Scotland/Scots > Black's picturesque tourist of Scotland

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STIRLING.
Hawley,* a pedantic and severe commander, whose gross negligence and
incapacity were the main causes of the defeat of the royal forces.
But there are commemorations of still older battles scattered around.
Tacitus tells us, in his rapid powerful style, how fiercely Agricola was
resisted by the Caledonian prince Galgacus, at the Mons Grampius or the
Grampian Mountains. The site of the battle has been claimed for many
spots, and there is no occasion to enter into the antiquarian merits of the
several disputes on the subject; but one thing is clear enough, that in
that amphitheatre of mountains stretching round from west to north, we
have the chain of the Grampian Hills, which the Roman army desired to
penetrate, and the Caledonians to defend. Nor are we without abundant
vestiges of the Roman operations. Besides the wall of Antoninus, of
which the eastern extremity touches the Forth in the low flat district to
the east, looking in the other direction through the valley separating
the Grampians from the Ochils, the eye may detect, at the village of
Ardoch, the spot where stands one of the most perfect specimens of a Roman
fortified camp to be seen in any part of the world.
But there are associations in the scene around older still than the
days of Rome, In the year 1819 there was found the entire skeleton of a
whale, which must have been 70 feet long, in the course of some draining
operations carried on by the late Sir Robert Abercromby, on the estate of
Airthrey. The place where it was found was adjoining the south side
of the turnpike road east from the eastern porter's lodge which leads to
* “ Hawley had not a better head, and certainly a much worse heart, than Sir
John Cope, who was a humane, good tempered man. The new general ridiculed
severely the conduct of his predecessor, and remembering that he had seen, in 1715, the
left wing of the Highlanders broken by a charge of the Duke of Argyle’s horse, which
came upon them across a morass, he resolved to manceuvre in the same manner. H e
forgot, however, a material circumstance—that the morass at Sheriffmuir was hard
frozen, which made some difference in favour of the cavalry. Hawley’s manoeuvre, as
commanded and executed, plunged a great part of his dragoons up to the Saddle-laps
in a bog, where the Highlanders cut them to pieces with so little trouble, that, as one
of the performers assured us, the feat was as easy as slicing lacon. The gallantry of
some of the English regiments beat off the Highland charge on another point, and,
amid a tempest of wind and rain which has been seldom equalled, the field presented
the singular prospect of two armies flying different ways at the same moment. The
king’s troops, however, ran fastest and farthest, and were the last to recover their
courage; indeed, they retreated that night to Falkirk, leaving their guns, burning
their tents, and striking a new panic into the British nation, which was but just
recovering from the flutter excited by what, in olden times, would have been called
the Raid of Derby. In the drawing-room which took place at Saint James’s on the'
day the news arrived, all countenances were marked with doubt and apprehension,
excepting those of George the Second, the Earl of Stair, and Sir John Cope, who was
radiant with joy at Hawley’s discomfiture. Indeed, the idea of the two generals was
so closely connected, that a noble peer of Scotland, upon the same day, addressed
Sir John Cope by the title of General Hawley, to the no small amusement of those
who heard the quid fro quo."—Sir Walter Scott’s Prose Worts, vol. xix., p 303.