Edinburgh Castle had been tamely yielded by the Duke of Gordon; Balcarres, the associate of Dundee, had been imprisoned; but Dundee himself, after being declared a rebel, in April raised the standard of King James.  As against him the Whigs relied on Mackay, a brave officer who had been in Dutch service, and now commanded regiments of the Scots Brigade of Holland.  Mackay pursued Dundee, as Baillie had pursued Montrose, through the north:  at Inverness, Dundee picked up some Macdonalds under Keppoch, but Keppoch was not satisfactory, being something of a freebooter.  The Viscount now rode to the centre of his hopes, to the Macdonalds of Glengarry, the Camerons of Lochiel, and the Macleans who had been robbed of their lands by the Earl of Argyll, executed in 1685.  Dundee summoned them to Lochiel’s house on Loch Arkaig for May 18; he visited Atholl and Badenoch; found a few mounted men as recruits at Dundee; returned through the wilds to Lochaber, and sent round that old summons to a rising, the Fiery Cross, charred and dipped in a goat’s blood.

Much time was spent in preliminary manoeuvring and sparring between Mackay, now reinforced by English regulars, and Dundee, who for a time disbanded his levies, while Mackay went to receive fresh forces and to consult the Government at Edinburgh.  He decided to march to the west and bridle the clans by erecting a strong fort at Inverlochy, where Montrose routed Argyll.  A stronghold at Inverlochy menaced the Macdonalds to the north, and the Camerons in Lochaber, and, southwards, the Stewarts in Appin.  But to reach Inverlochy Mackay had to march up the Tay, past Blair Atholl, and so westward through very wild mountainous country.  To oppose him Dundee had collected 4000 of the clansmen, and awaited ammunition and men from James, then in Ireland.  By the advice of the great Lochiel, a man over seventy but miraculously athletic, Dundee decided to let the clans fight in their old way,—­a rush, a volley at close quarters, and then the claymore.  By June 28 Dundee had received no aid from James,—­of money “we have not twenty pounds”; and he was between the Earl of Argyll (son of the martyr of 1685) and Mackay with his 4000 foot and eight troops of horse.

On July 23 Dundee seized the castle of Blair Atholl, which had been the base of Montrose in his campaigns, and was the key of the country between the Tay and Lochaber.  The Atholl clans, Murrays and Stewarts, breaking away from the son of their chief, the fickle Marquis of Atholl, were led by Stewart of Ballechin, but did not swell Dundee’s force at the moment.  From James Dundee now received but a battalion of half-starved Irishmen, under the futile General Cannon.