Each general spoke a few words to his men.  Dundee reminded his captains that they were assembled that day to fight in the best of causes, in the cause of their King, their religion and their country, against rebels and usurpers.  He urged them to behave like true Scotchmen, and to redeem their country from the disgrace cast on it by the treachery and cowardice of others.  He asked nothing of them but what they should see him do before them all.  Those who fell would fall honourably like true and brave soldiers:  those who lived and conquered would have the reward of a gracious King and the praise of all good men.  Let them charge home then, in the name of King James and the Church of Scotland.  Mackay urged the same honourable duty on his battalions; but he added one very practical consideration which suggests that he was not so confident of the issue as he afterwards professes to have been, and which was perhaps not very wisely offered.  They must fight, he said, for they could not fly.  The enemy was much quicker afoot than they, and there were the Athole men waiting to pounce on all runaways.  Such thoughts would hardly furnish the best tonic to a doubtful spirit.  Nevertheless the troops answered cheerfully that they would stand by their general to the last; which, adds the brave old fellow ruefully in his despatch, “most of them belied shortly after."[102]

A dropping fire of musketry had for some time been maintained between the two lines, and on the English left there had been some closer skirmishing between Lauder’s sharpshooters and the Macleans.  Mackay was anxious to engage before the sun set.  He doubted how his raw troops would stand a night-attack from a foe to whom night and day were one:  still more did he fear what might happen in the darkness during the confusion of a retreat down that awful pass.  But he could not attack, and Dundee would not, till his moment came.  The darkness the other feared would be all in his favour.  A very short time he knew would be enough to decide the issue of the battle.  Should that issue be favourable to King James, as he felt confident it would be, he had determined that before the next morning dawned there should be no army left to King William in the Highlands.

The sun set, and the moment he had chosen came.  The Southrons saw Dundee, who had now changed his scarlet coat for one of less conspicuous colour, ride along the line, and as he passed each clan they saw plaids and brogues flung off.  They heard the shout with which the word to advance was hailed; but the cheer they sent back did not carry with it the conviction of victory.  Lochiel turned to his Camerons with a smile.  “Courage!” he said, “the day is our own.  I am the oldest commander in this army; and I tell you that feeble noise is the cry of men who are doomed to fall by our hands this night.”  Then the old warrior flung off his shoes with the rest of them, and took his place at the head of his men.  Dundee rode to the front of his cavalry.  The pipes sounded, and the clans came down the hill.