"What is above should have gone this morning, but was delyed. Six hundered of the clans are gone out this night to reinforce the garison of Braco and Crief. I hear they have orders to destroy the corn-yards and barns about Achterardir and Black Ford, which we hear were revewed by the enemy yesterday. The King signed thir orders, I can ashour you, most unwillingly; and caused put it in the order that every thing should be made good to the poor people, with a gratuity; and if any of them pleased to come to Perth, they should be maintained and all care taken of them. This you may take for truth, for no doubt they will make a great noise about it.
"We have just now got ane account of a ship being come into Montross, but we know not yett what she brings. Adieu,—writte soon. I am in haste."
"Eleven att night."
On the twenty-fourth of January, the Duke of Argyle marched to Dumblane, with two hundred horse, to reconnoitre the roads. The report that the enemy was approaching, was quickly conveyed to Perth; and now was the order to burn and destroy the village of Auchterarder, the contents of the houses, all stores of corn and forage, mournfully and promptly executed. It was supposed by this, that the march of Argyle's forces would be impeded; but it produced no other inconvenience to that army than obliging them to lie one night in the open air; whilst the unpopularity it brought on James and his advisers, was long the subject of comment to their enemies. It is consolatory to those who wish to judge favourably of James to find this declaration in Lord Mar's correspondence.
"The King was forced, sore against his will, to give these burning orders, as all of us were, could we have helped it; but this extraordinary man[oe]uvre of the enemy made it absolutely necessary. A finger must be cut off to save the whole body. I have ordered some copies of a proclamation to be sent you. There is about two of the places burnt, and there's another ordred about the rest. Adieu.
"It was not amiss that this proclamation were sent to London."
In pursuance of the cruel and impolitic commands to which Lord Mar refers, three thousand Highlanders were sent forth to the act of destruction. Auchterarder, Crieff, Blackford, Denning and Muthel, were mercilessly burned; and the wretched inhabitants turned out at that inclement season to destitution without a roof to shelter them. Many decrepid people and children perished in the flames.[141] Had James sought, in truth, to prepare a way for the Government in the hearts of the people, he could not have adopted a more suitable means. In the Duke of Argyle, he had a generous and humane adversary to deal with,—one whose forbearance laid him under the imputation of a want of zeal for the cause of the Government, and rendered him no favourite at the English Court. The fashion at the Court of St. James's, according to a letter in the Mar Papers, was, to rail against the Duke, and even George the First and those about him joined in the unjust and ungrateful abuse.
Even so late as Sunday, the twenty-ninth of January, when Argyle's troops left Stirling and advanced to Braco Castle, Lord Mar appears to have been in ignorance of their actual movements. Perhaps, like the busy world of London politicians, he regarded the project of an attempt upon Perth in such weather as impracticable. Such was the opinion at St. James's. "Argyle's friends here," writes one near the Court, "speak of the march and the attempt at present as madness." And another individual writes, that "one half of their people must die of cold, and the other be knocked o' the head. So it seems Argyle is dragg'd to this matter. We cannot perceive, by all the letters that come up, any particular certainty as to Lord Mar's number and his designs. The Court are positive he will not stand; and they, as well as Ridpeath, assert strongly that the Pretender is gone already as far as Glammis. The Jacobites fancy that if he went thither, it was to meet and assemble these officers that were landed."[142]
Whilst in this state of perplexity Lord Mar thus writes:
"Jan. 29th.