LESSONS IN GERMAN. 



117 



rejoiced at the prospect of being able to make an example, and 



:-!H of Breadalbane and Argyll, with whom Mao Ian wan 



ut private war, rejoiced at the prospect of taking a bloody 



.'. The intelligence of Mao lan's submission was a blow 



to nil three, and they cast about how they might fend it off. 



In :m age when persons arraigned on criminal charges were 

 condfiimrd to death on failure to sustain some technical ob- 

 . to the indictment, it ia not surprising to find that even a 

 Secretary of State should take advantage of an informality in 

 order to press matters against an inveterately hated antagonist 

 Substantially, of course, it made no difference whatever, whether 

 submission was made on the Slat of December or on the 6th of 

 the following January, and the attempt made by Mac Ian on 

 the earlier date might well be taken to show the animus with 

 which he acted on the latter. But this was not the way in 

 which the Secretary looked at the case. He desired a loophole 

 out of which he might fling Mac Ian and his people, and ho 

 found it in the fact that Mao Ian had not surrendered by the 

 prescribed day. He knew it would be fatal to his purpose to 

 furnish the king with all the information he himself had, and in 

 speaking on the subject, the Master of Stair suppressed the 

 evidence that Mao Ian had, though tardily, given in his alle- 

 giance. In those days news was slow in travelling, and the 

 royal pleasure was taken as if the Macdonalds of Glencoe were 

 still contumacious ; but the royal pleasure seems to have been, 

 even then, that the outlaws should but be repressed with a 

 strong hand, their valley occupied, and examples made of such 

 as should be guilty of flagrant breaches of the public peace. 

 Certainly there is not any warrant for supposing that King 1 

 William or his other ministers were at any time privy to the 

 plan which the Master of Stair was maturing in his brain. To 

 him it was a source of deep regret that any of the clans had 

 submitted. He had hoped to make a clean sweep of them all. 

 The Macdonalds of Glencoe he determined should not escape. 

 So the order quoted at the beginning of this sketch was sent 

 down to the Commander of the Forces, and the Master of 

 Stair wrote full and particular instructions to explain how this 

 generally-worded order was to be carried out. 



With zealous care the Secretary of State and his friends, 

 Breadalbane and Argyll, studied the geography of Glencoe, and 

 took the necessary measures to bar the ways out of it when 

 once the Macdonalds should become fugitives. The chiefs 

 beyond the passes from Glencoe were secured by promises, by 

 appeals to their hatred and their interest ; and when this was 

 done, the conspirators proceeded to devise a scheme by which 

 they might fall on the Macdonalds unawares, and slay them all, 

 men, women, and children. The season was winter, and the 

 Master of Stair reckoned on its help to finish his work, if per- 

 adventure any of his prey should escape to the wood or the 

 thicket. The plot was laid with devilish cunning. 



Lieutenant-Colonel Hamilton, second in command to Colonel 

 Hill, of Fort William, was selected as the military executioner. 

 Hill waa reckoned too humane, too squeamish, to undertake 

 such a business, and he waa simply ordered to place a strong 

 detachment under his junior's command. " Better not meddle 

 with them than meddle to no purpose. When the thing is 

 resolved, let it be secret and sudden." These were the Secre- 

 tary's instructions to Hamilton, whoae brain readily thought of 

 a method for strictly obeying them. 



A hundred and twenty men were chosen from a regiment 

 lately raised by the Earl of Argyll, and therefore for clan 

 reasons deadly opposed to the Macdonalda ; they were pnt 

 under the command of a Captain Campbell, commonly called 

 Glenlyon, whose niece was married to the second son of Mac 

 Ian, and were marched on the 1st of February, 1692, to Glencoe. 

 The fears of the clansmen were allayed by the king's officers, 

 who assured them they came but as friends, and that all they 

 wanted were food and quarters. These were accorded cheer- 

 fully, the men were distributed through the community, the 

 officers were lodged with the chief's kinsman ; Highland hospi- 

 tality was largely extended to men who came as travellers and 

 friends, and Mac Ian little thought the advent of his guests 

 waa in any way connected with his tardy journey to Inverary. 



All went happily for nearly a fortnight, Glenlyon and Lindsay 

 were treated like members of Mao lan's own family, and there 

 vraa no hint in the conduct of the officers of the danger that 

 was threatening their hosts. Yet all the while Glenlyon was 

 secretly informing Hamilton of what he saw, and receiving his 



instruction* in return. ThoM instruction*, th ftnal ImliiiuUiius. * 

 were to begin operations at 8 a.m. oo the 18th of February, ard 

 to kill every Macdonald in Glenooe under the age of seventy. 

 Hamilton intended to come with 400 men for Ue purpose 

 of cutting off fugitives, bat in any case Glenlyon was to fall oa 

 at the time and date agreed. 



There was not any suspicion of guest* who wet* eating " 

 drinking at the clansmen's tables, sleeping in their hots. Mid 

 interchanging the offices of friendship with them, until a few 

 hours before the massacre began, and then the wwpiaioa* of 

 John Macdonald, son of Mao Ian, were allayed as soon as 

 aroused by the assurances of Lindsay, that they were only about 

 to march against the Glengarry men, who bad been giving BOOM 

 trouble. Sharp at five o'clock, Glenlyon began the work by 

 shooting his host and family, and then the fiendish slaughter went 

 on all through Glencoe. Mac Ian was shot through the head, hi* 

 wife was so maltreated that she died next day, and the chiefs 

 sons had a hairbreadth escape, having only time to fly ere the 

 human bloodhounds cou.d come upon them. The rattle of 

 musketry mingled grimly with the groans of the dying and 

 the shrieks of the wounded, and the red glare of the burning 

 houses for the soldiers set fire to the dwellings which had 

 sheltered them lighted the way to the destruction which waa 

 meant to be universal. But Hamilton was delayed on the 

 road, and did not appear in time ; Glenlyon's men bungled at 

 their work, and the result waa that at least half of the people 

 escaped. When Hamilton came he found the work unfinished, 

 and though he committed a few more cold-blooded murders by 

 way of wreaking vengeance, he was unable to follow the balk of 

 the fugitives into the fastnesses which were known only to them. 



It was a long time before the truth leaked out. The perpe- 

 trators of the massacre kept the thing quiet, and the surviving 

 sufferers by it were not in a position to make themselves heard. 

 Humour, then revelations by men in their cups, then the com- 

 plaint of Mac laii's sons, gradually brought the affair at Glencoe 

 into prominence. The story was disbelieved at first, as being 

 simply impossible ; but fresh facts continued to present them- 

 selves till the mass of evidence became enormous, and there wa* 

 a cry all over Scotland for an inquiry into the circumstances 

 attendant on the slaughter of the Macdonalds of Glenooe. The 

 Scottish Parliament took the matter in hand, and King William 

 was at length obliged, for the honour of his Government, tc 

 order an inquiry by a commission. 



The result of the inquiry was to fix the entire guilt of the 

 massacre upon the Master of Stair, whose letters and paper* of 

 instructions were produced. The subordinates, Hamilton, Glen- 

 lyon, Lindsay, and some more, were voted by the Parliament to 

 be murderers, and they fled for their lives before the request of 

 the Estates that they might be prosecuted for their crimes. For 

 the Master of Stair, the Estates left him to the judgment of the 

 king, his master, whom they voted to have had no know- 

 ledge of what the Master intended, and whose letter to the 

 commander of the troops they declared was not capable of the 

 interpretation pnt upon it by the Secretary. The king simply 

 dismissed the Master of Stair from his poets, and refused to 

 prosecute him for the murder ; and finding that so many person* 

 were implicated in the affair, and that it would be inconvenient 

 to prosecute them all, while he could not punish a few only 

 where all were guilty, proclaimed soon afterwards a general 

 amnesty. For the actual participators in the massacre of 

 Glencoe, the only punishment that was inflicted upon them was 

 thai described by Macaulay, the punishment " which made Cain 

 cry out that it was greater than he could bear ; to be vagabond* 

 on the face of the earth, and to carry wherever they went a 

 mark from which even bad men should tarn away nek with 

 horror." 



LESSONS IN GERMAN. XXVEL 



SECTION LI. VEEBS REQUIRING THE DATIVE OB 

 ACCUSATIVE. 



SOME verbs govern the dative or accusative, according to their 

 signification, as : 9aj5 mir tint von trintn $ucbtrn. leave me one of 

 your books. Sap mtcb )mh 9Bortt mil tcmcr i'.'uittr frrrcfcrn. let me 

 speak two words with your mother. <?r Mrmmi ta (felt, be fete 

 the money. Tirft Croft btfcmmt mic nu$r, this food does not 

 agree with me. 



