The formation of the Highland host long remained the same. Clans could not be mixed. They fought side by side, each under its chieftain, who stood in the centre, surrounded by his personal kinsmen, much as Harold fought at Hastings with his housecarles. Then, often after silent prayer, the plaids were thrown aside, and the charge was made. To this there were five motions. First, to set the bonnet firmly on the head; secondly, covered by the brass-studded target, to rush up to within fifty yards; next, to fire the long-barrelled Spanish gun and drop it; fourthly, to fire the steel pistol; and, lastly, to charge home with dirk or claymore. The men were often arranged ten or twelve ranks deep. The march and deployment of the troops on either side in this battle was such as to place the left wings of both armies outflanking the other. This gave Mar his chance, and he quickly took it. Ordering the charge, he led the clan Maclean in person; and they, throwing aside their plaids, fired a volley, dropped their muskets, and rushed with cheers and yells on their opponents, claymore and target in hand. Skilled in the use of these weapons, such a rush was for the time irresistible. The bayonet thrust was met by the shield, and the sword or dirk did the rest. The loss in such a case was terrible, the wounded generally injured beyond recovery. And so the Jacobites swept the enemy’s left clean off the field, but, like the Royalists sixty years before, they did not know when to check pursuit, and turn the defeat of one wing of an army into the rout of the whole. Yet there was more discipline than usual in these irregulars, for they were little more. Their first volley had been most steadily delivered, and they were not “in the least discomposed by the musketry which the British regiments opened on them in turn.” Meanwhile, on the other wing, Mar’s troops had been defeated and routed by the combined attack of Argyll’s cavalry on the flank and his infantry in front, and though the Macraes, especially, fought with desperate obstinacy, the result here was practically as decisive as had been the attack of the Earl of Mar. So he fell back after the battle, leaving Argyll master of the field and of the situation, and who remarked to an officer before the day closed that-- “If it was na weel bobbit, We’ll bob it again.”