Chapter XX: Rob Roy Retreats

In January, 1714, Rob commanded 500 men among the gathering of 2,000 Highlanders who, on the 28th of that month, fully armed on all points, attended the great funeral of Campbell of Lochnell. At their head were a pair of standards, belonging to the Earl of Breadalbane, preceded by thirteen pipers; for, in fact, this great Celtic funeral was in reality a Jacobite meeting--the dead body having been kept unburied for nearly a month, that an assemblage of Cavalier chiefs might take place, to consider and arrange during the march to the interment and the feast that followed it, the measures to be taken for a rising in favour of the Stuarts.

After maintaining, as already related, a vexatious predatory warfare against Montrose, who long since repented bitterly his injustice to the unfortunate Rob Roy, the MacGregors assembled in such numbers under the latter that they began to threaten the Western Lowlands, towards the lower end of Loch Lomond, from whence, marching into Monteith and the Lennox, they disarmed all whom their leader deemed inimical to the cause of James VIII.

To have complete command of the great sheet of water which lay before his rocky home, Rob seized every boat upon it, and had them drawn overland to Inversnaid, for the purpose of attacking or cutting off a strong body of West country Whigs, who were in arms for King George, and who were marching towards Loch Lomond; for so greatly were the operations of Rob dreaded that the people of Dumbarton supposed he might come upon them in the night to storm the castle and plunder the town.

Exasperated on finding that he had pounced on all their boats, the Whigs resolved to make a bold dash for their recovery.

The volunteers of Paisley, Renfrew, and Kilmarnock, were mustered and armed from the Royal arsenal in the castle of Dumbarton. A body of seamen from the ships of war then lying in the Clyde towed them up the river in long-boats and launches, and on entering Loch Lomond the whole force proceeded by land and water against Rob Roy and the MacGregors.

These forces acted under the orders of Lieutenant-General Lord Cadogan, colonel of the 4th Foot, who had arrived that year in Scotland. At night they halted at Luss, the stronghold of the Colquhouns, the hereditary foemen of Clan Alpine, where they were joined by Sir Humphry Colquhoun, chief of his name (and fifth in succession of him who fled from Glenfruin), with his son-in-law, James Grant of Pluscardine, who brought some forty or fifty men of his clan--"stately fellows," says Rae, in his history of the affair, "in their short hose and belted plaids (_i.e._ kilts), armed each with a well-fixed gun on his shoulder, a handsome target with a sharp-pointed steel about half an ell in length screwed into the navel of it, slung on his left arm, a sturdy claymore by his side, and a pistol or two with a dirk and knife in his belt."

The man-of-war boats, which were armed with brass swivel-guns, took all on board, and then they crossed the loch.

From the high land above Craigrostan MacGregor saw the advance of this force, which was too strong for him to contend against alone; and a stirring sight it must have been, on that beautiful sheet of water--the large boats, full of men in gay scarlet uniforms, their bright arms flashing in the sun; and it would seem, that thinking to scare the Highlanders, they beat incessantly on their drums, while the seamen maintained a constant discharge from their swivel-guns, the reports of which were multiplied among the steep mountains by a thousand echoes, as the whole expedition swept in shore towards Craigrostan.

Rob and his men, who were concealed among the rocks, the heather, and tall braken, high up on the mountain slope, could scarcely be restrained from rushing to the beach and making an attack when they saw the family banner of Sir Humphry, a saltire engrailed sable, crested with a red hart's head, and his followers in their tartan, which is blue striped with red; and each man wore the badge of his name, a tuft of bear-berry in his bonnet.

The union-jack that floated in the stern of each boat seemed but a foreign flag to MacGregor, for never had it waved on these waters before, and the red-coated volunteers he viewed simply as invaders and enemies; yet their strength was too great for him to hope a victory if he opposed them.

"Oich, oich!" muttered MacAleister, and others, as James Grant's boats, with his men in red tartans, appeared; "here come Pluscardine and his kail-eaters"--for being the people who first cultivated that vegetable in the north, they were named "the kail-eating Grants."

As the men began to leap ashore, with fixed bayonets, and form into companies, young Coll MacGregor could no longer restrain his ardour and impatience, and levelled his gun over the rocks, crying--

"A nis! a nis! a nis!" (now, now, now!) "E'en do and spaire nocht!"

"Hold, son of mine!" exclaimed his father, grasping his arm like a vice; "boy, would you destroy us all, and, it may be, with us King James's cause too? Let us await our time, and be assured it will come anon."

And so, seeing that a conflict would be useless, he prudently drew off his men to Strathfillan, where the Jacobite clans were forming a camp, prior to their joining the Earl of Mar; while the invaders of Craigrostan committed to the flames several thatched dwelling-houses, and the smoke of the conflagration, as it rolled along the mountain-slopes, added to the wrath and mortification of Rob and his men, as they retreated up the side of Loch Lomond.

While one party of volunteers pushed on the work of destruction, others searched for the missing boats, which they found far inland, at Inversnaid, and drew from thence to the water. Those which were useless they staved, or sunk, the rest were all conveyed to Dumbarton, where they were safely moored under the guns of the castle. And so ended the first expedition against Rob Roy, a history of which--as if it had been a campaign in a foreign land--was published soon after, in the form of a pamphlet.

Summonses were now issued by Government to all nobles and gentlemen, either in arms or who were suspected of being about to arm, including John, Earl of Mar, and fifty-two others, one of whom is designated as "Robert Roy, _alias_ MacGregor."