THE CELTIC MAGAZINE.

No. V. MARCH 1876.

THE MASSACRE OF GLENCOE.

Very interesting and instructive, though very sad it is to chronicle certain undeniable and not unfrequent facts in the history of human nature, outbursts, as Carlyle calls them, of the feral nature, that element which man holds in common with the brutes, and which, when it breaks forth in him, assumes, by contrast, a more hideous and savage character than in them, even as fire seems more terrible in a civilized city than amidst a howling wilderness; among palaces and bowers than among heathery moorlands or masses of foliage, and even as the madness of a man is more fearful than that of a beast. It is recorded of Bishop Butler that one day walking in his garden along with his Chaplain immersed in silent thought, he suddenly paused and turning round asked him if he thought that nations might go mad as well as individuals. What reply the Chaplain gave we are not informed; but fifty years after the French Revolution with its thunder-throat answered the Bishop's question. Nay—it had been answered on a less scale before by Sicilian Vespers—Massacres of Bartholomew, and the Massacre of Glencoe, and has been answered since, apart from France, in Jamaica, India, and elsewhere. God has made of one blood all nations that dwell on the face of the earth. Yet alas, that blood when possessed by the spirit of wrath, of revenge, of fierce patriotism, or of profound religious zeal, and heated sevenfold, becomes an element only inferior in intensity to what we can conceive of the passions of hell, such as Dante has painted in his Ugolino in the Inferno, gnawing his enemy's skull for evermore; such as Michael Angelo has sculptured on the roof of the Sistine Chapel, in eyes burning with everlasting fury, and fists knotted to discharge blows, the least of which were death, but which hang there arrested as if for ever on the walls, and such as Milton has represented in Moloch's unappeaseable malignity, and in Satan's inexorable hate.

It is to one of these frightful outcomes of human ferocity, an event with which even after a period of 200 years that all Scotland, and especially all the Highlands, rings from side to side, and which unborn generations shall shudder at, that we propose to turn the attention of the readers of the Celtic Magazine. We do so partly, no doubt, from the extreme interest of the subject, and partly also, because important lessons of humanity, of forgiveness, of hatred at wrong and oppression, of the benefits of civilization, of the gratitude we feel for the extinction of clan quarrels and feuds, and the thousand other irregularities and inhumanities which once defaced the grandest of landscapes, and marred a noble and a manly race of men; because such lessons may be, if not formally drawn, yet may pervade and penetrate the whole story as with a living moral.

The occasion of the Massacre of Glencoe was as follows:—Although the Lowlands, since the date of the Revolution, were now quiet, it was far different with the Highlands. There, indeed, the wind was down, but still the sea ran high. The Highlanders were at that time very poor, very discontented, and very pugnacious. To subdue them seemed a long and difficult process. To allow them to exterminate one another, and re-enact on a much larger scale, the policy of the battle between the clans on the North Inch of Perth seemed as unwise as it was cruel. There was a third course proposed and determined on, that of buying them up, bribing them in short, applying that golden spur which has, in all ages, made the laziest horse to go, and the most restive to be obedient. The Government of King William resolved to apply to this purpose a sum variously estimated at £12,000 and £20,000. This sum was committed to John, Earl of Breadalbane, the head of a powerful branch of the great Clan Campbell. He was one of the most unprincipled men of that day; had turned his coat, and would have turned his skin had it been possible and worth while; and is described by a contemporary as "Grave as a Spaniard, cunning as a fox, wiry as a serpent, and slippery as an eel." He was the worst of persons to have the charge of pacifying the Highlands committed to him, being distrusted by both parties, and hated by the Jacobites with a deadly hatred. Nevertheless the negotiations went on, although slowly. Breadalbane lived at Kilchurn Castle, which, now a fine old ruin, stands on the verge of the magnificent Loch Awe, looks up to the gigantic Ben Cruachan, and which Wordsworth has glorified in one of his finest minor poems. To that romantic castle, now silent in its age, but then resounding with the music and revelry of the clans, were to be seen some of the leading Jacobite chieftains crossing the mighty mountains to the northwest, and holding conferences with the crafty head of the Campbells; and on the 30th of January 1690 a large assembly met at Achallaster in Glenorchy, to arrange matters between the Earl and the Highlanders, but in vain. There was mutual distrust. The chiefs were willing to come to terms, but they suspected that Breadalbane meant to deceive them and to keep a portion of the cash in his own Sporran. He, on the other hand—ill-doers being usually ill-dreaders—thought that they were playing a double game. More than a year passed in fruitless negotiations, and the autumn of 1691 saw the matter unsettled. At last Lord Stair and the other advisers of the King resolved to try the effect of threats as well as bribes; and in August they issued a proclamation promising an indemnity to every rebel who should swear the oath of allegiance in the presence of a Civil Magistrate before the 1st January 1692, and threatening with dire penalties, letters of fire and sword, as they were called, all who delayed beyond that day. The proclamation was drawn up by Stair in conjunction with Breadalbane. He had wished to form a Highland Regiment in favour of Government, and to get, if possible, all the Highland chiefs to transfer their allegiance from King James to the New Dynasty. This he found very difficult. The chiefs were fond enough of the money, but fonder at heart of the Stewarts. Many of them, including the Macdonalds stood out for more favourable terms. The negotiations were broken off, and the fatal proclamation was issued. Stair's letters show to a certainty that he and King William's Government cherished the hope that the chiefs would not submit at all, or at least that they would hold on beyond the prescribed time. Like Hyder Ali, as described by Burke, he had determined, in the gloomy recesses of a mind capacious of such things, to make the broad Highlands a monument of his vengeance.

The great object, let it be remembered, of the Government was to get the troops employed in the Highlands disengaged and free for service in other places. To serve this purpose they were willing to pay a certain sum, but if this proved ineffectual they were still more willing to inflict summary punishment on the principal offenders. Hence Stair had collected troops at Inverlochy, had resolved to take advantage of the winter when the passes would be probably stopped with snow, and when the Highlanders, not expecting the attack, would be likely to fall an easy prey. And thus, not like an injured and infuriated Hyder Ali, but like a tiger on the edge of his jungle, did this inhuman lawyer lie eagerly biding his time. Hear his own language illustrating a character whom Macaulay elaborately defends. "If the rest are willing, as crows do, to pull down Glengarry's nest so as the King be not hindered from drawing four regiments from Scotland, in that case the destroying him and his clan will be to the full as acceptable