CHAPTER V.

There is no letter from Claverhouse in this year, 1679, later than that reporting the defeat at Drumclog.  There was, indeed, no occasion for him to write.  As soon as the news of his defeat and the attack on Glasgow had reached the Council, orders were at once sent for the forces to withdraw from the latter place and join Linlithgow at Stirling.  After Bothwell Bridge had been won he was sent again into the West on the weary work that we have already seen him employed on.  But during the intervening time his independent command had ceased.  At the same time there is no reason to suppose that he was in any disgrace for the defeat at Drumclog.  He had committed the fault, not uncommon, as military history teaches, with more experienced leaders than Claverhouse, of holding his foe too cheaply:  he had committed this fault, and he had paid the penalty.  There is some vague story of a sealed commission not to be opened till in the presence of the enemy, and when opened on the slope of Drumclog containing strict orders to give battle wherever and whenever the chance might serve.  But the story rests on too slight authority to count for much.  His own temperament would have made him fight without any sealed orders; and, indeed, he had not long before written to Linlithgow that he was determined to do so on the first occasion, and had warned his men to that effect.  The wisdom of his resolve is clear.  Disgusted with their work, discontented with the hardness of their fare and the infrequency of their pay, in perpetual danger of their lives from unseen enemies, his soldiers were getting out of hand.  Claverhouse was the sternest of disciplinarians; but the discipline of those days was a very different thing from our interpretation of the word.  It was more a recognition by the soldier of the superior strength and possibilities of his officer, than trained obedience to an inevitable law.  When they once had satisfied themselves that their captain was unable to bring the enemy to book, was unable even to provide them with proper rations and pay, no love for the flag would have kept them together for another hour.  It was essential for Claverhouse to show them that he and they were more than a match for their foes whenever and in whatever form the opportunity came.  Unfortunately for him it came in the form of Drumclog, and the proof had still to be given.

But it is abundantly clear that no stain was considered to rest either on his honour or his skill.  The only ungenerous reference to his discomfiture came a few years later in the shape of a growl from old Dalziel against the folly of splitting the army up into small detachments at the discretion of rash and incompetent leaders.  Claverhouse was removed from his independent command only because the circumstances of the moment made it necessary.  When it was found necessary to despatch a regular army against the insurgents (as, for all their provocation, they must after Drumclog be styled), he took his proper place in that army as captain of a troop in the Royal Scottish Life Guards.  When the brief campaign had closed at Bothwell Bridge, and, worst fortune for him, affairs had resumed their original complexion, he went back to his old position.