The Earl of Mar sent immediately an officer to reconnoitre them, and at the same time assembled the General officers and heads of clans, to consult whether he should attack them again; but the officer having reported that their numbers were equal to ours, and the Highlanders, who were extreamly fatigued, and had eat nothing in two days, being averse to it, it was resolved to keep the field of battle, and to let the enemy retire unmolested, which they had already began to do under cover of the earth walls, as well as of the night which was now approaching, leaving us about fifty prisoners of ours, most of them wounded, whom they had not time to carry along with them. We continued on the field of battle till dark night, and then marched back to the same villages which had been marked for our quarters the night before. The enemy had about seven hundred men killed or wounded, amongst whom was the Earl of Forfar killed, and the Earl of Islay wounded, and two hundred and twenty-three taken prisoners, and we had about 150 killed or wounded, and eighty-two taken; but among those killed we had three persons of note, the Earl of Strathmore, his unkle Auchterhouse, and Clanronald, and the Earl of Panmure very much wounded. The loss of colours was almost equal on both sides; but the enemy got five piece of our cannon, which we could not carry off, those belonging to the train having run away with the horses when they saw our left broke; and thus ended the affair of Dumblain, in which neither side gained much honour, but which was the entire ruin of our party. Some unlucky mistakes which happened that day, must here take place; first, an order to the whole horse on the left to march to the right, which so discouraged the foot of that wing to see themselves abandoned, that to it may be attributed their shameful behaviour that day; nor were these horse of any advantage to us where they were posted, for the ground was so bad that they could never be brought to engage. Another, of no less consequence, was the mistake of the officer who was sent to reconnoitre the Duke of Argile's army in the afternoon, for he having taken his remarks more by the number of colours than the space of ground they occupied, made his report that the enemy was betwixt two and three thousand foot strong, when in reality there was no more than three battalions, not making in all above one thousand foot, the other colours being what the Duke had just taken on our left, and being almost the same with his own, he now used them to disguise the weakness of his troops by making a show of four battalions more than he had, the ground and mud walls by which he was cover'd not allowing to see that he had formed only two ranks deep; this mistake hinder'd us from attacking him in the evening, which it's probable we might have done with better success than we had in the morning.