In the meantime Dundee had not been idle. Sending a few men straight down the valley, he led his main body across the Tilt, which joins the Garry just below the castle, round at the back of the hills till he had reached the English right. Mackay was in front with his skirmishers, watching what he supposed to be the approach of Dundee's van, when word was brought to him that the enemy were occupying the hills on the right in force. Mackay saw his danger at a glance. The Highlanders would be down like one of their own rivers in flood on his right flank, and roll the whole line up into the Garry. On one of the hills overlooking his position stood what is now known as Urrard House, but was then called by its proper name of Renrorie.[99] Immediately below this stretched a piece of ground large and level enough in Mackay's judgment for his army to receive, though not to give, the attack. He made no change in his line, but wheeling it as it stood upon the right wing, he marched it up the slope on to this new ground in the face of the enemy.[100] His position was now better than it had been; but it was bad enough. The river was in his rear, and behind the river the inhospitable mountains. His only way of escape, should the day go against him, lay through that terrible pass up which, with no enemy to harass him, he had just climbed with infinite toil. He could hardly hope to make good his retreat down such a road with a victorious army maddening in his rear. In the preliminary game of tactics he had been completely out-manœuvred by his old comrade.
The clans were now forming for battle. The Macleans of Duart held the post of honour on the right wing. Next to the Macleans stood Cannon with his Irish. Then came the men of Clanranald, the men of Glengarry, and the Camerons. The left wing was composed of the Macdonalds of Sleat and some more Macleans. In the centre was the cavalry, commanded not as hitherto by the gallant Dunfermline, but by a gentleman bearing the illustrious name of Wallace. He had crossed from Ireland with Cannon; but nothing is heard of him till apparently on the very morning of the day he produced a commission from James superseding the Earl of Dunfermline in favour of Sir William Wallace of Craigie. What would otherwise appear one of those inexplicable freaks by which James ever delighted to confound his affairs at their crisis, is amply explained by the fact that the new captain was the brother of Melfort's second wife. Fortunately Dunfermline was too good a soldier and too loyal a gentleman to resent the slight. As Mackay's line was much longer than his, Dundee was compelled to widen the spaces between the clans for fear of being outflanked, which left for his centre only this little cluster of sabres. Lochiel's eldest son, John, was with his father, but Allan, the second, held a commission in Mackay's own regiment. As the general saw each clan take up its ground, he turned to young Cameron and said, pointing to the standard of Lochiel, "There is your father with his wild savages; how would you like to be with him?" "It signifies little what I would like," was the spirited answer; "but I recommend you to be prepared, or perhaps my father and his wild savages may be nearer to you before night than you would like!"[101]
Each general spoke a few words to his men. Dundee reminded his captains that they were assembled that day to fight in the best of causes, in the cause of their King, their religion and their country, against rebels and usurpers. He urged them to behave like true Scotchmen, and to redeem their country from the disgrace cast on it by the treachery and cowardice of others. He asked nothing of them but what they should see him do before them all. Those who fell would fall honourably like true and brave soldiers: those who lived and conquered would have the reward of a gracious King and the praise of all good men. Let them charge home then, in the name of King James and the Church of Scotland. Mackay urged the same honourable duty on his battalions; but he added one very practical consideration which suggests that he was not so confident of the issue as he afterwards professes to have been, and which was perhaps not very wisely offered. They must fight, he said, for they could not fly. The enemy was much quicker afoot than they, and there were the Athole men waiting to pounce on all runaways. Such thoughts would hardly furnish the best tonic to a doubtful spirit. Nevertheless the troops answered cheerfully that they would stand by their general to the last; which, adds the brave old fellow ruefully in his despatch, "most of them belied shortly after."[102]
A dropping fire of musketry had for some time been maintained between the two lines, and on the English left there had been some closer skirmishing between Lauder's sharpshooters and the Macleans. Mackay was anxious to engage before the sun set. He doubted how his raw troops would stand a night-attack from a foe to whom night and day were one: still more did he fear what might happen in the darkness during the confusion of a retreat down that awful pass. But he could not attack, and Dundee would not, till his moment came. The darkness the other feared would be all in his favour. A very short time he knew would be enough to decide the issue of the battle. Should that issue be favourable to King James, as he felt confident it would be, he had determined that before the next morning dawned there should be no army left to King William in the Highlands.
The sun set, and the moment he had chosen came. The Southrons saw Dundee, who had now changed his scarlet coat for one of less conspicuous colour, ride along the line, and as he passed each clan they saw plaids and brogues flung off. They heard the shout with which the word to advance was hailed; but the cheer they sent back did not carry with it the conviction of victory. Lochiel turned to his Camerons with a smile. "Courage!" he said, "the day is our own. I am the oldest commander in this army; and I tell you that feeble noise is the cry of men who are doomed to fall by our hands this night." Then the old warrior flung off his shoes with the rest of them, and took his place at the head of his men. Dundee rode to the front of his cavalry. The pipes sounded, and the clans came down the hill.
They advanced slowly at first, without firing a shot, while Mackay's right poured a hot volley into their ranks, and the leathern cannon discharged their harmless thunder from the centre. A gentleman of the Grants, who was fighting that day among the Macdonalds, was knocked over by a spent ball which struck his target. "Sure, the Boddachs are in earnest now!" he said, as he leaped to his feet with a laugh. It was not till they had reached the level ground that the Highlanders delivered their fire. One volley they poured in, and then, flinging their muskets away, bounded forward sword in hand with a terrific yell. The soldiers had not time to fix their bayonets in the smoking muzzles of their muskets before the claymores were among them and the battle was over.[103] On the left wing scarcely a trigger was pulled: the men broke and ran like sheep. The famous Scots Brigade, in fact, set the example of flight. Their officers behaved like brave soldiers. Balfour, abandoned by his men, defended himself for a time against overwhelming odds, till he was cut down by a young clergyman, Robert Stewart, a grandson of Ballechin. Eight officers of Mackay's own regiment were killed, including his brother, the colonel; and many of Ramsay's. In vain was the cavalry ordered to charge. In vain did Belhaven like a gallant gentleman gallop to the front. In vain did Mackay place himself at their head, and, calling on them to follow him, spur into the thick of the flashing claymores. Before his horse they fell back right and left in such a way as to justify his boast to Melville that with fifty stout troopers he could have changed the day even then; but one of his own servants alone followed him. A few of the dragoons discharged their carbines at random. Then all turned and spurred off among the crowd of footmen to the mouth of the pass. Some of the fugitives tried to cross the Garry, and were either drowned in its swift waters, or cut down as they scrambled drenched and unarmed through its fords. Down the pass to Pitlochrie the rout went. The men of Athole, no longer doubtful of the issue, pounced from their lair upon the easy prey; and even women lent their hands to the butchery.[104]
Well might Mackay bitterly complain, "There was no regiment or troop with me but behaved like the vilest cowards in nature except Hastings and my Lord Leven's."[105] For on the right matters had fared rather better with the Lowlanders. Many of Leven's Borderers had stood firm and Hastings' Englishmen; and where the Southrons stood firm the Highlanders wavered. But they were too few for Mackay to have any hopes of retrieving the fortune of the day. The Highlanders were now busy with the baggage, which offered a more tempting and less troublesome prize than the struggling mass of fugitives. Mackay therefore collected the few men he could get together, and led them across the Garry by a ford above the field of battle over the mountains towards Stirling. On his march he overtook some more of his runaways whom Ramsay was leading in the same direction. Mackay did all it was possible for a brave man to do to encourage his men and keep them together. But many were too frightened to heed his words, or even the pistol with which he threatened to shoot the first man he saw leaving his ranks. The news of his defeat had spread with marvellous rapidity: the whole country was up: every glen and mountain sent out its reapers to the rich harvest. And where enemies did not exist, the fears of these poor wretches found them. Every drover with his herd, every shepherd with his flock, was magnified into a fresh array of the terrible Highlanders. On the evening of Monday, the 29th, Mackay reached Stirling with barely one-fifth of the force with which he had marched out of the town a week earlier.
The Highland loss was calculated at nine hundred men. The Macdonalds and Camerons were the principal sufferers, their position on the left and left-centre having brought them in contact with the battalions who had kept their ground. Glengarry's brother was among the killed, with Macdonald of Largo, and no less than five cousins of Macdonald of the Isles. Among the Lowlanders fell Hallyburton of Pitcur, and Gilbert Ramsay, Dundee's favourite officer, who had dreamed overnight of the victory and of his death. But though the battle had been won for James, he had suffered a greater loss than William. A fresh army could replace Mackay's broken battalions; but no one could replace Dundee, and Dundee was dead.
He had ridden at the head of his cavalry straight on Mackay's centre. But for some unexplained reason his troopers had not followed him close; whether their new captain did not like the guns, or had misunderstood his orders, is not clear. Dunfermline, seeing his general's plumed hat waving above the smoke, had spurred out of the ranks with sixteen gentlemen, and with these sabres the guns were taken and silenced. Dundee, seeing that all went well on the right wing, turned to the left where the Macdonalds were wavering before the firmer front of Hastings' Englishmen. As he galloped across the field to bring them to the charge, a shot struck him in the right side immediately below his breastplate. For a few strides further he clung swaying to his saddle, and then sank from his horse into the arms of a soldier named Johnstone. Like Wolfe on the heights of Abraham, he asked how the day went. "Well for the King," said the man, "but I am sorry for your Lordship." And like Wolfe, Dundee answered, "It is the less matter for me, seeing the day goes well for my master." As his officers returned from the pursuit they found him on the field, and it is said, though one would be glad to disbelieve it, stripped by the very men whom he had led to victory. By his side was found a bundle of papers. Among them was a letter from Melfort, bidding him be sure that both he and James would feel themselves bound by no promise of toleration circumstances had induced them to make. Well might Balcarres, who knew his friend's disposition better than Melfort, tell James how such foolish and disingenuous dealing had grieved Dundee and all who wished honestly to the cause.[106]