Page:Gallant exploits of Lord Dundee.pdf/17

Rh delay the war, and to detain themselves prisoners in places where they had been already kept too long in confinement. With most ease in open fields the impetuosity of the highlanders shock was to be exerted. Six successive battles gained by Montrose, ensured the fortune of next day. To allow the enemy to pass over to fair ground, would inspire a generous confidence into his own men, but fill their opponents with a suspicion of the secret cause of it. What better terms could be asked, by an army for a general action, than unfatigued, and on their own ground, to receive an enemy, who had fourteen miles to march the same lay that he fought, and who was ignorant of the ground that was to be left him to occupy? The terms of defeat were unequal for to him, retreat was easy, but to the enemy, retreat and ruin were the same: entangled in the pass, the stronger would push the weaker over the precipices in their flight, and all must fall and fenceless prep his victorious army pursuing behind: even at the other end of the pass, he had sent orders to his friends in Athole, to watch fall upon the few who should escape, If a decisive action was delayed for a few days, the rest of M'Kay's horse would have time to come up an enemy the most terrible to highlanders, because they were conscious it was the only one they feared."

The night before the h, Dundee having reflected that highlanders had not been in general actions since the battle of , which had been fought 10 years before, hand being to put their courage to the gave an, and caused a false attack to be upon his camp in an instant, she found every at his