Battle of Killiecrankie

Background

In the Glorious Revolution James VII and II went into exile in December 1688. A Convention in Edinburgh, dominated by the new regime's supporters, offered the Scottish crown to William and Mary on 11 April 1689. John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee, a veteran of the campaigns against the Covenanters, raised King James's standard on Dundee Law that April. The Scottish rising was meant to support James's war in Ireland, and both were minor theatres of the European conflict known as the Nine Years' War, under which CDB90 files the battle as King William's War.

Dundee joined Ewen Cameron of Lochiel at Glenroy and in May led about 1,800 Highlanders against Major-General Hugh Mackay, the government commander, without bringing him to battle. By June most of the clansmen had gone home, Edinburgh Castle had surrendered and James's court in Ireland sent only some 300 Irish under Alexander Cannon, who landed near Duart Castle on 21 July.

The campaign then turned on Blair Castle in Atholl, which controlled the road from the Highlands into the Lowlands. The Marquess of Atholl had gone to England; his steward, Patrick Stewart of Ballechin, held the castle for James, while Atholl's son, Lord John Murray, besieged it for William. As Jacobite reinforcements came in, Murray drew off and Mackay marched north from Perth to relieve him. Dundee set out to meet him, calling on the clans to follow with all haste. Lochiel reached Blair on 26 July with his Camerons and Cannon's Irish. Between Blair and Mackay lay the Pass of Killiecrankie, a two-mile defile of the River Garry on the main road from Perth to Inverness.

The armies

Mackay's army was a Scottish government force, though not a homogeneous one. Its core was a battalion from each of the three Scots regiments of the Dutch service, Balfour's, Ramsay's and Mackay's own; but, as Mackay complained, they were mostly new men, since King William had taken their best and oldest soldiers to recruit the Dutch regiments in England. With them marched the new Scottish regiments of Viscount Kenmure and the Earl of Leven, part of Ferdinando Hastings' English regiment, Lord Belhaven's and the Earl of Annandale's troops of horse, about 100 men, and three light leather guns carried on horseback. Mackay admitted that none of his officers or men understood the Highland way of fighting. The Battlefields Trust calls this the first battle in Britain where the infantry all carried muskets with plug bayonets in place of pikes, though Mackay mentions pikemen in his own battalion and in Hastings'. The plug bayonet fitted into the muzzle, and once fixed the musket could not be fired.

Dundee's army was about 2,400 strong: clan regiments under their chiefs, among them Lochiel's Camerons, the MacDonalds of Sleat and Glengarry and the Macleans under Sir Alexander Maclean, with Cannon's Irish and about 40 horse, many of them gentlemen and former officers. Mackay described their method precisely: advance slowly to musket range, fire one ragged volley, throw down the firelocks and run in with broadsword and targe.

The battle

The approach (morning to late afternoon, 27 July). Mackay broke camp at dawn, reached the southern end of the pass, eleven miles on, at about ten o'clock and rested his men for two hours while Lieutenant-Colonel Lawder's 200 fusiliers scouted. Told the pass was clear, he marched through it with Balfour's, Ramsay's and Kenmure's battalions leading, then Belhaven's troop, Leven's regiment and Mackay's own battalion. Then came about 1,200 baggage horses, guarded by Hastings' and Annandale's troop. Beyond the pass it halted on a cornfield by the river.

The race for the slope. Lawder reported Jacobite parties appearing between the army and Blair. Mackay rode forward, saw Highlanders coming down a hill a quarter of a mile away and, fearing they would seize the wooded rise above his halted column and drive it into the river, had each battalion make a quarter-turn to the right and climb straight up the slope to a terrace. He won that ground, but Dundee already held a higher shelf within musket shot, with the mountain behind him. Sources disagree here: Mackay says the Highlanders held the high ground first; MacBane and the Lochiel memoirs say Mackay was deployed and waiting.

The standoff (about two hours). Mackay formed a single line about 1,500 metres long, three deep instead of six to widen his front, each battalion split in two with small intervals and a larger gap in the centre for the horse. Lawder held the far left on a wooded knoll, with Balfour's and Ramsay's next to him; boggy ground separated this wing from the right, where Kenmure's, Leven's, Mackay's own and, last, Hastings' stood. When the Highlanders seemed to overlap his right, Mackay sidestepped the whole line towards the pass. The leather guns broke their carriages on the third round. Jacobite marksmen in houses on the slope (Camerons, says the Lochiel account) harried the line until Mackay's brother sent a captain and some firelocks to clear them out. Dundee waited, reportedly so that the setting sun would no longer be in his men's eyes.

The charge (shortly after 8 p.m.). About half an hour before sunset the Jacobites came down in three bodies. Mackay's battalions were to fire by platoons from 100 paces. On the right the MacDonalds took heavy losses from Mackay's own battalion and Leven's, but fired once, dropped their muskets and closed with the sword. Mackay ordered Belhaven's troop out to take them in the flank; the horse fired in confusion and turned back, and Kenmure's and half of Leven's went with them. Mackay rode clean through the Highlanders with a single servant. On the left the line went 'in the twinkling of an eye': by Mackay's account Balfour's did not fire a shot and half of Ramsay's fired a little before running down to the river and the baggage. Balfour was killed trying to rally a few men, and Lieutenant-Colonel James Mackay fell with the pikemen of the general's battalion. It was over in under an hour.

Dundee's death. Leading his 40 horse against Leven's, Dundee was hit by a musket ball and died soon afterwards. HES puts the wound under his arm; another account, from his stripped body, has him shot through the head. The story that a sniper in Urrard House killed him lacks evidence.

The retreat (after sunset). Mackay found Leven's, with the Earl and his officers, and part of Hastings', which had wheeled its pikes on a party trying to take it in flank. The Highlanders were plundering the baggage, though the Lochiel account says they found it only next morning and stopped from exhaustion. In the dusk Mackay saw Highlanders forming along the wood on his old left and led the survivors quietly down across the Garry, then through the hills towards Stirling. One fugitive, Donald MacBane, later claimed to have jumped the Garry gorge at what is now the Soldier's Leap.

Aftermath

The government army lost perhaps 2,000 killed, wounded, captured and missing, as much as half its strength; Mackay wrote that most of the slaughter and capture happened in the chase. The Jacobites lost 600-800, up to a third of their army, many of them gentlemen of the MacDonalds.

The victory was Pyrrhic. Dundee's death left the rising without a leader of his standing. Cannon, who took command, had no siege train or cavalry, and many Highlanders went home with their plunder. On 21 August his attack on Dunkeld was beaten off, and the campaign ended. Mackay built a new base at Fort William, and the rising's last army was surprised at Cromdale on 1 May 1690. Mackay drew his own lesson, devising a bayonet fixed outside the muzzle by rings so that men could fire and then charge; HES notes the socket bayonet was not his invention.

Dundee lies at St Bride's kirk, Old Blair. The battle became 'Bonnie Dundee' romance in the hands of Walter Scott. On the ground, the Claverhouse Stone is a prehistoric standing stone, Dundee's Mound is probably a later garden feature, and the Soldier's Leap, now in National Trust for Scotland care, is a jump of about 5 m that HES calls improbable. Surveys in 2003 and 2015 found buttons, musket and pistol balls and a grenade fragment, showing where the close fighting was heaviest. The site is on the Inventory of Historic Battlefields.

Wargaming it

Killiecrankie is small and short: about 2,400 Highlanders against perhaps 3,500-4,000 government troops, decided in under an hour. It suits battalion-level rules on a single table, one unit per clan regiment or half-battalion, or a skirmish game for the fight around the houses. The table is a slope: river and baggage at the bottom, Mackay's terrace in the middle, Dundee's shelf and the mountain at the top, with the wooded knoll on the government left and boggy ground splitting the line.

The scenario can start at the cornfield, with the government player choosing whether to climb, cross the river or hold the flat ground, or at the terrace for a straight test of the Highland charge. Rules need Highland units that take casualties from platoon fire as they close and then hit very hard, a firing sequence in which fixing plug bayonets ends a unit's shooting, and fragile raw battalions next to steadier ones. Timing matters: a fading-light rule, and a Jacobite incentive to wait for the sun, give the standoff some tension rather than making it a pause.

The 'what ifs' are strong ones: Mackay attacking up the hill or retiring across the Garry; Belhaven's troop pressing its flank attack; the leather guns standing up to firing; Dundee surviving to lead a pursuit; and the six troops of horse and dragoons expected from Perth arriving in time.

Maps and pictures