The massacre commenced about five o'clock in
the morning at three different places at once. Glenlyon, with a barbarity which
fortunately for society has few parallels, undertook to butcher his own hospitable
landlord and the other inhabitants of Inverriggen, where he and a party of his men were
quartered, and despatched Lieutenant Lindsay with another party of soldiers to Glencoe's
house to cut off the unsuspecting chief. Under the pretence of a friendly visit, he and
his party obtained admission into the house. Glencoe was in bed, and while in the act of
rising to receive his cruel visitors, was basely shot at by two of the soldiers, and fell
lifeless into the arms of his wife. The lady in the extremity of her anguish leaped out of
bed and put on her clothes, but the ruffians stripped her naked, pulled the rings off her
fingers with their teeth, and treated her so cruelly that she died the following day. The
party also killed two men whom they found in the house, and wounded a third named Duncan
Don, who came occasionally to Glencoe with letters from Braemar. While the butchery was going on in Glencoe's house, Glenlyon was busily doing
his bloody work at Inverriggen, where his own host was shot by his order. Here the party
seized nine men, whom they first bound hand and foot, after which they shot them one by
one. Glenlyon was desirous of saving the life of a young man about twenty years of age,
but one Captain Drummond shot him dead. The same officer, impelled by a thirst for blood,
ran his dagger through the body of a boy who has grasped Campbell by the legs and was
supplicating for mercy.
A third party under the command of one Sergeant Barker,
which was quartered in the village of Auchnaion, fired upon a body of nine men whom they
observed in a house in the village sitting before a fire. Among these was the laird of
Auchintriaten, who was killed on the spot, along with four more of the party. This
gentleman had at the time a protection in his pocket from Colonel Hill, which he had
received three months before. The remainder of the party in the house, two or three of
whom were wounded, escaped by the back of the house, with the exception of a brother of
Auchintriaten, who having been seized by Barker, requested him as a favour not to despatch
him in the house but to kill him without. The sergeant consented, on account of having
shared his generous hospitality; but when brought out he threw his plaid, which he had
kept loose, over the faces of the soldiers who were appointed to shoot him, and thus
escaped.
Besides the slaughter at these three places, there were
some persons dragged from their beds and murdered in other parts of the Glen, among whom
was on old man of eighty years of age; in all, 38 persons were slaughtered. The whole male
population under 70 years of age, amounting to 200, would in all likelihood have been cut
off, if, fortunately for them, a party of 400 men under Lieutenant-colonel Hamilton, who
was principally charged with the execution of the sanguinary warrant, had not been
prevented by the severity of the weather from reaching the Glen till eleven o'clock, six
hours after the slaughter, by which time the whole surviving male inhabitants, warned of
their danger and of the fate of their chief and other sufferers, had fled to the hills.
Ignorant of this latter circumstance, Hamilton, on arriving at the pass, appointed several
parties to proceed to different parts of the Glen, with orders to take no prisoners, but
to kill all the men that came in their way. They had not, however, proceeded far when they
fell in with Major Duncanson's party, by whom they were informed of the events of the
morning, and who told them that as the survivors had escaped to the hills, they had
nothing to do but burn the houses, and carry off the cattle. They accordingly set fire to
the houses, and having collected the cattle and effects in the Glen, carried them to
Inverlochy, where they were divided among the officers of the garrison. That Hamilton
would have executed his commission to the very letter, is evident from the fact, that an
old man, above seventy, the only remaining male inhabitant of the desolate vale they fell
in with, was put to death by his orders.
After the destruction of the houses, a heart-rending scene
ensued. Ejected from their dwellings by the devouring element, aged matrons, women with
child, and mothers, with infants at their breasts and followed by children on foot,
clinging to them with all the solicitude and anxiety of helplessness, were to be seen
wending their way, almost in a state of nudity, towards the mountains in a quest of some
friendly hovel, beneath whose roof they might seek shelter from the pitiless tempest and
deplore their unhappy fate. But as there were no houses within the distance of several
miles, and as these could only be reached by crossing mountains deeply covered with snow,
a great number of these unhappy human beings, overcome by fatigue , cold, and hunger,
dropt down and perished miserably among the snow.
While this brutal massacre struck terror into the hearts of
the hearts of the Jacobite chiefs, and thus so far served the immediate object of the
government, it was highly prejudicial to King William. In every quarter, even at court,
the account of the massacre was received at first with incredulity, and then with horror
and indignation; and the Jacobite party did not fail to turn the affair to good account
against the government, by exaggerating, both at home and abroad, the barbarous details.
The odium of the nation rose to such a pitch, that had the exiled monarch appeared at the
head of a few thousand men, he would, probably, have succeeded in regaining his crown. The
ministry, and even King William, grew alarmed, and to pacify the people he dismissed the
Master of Stair from his councils, and appointed a commission of inquiry to investigate
the affair.
As for the Master of Stair, at whose door the chief blame
of the infamous transaction was laid by the commission of inquiry, and who is popularly
considered to have been a heartless and bloodthirsty wretch, he could not understand the
indignant astonishment expressed on all hands at what he considered a most patriotic,
beneficial, and in every respect highly commendable proceeding. He considered that he had
done his ungrateful country excellent service in doing a little to root out a band of
pestilential banditti, whom he regarded in as bad a light as the Italian government of the
present day does the unscrupulous robbers who infest the country, or as the American
government did the bloodthirsty Indians who harassed the frontiers. Letters of "fire
and sword" against the Highlanders were as common, in the days of the Stewarts, as
warrants for the apprehension of house-breakers or forgers are at the present day. They
were looked upon as semi-civilised aborigines, characterised by such names as
"rebellious and barbarous thieves, limmers, sorners "etc.; and the killing of a
Highlandman was thought no more of than the killing of a "nigger" was in the
slave-states of America. In various acts of the privy council of Scotland, the clan Gregor
is denounced in the above terms, and was visited with all the terrors of "fire and
sword". "their habitations were destroyed. They were hunted down like wild
beasts. Their very name was proscribed." We have already referred to, in its proper
place, a mandate from King James V in 1583, against the clan Chattan, in which he charges
his lieges to invade the clan "to their utter destruction by slaughter, burning,
drowning, and otherways; and leave no creature living of that clan, except priests, women
and bairns." Even Captain Burt, in the beginning of the next century writes of the
Highlanders as if they were an interesting race of semi-barbarians, many of whom would cut
a man's throat for the mere sake of keeping their hands in practice. In a letter of the
5th. March, 1692, after referring to the universal talk in London about the transaction,
dalrymple says, "All I regret is, that any of the sort got away; and there is a
necessity to prosecute them to the utmost." Again, writing to Colonel Hill in April
of the same year, he tells him that "as for the people of Glencoe, when you do your
duty in a thing so necessary to rid the country of thieving, you need not trouble yourself
to take the pains to vindicate yourself. When you do right, you need fear nobody. All that
can be said is, that, in the execution, it was neither so full nor so fair as might have
been." Indeed we think that any one who examines into the matter with unbiassed and
cool mind, which is difficult, cannot fail to conclude that neither private spite nor
heartless bloodthirstiness actuated him in bringing about the transaction; but that he
sincerely thought he was doing his country a service in taking the only effectual means of
putting down a public pest and a hindrance to progress.
Had the clan been proceeded against in open and legitimate
warfare, resulting in its utter extinction, the affair might have occupied no more than a
short paragraph in this and other histories. There can be no doubt that what gives the
deed its nefarious stamp, is the fiendishly deliberate and deceitful way in which it was
accomplished, in violation of laws of hospitality which are respected even by cut-throat
Arabs. And after all it was a blunder.
As to whether King William knew the full significance of
the order which he signed, and what was the extent of his knowledge of the circumstances,
are points which can never be ascertained. It is mere meaningless declamation to talk of
it as a foul and indelible blot on his character and reign. "The best that can be
done for the cause of truth, is to give the facts abundantly and accurately. The character
of the revolution king is one of the questions which political passion and partizanship
and not yet let go, so that reason may take it up. And with those who believe that, by his
very act of heading the revolution which drove forth the Stewarts, he was the man to order
and urge on the murder of an interesting and loyal clan, it would be quite useless to
discuss the question on the ground of rational probabilities."
Though the nation had long desired an inquiry into this
barbarous affair, it was not until the 29th. April, 1695, upwards of three years after the
massacre, that a commission was granted. A commission had indeed been issued in 1693
appointing the Duke of Hamilton and others to examine into the affair, but this was never
acted upon. The Marquis of Tweeddale, lord high chancellor of Scotland, and the other
commissioners now appointed, accordingly entered upon the inquiry, and, after examining
witnesses and documents, drew up a report and transmitted it to his majesty. The
commissioners appear to have executed their task, on the whole, with great fairness,
although they put the very best construction on William's orders, and threw the whole
blame of the massacre upon Secretary Dalrymple.
The report of the commissioners was laid before the
parliament of Scotland on the 24th. June which decided that the execution of the
Glencoe-men was a murder, resolved nemine contradicente, that the instructions contained
in the warrant of the 15th. January, 1692, did not authorise the massacre. After various
sittings on the subject, "the committee for the security of the kingdom" was
appointed to draw up an address to the king on the subject of the massacre, which being
submitted to parliament on the 10th. of July, was voted and approved of.
No active measures in the way of punishing either
principals or subordinates, however, were taken in consequence of the findings of the
commission and the recommendations of parliament, except that Breadalbane, who they found
had laid himself open to a charge of high treason, was imprisoned for a few days in
Edinburgh castle. A curious and interesting incident came out during the sitting of the
commission, tending to show that Breadalbane was conscious of a very large share of guilt,
and was fully aware of the heinous and nefarious character of the bloody transaction. Some
days after the slaughter, a person sent by Breadalbane's steward waited upon Glencoe's
sons, and told them that if they would declare that his lordship had no concern in the
slaughter, they might be assured that the earl would procure their "remission and
restitution."
As the surviving Macdonalds, who on their humble petition
and promise of good behaviour were allowed to return to the glen, had been reduced to
great poverty and distress by the destruction of their property, and as they had conducted
themselves with great moderation under their misfortunes, the estates solicited his
majesty to order reparation to be made to them for the losses they had sustained in their
properties. Whether the "royal charity and compassion" invoked by the estates in
behalf of these unfortunate people were ever exercised does not appear; but it is highly
probable, that this part of the address was as little heeded as the rest. In fact, the
whole matter was hushed up, and it now lives in the page of history as a sad and somewhat
inexplicable blunder, which has rendered the memories of those who contrived it and those
who executed it, for ever infamous. |