the forces. After
the engagement which ensued, when the heat of the contest was over, he
distinguished himself in a manner in which every brave and loyal man
would wish to imitate his example,--by saving the lives of the
combatants. His tenantry, commanded by Lord Nairn, were among the most
eager of the combatants on that day. When the defeat of the King's
troops was manifest, a terrible carnage ensued. Some of the conquered
threw down their arms, and begged for quarter, which was refused them;
others, who fled into the enclosures, were murdered; and all who were
overtaken were cut in the most cruel manner by broad-swords and Lochaber
axes.

The kind-hearted Duke of Perth, seeing this slaughter, made a signal to
Cameron of Lochiel to stop the impetuosity of his men; and sent his
aid-de-camp, or, as he was then called, his gentleman, for that purpose.
No sooner had the Duke done this, than he sprang himself upon a fleet
bay mare, a racer, which had won the King's plate at Leith some years
before; and, taking a Major of the King's troops along with him, "shot
like an arrow through the field," and saved numbers: as also did his
gentleman, Mr. Stuart.[237]

But these efforts were insufficient to prevent a cruel and terrible
destruction of some of the bravest and best of the British officers. In
the battle of Preston Pans fell the famous Colonel Gardiner. His fate
was, it is said, envied by General Cope, who, witnessing the destruction
of his army, wished to have died on the field.

Whilst the Highlanders were carried away to the house of Colonel
Gardiner, close by, the young Chevalier stood by the road-side, having
sent to Edinburgh by the advice of the Duke of Perth for surgeons. At
this moment, Henderson, that spectator of the proclamation who had
resolved to write a history of the war, having slept at Musselburgh,
only at two miles' distance, the night before, stepped forward to take a
survey of the field. "It was one scene of horror, capable," writes this
historian,[238] "of softening the hardest heart, being strewed not so
much with the dead as with the wounded: the broken guns, halberts,
pikes, and canteens showing the work of the day. In the midst of this
distressing spectacle, an act of mercy shone forth, like a light from
Heaven." "Major Bowles," continues Henderson, "of Hamilton's Dragoons,
being dismounted, the enemy fell upon and wounded him in eleven
different places; and just as some inhuman wretch was fetc