which they chose
to ask, or which he could grant, to mark his approbation. The answer to
this proof of approbation was worthy of those valiant auxiliaries, who
are described by the French as "Highland furies, who rushed in upon us
with more fury than ever did a sea driven by a tempest." The Highlanders
replied, after thanking the Royal Duke for his courtesy, "that no favour
he could bestow on them would gratify them so much as to pardon a
soldier of their regiment, who lay under a sentence of court martial, by
which he was decreed to incur a heavy corporal punishment; the
infliction of which would," they said, "bring dishonour on themselves,
their friends, and their country." The request was granted. It was,
nevertheless, the countrymen of these Highlanders, men as heroic as
true, as nice in their sense of honour as the Black Watch, upon whom the
Duke wreaked the utmost of his vengeance after Culloden, whom he hunted
with bloodhounds,--whose honest hearts he broke by every possible
indignity, though their gallant spirits could never be subdued.

As the army advanced, a great multitude assembled to gaze upon the
singular spectacle. The very arms borne by the Highlanders were objects
of curiosity and surprise, no less than of alarm, to the populace, who
stood by the way-side expressing their good-will to the expedition, but
who, when asked to join the insurgents, declined, saying, "they did not
understand fighting."[98] The formidable weapons with which the
Highlanders contrived to make themselves terrible to their enemies,
consisted of a broad-sword, girded on the left side, and a dirk or short
thick dagger on the right, used only when the combat was so close as to
render the broadsword useless. In ancient times, these fierce warriors
brandished a small short-handled hatchet or axe, for the purpose of a
close fight. A gun, a pair of pistols, and a target, completed their
armour, except when ammunition failed, when they substituted for the
gun, the lochaber axe; this was a species of long lance, or pike, with a
formidable weapon at the end of it, adapted either for cutting or
stabbing. The lochaber axe had fallen into disuse since the introduction
of the musket; but a rude, yet ready substitute had been found for it,
by fixing scythes at the end of a pole, with which the Highlanders
resisted the attacks of cavalry. Such had been their arms in the early
part of the Insurrection of 1745, and such they continued until, at th