“Then woman’s shriek was heard in vain/Nor infancy’s unpitied plain/More than the warrior’s groan, could gain/Respite from ruthless butchery!” (Sir Walter Scott)

FROM the preceding, you’ll see that, when I say “Glencoe”, I refer to the massacre with which it’s inextricably linked. If you were expecting topography, we could do no worse than quote Thomas Macaulay’s History of, er, England, written more than a century and a half after the massacre of 1692, but still indicating attitudes that preceded it.

“In the Gaelic tongue Glencoe signifies the Glen of Weeping; and in truth that pass is the most dreary and melancholy of all the Scottish passes, the very Valley of the Shadow of Death.

“Mists and storms brood over it through the greater part of the finest summer; and even on those rare days when the sun is bright, and when there is no cloud in the sky, the impression made by the landscape is sad and awful. The path lies along a stream which issues from the most sullen and gloomy of mountain pools. Huge precipices of naked stone frown on both sides.” I see.

The only sound, records the imaginative English Whig historian, is “the faint cry of a bird of prey from some storm-beaten pinnacle of rock”. The progress of civilisation, which had turned other wastes “into fields yellow with harvests or gay with apple blossoms” had made no headway here, a place whose only positive was “the shelter which it afforded to the plunderer and his plunder”.

For the “wild race” of Highlanders, “to rob was thought at least as honourable an employment as to cultivate the soil” and, as the soil of Glen Coe was poor, it was hardly surprising the MacDonalds there were robbers, and that Lord Stair, organiser of the massacre (and later, to a great degree, of the Treaty of Union) “thought it monstrous that a third part of Scotland should be in a state scarcely less savage than New Guinea”.

Well. What do you think of that, people of New Guinea? Today, Glen Coe is deemed beautiful, with the worst horror being heavy traffic of tourist coaches and camper vans.

As for the MacDonalds, cattle-thieving did occur – as it did nearly everywhere there were cattle – but, as was pointed out at the time and after, the picture painted of general lawlessness was a fantasy deployed to justify treachery and massacre, with those in turn motivated by a king who wanted the Highlands militarily pacified so he could send his soldiers to fight for his beloved Holland in the Nine Years’ War on the Continent.

Though Scottish history has not historically been much taught, most of you know that, on 13 February 1692, redcoat soldiers who’d enjoyed the hospitality of their hosts for nearly a fortnight, turned on them in a pre-arranged plan, killing between 30 and 38. The MacDonalds’ crime was that their chief had been late in pledging allegiance to King William of Orange. And they were to be made an example of.

Though William knew little of the Highlands, and approved the plan from Flanders, the aforementioned Stair – Sir John Dalrymple, Secretary of State for Scotland – had written well before the deadline for the oath: “[The] clan Donell must be rooted out …” His intention was to “ … destroy entirely the country of Lochaber, Locheal's lands, Kippochs, Glengarrie and Glenco …”, because “their chieftains all being papists, it is well the vengeance falls there”.

In fact, even allowing for the ethnic cleansing, the Glencoe MacDonalds were Episcopalian-led, though Glengarry was Catholic. As for the oath, a total of £12,000 was to be paid to the Jacobite clan chiefs for swearing it, but the division of that sum proved rancorous, and MacDonald was not the only one who missed the deadline, in his case partly by arrangements being deliberately delayed.

On 1 February 1692, two companies of soldiers from the Earl of Argyll’s Regiment of Foot – around 120 men – arrived in Glencoe. Their commander was Robert Campbell of Glenlyon, an impoverished drunk and gambler who’d taken a commission at nearly 60 to pay off his debts.

He carried orders for “free quarter” from his hosts, whose number included his niece and her husband. On the evening of 12 February, he also received the following orders conveyed by a Captain James Drummond: “You are hereby ordered to fall upon the rebells, the McDonalds of Glenco, and put all to the sword under seventy. You are to have a speciall care that the old Fox and his sones doe upon no account escape your hands, you are to secure all the avenues that no man escape … This is by the Kings speciall command, for the good & safety of the Country, that these miscreants be cutt off root and branch. See that this be putt in execution without feud or favour, else you may expect to be dealt with as one not true to King nor Government …”

Drummond was sent to ensure the orders were enforced, himself shooting two people who had begged Campbell for mercy. The orders were carried out at 5 a.m.. Maciain, the clan chief, was among the first killed. His wife had the rings on her fingers hacked off, and died soon afterwards.

The death toll could have been much higher. However, as the first murders were carried out by gunshot, the noise warned others in the glen to flee, though some were shot in the back. Also, while orders had been given to close off the glen, the troops ordered to do this arrived late.

It’s also thought that Gaels among the soldiery had little enthusiasm for the task and while, partly due to historic enmity, the name Campbell has ever since suffered opprobrium, only about a dozen of the 120 soldiers bore that surname, and some MacDonald tradition suggests Campbell soldiers warned many in good time.

As for Robert Campbell, only obeying orders was never enough to salvage his conscience, and he inadvertently caused news of the atrocity to circulate after leaving his orders in an Edinburgh bar. He died in poverty, in Bruges in 1696, and was buried in an unmarked grave.