Arms & Tactics
The Armament of the Highland Clans.
The following shrt article is from a 1911 copy of the Aberdeen
Journal.
Always the armament of the clans was pretty complete, at least
for the higher ranks. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the
gentlemen dressed in a saffron tunic, the "yellow war-coat" of the
chiefs, but for battle they might assume the ancient hauberk or
jersey of iron rings: they carried bow and arrows, a broadsword, a
small axe-spear or halbert, and in the belt a dagger with a single,
very sharp edge. The lesser folk donned a jacket of quilted linen,
smeared with wax or pitch, and over that, one of deerskin, English
and the other Scots fought in a woollen garment. Later a Highland
array was a museum of old-fashioned pieces of armour, as in the '
Highland Host' of 1678. On that occasion the Glencoe men had for
their regimental ensign a bush of heath spread out on the top of a
staff. At Glenlivat (1594) the "yellow standard" of Argyll was the
mark for Huntly's cannon. By the first quarter of the eighteenth
century the Highland warrior had accumulated more modern weapons to
the extent of carrying when armed at all points, a target, a
firelock, a heavy broadsword, a pistol, a dirk, and a small knife
tinder the armpit - "in his own individual person a whole company
of foot" scoffs the military critic. These, of course, were the
front-rank men, "who called themselves gentlemen," and had a
shilling a day in the Forty-five (Home).
The Highland tactic in mass was to charge in columns of clans,
unequal in number, from higher ground if at all possible. Two
things heartily disliked and feared were horsemen and cannon,
neither being fair play to a mountain militia. Their awe of the
latter was almost a superstition. About the time of the
Reformation, Huntly was the " Cock o' the North' and one means he
had of overawing restless Highlanders was a great cannon which he
had brought north and kept ostentatiously displayed in the
courtyard of Strathbogie Castle. The cowardice of the dragoons and
the abandonment of the guns at Prestonpans relieved much of this
terror. But the peculiarity of the Highland charge - the scattered
volley from muskets which were then thrown down, the swinging
claymores with which they fell upon the soldiers of the line and
the way in which they turned aside the bayonet with the target of
hide - was equally disconcerting to the regular troops "with their
stiff, pipe-clayed drill, and accounts for the rapid victories at
Killiecrankie and Prestonpans until the military ability of
Cumberland devised a method that at Culloden destroyed, with so
much else, the formidable nature of the Highland attack. Fire was
restrained and concentrated, the bayonet lunged not straight
forward, but towards the next man, under the guard - and the day of
victory was over.-
W. M. Mackenzie in ''Home Life of the Highlanders 1400-1746
(Highland Village Association Limited', Scottish Exhibition,
Glasgow 1911).