pletely
overcome.

The Highlanders, while they continued to be a nation living under a
peculiar polity, were in one sense better and in another sense worse
fitted for military purposes than any other nation in Europe. The
individual Celt was morally and physically well qualified for war, and
especially for war in so wild and rugged a country as his own. He was
intrepid, strong, fleet, patient of cold, of hunger, and of fatigue. Up
steep crags, and over treacherous morasses, he moved as easily as the
French household troops paced along the great road from Versailles
to Marli. He was accustomed to the use of weapons and to the sight of
blood: he was a fencer; he was a marksman; and, before he had ever stood
in the ranks, he was already more than half a soldier.

As the individual Celt was easily turned into a soldier, so a tribe
of Celts was easily turned into a battalion of soldiers. All that was
necessary was that the military organization should be conformed to the
patriarchal organization. The Chief must be Colonel: his uncle or his
brother must be Major: the tacksmen, who formed what may be called the
peerage of the little community, must be the Captains: the company of
each Captain must consist of those peasants who lived on his land, and
whose names, faces, connections, and characters, were perfectly known to
him: the subaltern officers must be selected among the Duinhe Wassels,
proud of the eagle's feather: the henchman was an excellent orderly: the
hereditary piper and his sons formed the band: and the clan became at
once a regiment. In such a regiment was found from the first moment that
exact order and prompt obedience in which the strength of regular armies
consists. Every man, from highest to lowest, was in his proper place,
and knew that place perfectly. It was not necessary to impress by
threats or by punishment on the newly enlisted troops the duty of
regarding as their head him whom they had regarded as their head ever
since they could remember any thing. Every private had, from infancy,
respected his corporal much and his Captain more, and had almost adored
his Colonel. There was therefore no danger of mutiny. There was
as little danger of desertion. Indeed the very feelings which most
powerfully impel other soldiers to desert kept the Highlander to his
standard. If he left it, whither was he to go? All his kinsmen, all
his friends, were arrayed round it. To separate himself from it was to
separate him