soon be surrounded at
Stirling. If Mar had only made a forward movement it is impossible to
say what degree of success he might not have accomplished. It seems
almost marvellous, when we look back and survey the state of things, to
see what a miserable force the Government had to rely upon. In the
whole country they had only about eight thousand men. They had more
men abroad than at home, and in the critical condition of things which
still prevailed upon the Continent, it did not seem clear that they
could, except in the very last extremity, bring home many of the men
whom they kept abroad. Of that little force of eight thousand soldiers
they did not venture to send a considerable proportion up to the North.
They had, perhaps, good reason. They did not know yet where the
serious blow was to be struck for the Stuart cause. Many of George's
counsellors still looked upon the movement in Scotland as something
merely in the nature of a feint. They believed that the real blow
would yet be struck by Ormond in the West of England.

[Sidenote: 1715--Sheriffmuir]

But the evil fortune which hung over the Stuart cause in all its later
days clung to it now. There was no conceivable reason why Mar should
not have marched southward. The forces of the King were few in number,
and were not well placed for the purpose of making any considerable
resistance. But in an enterprise like that of {125} Mar all depends
upon rapidity of movement. What we may call the ultimate resources of
the country were in the hands of the King and his adherents. Every
day's delay enabled them to grow stronger. Every day's delay beyond a
certain time discouraged and weakened the invaders. Mar might, at one
critical moment, have swept Argyll's exhausted troops before him, but
he was feeble and timorous; he dallied; he let the time pass; he
allowed Argyll to get away without making an effort to attack him. It
was then that one of the Gordon clan broke into that memorable
exclamation, "Oh for one hour of Dundee!"--the exclamation which Byron
has paraphrased in the line,

Oh, for one hour of blind old Dandolo!

Certainly one hour of Dundee might, at more than one crisis in this
melancholy struggle, have secured for the time the cause of the
Stuarts, and won for James at least a temporary occupation of the
throne of his ancestors. Mar's little force remained motionless long
enough to allow the Duke of Argyll to get sufficient strength to m