evacuated without any proper
measures being taken to execute the earl's orders, and the military
stores in it to a considerable amount, as well as the ships which had no
other defence, were abandoned to the king's forces.

This was a severe blow; and all hopes of acting according to the earl's
plan of establishing himself strongly in Argyleshire were now
extinguished. He therefore consented to pass the Leven, a little above
Dumbarton, and to march eastwards. In this march he was overtaken, at a
place called Killerne, by Lord Dumbarton, at the head of a large body of
the king's troops; but he posted himself with so much skill and judgment,
that Dumbarton thought it prudent to wait, at least, till the ensuing
morning, before he made his attack. Here, again Argyle was for risking
an engagement, and in his nearly desperate situation, it was probably his
best chance, but his advice (for his repeated misfortunes had scarcely
left him the shadow of command) was rejected. On the other hand, a
proposal was made to him, the most absurd, as it should seem, that was
ever suggested in similar circumstances, to pass the enemy in the night,
and thus exposing his rear, to subject himself to the danger of being
surrounded, for the sake of advancing he knew not whither, or for what
purpose. To this he could not consent; and it was at last agreed to
deceive the enemies by lighting fires, and to decamp in the night towards
Glasgow. The first part of this plan was executed with success, and the
army went off unperceived by the enemy; but in their night march they
were misled by the ignorance or the treachery of their guides and fell
into difficulties which would have caused some disorder among the most
regular and best-disciplined troops. In this case such disorder was
fatal, and produced, as among men circumstanced as Argyle's were, it
necessarily must, an almost general dispersion. Wandering among bogs and
morasses, disheartened by fatigue, terrified by rumours of an approaching
enemy, the darkness of the night aggravating at once every real distress,
and adding terror to every vain alarm; in this situation, when even the
bravest and the best (for according to one account Rumbold himself was
missing for a time) were not able to find their leaders, nor the corps to
which they respectively belonged; it is no wonder that many took this
opportunity to abandon a cause now become desperate, and to effect
individually that escape which,