Castle. Murray, with
twelve hundred followers, appeared before the walls and demanded to be
admitted into the mansion of his family, the mansion which would one day
be his own. The garrison refused to open the gates. Messages were sent
off by the besiegers to Edinburgh, and by the besieged to Lochaber,
[356] In both places the tidings produced great agitation. Mackay and
Dundee agreed in thinking that the crisis required prompt and strenuous
exertion. On the fate of Blair Castle probably depended the fate of all
Athol. On the fate of Athol might depend the fate of Scotland. Mackay
hastened northward, and ordered his troops to assemble in the low
country of Perthshire. Some of them were quartered at such a distance
that they did not arrive in time. He soon, however, had with him the
three Scotch regiments which had served in Holland, and which bore the
names of their Colonels, Mackay himself, Balfour, and Ramsay. There
was also a gallant regiment of infantry from England, then called
Hastings's, but now known as the thirteenth of the line. With these old
troops were joined two regiments newly levied in the Lowlands. One of
them was commanded by Lord Kenmore; the other, which had been raised on
the Border, and which is still styled the King's own Borderers, by
Lord Leven. Two troops of horse, Lord Annandale's and Lord Belhaven's,
probably made up the army to the number of above three thousand men.
Belhaven rode at the head of his troop: but Annandale, the most factious
of all Montgomery's followers, preferred the Club and the Parliament
House to the field, [357]

Dundee, meanwhile, had summoned all the clans which acknowledged his
commission to assemble for an expedition into Athol. His exertions were
strenuously seconded by Lochiel. The fiery crosses were sent again in
all haste through Appin and Ardnamurchan, up Glenmore, and along Loch
Leven. But the call was so unexpected, and the time allowed was so
short, that the muster was not a very full one. The whole number of
broadswords seems to have been under three thousand. With this force,
such as it was, Dundee set forth. On his march he was joined by succours
which had just arrived from Ulster. They consisted of little more than
three hundred Irish foot, ill armed, ill clothed, and ill disciplined.
Their commander was an officer named Cannon, who had seen service in
the Netherlands, and who might perhaps have acquitted himself well in a
subordinate post and in a regula