f his liege lord, or of a
royal proclamation. The law remained the same in sixteen hundred and
forty-five as a hundred years before, but the race of those subjected to
it had been bred up under very different feelings. They had sat in quiet
under their vine and under their fig-tree, and a call to battle involved
a change of life as new as it was disagreeable. Such of them, also, who
lived near unto the Highlands, were in continual and disadvantageous
contact with the restless inhabitants of those mountains, by whom their
cattle were driven off, their dwellings plundered, and their persons
insulted, and who had acquired over them that sort of superiority
arising from a constant system of aggression. The Lowlanders, who lay
more remote, and out of reach of these depredations, were influenced by
the exaggerated reports circulated concerning the Highlanders, whom,
as totally differing in laws, language, and dress, they were induced
to regard as a nation of savages, equally void of fear and of humanity.
These various prepossessions, joined to the less warlike habits of the
Lowlanders, and their imperfect knowledge of the new and complicated
system of discipline for which they had exchanged their natural mode
of fighting, placed them at great disadvantage when opposed to the
Highlander in the field of battle. The mountaineers, on the contrary,
with the arms and courage of their fathers, possessed also their simple
and natural system of tactics, and bore down with the fullest confidence
upon an enemy, to whom anything they had been taught of discipline was,
like Saul's armour upon David, a hinderance rather than a help, "because
they had not proved it."

It was with such disadvantages on the one side, and such advantages on
the other, to counterbalance the difference of superior numbers and the
presence of artillery and cavalry, that Montrose encountered the army of
Lord Elcho upon the field of Tippermuir. The Presbyterian clergy had not
been wanting in their efforts to rouse the spirit of their followers,
and one of them, who harangued the troops on the very day of battle,
hesitated not to say, that if ever God spoke by his mouth, he promised
them, in His name, that day, a great and assured victory. The cavalry
and artillery were also reckoned sure warrants of success, as the
novelty of their attack had upon former occasions been very discouraging
to the Highlanders. The place of meeting was an open heath, and the
ground affo