Macquarie heads for India - and eventual ignominy
In 1787, Lachlan hit on a scheme to enable him to loot Indian towns, as in, towns in the collection of principalities in what we now know as India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, not towns of Indigenous Americans. However, to do so, he had to pay the army for the right to call himself "senior lieutenant", but he also, out of his own very shabby pocket, had to pay for at least fifteen men to accompany him.
Macquarie decided he would call in some clannish favours, popped over to Ulva and, with the direct support of the clan chieftain, called for men to join his expedition to kick Indian bottom for the mad English-speaking king, who, having lost what we now know as the USA, didn't want to lose India as well. Mind you, he probably thought it was the room next door to his nursery. If the story of the Macquarie presence at Culloden is true, it seems memories were still strong of their fathers and grandfathers being led to their awful deaths on the field of Culloden and the criminal slaughter that went on for days afterwards. The English commander at Culloden was a son of the then German-speaking king, and accordingly a brother of the current English-speaking, but occasionally mad, king. Officially he was William, Duke of Cumberland, but to the Scots, at least those who had followed the Stuart pretender, he was known as "Butcher" Cumberland, for good reason. The English may have named the flower Sweet William after this outrageous war criminal, but the Scots deservedly named one of their weeds Stinking Billy. And, of course, again if the story is true, those who had mistakenly followed their chieftain to America didn't remember any slaughter, just the boredom of garrison duty, the extreme brutal violence of the English military, and the lack of good loot after years of being away. The boys and men of Ulva didn't, we understand, actually say it, but they did the equivalent of telling their supposed chieftain and Young Lachie to stick their respective heads up their respective jacksies. To describe Lachlan as upset would be a significant understatement. Not only did it show the Ulva men had no respect for him or the clan, and were, in his opinion, showing themselves to be cowards, but it also showed they had lost all respect for the chieftain, who had sold Ulva, and their bodies and fortunes with it. If, of course, they ever had such respect. Macquarie was a great one for watching what he spent, keeping detailed lists of his earnings and expenditures throughout his life (and as we're both substantially of Scots background, we'll hear no jokes about mean Scots). He clearly didn't willingly go into debt, but to achieve his aims it had to be done. Some sources say he borrowed the cash from his uncle Murdoch Maclaine, of Lochbuie. After his rejection by the men of Ulva, Lachlan had to walk hundreds of miles, mostly through the lowlands, offering 3 guineas each to prospective soldiers. Eventually, with twenty-one men in tow, he turned up to join his regiment way down in Dover, England, with recommendations from his uncle Murdoch, who had some sort of connection with the commanding general. That general accepted Macquarie, but was apparently most unimpressed as he had seemingly been told Lachlan would bring one hundred men. He was even more unimpressed when four of Lachlan's twenty-one got kicked out as unfit. Lachlan was off to India. |
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