Eight-and-thirty persons suffered in this manner, the greater part of whom were surprised in their beds, and hurried into eternity before they had time to implore the divine mercy.

The design was to butcher all the males under seventy that lived in the valley, the number of whom amounted to two hundred; but some of the detachments did not arrive soon enough to secure the passes; so that one hundred and sixty escaped.

Campbell having perpetrated this cruel massacre, ordered all the houses to be burned, made a prey of all the cattle and effects that were found in the valley, and left the helpless women and children, whose fathers and husbands he had murdered, naked and forlorn, without covering, food, or shelter, in the midst of the snow that covered the whole face of the country, at the distance of six long miles from any inhabited place.

Distracted with grief and horror, surrounded with the shades of night, shivering with cold, and appalled with the apprehension of immediate death from the swords of those who had sacrificed their friends and kinsmen, they could not endure such a complication of calamities, but generally perished in the waste, before they could receive the least comfort or assistance.

This barbarous massacre, performed under the sanction of king William's authority, answered the immediate purpose of the court by striking terror into the hearts of the Jacobite high-landers; but at the same time excited the horror of all those who had not renounced every sentiment of humanity, and produced such an aversion to the government, as all the arts of a ministry could never totally surmount.