Читать книгу An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America - J. P. Maclean - Страница 23

During the year 1547, the English, under the duke of Somerset, invaded Scotland. The hostile armies came together at Pinkie, September 18th. The right and left wings of the Scottish army were composed of Highlanders. During the conflict the Highlanders could not resist the temptation to plunder, and, while thus engaged, saw the division of Angus falling back, though in good order; mistaking this retrograde movement for a flight, they were suddenly seized with a panic and ran off in all directions. Their terror was communicated to other troops, who immediately threw away their arms and followed the Highlanders. Everything was now lost; the ground over which the fight lay was as thickly strewed with pikes as a floor with rushes; helmets, bucklers, swords, daggers, and steel caps lay scattered on every side; and the chase beginning at one o'clock, continued till six in the evening with extraordinary slaughter.

During the reign of Charles I. civil commotions broke out which shook the kingdom with great violence. The Scots were courted by king and parliament alike. The Highlanders were devoted to the royal government. In the year 1644 Montrose made a diversion in the Highlands. With dazzling rapacity, at first only supported by a handful of followers, but gathering numbers with success, he erected the royal standard at Dumfries. The clans obeyed his summons, and on September 1st, at Tippermuir, he defeated the Covenanters, and again on the 12th at the Bridge of Dee. On February 2nd, 1645, at Inverlochy, he crushed the Argyle Campbells, who had taken up the sword on behalf of Cromwell. In rapid succession other victories were won at Auldearn, Alford and Kilsyth. All Scotland now appeared to be recovered for Charles, but the fruit of all these victories was lost by the defeat at Philiphaugh, September 13th, 1645.

Within the brief space of three years. James II., of England, succeeded in fanning the revolutionary elements both in England and Scotland into a flame which he was powerless to quench. The Highlanders chiefly adhered to the party of James which received the name of Jacobites. Dundee hastened to the Highlands and around him gathered the Highland chiefs at Lochabar. The army of William, under Hugh Mackay, met the forces of Dundee at Killiecrankie, July 29th, 1689, where, under the spirited leadership of the latter, and the irresistible torrent of the Highland charge, the forces of the former were almost annihilated; but at the moment of victory Bonnie Dundee was killed by a bullet. No one was left who was equal to the occasion, or who could hold the clans together, and hence the victory was in reality a defeat.

The exiled Stuarts looked with a longing eye to that crown which their stupid folly had forfeited. They seemed fated to bring countless woes upon the loyal hearted, brave, self-sacrificing Highlanders, and were ever eager to take advantage of any circumstance that might lead to their restoration. The accession of George I, in 1714, was an unhappy event for Great Britain. Discontent soon pervaded the kingdom. All he appeared to care about was to secure for himself and his family a high position, which he scarcely knew how to occupy: to fill the pockets of his German attendants and his German mistresses; to get away as often as possible from his uncongenial islanders whose language he did not understand, and to use the strength of Great Britain to obtain petty advantages for his German principality. At once the new king exhibited violent prejudices against some of the chief men of the nation, and irritated without a cause a large part of his subjects. Some believed it was a favorable opportunity to reinstate the Stuart dynasty. John Erskine, eleventh earl of Mar, stung by studied and unprovoked insults, on the part of the king, proceeded to the Highlands and placed himself at the head of the forces of the house of Stuart, or Jacobites, as they were called. On September 6, 1715, Mar assembled at Aboyne the noblemen, chiefs of clans, gentlemen, and others, with such followers as could be brought together, and proclaimed James, king of Great Britain. The insurrection, both in England and Scotland, began to grow in popularity, and would have been a success had there been at the head of affairs a strong military man. Nearly all the principal chiefs of the clans were drawn into the movement. At Sheriffmuir, the contending forces met, Sunday, November 13, 1715. The victory was with the Highlanders, but Mar's military talents were not equal to the occasion. The army was finally disbanded at Aberdeen, in February, 1716.

The rebellion of 1745, headed by prince Charles Stuart, was the grandest exhibition of chivalry, on the part of the Highlanders, that the world has ever seen. They were actuated by an exalted sense of devotion to that family, which for generations, they had been taught should reign over them. At first victory crowned their efforts, but all was lost on the disastrous field of Culloden, fought April 16, 1746.

Were it possible it would be an unspeakable pleasure to drop a veil over the scene, at the close of the battle of Culloden. Language fails to depict the horrors that ensued. It is scarcely within the bounds of belief that human beings could perpetrate such atrocities upon the helpless, the feeble, and the innocent, without regard to sex or age, as followed in the wake of the victors. Highland historians have made the facts known. It must suffice here to give a moderate statement from an English writer:

"Quarter was seldom given to the stragglers and fugitives, except to a few considerately reserved for public execution. No care or compassion was shown to their wounded; nay more, on the following day most of these were put to death in cold blood, with a cruelty such as never perhaps before or since has disgraced a British army. Some were dragged from the thickets or cabins where they had sought refuge, drawn out in line and shot, while others were dispatched by the soldiers with the stocks of their muskets. One farm-building, into which some twenty disabled Highlanders had crawled, was deliberately set on fire the next day, and burnt with them to the ground. The native prisoners were scarcely better treated; and even sufficient water was not vouchsafed to their thirst. **** Every kind of havoc and outrage was not only permitted, but, I fear, we must add, encouraged. Military license usurped the place of law, and a fierce and exasperated soldiery were at once judge—jury—executioner. **** The rebels' country was laid waste, the houses plundered, the cabins burnt, the cattle driven away. The men had fled to the mountains, but such as could be found were frequently shot; nor was mercy always granted even to their helpless families. In many cases the women and children, expelled from their homes and seeking shelter in the clefts of the rocks, miserably perished of cold and hunger: others were reduced to follow the track of the marauders, humbly imploring for the blood and offal of their own cattle which had been slaughtered for the soldiers' food! Such is the avowal which historical justice demands. But let me turn from further details of these painful and irritating scenes, or of the ribald frolics and revelry with which they were intermingled—races of naked women on horseback for the amusement of the camp at Fort Augustus."[3]

The author and abettor of these atrocities was the son of the reigning monarch.

Not satisfied with the destruction which was carried into the very homes of this gallant, brave and generous race of people, the British parliament, with a refined cruelty, passed an act that, on and after August 1, 1747, any person, man, or boy, in Scotland, who should on any pretense whatever wear any part of the Highland garb, should be imprisoned not less than six months; and on conviction of second offense, transportation abroad for seven years. The soldiers had instructions to shoot upon the spot any one seen wearing the Highland garb, and this as late as September, 1750. This law and other laws made at the same time were unnecessarily severe.

However impartial or fair a traveller may be his statements are not to be accepted without due caution. He narrates that which most forcibly attracts his attention, being ever careful to search out that which he desires. Yet, to a certain extent, dependence must be placed in his observations. From certain travellers are gleaned fearful pictures of the Highlanders during the eighteenth century, written without a due consideration of the underlying causes. The power of the chiefs had been weakened, while the law was still impotent, many of them were in exile and their estates forfeited, and landlords, in not a few instances, placed over the clansmen, who were inimical to their best interests. As has been noticed, in 1746 the country was ravaged and pitiless oppression followed. Destruction and misery everywhere abounded. To judge a former condition of a people by their present extremity affords a distorted view of the picture.

Fire and sword, war and rapine, desolation and atrocity, perpetrated upon a high-spirited and generous people, cannot conduce to the best moral condition. Left in poverty and galled by outrage, wrongs will be resorted to which otherwise would be foreign to a natural disposition. If the influences of a more refined age had not penetrated the remote glens, then a rougher reprisal must be expected. The coarseness, vice, rapacity, and inhumanity of the oppressor must of necessity have a corresponding influence on their better natures. If to this it be added that some of the chiefs were naturally fierce, the origin of the sad features could readily be determined. Whatever vices practiced or wrongs perpetrated, the example was set before them by their more powerful and better conditioned neighbors. Among the crimes enumerated is that some of the chiefs increased their scanty incomes by kidnapping boys or men, whom they sold as slaves to the American planters. If this be true, and in all probability it was, there must have been confederates engaged in maritime pursuits. But they did not have far to go for this lesson, for this nefarious trade was taught them, at their very doors, by the merchants of Aberdeen, who were "noted for a scandalous system of decoying young boys from the country and selling them as slaves to the planters in Virginia. It was a trade which in the early part of the eighteenth century, was carried on to a considerable extent through the Highlands; and a case which took place about 1742 attracted much notice a few years later, when one of the victims having escaped from servitude, returned to Aberdeen, and published a narrative of his sufferings, seriously implicating some of the magistracy of the town. He was prosecuted and condemned for libel by the local authorities, but the case was afterwards carried to Edinburgh. The iniquitous system of kidnapping was fully exposed, and the judges of the supreme court unanimously reversed the verdict of the Aberdeen authorities and imposed a heavy fine upon the provost, the four bailies, and the dean of guild. *** An atrocious case of this kind, which shows clearly the state of the Highlands, occurred in 1739. Nearly one hundred men, women and children were seized in the dead of night on the islands of Skye and Harris, pinioned, horribly beaten, and stowed away in a ship bound for America, in order to be sold to the planters. Fortunately the ship touched at Donaghadee in Ireland, and the prisoners, after undergoing the most frightful sufferings, succeeded in escaping."[4]

Under existing circumstances it was but natural that the more enterprising, and especially that intelligent portion who had lost their heritable jurisdiction, should turn with longing eyes to another country. America offered the most inviting asylum. Although there was some emigration to America during the first half of the eighteenth century, yet it did not fairly set in until about 1760. Between the years 1763 and 1775 over twenty thousand Highlanders left their homes to seek a better retreat in the forests of America.