Glencoe Massacre

“ GLENCOE, MASSACRE OF.—The McDonalds of Glencoe, were cruelly massacred, May 9th, 1691, merely for not surrendering in time after King William’s proclamation perpetrated by the Earl of Argyle’s regiment. 38 men besides women and children perished.
GOOJERAT, BATTLE OF.—India.—Fought February 21st, 1849. Lord Gough with 21,000 men and 100 guns attacked the enemy, numbering 60,000 men, with 59 guns. ”

“ How congenial to such scenes are the deep solitude and stillness that reigns here! In the Glen of the massacre especially, the ruined walls, and cottages destroyed, and the absence of the once cheerful population, tell, without language, a tale of death and destruction, on which silence and desolation are the heart-touching comments! I could apply to Glencoe, with justice, the description “beauty in the lap of horror!” ”

“ Even the sanctuary of churches was not to be respected: "in a word," says Lord Lovat's Manifesto, "history, sacred or profane, cannot produce an order so pregnant with such unexampled cruelty as this sentence, which is carefully preserved in the house of Lovat, to the eternal confusion and infamy of those who signed it." [153] The [Pg 245] Government which sanctioned the massacre of Glencoe was perfectly capable of issuing a proclamation which confounded the innocent with the guilty, and punished before trial.
The Master of Lovat assembled his clan. ”

“ The freedmen are trodden down, and the land is filled with tragedies. History stands aghast at the Massacre of Glencoe in a retired Scotch valley, and our sympathies overflow at the murder of a solitary traveller by the merciless Indian ”

“ The massacre of Glencoe operated in some respects favourably, after the tragedy had been completed, upon the circumstances of the Jacobites. Terrified at the odium incurred, a more lenient spirit was henceforth shown to them by Government. Many persons were exempted from taking the oaths, and were allowed to remain in their houses. Early in the year 1792, Sir John Maclean took advantage of this favourable turn of affairs, and, after obtaining permission through the influence of Argyle, and placing the castle of Duart under that nobleman's control, he went to England. ”

“ The part which Sir Ewan Dhu had taken in the action at Killicrankie would, it was naturally supposed, draw down upon him the vengeance of those who visited with massacre the neighbouring valley of Glencoe. The forbearance of Government can only be accounted for by the supposition that King William, with his usual penetration, decreed it safer to conciliate, than to attempt to crush a clan which was connected by marriage with the most powerful of the Highland chieftains. ”

“ Campbell of Glenlyon, a captain in Argyll’s regiment, and two subalterns, were ordered to repair to Glencoe on the first of February with a hundred and twenty men. Campbell being uncle to young Macdonald’s wife, was received by the father with all manner of friendship and hospitality. The men were lodged at free quarters in the houses of his tenants, and received the kindest entertainment. Till the 13th of the month the troops lived in the utmost harmony and familiarity with the people, and on the very night of the massacre the officers passed the evening at cards in Macdonald’s house. ”

“ See Cawnpore and Delhi.
SLAUGHTER or MASSACRE OF GLENCOE.—This barbarous and diabolical massacre, which, at the time of its commission, excited universal and heartfelt indignation, took place in February, 1692. About the middle of 1691, “as the Highlanders were not yet totally subdued, the Earl of Breadalbane undertook to bring them over by distributing sums of money among their chiefs; and £15,000 were accordingly remitted from England for that purpose. The clans being informed of this, suspected that the Earl’s design was to appropriate to himself the best part of the money ”

“ Massacre of Glencoe, Scotland. King William, whose chief virtue was not humanity, signed and countersigned the warrant, which was transmitted to the secretary for Scotland, who particularly charged the ministers of destruction to take no prisoners. The population was barbarously massacred, and the spot disemboweled of every social appearance.
1718. Ashton Lever died at Manchester, England. He was a collector of specimens in natural history, and possessed one of the finest museums in the world.
1750. The Student, a paper of much merit, issued at Oxford, England, appeared this day. ”

“ Perimendus est omnis sexus virilis. Occidendus est quicunque maledixit. Occidendus est quicunque male voluit. Lacera. Occide. Concide."
[235] What I have called the Whig version of the story is given, as well as the Jacobite version, in the Paris Gazette of April 7. 1692.
[236] I believe that the circumstances which give so peculiar a character of atrocity to the Massacre of Glencoe were first published in print by Charles Leslie in the Appendix to his answer to King. The date of Leslie's answer is 1692. ”

“ From the night of the massacre of Glencoe, Glenlyon, as Macaulay tells us, was never again the man that he had been before that night. The form of his countenance was changed; and “in all places, at all hours, whether he waked or slept, Glencoe was for ever before him.” As with a distinguished foreigner of a later generation, Depuis ce moment, point de sommeil, point de repos; il croyait toujours voir un glaive arrêté sur sa tête. In such cases, the sleepers start from broken slumbers, as if starting back from the edge of a precipice; for,—
“Their whole tranquillity of heart is gone ”

“ The case of Glencoe was, doubtless, an extreme case; but it cannot easily be distinguished in principle from cases which, in war, are of ordinary occurrence. Very terrible military executions are sometimes indispensable. Humanity itself may require them. Who then is to decide whether there be an emergency such as makes severity the truest mercy? Who is to determine whether it be or be not necessary to lay a thriving town in ashes, to decimate a large body of mutineers, to shoot a whole gang of banditti? ”

“ Glenlyon, it was said, had been sent with a detachment from Argyle's regiment, under cover of darkness, to surprise the inhabitants of Glencoe, and had killed thirty-six men and boys and four women. 235 In this there was nothing very strange or shocking. A night attack on a gang of freebooters occupying a strong natural fortress may be a perfectly legitimate military operation; and, in the obscurity and confusion of such an attack, the most humane man may be so unfortunate as to shoot a woman or a child. ”

“ At five in the morning, though Hamilton had not arrived, the bloodthirsty Glenlyon commenced the massacre by murdering his host and all his family. Lindsay did the same by his host, old Mac Ian and his family; and Barbour shot down his host and family in the same manner. Then the soldiers at every hut imitated their example, and speedily there was a hewing and shooting down of victims flying from the huts to the defiles for escape. Men, women, children, pleading most piteously, were ruthlessly murdered. ”

“ As to this massacre, God forbid that I should say a single word in defense of it! As a white man and a Christian, I feel it is an act of horrible atrocity; but it should not make such an impression upon your people, who make wars solely to obtain victims, whom they may sacrifice at the altars of their gods; and who, every year, slay in cold blood fully twenty-five thousand people who have done them no wrong. By the side of such horrible slaughter as this, the murder of six hundred, the other day, was but a drop in the ocean of blood annually shed here. ”

“ No wonder though the actors in the tragedy felt, in their dire experience afterwards, that the infatuation of crime dissolves the moment it is perpetrated; that Breadalbane sought the sons of the murdered MacIan to gain impunity for himself by signing a document declaring him guiltless; that Glencoe haunted the couch and clouded the countenance, and shortened the days of Glenlyon. Hamilton apparently felt no remorse, and his only regret was that any had escaped, and that a colossal crime had been truncated by some colossal blunders. ”

“ The wildest rumors flew from parched tongue to throbbing ear.
An army of a hundred thousand fresh troops had fallen on their tired, bloody ranks. They were led by Jeb Stuart at the head of four thousand Black Horse Cavalry. If a single man escaped alive it would be for one reason, only they could outrun them. It was a crime for officers to try to round them up for a massacre. That's all it was—a massacre! With each mad thought of the rushing mob the panic grew. They cut the traces of horses from guns and left them on the field. ”

“ The garrison of the bank saw many Europeans, hurrying, too late, to reach that shelter, murdered before their eyes. In the Levantine quarter, the cracking of pistols and the shouts of men showed that the work of massacre was proceeding there. Soon every door of the houses in the great square was forced in, and ere long great numbers of men, loaded with spoil of all kinds, staggered out. ”

“ The Massacre of Glenco, being a true narrative of the barbarous murder of Glenco-men in the Highlands of Scotland, by way of military execution, on 13 Feb. 1692; containing the Commission under the Great Seal of Scotland for making an Enquiry into the Horrid Murder, the Proceedings of the Parliament of Scotland upon it, the Report of the Commissioners upon the Enquiry laid before the King and Parliament, and the address of the Parliament to King William for Justice on the Murderers ”

“ The Red men were like incarnate fiends, and, amid groans, yells, prayers, and entreaties, were seen on their knees in frenzy, drinking blood from the spouting veins and bleeding scalps of their victims. The combat was a mere massacre, and seemed as if all hell had burst its gates and held jubilee in that wild forest of the savage West. The Provincials were destroyed. Grant, with nineteen officers, fell into the hands of the French ”

“ In a little address at Baltimore, while referring to the rumor of the massacre which had just been received, Mr. Lincoln said:
"We do not to-day know that a colored soldier, or white officer commanding colored soldiers, has been massacred by the rebels when made a prisoner. We fear it, believe it, I may say, but we do not know it. To take the life of one of their prisoners on the assumption that they murder ours, when it is short of certainty that they do murder ours, might be too serious, too cruel, a mistake." ”

“ In vain did they shriek to the national guard for aid: the city hears the massacre without daring to give any signs of animation. The daring of the crime chilled and paralysed every citizen. The murderers preluded the death of the females by derision [Pg 325] and insults which added shame to terror, and the agonies of modesty to the pangs of murder. When there were no more to be slain they mutilated the carcases, and swept the blood into the sewer of the palace. They dragged the mutilated corpses to La Glacière, walled them up, and the vengeance of the people was stamped upon them. ”

“ We may spare ourselves the pain of relating the horrors of the September massacre, when, for more than four days, gangs of men worse than devils, and of women unsexed by profligacy and cruelty till they had become worse even than the men, gave themselves up to the work of indiscriminate slaughter, deluging the streets with blood, and where they could spare time, aggravating the pangs of death by superfluous tortures. ”

“ They can only say that the work of massacre was pursued with a cowardly ferocity unsurpassed in the annals of crime. Escaping negroes were mercilessly pursued, shot, stabbed, and beaten to death by the mob and police. Wounded men on the ground begging for mercy were savagely despatched by mob, police, firemen, and, incredible as it may seem, in two instances by women; but, in two or three most honorable and exceptionable cases, white men and members of the Convention were protected by members of the police, both against the mob, and against other policemen. ”

“ To our surprise and dismay we found that the massacre of Wednesday, which might have been explained though certainly not excused on the ground of excitement in the heat of battle, the flush of victory, and the knowledge of dead comrades 599mutilated, was being continued in cold blood now. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were spent by the soldiery in murder and pillage from dawn to dark, in mutilation, in every conceivable kind of nameless atrocity, until the town became a ghastly Inferno to be remembered with a fearsome shudder until one’s dying day. ”

“ Sixteen years after the Conestoga massacre came that of Gnadenhütten, the blackest crime on the long list; a massacre whose equal for treachery and cruelty cannot be pointed out in the record of massacres of whites by Indians. ”

“ It seemed that nothing could prevent the people from dragging their victim into the street; Inglesant felt his blood turn cold, fully expecting to see the massacre performed before his eyes; but before the people could open the door, which seemed fastened on the inside, the guard rallied, and by the free use of their halberds and short swords recovered the coach, and drove back the mob. ”

“ It was impossible, and they were simply slaughtered where they stood, only one man of the whole regiment escaping to tell the story.”
“That was a terrible massacre indeed,” Malcolm said. “I have read of a good many surprises and slaughters in our Scottish history, but never of such complete destruction as that only one man out of 900 should escape. And was the slaughter never avenged?”
“No,” Munro replied. ”