Three minutes of destruction
On 27 July 1689, Viscount Dundee's Highland army destroyed a government force under General Hugh Mackay at the Pass of Killiecrankie in Perthshire. The battle lasted approximately three minutes. It was one of the most devastating infantry charges in military history and the defining moment of the first Jacobite rising.
Mackay's government army of around 3,500 men had marched north from Perth to intercept Dundee's Highlanders. They entered the narrow pass of Killiecrankie, where the River Garry cuts through a steep, wooded gorge, and emerged onto the flat ground beyond. There they found Dundee's force of around 2,500 clansmen occupying the high ground above them. The two armies faced each other for several hours in the long summer evening, the Highlanders silhouetted against the skyline.
At around seven o'clock, as the sun dropped low enough to stop shining in the Highlanders' eyes, Dundee gave the order to charge. The clansmen fired a single volley, threw down their muskets, drew their swords and targes, and hurled themselves downhill. Mackay's men fired one volley in return — some accounts say two — but the Highlanders were among them before they could fix bayonets. The impact was annihilating. The government line shattered. Within three minutes, over two thousand of Mackay's men were dead or fleeing. Mackay himself escaped with a handful of cavalry.
But the victory was pyrrhic. At the moment of triumph, Dundee was struck by a musket ball beneath his raised arm — a gap in his armour. He fell from his horse and died on the field. The Jacobite army, robbed of its only leader capable of holding the clans together, won one more inconclusive engagement at Dunkeld before disintegrating. The Pass of Killiecrankie, now managed by the National Trust for Scotland, remains one of the most beautiful and historically significant sites in Perthshire. The Soldier's Leap — a point where a fleeing government soldier is said to have jumped eighteen feet across the River Garry — is still visible from the walking trail through the gorge.