campbells - mcdonalds glencoe

The atrocity occurred at 5.00am on February 13, 1692 when some of the 135 men in the Argyll regiment, turned on the MacDonalds after receiving orders to kill all the men below the age of 70. The soldiers had been billeted for 11 days with McDonald families in the little Glencoe communities and receiving hospitality. The regiment were not only  Campbells. Only a few were professional soldiers.

The Captain of the troop, Robert Campbell of Glenlyon who was 60, seems to have been deliberately chosen as a shambles of a man by all accounts, a drunkard, who had recently taken heavy gambling debts