Before four in the morning the army began to march, and an arrangement of the first line, which had been previously agreed upon, was now put into execution. Those who had had the right the day before, were to have the rear and the left; and this alteration was made without the least noise or confusion. The Duke of Perth therefore went into the front, Lord George giving up his guides to him. No horse marched at that time, for fear of being discovered. When the army had advanced within a hundred paces of the ditches, they marched on to the attack, Lord George calling on Cameron of Lochiel to incline to the left. As the enemy discovered their approach, the noise of the cannon announced that the engagement had begun. Notwithstanding that Lord George Murray's regiment was the last to pass the defile towards the enemy, it was the first to fire. "Our whole first line," writes the gallant soldier, "broke through the enemy. Some of them were rallying behind us; but when they saw our second line coming up, they then made the best of their way." Lord George pursued the enemy to the walls of Bankton House, the residence of Colonel Gardiner; and here a party of the enemy got over the ditch, and fired at the Highland foe. This little company, brave as it was, was composed of only fourteen men, headed by a Lieutenant-Colonel. "I got before a hundred of our men," writes Lord George, "who had their guns presented to fire upon them, and at my desire they kept up their fire, so that those officers and soldiers surrendered themselves prisoners; and nothing gave me more pleasure that day than having it in my power to save those men, as well as several others." This declaration was perhaps necessary, to rescue the memory of Lord George from the opprobrium of cruelty; since it has been asserted, that at the battle of Culloden he issued orders to give no quarter, and that such a document to that effect, in the handwriting of Lord George, was in the possession of the Duke of Cumberland.[43] This stigma on the fame of Lord George Murray may have originated from the desperate character of that last effort: his haughty temper may have been exasperated in the course of the fatal contest. It is a charge which can now only be repelled by the previous character of the individual against whom it is made, since it was never fairly made out, nor satisfactorily contradicted.