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He was the unscrupulous agent of the Scottish Privy Council in executing the merciless severities of the government in Scotland during the reigns of Charles II. and James II.; but he redeemed his character by the zeal with which he asserted the cause of the latter monarch after the Revolution, the military skill with which he supported it at the battle of Killiecrankie, and by his own death in the arms of victory.
Mackay followed Dundee through the Highlands to Elgin and on to Inverness, and finally, after many wanderings, the two armies met in the pass of Killiecrankie. Dundee and his Highlanders were victorious, but Dundee himself was killed in the battle, and his death proved a fatal blow to the Jacobite cause.
It would be difficult to name any eminent man in whom national feeling and clannish feeling were stronger than in Sir Walter Scott. Yet when Sir Walter Scott mentioned Killiecrankie he seemed utterly to forget that he was a Saxon, that he was of the same blood and of the same speech with Ramsay's foot and Annandale's horse.
In all probability this prevented Lord Evandale from learning that he was actually in existence; for the news that the Highlanders had obtained a decisive victory at Killiecrankie had occasioned an accurate look-out to be kept, by order of the Government, on all the passes, for fear of some commotion among the Lowland Jacobites.
He therefore raised the siege of Blair Castle, and retired with a few followers into the defile of Killiecrankie. There he was soon joined by a detachment of two hundred fusileers whom Mackay had sent forward to secure the pass. The main body of the Lowland army speedily followed, Early in the morning of Saturday the twenty-seventh of July, Dundee arrived at Blair Castle.
The Roman order of battle, evidently intended to repair a broken front, was perhaps a lesson taught the Roman tacticians on the day when their front was broken by the rush of the Celtic clans at Allia. That rush produced the same effect on troops unaccustomed to it and unprepared for it at Killiecrankie, and again at Preston Pans and Falkirk.
It is curious that the two most remarkable battles that perhaps were ever gained by irregular over regular troops should have been fought in the same week; the battle of Killiecrankie, and the battle of Newton Butler. In both battles the success of the irregular troops was singularly rapid and complete.
Within three years the four brothers vanished, leaving among them no male heir, and George's elder brother, who was then in a West India Regiment, was called home from Demerara to be Marquis of Killiecrankie.
Such were the obsequies of the Earl of Dunfermline, who had served the House of Stuart with the hazard of his life and to the utter ruin of his fortunes, who had fought at Killiecrankie, and who had, after the victory, lifted from the earth the still breathing remains of Dundee. While living he had been treated with contumely.
As Deans repelled with some force the rude pushes which he received on all sides, his figure and antiquated dress caught the attention of the rabble, who often show an intuitive sharpness in ascribing the proper character from external appearance, "Ye're welcome, whigs, Frae Bothwell briggs," "Mess David Williamson, Chosen of twenty, Ran up the pu'pit stair, And sang Killiecrankie,"
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