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 and marched them up to slightly more elevated ground. His room for manœuvring was so narrow that he was unable to form a reserve, and he drew out his men in a single extended line of three deep. His forces in all numbered about four thousand. The nature of the ground did not permit him to give the attack; he had advanced too far for retreat; with the enemy on the hills to the right he was unable to advance into the open plain beyond; he was compelled to stand to arms till Dundee assumed the offensive. From his higher position Dundee could study his movements at his leisure and form his plans accordingly. He was ‘much pleased’ to observe the formation Mackay had adopted, and now regarded victory as certain (, p. 46). Against a thickly massed body of troops the charge of irregular highland clans might be comparatively ineffectual, but a thin extended line might be swept into confusion by the first onset. Retaining the formation into separate clans, Dundee widened the spaces between them so as to embrace the whole of Mackay's line. Having concluded his arrangements, and possibly addressed the chiefs and his officers (a speech said to have been Dundee's is printed in Macpherson's ‘Original Papers,’ pp. 371–2), Dundee waited till the sun, which was shining on the faces of his men, had touched the western hills in its descent. Lochiel urged him to content himself with issuing his commands, but Dundee replied that on this first occasion he must establish his character for courage (Memoirs of Ewan Cameron, p. 157), and he charged in the centre at the head of the cavalry. To the wild shout of the highlanders Mackay's troops replied with a cheer, but, partly from the peculiarity of their formation, it sounded broken and feeble. The strange and savage surroundings had probably also told on their imaginations; they were moreover in total ignorance as to the number of their opponents; and when in the gathering twilight the outlandish array advanced against them from the shadows of the hills their resolution had probably begun to give way before a blow was struck. Their fire was ineffectual; and the highlanders moving swiftly down the slopes, and retaining their fire till they almost reached level ground, poured in a single volley, and, throwing away their firelocks, rushed impetuously at the thin extended line with their claymores. The soldiers of Mackay had not time to fix their bayonets, and the great bulk of them broke and ran at the first charge. An English regiment showed a firm front, but it was impossible for Mackay to stay the general stampede. The stand of the Englishmen proved fatal to Dundee. He galloped towards his cavalry, and, waving his sword, signalled to them where to charge. Desultory firing was going on, and as he lifted his arm a ball struck him below the cuirass and inflicted a mortal wound. The cavalry swept past him, and the cloud of dust and smoke concealed his fall from the enemy and from the bulk of his own forces. As he was sliding down from the saddle he was caught by a soldier named Johnstone. ‘How goes the day?’ said Dundee. ‘Well for King James,’ answered Johnstone, ‘but I am sorry for your lordship.’ ‘If it goes well for him it matters the less for me,’ said Dundee (evidence of Johnstone in App. to Acta Parl. Scot. ix. 56 a). It is uncertain whether Dundee died on the evening of the battle, 17 July 1689, or next morning. The highlanders being engaged in plunder or in the pursuit, probably no officer or chief witnessed his death. The body was afterwards wrapped up in a pair of highland plaids (ib. p. 57 a), and after being brought to the castle of Blair was buried in the old parish church of Blair, in the Atholl vault. In 1889 a monument to his memory was erected in old Blair church by the Duke of Atholl. Some bones, believed to be those of Dundee, were removed in 1852 from Blair to the church of St. Drostan, Old Deer, Aberdeenshire. A steel cap, or morion, and a cuirass, supposed to have been stolen from the grave of Dundee, were recovered from some tinkers, in 1794, by General Robertson of Lude, Perthshire; the morion is now at Lude, and the cuirass in the castle of Blair. They are, however, also stated to have been in 1809 in possession of a descendant of the widow of General Mackay at Dornoch (, Correspondence, i. 380). The circumstances of Dundee's death allowed full play to the imagination of the covenanters. No one had seen him shot, and he was supposed to have obtained a charm from the devil against leaden bullets; various accounts became current as to how he met his death; but that which ultimately found general acceptance was that he was shot by his own servant ‘with a silver button he had before taken off his own coat’ (, God's Judgement on Persecutors, p. xxxix). In accordance with this tradition Dundee is depicted by Scott among the ghostly revellers in ‘Wandering Willie's Tale’ as having ‘his left hand always on his right spule-blade to hide the wound that the silver bullet had made.’

Four portraits of Dundee are given in Napier's ‘Life of Montrose;’ the first from a mezzotint print by Williams, of which there is a copy in the Bodleian Library, and another at Keir, Stirlingshire; the second from one in