The Birkenhead News and Wirral General Advertiser. — 1888-08-25 (Birkenhead, Merseyside, England)

THE MASSACRE OF GLENCOE.  This atrocity, which the policy of William 111. inculcated, though not a battle, is inseparably connected with our military history, and "is an event," says Aytoun, "which neither can, nor ought to be forgotten. It was a deed of the worst treason and cruelty—a barbarous infraction of all laws, human and divine; and it exhibits in their foulest 1 perfidy the true characters of the 'authors and abettors of the Revolution." A royal order had been decreed that all chiefs of clans should take the oath of allegiance to William of Orange before the last day Lot 1691. One was compelled to delay in the performance of this obnoxious oath, Man, the aged head of the M‘Donalds of Glencoe, whom a toilsome journey over snowy hills and across swollen floods detained a day or two late; but he waspermitted to take the  oath, and returned home, as he thought, tg dwell in safety ia his lonely and gloomy Argyleshire valley. But it was not to be so. On the 16th of January, 1692, the Prince of Orange, as Kiug of Scotland, issued the following warrant in London to Secretary Dalrymple : " WiLLism R. As for Mllan of Glencoe, and that tribe, if they can well be distinguished from the rest of the Highlanders, it will be proper for public justice to extirpate that set of thieves. W., R." This letter, almost the only document William was ever known to sign and countersign, was the warrant for the subsequent butchery. Armed with secret orders to "fall on the rebels, the M‘Donalds of Glencoe, and put all to the sword under seventy," as he expected to be deemed "a man fit to bear the king's commission," Captain Campbell, of Glenlyon, with a strong detachment of Argyle's Regiment, marched into Glencoe, where he met from the unsuspecting people a right Highland welcome. Hunting and feasting filled the days and nights till the time was ripe, and at the appointed hour, when all the people of the glen were asleep, the work of King William began, and every man the soldiers could find was butchered in cold blood. " In-a word," says the "Memoirs of Cameron of Lochiel," they left none alive but a young child, who, being frightened with the noise of the guns, and the dismal shrieks of its dying parents, whom they were a-murdering, got hold of Captain Campbell's knees and wrapt itself within his cloak; by which, chancing to move compassion, the captain inclined to have saved it, but one Drummond, an officer arriving about break of day with more troops, commanded it to be shot by a file of musketeers. Nothing could be more shocking and horrible than the aspect of the houses strewed with mangled bodies of the dead, covered with blood, and resounding with the groans of wretches in the last agonies of life." The aged Arian and his wife perished in each other's arms, but their two sons escaped. The snowy night was stormy and tempestuous; thus 400 more soldiers, who were on their march to block up one end of the glen, failed to arrive in time, or the whole tribe had perished. The soldiers carried off 1,100 cattle and horses and innumerable sheep, leaving the few survivors te perish amid their flaming houses.—From " British Battles on Land and Sea " for August.