The Glencoe Massacre

In Our Time

BBC

History

4.6 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 21 January 2010

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests Karin Bowie, Murray Pittock and Daniel Szechi discuss the Glencoe Massacre of 1692, why it happened, and its lasting repercussions.On a winter night in 1692, a company of soldiers quartered with the MacDonalds of Glencoe rose early and slaughtered their hosts. About 38 men, women and children were killed. Their homes were torched and many survivors died as they fled into the snow. This mass killing was branded by a Scottish Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry as 'murder under trust'.Why did this still infamous atrocity happen? The answer takes in the seismic impact of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the ongoing struggles for religious power that swept through the country in the 17th century. Crucially, Britain was at war in Europe, and the distracting nature of the conflict in Scotland, as far as the London government was concerned, helped to give the events at Glencoe their particular character. But this is also a story of a deadline and the fatal consequences of the Glencoe MacDonalds' attempts to meet it - and of how their technical failure to do so was exploited.The Glencoe Massacre had a severe impact on the reputation of the government of the Protestant King William III, who had ousted the Catholic James II with the support of the English and Scottish Parliaments only four years earlier. Some historians contend that it pushed the two states along the road to the Act of Union of 1707. Karin Bowie is Lecturer in Scottish History at the University of Glasgow; Murray Pittock is Bradley Professor of English Literature at the University of Glasgow; Daniel Szechi is Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Manchester.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Thanks for downloading the NRTIME podcast. For more details about NRTIME and for our terms of use, please go to bbc.co.uk forward slash radio for.
0:10.0	I hope you enjoy the program.
0:12.0	Hello, at 5 o'clock in the morning of the 13th of February 1692, the McDonald's of Glencoe were massacred by the Scottish Army.
0:20.0	Three years later, a parliamentary commission branded the attackers Murder Under Trust.
0:26.0	The massacre was one consequence of the glorious revolution of 1688 and of the ongoing struggles for religious supremacy that had raged across England and Scotland for much of the 17th century.
0:37.0	But even in this period of endemic violence, what happened in Glencoe stood out as an active atrocious cruelty.
0:42.0	The motives behind it encompass political power battles, military codes of obedience and fatally amidst deadline.
0:48.0	With me to discuss the Glencoe massacre, a Karen Bowie, a lecturer in Scottish history at the University of Glasgow, Daniel Seychee, Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Manchester,
0:59.0	and Murray Pittick, Bradley Professor of English Literature at the University of Glasgow.
1:03.0	Murray Pittick, can you give us the outline of what happened so that listeners know what we're going for?
1:10.0	On the day itself, the Campbell of Glen Lyam, who is commanding the force in the Glen, the 120 men, two companies that have been billeted on the McDonald's,
1:21.0	and who had just received the previous day, the order which until that time he was ignorant of, to carry out the massacre under trust.
1:31.0	His fellow officer, Drummond, did have knowledge of the order earlier than that.
1:37.0	At a given signal, attacked a number of houses up and down the Glen.
1:43.0	They had previously been noticed that they were arming by the McDonald's, and they had said that they were off to pursue Glen Gary, who was also Madonna Glen Gary, who was also out.
1:55.0	Then they sent clumps of soldiers back into the Glen, the Madonna started to get nervous, some of them were warned.
2:01.0	The first killing was the chief of the McDonald's of Glen Co.
2:08.0	After that, they went up and down the Glen, killing everybody under the age of 70.
2:13.0	Most of the casualties were women, quite a number of children were killed, including five-year-olds attending there.
2:25.0	There was going to be a attempt to close the Glen from both ends by Hamilton coming down from Fort William Lieutenant,
2:32.0	Hamilton with 400 men, he was driven back by a snow storm, so it couldn't close the Glen at one end,
2:37.0	and by Major Duncanston coming up from the south with two companies of our giles, who didn't actually get through to close again from the other end either,
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in -5547 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.