he centre
with a gate-house. The post was a strong one for defence, and had there
been any military skill, or even unity of purpose, among the defendants,
Monmouth would have had to buy his passage dear. Hackston of Rathillet
had thrown himself with a small body of determined men into the
gate-house, while Burley, with a few who could hold their muskets
straight, took up his post among the alder-bushes. The rest stood idly
by while their comrades fought. For about an hour Hackston held the gate
till his powder was spent. He sent to Hamilton for more, or for fresh
troops, but the only answer he received was an order to retire. He had
no choice but to fall back on the main body, which he found at that
supreme moment busily engaged in cashiering their officers, and
quarrelling over the choice of new ones. The English foot then crossed
the bridge: Monmouth followed leisurely at the head of the horse, while
his cannon played from the eastern bank on the disordered masses of the
Covenanters. A few Galloway men, better mounted and officered than the
rest of their fellows, spurred out against the Life Guards as they were
filing off the narrow bridge, but were at once ordered back by Hamilton.
The rest of the horse in taking up fresh ground to avoid the English
cannon completed the disorder of the foot--if, indeed, anything were
wanted to complete the disorder of a rabble which had never known the
meaning of the word order; and a general forward movement of the royal
troops, who had now all passed the bridge, gave the signal for flight.
Hamilton was the first to obey it, thus, in the words of an eye-witness,
"leaving the world to debate whether he acted most like a traitor, a
coward, or a fool."[32] Twelve hundred of the poor wretches surrendered
at discretion: the rest fled in all directions. Monmouth ordered quarter
to be given to all who asked it, and there is no doubt that he was able
considerably to diminish the slaughter. Comparatively few fell at the
bridge, but four or five hundred are said to have fallen, "murdered up
and down the fields," says Wodrow, "wherever the soldiers met them,
without mercy." Mercy was not a conspicuous quality of the soldiery of
those days; and the discovery of a huge gallows in the insurgents' camp,
with a cartload of new ropes at the foot, was not likely to stay the
hands of men who knew well enough that had the fortune of war been
different those ropes would have been round their necks without