The Duke of Argyll was put in command of the royal forces, and arrived in Scotland in the middle of September 1716. He hastened to the camp, which had been got {124} together somehow at Stirling. He came there almost literally alone. He brought no soldiers with him. He found few soldiers there to receive him. Under his command he had altogether about a thousand foot and half as many dragoons, the latter consisting in great measure of the famous and excellent Scots Grays. His prospect looked indeed very doubtful. He could expect little or no assistance from his own clan. They had work enough to do in guarding against a possible attack from some of the followers of Lord Mar. Glasgow, Dumfries, and other towns were likewise in imminent danger from some of the Highland clans, and were kept in a continual agony of apprehension. It seemed likely enough that Argyll might soon be surrounded at Stirling. If Mar had only made a forward movement it is impossible to say what degree of success he might not have accomplished. It seems almost marvellous, when we look back and survey the state of things, to see what a miserable force the Government had to rely upon. In the whole country they had only about eight thousand men. They had more men abroad than at home, and in the critical condition of things which still prevailed upon the Continent, it did not seem clear that they could, except in the very last extremity, bring home many of the men whom they kept abroad. Of that little force of eight thousand soldiers they did not venture to send a considerable proportion up to the North. They had, perhaps, good reason. They did not know yet where the serious blow was to be struck for the Stuart cause. Many of George's counsellors still looked upon the movement in Scotland as something merely in the nature of a feint. They believed that the real blow would yet be struck by Ormond in the West of England. [Sidenote: 1715--Sheriffmuir] But the evil fortune which hung over the Stuart cause in all its later days clung to it now. There was no conceivable reason why Mar should not have marched southward. The forces of the King were few in number, and were not well placed for the purpose of making any considerable resistance. But in an enterprise like that of {125} Mar all depends upon rapidity of movement. What we may call the ultimate resources of the country were in the hands of the King and his adherents. Every day's delay enabled them to grow stronger. Every day's delay beyond a certain time discouraged and weakened the invaders. Mar might, at one critical moment, have swept Argyll's exhausted troops before him, but he was feeble and timorous; he dallied; he let the time pass; he allowed Argyll to get away without making an effort to attack him. It was then that one of the Gordon clan broke into that memorable exclamation, "Oh for one hour of Dundee!"--the exclamation which Byron has paraphrased in the line,