ROB AT LAST had the orders that he wanted – but woefully delayed. He was to take the Glengyle Regiment, plus a company of Macphersons, and make his way secretly to that part of the great Flanders Moss across which he had declared he could lead an army. He was to reconnoitre its possibilities, especially in view of the heavy rains of that late autumn and the consequent high level of all rivers; if he found that a crossing was possible, he was to discover whether Argyll was guarding the outcomes from the Moss on the other side. If all was well, he was to send back information to Mar, post-haste.
Rob Roy had been pleading for action on these lines for weeks. Only a few men, all MacGregors, knew the secrets of the hidden causeways, fords and shallows of this vast waterlogged flood-plain of the River Forth. From time immemorial this had been the strange barrier between the settled Lowlands and the wild Highlands. Here even the conquering Romans were brought to a halt although some of the underwater causeways were alleged to be of their making. This is what made Stirling so vital a place in Scotland. It stood at the first point where the Firth of Forth narrowed sufficiently to be bridged – and to the west of it lay the quaking wilderness of the Moss, all the way to the Loch Lomond-side mountains.
Long the Gregorach had cherished the secret of how to cross this fearsome barrier. It had been of inestimable value to them in their raiding and cattle-lifting and warfare. Five miles across in the middle, its bogs and meres and lochans represented a most valuable trade secret. Now Rob was prepared to reveal the secret by conducting a Jacobite force across it, to take Argyll in the rear.
Even so, of course, it would be a most difficult and dangerous task. No ordinary army could have begun to attempt it. Cavalry was out of the question. Much of the crossing would have to be done in single-file, with men stepping carefully and precisely in the footsteps of those in front. Only Highlanders used to such terrain could be used. It would have to be done at night so that observers on the rising ground to the south did not see the assembling of men on the north side. In flood conditions it would be even more difficult. Even the approach to the area would have to be done in secret, for if word reached Argyll that any large body of men was approaching the northern flank of the Moss, he would almost certainly detach troops to watch all the southern rim of it, even though he could not know just where the crossing might be attempted.
So Rob’s mission had to be very secret. This very fact was to tell grievously against him later. On November 10th, when Mar broke up his long-standing camp at Perth and moved south on the road towards Stirling, halting at Auchterarder, the Glengyle Regiment moved off quietly south-westwards into the low foothills that lay between Strathearn and the valley of the Teith. Argyll had demolished the bridge over the Teith at Doune, and a secondary task for Rob was to find another suitable crossing of this river, on the way to the plain of Forth.
Most unfortunately no documentary evidence appears to exist as to what happened thereafter though this is hardly surprising. We know that Rob and his Gregorach fulfilled their task of surveying the area, concentrating on that part of the Flanders Moss which centres round the Fords of Frew. We know that he was expecting a large body of Highland infantry to join him there and we know that no troops of any sort followed him at all. We know that he was away for more than 48 hours, with his own regiment – which, since the distance involved was a mere dozen miles or so, indicates that the MacGregors waited for a considerable time at the area of the crossing. We also know that Rob’s reputation has never really recovered from the assertion, made not at the time but considerably later, that he deliberately absented himself and his men from the Battle of Sheriffmuir, and that when he did reach the scene, late in the day, he refused to take part.
It is here that Sir Walter Scott has been, I submit, most grievously unfair to Rob Roy. He states, both in his introduction to Rob Roy, and in his Tales of a Grandfather, that Rob’s ‘conduct during the insurrection of 1715 was very equivocal. His person and followers were in the Highland army but his heart seems to have been with the Duke of Argyll’s. Yet the insurgents were constrained to trust to him as their only guide, when they marched from Perth towards Dunblane with a view of crossing the Forth at what are called the Fords of Frew, and when they themselves said that he could not be relied upon. This movement to the westwards a risk. And yet brought on the battle of Sheriffmuir.’
Scott was a novelist, of course, rather than a historian, and wrote this merely as an introduction to a novel. But the statement has been picked out and repeated by historians so often as to become accepted as true. It gives, in my opinion, a completely false picture of the situation. Indeed it is quite obviously inaccurate.
The insurgents, as Scott calls them, did not march from Perth towards Dunblane with a view to crossing the Fords of Frew, and therefore they did not trust Rob as their only guide. There was never any suggestion that the main army should or could take this extraordinary and dangerous route. Scott says nothing about Rob and the MacGregors being detached and sent away on their own with the task of surveying this route and so does not make it clear why Rob and his men came late to the battle, a battle which Rob could have no idea was going to be fought at that time and place.
In the confused and confusing accounts of the battle, most of them compiled long afterwards, when the main objective seems to have been to whitewash the writers from all personal blame or reproach for a shocking defeat, it seems clear that the Duke of Argyll, learning that Mar had moved forward to Auchterarder, fewer than 20 miles from Stirling, decided on the bold course of taking the initiative and moved out from Stirling across the Forth, and marched towards Dunblane. This took place on November 12th, with Rob already away on his reconnaissance. Mar seems to have lost his head when he heard that the redoubtable Red John of the Battles was actually approaching him.
Instead of recognising that the proposed outflanking move by the Flanders Moss would now be more valuable than ever, he cancelled the whole project, and decided to keep all his force together for a head-on clash with Argyll. The next morning, Sunday, November 13th, the two armies met on the slanting uplands of Sheriffmuir and fought one of the strangest battles in British history. A dozen miles away Rob and his MacGregors were still waiting for the Highland contingent to come to be led across the Fords of Frew.
That Rob, when he heard, did bring his tired men back to Sheriffmuir, even though they arrived fairly late in the day, seems never to have been recognised in his favour. That he would be utterly against the idea of a pitched battle with Argyll can be accepted, when the enemy could be so satisfactorily outflanked. All that is usually recounted is that when he did arrive late at the battle, he refused to fight. This accusation has stained his name indelibly and, I believe, most unjustly.
The Jacobites ought to have won the Battle of Sheriffmuir, even without the outflanking movement. Their numbers were far greater than Argyll’s – some 15,000 against 5,000; though, of course, the latter were regular troops against irregulars. Mar had the best position, also. In fact, the leadership failed grievously that day. But out of it all, the follies, the mistakes, the misfortunes and the disasters, only one man’s character is really blackened – and that man is Rob Roy MacGregor, who had in fact so little to do with it.
Just at what hour of the day Rob and his MacGregors arrived in the vicinity of Sheriffmuir seems to be unknown. That it was after the battle had already been lost seems indisputable. Even Rob’s keenest detractors quote the famous remark made to someone unspecified who urged him to throw his men in and try to stem the tide of defeat; ‘No’, he declared, ‘if they cannot do it without me, they cannot do it with me.’
This brief sentence, quoted from an unidentified source and without its context, has been used to damn Rob Roy as a traitor ever since. The argument is that since no-one could ever accuse him of either cowardice or over-caution, he deliberately turned his back on his fellows in their need and disobeyed orders in doing so.
How true a picture does this give? Consider what Locheil the Younger, Colonel of the Cameron Regiment, wrote. His brigade had been on the Jacobite right wing which had at first shattered Argyll’s left under General Witham and sent him fleeing all the way back to Stirling in the belief that the day was lost – but had then been rounded upon, cut up and broken hopelessly in their headlong pursuit, by Argyll’s regular cavalry. Of the chaos that followed, Locheil says:
I rallied there all I could meet with, and caused such of them as had fired to charge their pieces. At the same time I perceived Rob Roy MacGregor on his march towards me, coming from the town of Doune, he not being at the engagement, with about two hundred and fifty, betweixt MacGregors and Macphersons.
This makes it crystal clear that any picture of Rob standing idly by throughout the battle is sheer nonsense. The Highland right wing had won its battle, but in its over-enthusiastic pursuit had forgotten its flanks and suffered cutting up by Argyll’s dragoons which had by this time defeated Mar’s left, mainly irregular cavalry – all this before Rob came on the scene at all, marching from Doune on his way back from the Fords of Frew. The battle was in fact to all intents over. Mar’s centre remained unbroken, but he held it inactive up on the high ground of the moor. His left had been shattered, and his right was in chaos after initial victory. With fatal indecision the Commander-in-Chief did nothing, it is reliably reported, all afternoon.
Another chief, Struan Robertson, Colonel of the Robertson Regiment, also on the right, says in his account that in the flight, as soon as they passed the Water of Allan, having met with a party of MacGregors going to join their army, they drew up and the enemy thought it proper to leave then.
This is not only confirmation that the Gregorach’s arrival was too late to alter the issue, but indicates two other aspects of the matter. First, Rob’s point of arrival in the battle area; second, the steadying effect of his regiment on the rout.
He, coming from Doune, reached the River Allan near Kinbuck, when he found himself involved in the broken and fleeing right wing of Mar’s army, streaming and floundering as best they could across the swollen river. He could hardly fail to recognise grimly that these were the very troops which he should have been secretly smuggling across the Flanders Moss to get behind Argyll. Sheriffmuir itself lay a couple of miles away across the valley on the rising ground, and it was up there that Mar and the centre of his line waited, hesitant and inactive. So much for Mar sending orders to Rob to attack. Did Rob, in these circumstances, act mistakenly? I do not think that he did. He stood his regiment firm on the west side of Allan Water, like a rock in the flood of defeat, slowed up the flight, and saved the day, on this flank at least, from degenerating into a complete rout and massacre; for the victorious dragoons, chasing the fleeing Highland infantry, drew up at sight of a fresh and disciplined body of the dreaded Gregorach awaiting them on the other side, and dared not cross the river.
Should Rob Roy, instead of standing fast there, have led his 250 clansmen across the river in the face of Argyll’s victorious dragoons – the very thing that they themselves were afraid to do, mounted as they were and in vastly greater numbers? I could not think of anything more foolish for a responsible commander to do. Crossing a flooded river in the face of the enemy is classically one of the most difficult military tasks, and when the enemy is more powerful and flushed with victory, it just is not to be considered. For Rob to have done it, with the battle already lost, might have won him undying glory – but it would have been sheer lunacy. It is in the light of this situation that we must consider his reported decision: ‘No – if they cannot do it without me, they cannot do it with me.’
I believe that was the reasoned and reasonable decision of a very able and experienced guerilla fighter, seeing the military situation and summing it up. He had only 250 men. He could not change the course of the battle now. By standing fast he could keep the enemy cavalry at the far side of the river, and also tied there in case he in turn attempted a crossing, and at the same time give the broken Highland regiments the chance to straggle across and make good their escape, to reform. He did that.
For those who, because Rob Roy was a man in something of a mythical heroic mould, still hold that he should have done the heroic thing, however foolish and suicidal, for the sake of glory and his own reputation, I would point out another aspect of the matter – his intense loyalty and love for his Gregorach, his own clansmen. He was, after all, a Highland chieftain first and foremost, who reckoned his own people’s welfare his first responsibility. He was a clansman first and a Jacobite second. Should he have condemned his famous Gregorach elite to certain annihilation for the sake of making a gesture? I think not. These men were his closest associates and friends, companions of innumerable frays – much more so than could be the case in other Highland regiments; they were, in fact, mainly veterans of his old Glengyle Highland Watch. He had never stinted their participation in the campaign to date. Should he have voluntarily thrown them to their deaths now, for the sake of an incompetent general who had tossed away every chance of victory – including Rob’s own excellent scheme for turning Argyll’s flank – and for a Stewart king who not only had never done anything for the Highlands but could not even come to be with the men who were fighting for him?
That Rob’s decision was a carefully taken one, a judgement of the situation made intelligently and held firmly, is proved by the clash between him and one of his subordinates – although, strangely enough, Sir Walter Scott takes this further to prove Rob’s cynical treachery. The detachment of Macphersons with Rob were under the immediate leadership of one Alexander Macpherson, a fellow cattle drover and associate of Rob’s own. He was an impetuous man, and found standing still on the river bank much against his taste. Drawing his sword eventually he cried out, according to Scott: ‘Let us endure this no longer. If he will not lead you, I will! I Rob Roy replied coolly: ‘Were the question one of driving Highland stots or kyloes (black cattle), Sandie, I would yield to your superior skill; but as it respects the leading of men, I must be allowed to be the better judge.’
Would any responsible commander have acted otherwise?
Rob has been further blamed in that, when the early November dusk fell and Argyll’s forces fell back towards Stirling, he then did cross the river, following and harassing the retiring Hanoverians, and, it is claimed, plundering the baggage of both sides. This strikes me as on a par with the rest of Scott’s criticisms – it shows a remarkable lack of appreciation of the true military situation. The issue of the campaign, as distinct from the battle, was far from decided. Mar’s centre still sat up on the ridge, undefeated. Argyll was retiring towards his base at Stirling, not wishing his cavalry, his trump card, to be at a disadvantage in the darkness against the nimble Highland infantry whom the night would aid. It made excellent sense for the Gregorach to pursue now – indeed if all the other broken regiments had done the same, history might well have been written very differently. As to plunder, this was an accepted part of warfare in those days – and it must be remembered that the Highland troops were unpaid, and expected to make their own pay by plundering the enemy. The complaint that the Gregorach got much of the plunder seems to me a typical example of sour grapes on the part of those who were too busy going in the other direction to pursue the government troops. As for robbing other Highland units’ own baggage indiscriminately, this is obviously ridiculous. The Highlanders could not have had any baggage forward of the river. Their camp was back at Ardoch, five miles to the north. Any plunder which Rob’s men may have gained, and which could conceivably be claimed by other Jacobites, must have been loot taken by them in their first chase of General Witham’s fleeing divisions, and then abandoned when Argyll’s cavalry turned the tables on their undisciplined pursuit.
I have dealt at length and in detail with this sorry story of Sheriffmuir and Rob’s part therein, for in any attempt to portray Rob Roy, his life and character, this day’s events are a vital matter. Obviously, not everyone will agree with my findings and conclusions. But if these will tend to make some look again and more deeply, into the question, and not just accept Sir Walter Scott’s sweeping assertions, I shall be satisfied. Rob Roy was neither a saint nor a paragon of virtue, like the rest of us; but when a man’s whole life is considered, his known character and general attitude to life taken into account, then commonly held views on the events of a single day, if they are quite contrary to all the rest, at least ought to be considered closely and with some attempt at understanding.
Sheriffmuir was not a clear-cut victory for Argyll. Indeed, from one point of view, the Jacobites could claim to be the victors, for they remained in possession of the battlefield, the government troops going back to the security of Stirling, clearly uncertain of the tactical position and what was likely to happen next.
But in fact Sheriffmuir was the defeat of the Jacobite hopes. Mar’s army never recovered from it, having lost all faith in their leader and their cause. The tide of war ebbed away after Sheriffmuir, just as the clans seeped away back into their own mountains. The Rising of 1715 was, to all intents and purposes, over.
Perhaps it is only fair to Sir Walter Scott to mention here that his doubts about Rob Roy’s good faith in the Jacobite cause were almost certainly influenced by a very curious letter alleged to have been written by Rob more than 10 years later to General Wade, the terms of which were published in a book by an English officer, entitled Letters from the North of Scotland in 1818. This letter, if genuine, undoubtedly does not rebound to Rob’s credit, by present-day standards of correspondence. In the matter of Sheriffmuir, however, I prefer to judge by his known character and actual behaviour. I shall deal with the latter when I reach the period of its writing.