The ring-bayonet was invented by General Hugh Mackay of Scourie(1640-92). Previously, a bayonet was held in place by plugging it into the gun-barrel; this meant the gun could neither be fired nor reloaded till it was unplugged. General Mackay commanded one of three army divisions sent from the Continent by William of Orange in 1688. Mackay's soldiers were Scots who had been fighting as mercenaries in Europe. The first record of the new bayonet's use was in 1689, by 4000 of Mackay's Lowland soldiers at Killiecrankie against half that number of West Highlanders. These Highlanders were not particularly keen on the Stuarts, let alone King William, but had grudges to settle against some of William's supporters.

Viscount Dundee - John Graham of Claverhouse, a Jacobite, had persuaded them to fight under his command, much to the relief of the town of Inverness, which a contingent had been holding to ransom. A charismatic figure, Dundee (pictured) led his troops to a storming victory; though 600 of the Highlanders fell they took over 1000 Lowland troops with them, and the rest fled. But Dundee was shot dead, legend has it with a silver bullet or coat-button, and his leaderless force went on to attack the town of Dunkeld, which had been recently fortified with some 1200 Cameronians, a very resolute Lowland Covernanter regiment. With Dunkeld in flames the assault was finally repulsed, and the Clansmen went home.

On their way back from Dunkeld, the Glencoe MacDonalds couldn't resist plundering the Campbell lands at Glenlyon. This financially ruined Robert Campbell of Glenlyon; already the victim of his own drinking and gambling habits, he had at 60 to enlist as a Captain in the Campbell regiment, the Argyll Regiment.

In 1691 there was an amnesty for Highland rebels (Jacobites) provided they swore allegiance to the new king, William, by the end of the year. The Chiefs sought clearance from their former king to do so; it came in late December so (owing to the weather and distances) few met the deadline. It was decided to make an example of someone - and the Glencoe MacDonalds were selected, since they were not too numerous and had a long record of raiding other areas in Highlands and Lowlands alike.

In February, two companies of the Argyll Regiment were ordered by regional headquarters at Fort William, to proceed from their barracks at Ballachulish and be billeted in Glencoe (pictured). All was as per a normal army billeting till orders arrived on the 12th; Robert Campbell's command were to exterminate the Glencoe MacDonalds. At dawn they commenced; about 40 were killed directly and the 400 or so others escaped to freeze in the mountains.

Though Campbell of Glenlyon commanded the troops, his very specific orders came from the King himself - but Campbell became something of a scapegoat in later years. The sense of outrage in the Highlands was not because the MacDonalds had been hammered, they were not in any case particularly popular with their neighbours; it was because they acted correctly in following the Highland conventions of hospitality, but had then been attacked by their guests. Others of the Scottish nobility, particularly Lord Stair, had planned and pressed for ordering of the massacre, and effectively forced Campbell into carrying it out. The Argyll regiment subsequently fought in the Low Countries of Europe with great distinction, till its disbandment in 1697.

Argyll soldiers forewarned some of the MacDonalds at Glencoe, so they could escape. The Campbells themselves do not really deserve their negative historical image. After the battle of Culloden in 1746 when the defeated Jacobite soldiers were being systematically hunted down and killed by Cumberland's army, most of the Campbell militia seem to have tried to minimise the number caught, and showed little inclination to persecute their fellow Scots - in contrast to the zeal of Cumberland's Lowland battalions. By that time the king was a Hanoverian, George I, father of the ruthless but militarily competent Duke of Cumberland. Officers of the regiments actually from Hanover and attached to Cumberland's command are on record as protesting at his brutality towards the Highlanders. The real villains were Scottish Lowlanders and some English, not all.

ALLAN BRECK STEWART

At the beginning of the 1745 uprising, a soldier in General Cope's army surprised and smashed at Prestonpans by Highland Jacobite forces, was Allan Breck Stewart, formerly an officer in Ogilvie's Regiment in the service of France. Taken prisoner by the rebels, he changed sides - fighting in the Appin Regiment till Culloden, then accompanying his Commander, Colonel Stuart of Ardsheil, into exile in France. Breck was now wanted both as a rebel and as an army deserter. He is thought to have become a Jacobite agent and (possibly) hit-man - the unsolved assassination of Campbell of Glenure may have been one of his operations. Colin Campbell (the 'Red Fox') was an officer in Cumberland's Highland Militia, noted for his willingness to denounce former rebels, and was King's Factor for Lochaber and Appin. He was shot. Breck, with assistance, escaped from Scotland and in 1753 resumed his commission in France's service. In America during the Seven Years War (1756-63), he found that amongst some Hanoverian troops surrounded by the French and facing extinction, was a detachment of Highland soldiers, from Argyll. Breck infiltrated the British camp, and arranged with the Scots that he would leave a gap in his own force, such that they alone would escape.
Robert Louis Stevenson closely based a character of the same name in his novel Kidnapped on Allan Breck Stewart.