Glencoe, a valley of northern Argyllshire, descending 7½ miles west-by-northward from a 'col,' 1011 feet high, to salt-water Loch Leven, 2 miles ENE. of Ballachulish. It is traversed by the Coe (or Cona of Ossian); and it is flanked by conical mountains, the Pap of Glencoe (2430 feet) the most prominent, Benveedan (3766) the loftiest. Of many descriptions of Glencoe the best are by Dorothy Wordsworth (1804); by Macaulay (1849), who saw it both in rain and in sunshine, and calls it 'the very valley of the shadow of death;' and this by Charles Dickens (1841): 'Glencoe itself is perfectly terrible. The pass is an awful place. It is shut in on each side by enormous rocks, from which great torrents come rushing down in all directions. In amongst these rocks, on one side of the pass (the left as we came from Kingshouse), there are scores of glens high up, which form such haunts as you might imagine wandering in in the very height and madness of a fever. They will live in my dreams for years.'
In 1691 the Edinburgh authorities issued a proclamation exhorting the clans to submit to William and Mary, and offering pardon to all who before 31st December would swear to live peaceably under the government. All the chiefs submitted except M'Ean, the head of the Macdonalds of Glencoe, whose submission was delayed by unforeseen causes till 6th January 1692. The magistrate before whom he took the oath of allegiance transmitted a certificate to the Council at Edinburgh, explaining the circumstances of the case. However, on 16th January, King William signed an order, ending: 'If M'Ean of Glencoe and that trybe can be well separated from the rest, it will be a proper vindication of the public justice to extirpate that sect of thieves.' So on 1st February 120 soldiers—Campbells mostly, and commanded by Captain Campbell of Glenlyon—marched to Glencoe, and, telling the natives that they came as friends, and merely wanted quarters, for twelve days lived in the glen. Glenlyon, while visiting daily at the chief's house, employed himself in observing every pass by which escape was possible, and reported the result of his observations to Lieutenant-Colonel Hamilton, who was approaching from Fort-William with 400 more troops. The 13th was fixed for the massacre, and on the night of the 12th Glenlyon was supping and playing at cards with those whom he purposed to butcher. At five in the morning the murderous work began, and day broke on thirty-eight corpses, including those of at least one woman, an old man of seventy, and a boy of four. But, Hamilton not having come up in time, the passes were open, and some 150 men, and probably as many women, escaped—in many cases only to perish from cold and hunger among the snow in the high mountain-gorges. The huts were fired, and then the troops marched away, taking with them a thousand head of cattle and sheep and horses.
The prime movers of this deed of infamy were a Lowland statesman and a Highland chief, Sir John Dalrymple, Master (and afterwards Viscount and first Earl) of Stair, and John Campbell, Earl of Breadalbane. The one was actuated by chagrin at the failure of his scheme for pacifying the Highlands, the other by personal animosity. As for King William, Macaulay pleads that M'Ean's submission had been kept from him, that he knew the Macdonalds only as thieves and rebels, and that by 'extirpation' he certainly never meant them to be murdered in their sleep. Anyhow, a royal commission (1695) found that his instructions 'offered no warrant for the measure;' and there the affair ended. In 1884 a monument was erected to mark the scene of the massacre. See the histories of Macaulay and Hill Burton, and Paget's Paradoxes and Puzzles (1874).