The Highlanders of Scotland - Clan Strachan Society

230 THE HIGHLANDERS [part ii
Macleod of Lewis, and Lauchlan Maclane of Doward. To
Maclane was intrusted the person of Donald Du, and the task
of keeping possession of the Isles, while Alaster proceeded with
the greater part of the clan to Ross, with a view to recover
possession of that earldom. Here he was not prepared to meet
with opposition, but Mackenzie, being well aware that the loss
of his newly acquired independence would follow Alaster's
success, and although far inferior in strength, resolved to make a
desperate effort, in which he succeeded ; for, having surprised
the Macdonalds in the night time, at the village of Blairnapark,
he dispersed them with great slaughter. Alaster upon this
returned to the Isles, but the dissension among
the islanders
soon put a finishing stroke to the defeat of this first attempt.
The principal families of the Isles who were opposed to the
succession of Donald Du, were those of Macian of Ardna-
murchan, and Macconnel of Kintyre, who were apprehensive
that their own houses would suffer by the success of the
rebellion. They had not, however, dared to oppose it, when
fortune at first seemed to favour the enterprise ; but when, after
Alaster's defeat in Ross, he returned to the Isles, to raise men,
they followed his vessel to Oransay, where they overtook him,
and put him to death. Maclane with his party had, in the
meantime, though at first more successful, been reduced
to submission by the efforts of the government. Having
found little difficulty in making himself master of the
Isles, he had, with the other Island chiefs, burst into
Badenoch, at the head of a considerable force, wasting the
even set fire to the town of
country in every direction ; and
Inverness. An army, at the head of which were the earls of
Argyll, Huntiy, Crawford, and Marshall, with Lord Lovat, and
other barons was led against him, but, with the usual Highland
policy, he had retreated to the Isles with his plunder. James
then found it necessary to dispatch a fleet under the command
of Sir Andrew Wood, the most celebrated naval commander of
his day, to the
result of this
Isles, to co-operate with the land army, and the
expedition shewed that the Island chiefs had
hitherto owed their immunity to the inefficient state of the
Scottish navy and that the ; extraordinary advance which had
been made in that department now laid them at the mercy of