With Angus Og of the Isles now on the side of Bruce,
and the territories of Argyll and Lorn at his mercy in the absence
of their respective chiefs, it was an easy matter for the King,
during the varied fortunes of his heroic struggle, defending
Scotland from the English, to draw largely upon the resources of
the West Highlands and Isles, flow unmolested, particularly after
the surprise at Perth in the winter of 1312, and the reduction of
all the strongholds in Scotland - except Stirling, Berwick, and
Dunbar - during the ensuing summer. The decisive blow, however, yet
to be struck by which the independence and liberties of Scotland
were to be for ever established and confirmed, and the time was
drawing nigh when every nerve would have to be strained for a final
effort to clear it, once for all, of the bated followers of the
tyrant Edwards, roll them back before an impetuous wave of Scottish
valour, and for ever put an end to England's claim to tyrannise
over a free-born people whom it was found impossible to crush or
cow. Nor, in the words of the Bennetsfield manuscript, "will we
affect a morbid indifference to the fact that on the 24th of June,
1314, Bruce's heroic band of thirty thousand warriors on the
glorious field of Bannockburn contained above ten thousand Western
Highlanders and men of the Isles," under Angus Og of the Isles,
Mackenzie of Kintail (who led five hundred of his vassals), and
other chiefs of the mainland, of whom Major specially says, that
"they made an incredible slaughter of their enemies, slaying heaps
of them around wherever they went, and running upon them with
their broadswords and daggers like wild bears without any regard
to their own lives.
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