By two manuscript letters among the Mar papers, it appears, however, that the account soon afterwards published by Lord Mar was not so full of artifice and untruths as his enemies represented. "He kept the field of battle until it was dark," says one writer, in a letter dated from Perth (November the 19th, 1715); "and nothing but want of provisions prevented us from going forward the next day. We hear the Whigs give various accounts of the battle, to cover the victory; but the numbers of the slain on their part being eleven or twelve hundred, and ours not above fifty or sixty, and our keeping the field when they left it, makes the victory incontestable. Your friends that I know here mind you often, and they and I would be glad to have the opportunity to drink a bottle with you beyond the Forth." Another eye-witness gives a still more detailed account.[114] "I have yours of the seventeenth, with the paper inclosed, wherein that gentleman has taken the liberty to insert many falsehoods relative to the late action, a true and impartial account of which I here send you, which is but too modest on our side, and many things omitted that will be afterwards made publick, particularly their murdering Strathmoir, after he had asked quarters, and the treatment they gave to Panmuir and several others, who, I hope, will be living witnesses against them. The enclosed is so full that I have little to say, only that we have not lost a hundred men in the action, and none of note, except Strathmoir, and the Captain of Clan Ronald." The cruel spirit of party destroyed the generous characteristics of the soldier, during the excitement of the combat: but how can we palliate the conduct of one of the King's generals, Lord Isla, after the fierceness of the encounter was over? The letter referred to discloses particulars which were hushed up, or merely glanced at, in the partial annals of the time.