrison Dunkeld with the Cameronian regiment newly raised. The town was unfortified; and in vain Mackay protested against exposing them thus to the attack of the whole body of the highlanders encamped at Blair castle. The highland army, led on by Cannon, came down, but were received with a spirit worthy of the old race of covenanters—were repulsed, and driven back with great slaughter. The young commander, lieutenant-colonel Cleland, and after him captain Monro, fell at the head of the besieged; but the victory was decisive. The highlanders dispersed with their booty to their homes; Cannon, with his disorderly Irish, escaped to the isle of Mull; the fame of Mackay and his troops was higher than ever, and the war in Scotland was at an end.

Before the battle of Killiecrankie the duke of Gordon had surrendered the castle of Edinburgh, and James had no longer a spot in Scotland which owned his sway or displayed his banner, except the Bass Rock, where a garrison of his managed to maintain themselves against all attempts, and with many adventures, till the beginning of 1694.

All this year, however, a political war had been waged by the discontented clubbists against the government of William in Scotland. They opposed and defeated every measure which the ministers proposed; they refused all supplies till their claims were complied with; they claimed for parliament a veto on the nomination of the judges, and thus put a stop to the business of the court of session; they tried all their force to ruin the Dalrymples, on the plea that they had been in the interest of James; they had both, they said, "served the bloody and idolatrous house." They succeeded in carrying an act to incapacitate all who had been once in that service, and, as they termed it, "had oppressed the people of God." The government of Scotland was at a dead lock; the legal as well as legislative business was at an end. The leaders of this opposition, Montgomery, the lords Annandale and Ross, the factious Sir Patrick Hume—who had ruined the expedition of Argyll, and now sought to ruin the government altogether—vowed that they would compel the king to do them right. But William could afford to wait, and towards the end of the year signs of the declining influence of the clubbists began to show themselves. The ministers opened the court of session, Sir James Dalrymple took his seat as head of the lords of session; and all the clamour of the club could not prevent the common sense of the public supporting the cause of law.

We have continued to this point the affairs of Scotland, that we might not interrupt the still more important transactions which at the same time took place in Ireland. On the 12th of March, two days before the opening of the Scottish convention, James had landed in Ireland. That island was peculiarly open to the influence of James, for the bulk of the population were catholics, and they were thrown into a state of great excitement by the hope of being able to drive the protestants from their estates by his appearance there with a French army, of wreaking vengeance on them for all their past oppressions, and regaining their ancient patrimony.

From the moment almost that James had mounted the throne of England, he began his preparations for putting down protestantism in Ireland, and raising a military power there which should enable him to put it down also in England. The protestant judges had been removed one after another from the bench, so that little justice could be obtained in Irish tribunals by protestant suitors. The protestants were diligently weeded out of the army, and lying Dick Talbot, the earl of Tyrconnel, James's most obsequious tool, was his lord-lieutenant, and bent on carrying out his plans to the fullest extent. There arose a terrible panic amongst the protestants that a general massacre was contemplated, and the Englishry began to collect whatever of value they could carry with them, and escape across the channel into England or Wales. Tyrconnel sent for the leading protestants to Dublin, and protested with many oaths that the whole rumour was a malicious and groundless lie. Nobody, however, put any faith in his assurances, and the exodus rapidly increased, whilst such protestants as possessed any means of defence in towns, armed themselves, threw up fortifications, and determined to sell their lives dear. Such was the case at Kenmare, in Kerry; at Bandon, Mallow, Sligo, Charleville, Enniskillen, and Londonderry.

Such was the state of Ireland at the time of the landing of William at Torbay. Tyrconnel dispatched a body of popish infantry in December, 1688, to take possession of Enniskillen. The inhabitants summoned the protestants of the surrounding country to their aid, rushed out on the soldiers as they approached the gates of the town, and defeated them. They then appointed Gustavus Hamilton, a captain in the army, their governor, and determined to hold their own against the lieutenant-governor. Londonderry likewise shut its gates in the face of the earl of Antrim, who armed a popish regiment to garrison their town. This exploit was the work of thirteen apprentices, whose bold and decisive deed was quickly imitated by the rest of the inhabitants. The town was put into a posture of thorough