xample of his famous kinsman might indeed serve to fire both his
imagination and his ambition; but it could hardly serve to make him
hopeful of succeeding with the weapons which had failed Montrose. A few
thousand claymores would no doubt prove a useful supplement to the small
body of troops James might be able to spare from Ireland; but even a
mind so ardent and sanguine as Dundee's might well have shrank from
facing the chances of war with no other resources than a handful of
troopers and a rabble of half-armed, half-naked, and wholly
undisciplined savages. And in truth experience had shown that these
fierce and jealous spirits were little less dangerous as allies than as
enemies. Every clan had its hereditary feud, and no one could say that
on the day of battle the claymores might not be drawn against each other
instead of against the common foe. Branches even of the same stock did
not conceive themselves inevitably bound by the tie of blood, though it
was a claim never forgotten when it was convenient to make or allow it.
Sometimes a few of the smaller clans would make common cause against the
oppressions of a more powerful, or the cattle of a wealthier neighbour;
but it was rarely that friendship went beyond the conditions of an armed
neutrality. Though the feudal system had long prevailed in many parts of
the Highlands, it had never superseded the older patriarchal system. The
chief of the clan might pay homage to a great lord like Argyle or
Athole; but in the clan he was king, and his word was law. Moreover,
brave as the Highlanders undoubtedly were, they were not a warlike race.
They would rise to the signal of the fiery cross, without questioning
the cause; and they would on occasion fight for their own hand, for
revenge or plunder. But the long service of a regular war was little to
their taste. Of military science and military discipline they knew
nothing. To win the battle with the rush of the first onset, and when
the battle was won to make off to their homes with all the plunder they
could lay hands on,--this was their notion of warfare, and it was a
notion which the chiefs were too ignorant or too prudent to interfere
with. What chance could there be of inducing such spirits as these to
combine in one great confederacy, and to undertake a long and desperate
struggle for the sake of a king of whom the most part had never heard,
and of a cause which they could not understand?

But Dundee had learned somethin