Skye, Island of (Scotland) -- Description and travel
they had gratified hatred; they had had ample opportunities for
plunder; the chiefs had gained a new importance; they had been
assured of the royal gratitude and remembrance; and if they received
but scant supplies of royal gold, they were promised argosies. By
fighting under Montrose they were in a sense committed to the cause
of the king; and when at a later date Claverhouse again raised the
royal standard, that argument was successfully used. They had
already served the house of Stuart; they had gained victories in its
behalf: the king would not always be in adversity; the time would
come when he would be able to reward his friends; having put their
hands to the plough it would be folly to turn back. And so a second
time the clans rose, and at Killiecrankie an avalanche of kilted men
broke the royal lines, and in a quarter of an hour a disciplined army
was in ruins, and the bed of the raging Garry choked with corpses.
By this time the Stuart cause had gained a footing in the Highlands,
mainly from the fact that the clans had twice fought in its behalf.
Then a dark whisper of the massacre of Glencoe passed through the
glens--and the clansmen believed that the princes _they_ had served
would not have violated every claim of hospitality, and shot them
down so on their own hearthstones. All this confirmed the growing
feeling of attachment to the king across the water. When the Earl of
Mar rose in 1715, Macdonald of Sleat joined him with his men; and
being sent out to drive away a party of the enemy who had appeared on
a neighbouring height, opened the battle of Sheriffmuir. [Sidenote:
"The Forty-five."] In 1745, when Prince Charles landed in Knoydart,
he sent letters to Macdonald and Macleod in Skye soliciting their
aid. Between them they could have brought 2000 claymores into the
field; and had the prince brought a foreign force with them, they
might have complied with his request. As it was, they hesitated, and
finally resolved to range themselves on the side of the Government.
Not a man from Sleat fought under the prince. The other great
branches of the Macdonald family, Clanranald, Keppoch, and Glengarry,
joined him however; and Keppoch at Culloden, when he found that his
men were broken, and would not rally at the call of their chief,
charged the English lines alone, and was brought down by a musket
bullet.
[Sidenote: Flora Macdonald and Prince Charles.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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