command, put
to flight the musketeers of King James. Macdonald of Clanronald was of
tender years: but he was brought to the camp by his uncle, who acted
at Regent during the minority. The youth was attended by a picked body
guard composed of his own cousins, all comely in appearance, and good
men of their hands. Macdonald of Glengarry, conspicuous by his dark
brow and his lofty stature, came from that great valley where a chain of
lakes, then unknown to fame, and scarcely set down in maps, is now
the daily highway of steam vessels passing and reprising between the
Atlantic and the German Ocean. None of the rulers of the mountains had a
higher sense of his personal dignity, or was more frequently engaged in
disputes with other chiefs. He generally affected in his manners and
in his housekeeping a rudeness beyond that of his rude neighbours, and
professed to regard the very few luxuries which had then found their way
from the civilised parts of the world into the Highlands as signs of the
effeminacy and degeneracy of the Gaelic race. But on this occasion he
chose to imitate the splendour of Saxon warriors, and rode on horseback
before his four hundred plaided clansmen in a steel cuirass and a coat
embroidered with gold lace. Another Macdonald, destined to a lamentable
and horrible end, led a band of hardy freebooters from the dreary
pass of Glencoe. Somewhat later came the great Hebridean potentates.
Macdonald of Sleat, the most opulent and powerful of all the grandees
who laid claim to the lofty title of Lord of the Isles, arrived at
the head of seven hundred fighting men from Sky. A fleet of long boats
brought five hundred Macleans from Mull under the command of their
chief, Sir John of Duart. A far more formidable array had in old times
followed his forefathers to battle. But the power, though not the
spirit, of the clan had been broken by the arts and arms of the
Campbells. Another band of Macleans arrived under a valiant leader, who
took his title from Lochbuy, which is, being interpreted, the Yellow
Lake, [340]

It does not appear that a single chief who had not some special cause to
dread and detest the House of Argyle obeyed Dundee's summons. There
is indeed strong reason to believe that the chiefs who came would have
remained quietly at home if the government had understood the politics
of the Highlands. Those politics were thoroughly understood by one able
and experienced statesman, sprung from the great Highlan