In general, a thousand different pretensions divided their little army, and finally contributed in no small degree to its overthrow.
NOTE 25 .-- FIELD-PIECE IN THE HIGHLAND ARMY This circumstance, which is historical, as well as the description that precedes it, will remind the reader of the war of La Vendee, in which the royalists, consisting chiefly of insurgent peasantry, attached a prodigious and even superstitious interest to the possession of a piece of brass ordnance, which they called Marie Jeanne.
The Highlanders of an early period were afraid of cannon, with the noise and effect of which they were totally unacquainted.

It was by means of three or four small pieces of artillery that the Earl of Huntly and Errol, in James VI's time, gained a great victory at Glenlivat, over a numerous Highland army, commanded by the Earl of Argyle.

At the battle of the Bridge of Dee, General Middleton obtained by his artillery a similar success, the Highlanders not being able to stand the discharge of MUSKET'S-MOTHER, which was the name they bestowed on great guns.

In an old ballad on the battle of the Bridge of Dee, these verses occur:-- The Highlandmen are pretty men For handling sword and shield, But yet they are but simple men To stand a stricken field.
The Highlandmen are pretty men For target and claymore, But yet they are but naked men To face the cannon's roar.
For the cannons roar on a summer night Like thunder in the air; Was never man in Highland garb Would face the cannon fair.
But the Highlanders of 1745 had got far beyond the simplicity of their forefathers, and showed throughout the whole war how little they dreaded artillery, although the common people still attached some consequence to the possession of the field-piece which led to this disquisition.
NOTE 26 .-- ANDERSON OF WHITBURGH The faithful friend who pointed out the pass by which the Highlanders moved from Tranent to Seaton, was Robert Anderson, Junior, of Whitburgh, a gentleman of property in East Lothian.

He had been interrogated by the Lord George Murray concerning the possibility of crossing the uncouth and marshy piece of ground which divided the armies, and which he described as impracticable.