force.  In the writings of the time Claverhouse’s command is indiscriminately styled a regiment and a troop.  It is certain that he was the responsible officer, so that, whatever its numerical strength, he stood to the body of men he commanded in the relation that a colonel stands to his regiment.  But it is probable that his regiment, with those commanded by Home and Airlie, were practically considered as the three troops of the Royal Scottish Life Guards of whom the young Marquis of Montrose was colonel.  From a royal warrant of 1672, it appears that a troop of dragoons was rated at eighty men, exclusive of officers, and that a regiment was to consist of twelve troops.  But it is hardly possible that this strength was ever reached.  From a passage in the third chapter of Macaulay’s history it does not seem as if the full complement of a regiment of cavalry can have much exceeded four hundred men; but, I repeat, the indiscriminate use of the terms troop and regiment, battalion and squadron, makes all calculations theoretical and vague.[25] Scott puts the King’s forces at Drumclog at two hundred and fifty men; and, as a detachment had been left behind in garrison with Ross’s men at Glasgow, this is probably not over the mark, if Macaulay’s estimate of a regiment be correct.  He also, in the report Lord Evandale makes to his chief, rates the Covenanters at near a thousand fighting men, which would probably tally with Claverhouse’s estimate.  But, whatever the strength of either side may have been, it is tolerably certain that the advantage that way was on the side of the Covenanters.

The description of the fight in “Old Mortality” is an admirable specimen of the style in which Scott’s genius could work the scantiest materials to his will.  All contemporary accounts of the fray are singularly meagre and confused; and, indeed, the art of describing a battle was then very much in its infancy.  It is difficult, from Claverhouse’s own despatch, to get more than a general idea of the affair, which was probably after the first few minutes but an indiscriminate melee.  No doubt it was his consciousness of some lack of clearness that inspired his apologetic postscript:  “My Lord, I am so wearied and so sleepy that I have written this very confusedly.”  The flag of truce, which in the novel Claverhouse sends down under charge of his nephew Cornet Graham to parley with the Covenanters, was of Scott’s own making, though it seems that a couple of troopers were despatched in advance to survey the ground.  Nor does Claverhouse mention any kinsman of his, or any one of his name, as having fallen that day:  the only two officers he specifies are Captain Blyth and Cornet Crafford, or Crawford, both of whom were killed by Hamilton’s first fire.  But though Claverhouse mentions no one of his own name, others do.  By more than one contemporary writer one Robert Graham is included among the slain.  It is said that while at breakfast that morning in Strathavon he had refused his dog meat, promising it a full meal off the Whigs’ bodies before night; “but instead of that,” runs the tale, “his dog was seen eating his own thrapple (for he was killed) by several.”  Another version is, that the Covenanters, finding the name of Graham wrought in the neck of the shirt, savagely mangled the dead body, supposing it to be that of Claverhouse himself.[26]