The Massacre of Glencoe.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 308, 17 October 1888, Page 3

The Massacre of Glencoe.

1 Tins atrocity, which the policy of William 111. inculcated, though not a battle, is inseparably connected with our military history, and " is an event," says Aytoun, "which neither cannoroughttobeforgotten. It was a deed of the worst treason and cruelty — a barbarous infraction of all laws, human and divine ; and it exhibits in their foulest perfidy the true characters of the authors and the abetfcor3 ot the Revolution." A Royal order had beon 'decreed that all chiefs of clans should take the oath of allegiance to William of Orange before the last day of 1691. One was compelled to delay in the performance of this obnoxious oath, M'lan, the aged head of the Macdonalds of Glencoe, whom a toilsome journey over snowy liilla and across swollen floods detained a da,y or two late; but he was permitted to take the oath, and returned i home, as he thought, to dwell in safety in his lonely and gloomy Argyleshire valley. But it w^s not to be so. On the 16th Januavy. 1692, the Prince of Orange, as King ! of Scotland, issued the following warrant-, in London, to Secretaiy Dalrymple : — William, R. As for M'lan of Glencoe, and that tribe, if they can well be distinguished irom the rest ot the Highlanders, it will be proper for public justice to extirpate that set ot thieves — W., R. This letter, almost the only document William was ever known to sign and countersign, was the warrant for the subsequent butchery Armed with secret orders to ' fall on the rebels, the Macdonalds of Glencoe, and put ' all to the sword under seventy,' as he expected to be deemed ' a man fit to bear the king's commission,' Captain Campbell, of Glenlyon, with a strong detach- I ment of .Argyll's Regiment, inarched into Glencoe, where he met from the unsuspecting people a right Highland welcome. Hunting and feasting filled the days and nights till the time was ripe, and at the appointed hour, when all the people of the glen were asleep, the work of King William began, and every man the soldiers could find was butchered in cold blood. ' In a word,' says the * Memoirs ot Cameron of Lochiel,' ' they left none alive but a young child, who, being frightened with the noise of the guns and the dismal shrieks of the dying parents, whom they were a-murdering, got hold of Captain Campbells knees and wrapped itself within his cloak ; by which, chancing to move compassion, the captain inclined to have paved it, but one Drummond, an officer, arriving about break of day with more troops commanded it to be shot by a file of musketeers. Nothing could bemoreshocking and horrible than the aspect of the house' 5 , stiewed with mangled bodies of the dead, covered with blood, and resounding with the gioans of wi etches in the last agonies of life.' The aged M'lan and his wife peri&hed in each other's arms, but their two sons escaped. The snowy night was stormy and tempestuous ; thus 400 more soldiers, who were on their march to block up one end of the glen, failed to arri\ c in time, or the whole tribe had perished. The soldiers carried off 1,100 cattle and horses, and innumeiable sheep, leaving the few survivors to peri-h amid their flaming houees. — JFrom ' British Battles on Land and Sea' for August.