The party of foot, which, having charge of a convoy of provisions and ammunition for the intended garrison, had not yet arrived, on hearing of the retreat of the dragoons, shut themselves up in a gentleman’s house, to secure themselves from attack, and the commanding officer sent an express after Mackay, who was then on his way to the south, acquainting him with the failure of the enterprise. On receiving this intelligence, Mackay, although he had not a day’s bread on hand, and was in great haste to reach Edinburgh, “to put life in the design of Inverlochy,” turned off his course and crossed the hills towards Braemar, with his foot, after giving directions to Barclay’s dragoons to march up Deeside. Finding Braemar house destroyed, and the vaults of it incapable of holding a garrison, Mackay, after burning Inverey’s house and laying waste all his lands, descended the river to Abergeldie, where he left a detachment of 72 men as a check upon the Farquharsons. And having placed the other troops which he had brought from the north in quarters farther down the Dee, he posted off to Edinburgh, where he arrived in the beginning of July, about a fortnight after the surrender of the castle of Edinburgh, which capitulated on the 14th of June, after a siege of three months.
On his arrival at Edinburgh, Mackay was exceedingly mortified to find that no steps whatever had been taken by the government for putting his design into execution, of erecting a fort at Inverlochy. As the season was now too far advanced to collect materials for such an erection, he proposed that a body of 1,500 pioneers should be levied in the northern counties, each of whom should be obliged to carry a spade, shovel, or pickaxe, along with him, and that a month’s provisions of meal, with horses to carry it, should be furnished, along with a force of 400 men. But this plan, the general himself confesses, “considering the inability, ignorance, and little forwardness of the government to furnish the necessary ingredients for the advance of their service, was built upon a sandy foundation, and much like the building of castles in the air.”[563] As an instance of the slowness and irresolution of government, Mackay mentions, that after his return from the north, they took three weeks to deliberate upon the mode of conveying a fortnight’s provisions for 400 men; by which delay he says he lost the opportunity of preventing Dundee from occupying Athole, Badenoch, and other parts of the southern Highlands.
The return of Mackay to the capital, after a fruitless and exceedingly harassing series of marches and countermarches, seems to have abated the ardour of some of the supporters of the government, who, disappointed in their expectations, and displeased at the preference shown by the court to others they considered less deserving than themselves, had become either indifferent about the result of the struggle, or secretly wished for a restoration. That such an event might occur was indeed far from improbable. James was already in possession, with the exception of two cities, of all Ireland, and William was by no means popular in England. To give, therefore, a decided and favourable turn to James’s affairs in Scotland, nothing was wanting but to aid Dundee immediately with a few thousand men from Ireland; but although the necessity of such a step was urged by Dundee in his communications with the exiled monarch, the latter did not, unfortunately for himself, consider the matter in the same light. The expectation of such a reinforcement, which they confidently looked for, had, however, its due effect upon the minds of the Highlanders, who gladly endured during the recent campaign all those painful privations which necessarily attend an army scantily provided with the means of subsistence. No man was better fitted by nature than Dundee for command under such difficulties, and at the head of such troops. Whilst by his openness, frankness, and disinterestedness he acquired an ascendency over the minds of the chiefs, he was equally successful by attending personally to their wants, by mixing frequently among them, and by sharing their privations and fatigues, in securing the obedience of the clans. But valuable and important as the services were of such a bold and devoted band, it was evident that without a sudden and powerful diversion from Ireland, or a considerable rising in the lowlands, it would be impossible for Dundee, from the paucity of his forces, and the want of cavalry, to carry the war into the south with any possible chance of success.
As the Irish reinforcements were daily expected, Dundee enjoined the chiefs of the clans, who, with their men, had taken a temporary leave of absence on the departure of Mackay, to rejoin him as soon as possible, and from his head-quarters at Moy, in Lochaber, he sent expresses to the other chiefs who had not yet joined him to hasten to the approaching muster.[564]
About the same time he despatched a letter to the Earl of Melfort, in which, after adverting to various circumstances, he advises him to send over from Ireland a body of 5,000 or 6,000 men to Inverlochy, which he considered the safest landing-place that could be selected as being “far from the enemy,” and whence an easy entrance could be obtained for an army into Moray, Angus, or Perthshire. On the return of the transports from Inverlochy, Dundee advised Melfort to send over as many foot as he conveniently could to the point of Cantyre, on hearing of whose landing he would advance as far as the neck of Tarbert to meet them, and that on the junction taking place, Dundee would march “to raise the country,” and afterwards proceed to the passes of the Forth to meet the king, who, it was supposed, would follow the expedition. To deceive Mackay and the Scottish council, and to induce them to withdraw their forces from the north, and thus leave him at greater liberty to organize it, Dundee industriously circulated a report that the forces from Ireland would land altogether in some quarter south of the Clyde. To give an appearance of certainty to the rumour, he wrote a letter to Lady Errol, a warm supporter of James’s interest, acquainting her of the expected landing in the west, and to prevent suspicion of any ruse being intended, he inclosed some proclamations, which, it is presumed, he intended to issue when the Irish arrived. As wished and anticipated, this despatch was intercepted and sent to Edinburgh. The device appears to have in part succeeded, as Dundee informs Melfort, that the government forces were afterwards withdrawn from Cantyre.[579]
Whilst Dundee was thus maturing his plans, preparatory to another campaign, Mackay was urging the privy council to supply him with a sufficient force, for carrying into effect his favourite plan of erecting a strong fortification at Inverlochy. This leads to the supposition that “the General,” a term by which Mackay distinguishes himself in his memoirs, had not taken the bait which had been prepared for him by his artful rival, for it is improbable, had Mackay believed the story invented by Dundee, that he would have insisted on carrying such a large force as 4,000 men, the number he required, into Lochaber, so very remote from the scene of the threatened invasion.
Having collected his forces, Mackay made the necessary preparations for his departure, but he was detained nearly a fortnight in Edinburgh, beyond the time he had fixed for his march, by the delays of the government, in furnishing meal for his troops, and horses for transporting it. In the meantime he was informed by Lord Murray, eldest son of the Marquis of Athole, that Stewart of Ballochin, his father’s chamberlain, and other gentlemen of the county of Angus, had taken possession of the castle of Blair Athole, belonging to the Marquis, and were fortifying it for behoof of King James. Lord Murray offered to go immediately to Athole, and do everything in his power to obtain possession of the castle of Blair, before Dundee should arrive. As Lord Murray’s wife was known to be very zealous for the presbyterian interest, and as his lordship and the Marquis his father, who was secretly hostile to the government, were at variance, Mackay gave a ready assent to the proposal, and pressed his lordship eagerly to depart for Athole without loss of time, informing him that all he required from him, was to prevent the Athole-men from joining Dundee.[584]
Lord Murray accordingly proceeded to Athole, where he arrived about the beginning of July, and lost no time in summoning his father’s vassals to meet him. About 1,200 of them assembled, but no entreaties could induce them to declare in favour of the government, nor could a distinct pledge be obtained from them to observe a neutrality during the impending contest. His lordship was equally unsuccessful in an application which he made to Stewart of Ballochin, for delivery of Blair castle; Stewart telling him that he held the castle for behoof of King James, by order of his lieutenant-general. The failure of Lord Murray’s mission could certainly occasion no disappointment, as it was not to be imagined that a body of men who had all along been distinguished for their attachment to the exiled family, were, at the call of a young man, who by marriage, and the disagreement with his father, may be supposed to have made himself obnoxious to the men of Athole, all at once to abandon long-cherished ideas and to arm in support of a cause in which they felt no interest.
About the period of Lord Murray’s arrival in Athole, intelligence was brought to Dundee that a body of 500 Irish troops, under an officer of the name of Cannon, had reached Mull. The viscount immediately proceeded to Inverlochy to give orders respecting their landing, but, although they all reached the mainland in perfect safety, the ships which carried their provisions being unnecessarily detained at Mull, were all captured by some English frigates which were cruizing amongst the western islands. The loss of their stores was a serious evil; and it embittered the disappointment felt by Dundee and the chiefs, to find that instead of an efficient force of 5,000 or 6,000 men, as they had been led to expect, not more than a tenth part had been sent, and even this paltry force was neither properly disciplined, nor sufficiently armed; so that, according to Balcarras, their arrival did “more harm than good.” Such also was the opinion of Mackay at the time, as expressed in a letter to Lord Melville.[585]
Having given the necessary orders for bringing up the Irish troops, Dundee returned to Strowan, where he had fixed his head quarters. Here he received a letter which had arrived during his absence at Inverlochy, from Lord Strathnaver, eldest son of the Earl of Sutherland, couched in very friendly terms, and advising him to follow the example of the Duke of Gordon, as the course he was following, if persisted in, would lead inevitably to his ruin. But Dundee was not the man who would allow his personal interest to interfere with the allegiance which he considered he owed to his exiled sovereign, and while in his answer he expressed a deep sense of the obligation he lay under to his lordship for his advice and offers of service, which he imputed to his lordship’s “sincere goodness and concern” for him and his family, he assured him that he (Dundee) had no less concern for him, and that he had been even thinking of making a proposal to him, but delayed doing so till his lordship should see things in a clearer point of view.