The battles of the world

by J. Douglas Borthwick

Breadalbane had represented McDonald at court as an incorrigible rebel, as a ruffian inured to bloodshed and rapine, who would never be obedient to the laws of his country, nor live peaceably under any sovereign. He observed, that he had paid no regard to the proclamation, and proposed that the government should sacrifice him to the quiet of the kingdom, in extirpating him, with his family and dependants, by military execution. His advice was supported by the suggestions of the other Scottish ministers; and the King, whose chief virtue was not humanity, signed a warrant for the destruction of those unhappy people, though it does not appear that he knew of McDonald’s submission. An order for this barbarous execution, signed and counter-signed by his majesty’s own hand, being transmitted to the master of Stair, secretary for Scotland, this minister sent particular directions to Livingstone, who commanded the troops in that kingdom, to put the inhabitants of Glencoe to the sword, charging him to take no prisoners, that the scene might be more terrible. In the month of February, captain Campbell of Glenlyon, by virtue of an order from major Duncanson, marched into the valley of Glencoe with a company of soldiers belonging to Argyle’s regiment, on pretence of levying the arrears of the land-tax and hearth-money. When McDonald demanded whether they came as friends or enemies, he answered as friends, and promised, upon his honour, that neither he nor his people should sustain the least injury. In consequence of this declaration, he and his men were received with the most cordial hospitality, and lived fifteen days with the men of the valley in all the appearance of the most unreserved friendship. At length the fatal period approached. McDonald and Campbell having passed the day together, parted about seven in the evening, with mutual professions of the warmest affection. As soon as Campbell had retired, he received the following letter from major Duncanson, quartered at Ballachalis, a place some distance from Glencoe. It is dated the 12th of February, 1692, and runs thus:—

“Sir,—You are hereby ordered to fall upon the rebels, the McDonalds of Glencoe, and put all to the sword under seventy years of age. You are to have especial care that the old fox and his sons do upon no account escape. This you are to put into execution at five o’clock in the morning (Saturday, the 13th) precisely; and by that time I will strive to be with you, with a stronger party. If I do not come to you at five, you are not to tarry for me, but to fall on. Secure all the avenues, that not a man may escape. This is by the King’s especial command, for the good of the country, that these miscreants may be cut off, root and branch.”

This was instantly communicated to the officers and men under his command, and immediate preparations made for carrying the inhuman massacre into effect.

The younger McDonald, perceiving the guards doubled, began to suspect some treachery, and communicated his suspicion to his brother; but neither he nor the father would harbour the least doubt of Campbell’s sincerity; nevertheless, the two young men went forth privately, to make farther observations. They overheard the common soldiers say they liked not the work; that though they would willingly have fought the McDonalds of the glen fairly in the field, they held it base to murder them in cold blood; but that their officers were answerable for the treachery. When the youths hasted back to apprise their father of the impending danger, they saw the house already surrounded; they heard the discharge of muskets, the shrieks of women and children; and, being destitute of arms, secured their own lives by immediate flight. The savage ministers of vengeance had entered the old man’s chamber, and shot him through the head. He fell down dead in the arms of his wife, who died next day, distracted by the horror of her husband’s fate. The laird of Auchintrincken, McDonald’s guest, who had, three months before this period, submitted to the government, and at this very time had a protection in his pocket, was put to death without question. A boy of eight years, who fell at Campbell’s feet, imploring mercy, and offering to serve him for life, was stabbed to the heart by one Drummond, a subaltern officer. Eight and thirty persons suffered in this manner, the greater part of whom where surprised in their beds, and hurried into eternity before they had time to implore the divine mercy. The design to butcher all the males under seventy years of ago that lived in the valley, the number of whom amounted to 200, was defeated by Duncanson not arriving in time to secure the passes, so that one young man and woman had nearly succeeded in escaping, and were climbing the last rugged height of their native place, when they were discovered, and shots immediately sent after them. Struck by one of them the unfortunate young man made a convulsive spring, and fell headlong into the valley below. His companion, alarmed by the report, lost her hold, and tumbled after him. They were both killed by the fall.

Campbell, having perpetrated this brutal massacre, ordered all the houses to be burned, made a prey of all the cattle and effects that were found in the valley, and left the helpless women and children, whose husbands and fathers he had murdered, naked and forlorn, without covering, food, or shelter, in the midst of the snow that covered the whole face of the country, at the distance of six long miles from any inhabited place. Distracted with grief and horror, surrounded with the shades of night, shivering with cold, and appalled with the apprehension of immediate death from the swords of those who had sacrificed their friends and kinsmen, they could not endure such a complication of calamities, but generally perished in the waste, before they could receive the least comfort or assistance. This barbarous massacre, performed under the sanction of King William’s authority, answered the immediate purpose of the court, by striking terror into the hearts of the jacobite Highlanders; but at the same time excited the horror of all those who had not renounced every sentiment of humanity, and produced such an aversion to the government, as all the arts of a ministry could never totally surmount. A detail of the particulars was published at Paris, with many exaggerations, and the jacobites did not fail to expatiate upon every circumstance, in domestic libels and private conversation. The King, alarmed at the outcry which was raised on this occasion, ordered an inquiry to be set on foot, and dismissed the master of Stair from his employment of secretary; he likewise pretended that he had subscribed the order amidst a heap of other papers, without knowing the purport, of it; but as he did not severely punish those who made his authority subservient to their own cruel revenge, the imputation stuck fast to his character; and the Highlanders, though terrified into silence and submission, were inspired with the most implacable resentment against his person and administration.”

SLAUGHTER or MASSACRE OF THE MAMELUKES, March 1st, 1811.—“It has been related, that one of the chief means employed by Mahomet Ali in civilizing Egypt, or in improving the state of the country, was the destruction of the Mamelukes—a class of hired foreign soldiers, who, as usual in such cases, were opposed to all changes in the government. It was only by resorting to a barbarous stratagem in one of his campaigns, that the sanguinary blow was struck. The following is an account of this sanguinary affair:

“The chiefs of the Mamelukes, with their adherents, being assembled, by invitation from the Pacha of Egypt, within the citadel of Cairo, after a time, according to eastern custom, coffee was brought, and, last of all, the pipes; but at the moment when these were presented, as if from etiquette, or to leave his guests more at their case, Mahomet Ali rose and withdrew, and, sending privately for the captain of his guard, gave orders that the gates of the citadel should be closed; adding, that as soon as Siam Bey and his two associates should come out for the purpose of mounting, they should be fired upon till they dropped, and that at the same signal the troops posted throughout the fortress should take aim at, every Mameluke within their reach, while a corresponding order was sent down at the same time to those in the town, and to such even as were encamped without, round the foot of the fortress, to pursue the work of extermination on all stragglers that they should find, so that not one of the proscribed body might escape. Siam Bey, and his two brothers in command, finding that the Pacha did not return to them, and being informed by the attendants that he was gone into his harem (an answer that precluded all farther inquiry), judged it time to take their departure. But no sooner did they make their appearance without, and were mounting their horses, than they were suddenly fired upon from every quarter, and all became at once a scene of confusion, and dismay, and horror, similar volleys being directed at all the rest, who were collected round, and preparing to return with them, so that the victims dropped by hundreds. Siam himself had time to gain his saddle, and even to penetrate to one of the gates of the citadel; but all to no purpose, for he found it closed like the rest, and fell there pierced with innumerable bullets. Another chief, Amim Bey, who was the brother to Elfi, urged the noble animal which he rode to an act of greater desperation, for he spurred him till he made him clamber upon the rampart; and preferring rather to be dashed to pieces than to be slaughtered in cold blood, drove him to leap down the precipice, a height that has been estimated at from thirty to forty feet, or even more; yet fortune so favoured him, that though the horse was killed in the fall, the rider escaped. An Albanian camp was below, and an officer’s tent very near the spot on which he alighted. Instead of shunning it, he went in, and throwing himself on the rites of hospitality, implored that no advantage might be taken of him; which was not only granted, but the officer offered him protection, even at his own peril, and kept him concealed so long as the popular fury and the excesses of the soldiery continued. Of the rest of that devoted number, thus shut up and surrounded, not one went out alive; and even of those who had quietly remained in the town, but very few found means to elude the activity and greedy search that was made after them—a high price being set upon every Mameluke’s head that should be brought. All Cairo was filled with wailing and lamentations; and, in truth, the confusion and horrors of that day are indescribable; for not the Mamelukes alone, but others also, in many instances wholly unconnected with them, either from mistake, or from malice, or for plunder, were indiscriminately seized on and put to death; so that great as the number was that perished of that ill-fated body, it yet did not comprehend the total of the victims. The strange fact of the leap and escape of Amim Bey, and of his asylum in the officer’s tent, reached at last the Pacha’s ears, who sent instantly to demand him; and when the generous Albanian found that it would be impossible any longer to shelter or screen his fugitive, he gave him a horse, and recommended him to fly with all speed into Asia, where, in the palace of Suleyman Pacha at Acre, he found safety.”

SLAVE TRADE.—The following is a good description of this horrible trade now nearly at an end:—

“On our return from Brazil, we fell in with a slave-ship. She had taken in, on the coast of Africa, 336 males and 226 females, making in all 562, and had been out seventeen days, during which she had thrown overboard 55. The slaves were all enclosed under grated hatchways, between decks. The space was so low, that they sat between each other’s legs, and stowed so close together, that there was no possibility of their lying down, or at all changing their position, by night or day. As they belonged to, and were shipped on account of different individuals, they were all branded, like sheep, with the owners’ marks, of different forms. These were impressed under their breasts, or on their arms, and, as the mate informed me, with perfect indifference, “queimados pelo ferro quento—burnt with the red-hot iron.” Over the hatchway stood a ferocious-looking fellow, with a scourge of many twisted thongs in his hand, who was the slave-driver of the ship; and whenever he heard the slightest noise below, he shook it over them, and seemed eager to exercise it. As soon as the poor creatures saw us looking down at them, their dark and melancholy visages brightened up. They perceived something of sympathy and kindness in our looks, which they had not been accustomed to, and feeling, instinctively, that we were friends, they immediately began to shout and clap their hands. One or two had picked up a few Portuguese words, and cried out, “Viva! viva!” The women were particularly excited. They all held up their arms; and when we bent down and shook hands with them, they could not contain their delight; they endeavoured to scramble upon their knees, stretching up to kiss our hands; and we understood that they knew we had come to liberate them. Some, however, hung down their heads in apparently hopeless dejection; some were greatly emaciated, and some, particularly children, seemed dying. But the circumstance which struck us most forcibly, was, how it was possible for such a number of human beings to exist, packed up and wedged together as tight as they could cram, in low cells, three feet high, the greater part of which, except that immediately under the grated hatchways, was shut out from light or air, and this when the thermometer, exposed to the open sky, was standing in the shade, on our deck, at 89 deg. The space between decks was divided into compartments, three feet three inches high; the size of one was sixteen feet by eighteen, and of the other, forty by twenty-one; into the first were crammed the women and girls; into the second, the men and boys: 226 fellow-creatures were thus thrust into one space 288 feet square, and 336 into another space 800 feet square, giving to the whole an average of twenty-three inches, and to each of the women not more than thirteen inches, though many of them were pregnant. We also found manacles and fetters of different kinds; but it appeared that they had all been taken off before we boarded. The heat of these horrid places was so great, and the odour so offensive, that it was quite impossible to enter them, even had there been room. They were measured, as above, when the slaves had left them. The officers insisted that the poor suffering creatures should be admitted on deck, to get air and water. This was opposed by the mate of the slaver, who, from a feeling that they deserved it, declared they would murder them all. The officers, however, persisted, and the poor beings were all turned up together. It is impossible to conceive the effect of this eruption—507 fellow-creatures, of all ages and sexes, some children, some adults, some old men and women, all in a state of total nudity, scrambling out together to taste the luxury of a little fresh air and water. They came swarming up, like bees from the aperture of a hive, till the whole deck was crowded to suffocation, from stem to stern, so that it was impossible to imagine where they could all have come from, or how they could all have been stowed away. On looking into places where they had been crammed, there were found some children next the sides of the ship, in the places most remote from light and air; they were lying nearly in a torpid state, after the rest had turned out. The little creatures seemed indifferent as to life or death; and when they were carried on deck, many of them could not stand. After enjoying for a short time the unusual luxury of air, some water was brought; it was then that the extent of their sufferings was exposed in a fearful manner. They all rushed like maniacs towards it. No entreaties, or threats, or blows, could restrain them; they shrieked and struggled, and fought with one another, for a drop of this precious liquid, as if they grew rabid at the sight of it. There is nothing which slaves, in the middle passage, suffer from so much as the want of water. It is sometimes usual to take out casks filled with sea-water as ballast, and when the slaves are received on board, to start the casks and refill them with fresh. On one occasion, a ship from Bahia neglected to change the contents of the casks, and on the mid-passage found, to their horror, that they were filled with nothing but salt water. All the slaves on board perished! We could judge of the extent of their sufferings from the afflicting sight we now saw.”