The general found himself merely the president of a congress of petty kings.

He was perpetually called upon to hear and to compose disputes about pedigrees, about precedence, about the division of spoil.

His decision, be it what it might, must offend somebody.

At any moment he might hear that his right wing had fired on his centre in pursuance of some quarrel two hundred years old, or that a whole battalion had marched back to its native glen, because another battalion had been put in the post of honour.

A Highland bard might easily have found in the history of the year 1689 subjects very similar to those with which the war of Troy furnished the great poets of antiquity.