Glencoe

by John Prebble

  He might have added that it should be supplied with green vegetables and a good physician. Most of the thousand men whom Hill commanded were weak with the bloody flux, and a graveyard had already been started on the shore of the loch.

  ‘That God may have glory, his Cause carried on’

  THE Highland summer passed into autumn, brown shawls of bracken on the mountains, oak leaves and elder in yellow bands along the shores of Ardgour. On some days there were chill mists from dawn until dusk. On others, a single sunlit hill glowed incandescently against a sky of thunder-clouds. The fort grew, its embrasures finished and mounted, the greatest guns pointing across the black water of the loch. But there was a serious shortage of timber and canvas, and as the nights became colder Hill knew that many of his men would be forced to lie in the open until well into winter, unless he could persuade them to build crude huts of turf. Their strength and morale were low. There was too much aqua vitae, and although the soldiers and workmen had a taste for the spirit, they were unwilling to take it in lieu of pay. They were ready to mutiny over this one issue alone, Hill told Melville.

  He was sick with disgust for the men of the Highland levies, and particularly objected to the ‘brutishness’ of the Grants. Some of them, refused the freedom to pillage, had already gone home to Strathspey, and those who remained under threat were either sick, or sullen, or rebellious. Hill was grateful to one Highland officer, a major of the Mackay companies, who managed to keep his clansmen in order, even getting them to work now and then. After his earlier doubts, the Colonel had also warmed toward Robert Menzies, finding him now to be ‘an honest, well-affected gentleman, and rationally governable’. If the young man could break his habit of taking leave now and then, to attend to his father's affairs at Castle Weem, he would be worth recommending for the lieutenant-colonelcy of Hill's Regiment of Foot, should the King ever have the common sense and good grace to bring that into being.

  Rumours of a French invasion of England, which Hill considered palpably absurd, still sparked across the hills and kept some young men out on the heather. They frightened the occasional baggage-train that risked the overland route to Inverlochy, and sometimes they appeared on the braes of Nevis above the fort, the wind pulling at tartan, and the sun shining on steel. A day's march away, Black Alasdair of Glengarry was giving hospitality to Sir George Barclay, one of James's emissaries, and he had impudently appointed some of Buchan's Irish soldiers as his house-guards. But there had been no bloodshed and no serious acts of hostility. ‘I am very peaceable hereabouts,’ reported Hill with hopeful exaggeration, ‘a single man may go all over Lochaber untouched.’ Although it would have been hard to find a single man in a red coat ready to prove this claim, it was plain that the rebel chiefs intended no violent acts of defiance. Hill knew that they met frequently, in Glengarry's house or Lochiel's or Keppoch's, to weigh the value of resistance against the profit in submission. Now that Mackay's army was gone they were in no danger, and Hill's little command was more an affront to their pride than a threat to their property. Had they all been of one mind and indifferent to the result, they could have gathered five thousand men and driven the undisciplined garrison into Loch Linnhe before the fort was finished. They could afford to wait, they thought – for a French invasion and the return of James, or for a treaty with William that allowed them the privilege of breaking it when their honour demanded. Hill doggedly pursued his policy of firmness and conciliation. He sent armed patrols into the hills as a show of force, a hundred, two hundred, three hundred men with colours and drums. He let it be known that while he was waiting for the chiefs' submission he was ready to give his letter of protection to any of their gentry and tacksmen who were willing to acknowledge the authority of King William and Queen Mary. He told the common people that they could come to Inverlochy without fear of molestation. This was a shrewd move. From the women of the glens he bought badly needed butter and cheese, eggs, milk and beef.

  Hill worked hard and without mercy for himself. His moods reflected the changing autumn weather. There were days of storm and gales when he was ill in body and sick at heart, desperately aware of the long and empty years he had lived. Then nothing pleased him. Then the Highlanders were ‘people without any principle of religion or honour, always ready to strike a blow without caring what they have promised’. If the soldiers and workmen were rotting from dysentery it was their own ignorant fault. There was too little wood to build the barracks inside the fort, but were there enough materials the carpenters would still all be rogues, the seamen thieves, and the soldiers cowards. For all their righteous psalm-singing, the Cameronians were ready to break their oath and desert. Robert Menzies was spending too much time in Edinburgh or at Castle Weem, and without his presence the clansmen of his company drifted away southward in threes and fours. Most of the officers of the Grant levies had gone home before the leaves turned, abandoning their dispirited and idle men to their own fancies or the graveyard. When Mackay got this news from Hill, he exploded like a mine. He ordered Robert Menzies back to his duty, and said that if the Grant gentlemen did not return he would cashier them all. This threat does not seem to have troubled them, for few came back.

  And then there were days of sun and colour, of heat steaming from the marshy ground outside the fort, and grey-lag geese winging lazily across the loch. Then he had a good word to write of his ‘parcel of rogues, and the Angus men who now carry well’. Then some of the small gentry of Appin and Lochaber came in to accept his letters or protection. He welcomed them pleasantly, warmed by the sight of a face that recalled his youth. He was particularly delighted to see John MacDonald of Achtriachtan in Glencoe, for if MacIain's cousin were willing to live in peace the old wolf himself might be ready to submit before Christmas. The tacksmen came less in response to Hill's appeal than on the advice of John Stewart of Ardshiel, the guardian of Appin's chief and a sober man who also took the Governor's protection. The chiefs had no objection to this apparent defection. It did not commit them or their clans, and it saved the tacksmen from any harrying by Hill's patrols.

  On one memorable day Coll MacDonald of Keppoch himself came to Inverlochy, a proud and arrogant young man with a great tail of gillies in scarlet and green tartan, one to hold the bridle of his garron, another his shield and sword, a third to carry him dry across a stream if he wished to protect his shoes and hose. ‘He speaks better than any Highlander I know,’ Hill told Duncan Forbes, ‘and is a pretty fellow, 'tis pity but he were honest.’ Honest or not, Coll of the Cows had some encouraging news. He made no promises of submission himself, and asked for no letter of protection, but he said that he and Lochiel might persuade the other rebel chiefs to submit ‘if they can be made to live’. Hill understood what that meant, and he passed on the advice to the Privy Council. ‘If the King would cast a little largesse upon Lochiel (who rules all the rest), Glengarry and Maclean, who are low in the world, and the rest must do as they do; and the value of five or six thousand pounds would do the work and make them the King's true servants.’

  But Coll of Keppoch may only have been curious to see the fort, giving any reason to explain his visit. Iain Lom, his bard, said that day and night in heaven Clan Donald's dead were calling for vengeance upon King William and his true servants.

  Before the first frosts came Hill was given his regiment. At his headquarters in Waterford the King signed a warrant for its establishment. It was to cost the Crown little, for it was to be mustered from the disbanded companies of Glencairn's and Kenmure's, the latter a battalion that had been the first to break before the clan charge at Killiecrankie. If Hill thought he was getting less than he deserved in a gift of mutinous and ill-disciplined men, he stomached his disappointment. He asked for lists of the officers, and he began to think of uniforms, of facings and equipment. The same dispatches brought him news that he had been granted 12s. a day in addition to his colonel's pay, and the grumbling preacher of the Cameronians had his mouth stopped by the promise of 5s. a day. There was no sugg
estion when this money might arrive, but Hill was a good commander and honestly ashamed of complaining about his own empty pockets when his men were so much in arrears. ‘He that lives as ill as I do,’ he told Forbes, ‘has need of some encouragement, but it's necessary at present that I live as ill as others.’

  October scattered to their glens the few clansmen who had remained with Buchan since the rout of Cromdale, and he was left on Glengarry's ground with his handful of homesick Irish. Glengarry made no secret about his guest, rightly feeling secure behind five hundred armed men of his clan and the black walls of his castle by Loch Oich. Lochiel sent Hill some fair messages of friendship, and also a gift of venison, and while this pleased the Governor he was disappointed that the Cameron had not come in to submit. The weather had changed. There were more storms on Loch Linnhe, and flurries of snow on the high braes. Hill fell into despair again, believing that he had failed. He would have been encouraged by Tarbat's report to Melville: ‘This I must say, Colonel Hill has been the instrument of breaking the Highland trouble, and breaking all the conjunctions and designs. He first persuaded them to make no opposition to the settling of the garrison, and after all the army was retired he so dealt with the clans, that all were big of them were forced to render themselves at his mercy.’ This was an overstatement. No great chief had placed himself upon Hill's mercy, but neither had any challenged him, and all those with influence, except Glengarry, had said they were willing to consider an acceptable treaty.

  By November Hill was desperately ill. He lay in his thin tent within the walls of the fort, half blind from the soreness of his eyes, shivering feverishly, his weary mind confusing past and present. There was no proper physician to care for him, and only his obstinate spirit kept him alive. The Edinburgh News Letters reported him dying, then dead, then not yet dead but certain to be before the end of the month. Melville was distressed by the suffering of this old man who had done more to pacify the Highlands than all of Mackay's battalions, or the chattering on the benches of the Estates. He sent a butt of sack to Inverlochy by the next ship from Glasgow, and the thought as much as the wine put some strength into Hill. ‘It came in good time,’ Tarbat told Melville, ‘to the old man in very hard case.’

  Long before he was recovered, Hill went back to his work and his writing-desk. There were letters to write to the chiefs, appeals to their common sense and pride, each tactfully composed from particular knowledge of their persons and their people. There was his regiment, and his desire to have his ‘dear child’ John Forbes as his second-in-command. His hand, as he wrote, was unsteady. ‘Please to pardon errors and excuse frailties,’ he begged Melville. And then, as anger and concern gave him the power, the strokes of his pen were strengthened. He wanted money for his garrison. There wasn't twopence among all the subalterns in the command and he had had to advance them a few pounds of his own to bring them and their platoons to their duty. Meal was running short again, and the supply-ship from Glasgow was overdue. There was no fresh meat to be got, nothing but rotten flour, water and aqua vitae. But he kept the carpenters at their work, and he hoped to have all his men inside the walls of the fort, at least, before the worst of the winter.

  The weather was cruel enough already. There was frost on the men's clothes and hair at dawn. To breathe deeply was to feel a knife in the lungs. Mist hung like ice above the water and there was no sun and no sky. Money… money… all success depended on money. He thought of his regiment, which had yet to march to Inverlochy, and he thought of money again. ‘I hope that the time is drawing near that money will be coming in; and without that, if these men come up, they will all run away.’

  His fever returned, but he sat upon his thin pallet in his cloak and continued to work at his reports and dispatches. In his letters to Duncan Forbes he sometimes wrote as if he were still serving the Protectorate, referring to the rebel clans as ‘malignants’, a word that Cromwell's men had given to the Royalists. His religious zeal became fiercer, an unconscious prophylactic. God forgive all… that God may have glory, his Cause carried on… God is the searcher of all hearts and knows who are upright, that's a good man's satisfaction…

  He recovered again, enough to stand on his feet and walk. He followed the carpenters when they went to work at first light, pitying them when the icy air glued the skin of their hands to axe and adze, but driving them without mercy. He could do nothing about the lack of good timber, except complain uselessly to Edinburgh. He had been promised fir and oak, and might have got it had someone thought of authorizing payment. In the evenings he went back to his dispatches, telling the Council that he would be grateful to have his regiment here, whether it had been adequately equipped or not. He wanted them to be armed with firelocks, not matchlocks, for the men of Glencairn's and Kenmure's were mostly Highlanders, and such men despised anything but what they called trigger-guns. He was not happy to have a regiment of Highlanders, for he thought little of their ability to stand and give fire, but if they were all the King could give him, he must be content. It was a relief to turn from such dispatches and complaints to his letters to Duncan Forbes. The Laird was now in London, and using what influence he had with Court and Parliament on Hill's behalf. ‘God be thanked,’ said the old man, ‘that has put me into a friend's hands.’ He hoped that Forbes would find time to visit his daughters. If not, there was a friend, an old Commonwealth soldier who lived at the sign of the Still in Holborn Conduit, who would be grateful for news of Governor John Hill, once a major of Thomas Fitch's Regiment of Foot.

  And another day, colder than the last, and so much work yet to be done. He wanted a boat, with sails or oars, about twenty tons in burden. A small culverin could be mounted in its bows, and with a platoon of soldiers aboard it could be used to patrol the coast of Appin, Lorn and Ardgour. He wanted smaller boats for fetching wood, the fuel his men badly needed. He got none of these sensible requirements, but he was confident that God would reward him in time.

  December began with great storms and squalls of snow. No vessels came up Loch Linnhe from the sea. The supply ships full of meal waited at Greenock for kinder weather. The Privy Council approved a grant of money for Inverlochy, £1,000 to buy materials and supplies, and £10 a week to buy Hill and his officers candles and coal. But the money did not come. He was told that until his supplies reached him he could take what he wanted, beef, meal, timber and fuel, from the lands of those clans that had lately been in rebellion, Glencoe for example. But Hill could not do this, the proposal was foolish and impolitic. The most he did was to threaten some of the common people who lived by Loch Linnhe, saying he would quarter soldiers upon them if they did not cut peat for his fires.

  If the Black Garrison at Inverlochy was given too little money and too little materials too rarely, it was at least given a distinctive name. The Council decided to call it Fort William. West of the ramparts there had grown up a wretched straggling town of turf huts, and this, by a Royal Charter signed at Kensington Palace, became the Royal Burgh and Barony of Maryburgh. Thus both monarchs were honoured by a half-built fort and a squalid row of hovels. The Charter was not without other ironies. It gave Hill the right to hold a weekly market ‘for all manner of bestial goods, commodities, merchandise, and trade whatsoever’.

  John Forbes, the younger brother of the Laird of Culloden, came to Fort William at the end of the year. After some tiresome petitioning he had been given a commission in Hill's Regiment, but only a captaincy, not the majority asked for. The Governor did his best to soothe the young man, promising him the grenadier company, the best in any foot battalion. Forbes had been in Edinburgh for some weeks, organizing clothing and arms for the regiment, and he was in no good humour to find himself now on Loch Linnhe. He told his brother that while he liked John Hill, and would be grateful for the majority if ever it came, ‘as long as I have a good and honest heart, and am able to draw my sword, I am sure I may pretend without arrogance to earn my bread in a place more desirable than Lochaber’.

  To Hill's delight
the young man brought with him the £1,000 promised by the Privy Council. The soldiers were delighted, too, since most of it was paid to them against their arrears. Forbes also brought a list of the officers whom it was proposed to commission in Hill's regiment. That night the Governor sat in the office that had been built for him, wrapped in his blue cloak, leaning his elbows on his writing-desk as he carefully studied the list. He was approaching his seventieth year, and for more than thirty of them he had been a Colonel in name only. Most regiments were commanded by men no older than his grandson would be, and his pride needed the greedy pleasure he got from these sheets of paper. But he considered each name carefully, searching his mind for a memory of the man behind it. This officer was a pretty man, he must have a company. This captain – what was his name, Dunbar? – was no soldier and had a bad reputation for drink, ill-humour and a troublesome wife. The surgeon of Kenmure's, he too was a pretty man and deserved the appointment. No regimental commander of William's army, or of many yet to come, can have been more concerned about the officers he was given. And not only the officers. The private sentinels, he noted, could not live in an outpost like this on sixpence a day only (less twopence withheld against their clothing). They should have a penny more, and he would demand it.

  Just before Christmas the regiment itself arrived, marching down the brae from Ballachulish. When Hill first saw it he must have slammed many doors in his mind, shutting out memories of Oliver's foot-soldiers. These men were a rag-taggle, undisciplined mob, and would come close to breaking his heart in the months ahead. Many had deserted on the march up from the Lowlands, and were now being hunted through Stirlingshire and Dumbarton by sheriffs, magistrates and justices. The gaps had been filled by pressed men from the ‘brutish’ Grant levies, and by some of Robert Menzies's protesting clansmen. They were semi-mutinous before they arrived, and when they saw the half-built barracks, the ice-covered marsh on which they were to live, the black hostility of the mountains, they boiled close to open rebellion. Hill closed his ears to the whining gabble of Gaelic and Lowland Scots, handed them over to selected NCOs, and prayed God to guide them in loyalty and obedience. But when the four companies of Cameronians left him, singing psalms of joy, he must have felt that for once he had asked too much of the Almighty.