For a dashing foray they would be excellent.

Hardy, agile, and full of impetuosity, they would bear down all resistance instantly, were that resistance not too strong; but against stubborn and well armed troops they would break like a wave against a rock.

Archie saw that with such troops anything like regular war would be impossible, and that the struggle must be one of constant surprises, attacks, and forays, and that they could succeed only by wearing out and not by defeating the enemy.
With such tactics as these they might by long perseverance succeed; but this was just what Fergus had warned him they would not practise, and that their courage was rather of a kind which would lead them to dash desperately against the line of levelled spears, rather than continue a long and weary struggle under apparently hopeless circumstances.
The chiefs, hearing from Archie that he had acted as one of Wallace's lieutenants in battles where the English had been heavily defeated, willingly consented that he should endeavour to instil the tactics by which those battles had been won into their own followers; but when they found that he proposed that the men should remain stationary to withstand the English charges, they shook their heads.
"That will never do for our people," they said.

"They must attack sword in hand.

They will rush fearlessly down against any odds, but you will never get them steadily to withstand a charge of men-at-arms." Archie, however, persuaded them to allow him to organize a band of two hundred men under his immediate orders.