There is, in short, no good reason to doubt that when William signed the order for the "extirpation" of the Macdonalds he meant them to be extirpated. He treated his act as equivalent to the issue of one of those "letters of fire and sword" which in those wild days of Highland history formed a recognised instrument of police. He would undoubtedly have been quite prepared to hear that a regiment had been marched into the valley of Glencoe, had put the contumacious clansmen (as he believed them to be) to the sword, and left their village a heap of smoking ruins. As undoubtedly he was _not_ prepared to hear that a body of soldiers had quartered themselves on the clan under pretence of amity, and had treacherously slaughtered them at unawares. But though it is likely enough that when he did hear of this he was disgusted with the unsoldierly cowardice of the proceeding, we should mistake both the man and the time in supposing that he viewed it with the horror and detestation which in our own days it excites. He regarded it, so far as one can judge, as a mere blundering excess of duty and nothing more. Four years later, when an inquiry was instituted into the matter by the Scotch Parliament, he showed no disposition to press it forward;[15] and later on, when a commission reported that the affair of Glencoe was a murder for which the Master of Stair was primarily responsible, he steadily declined to inflict any further penalty on the chief culprit than he had already suffered in his dismissal from office. Burnet's excuse for William that he was alarmed at finding how many men it would be necessary for him to punish for the massacre is, as Macaulay rightly says, no justification for his screening the one criminal whose case was so easily distinguishable from the others, and whose guilt was so much more heinous than theirs. It is idle, in short, to deny that in the matter of the Glencoe Massacre William incurred something of the responsibility of an accessory after the fact. FOOTNOTES: [14] The whole affair is still surrounded with obscurity. At least half a dozen conflicting explanations of Marlborough's fall are in existence, and from the same hand--that of Burnet. It cannot be said that the conspiracy theory, which Macaulay of course adopts, is in itself at all improbable. [15] Macaulay, in that injudicious spirit of special pleading which is often so damaging to his hero, says that the King, "who knew little and cared little" about Scotland, "_forgot_ to urge the commissioners." As if a king would be likely to "forget" an inquiry as to whether one of his secretaries of state had or had not been guilty of murder. CHAPTER X 1692-1693 Gloomy European prospects--Campaign of 1692 in the Netherlands--Defeat of Steinkirk--Attempt of Grandval --Session of 1692--Place Bill and Triennial Bill-- Campaign of 1693--William outwitted by Luxembourg-- Defeat of Landen--Session of 1693-94--Louis's overtures of peace.