[11] With all the regulars he could muster Dalziel was quickly
after the fugitives. He came up with them on Rullion Green, a ridge of
the Pentland Hills. Though now numbering scarce a thousand men, the
Covenanters were strongly posted, and defended themselves bravely. The
royal troops were twice driven back before they could carry the ridge,
and night had fallen before the insurgents were fairly broken. The
slaughter was not great; and it is significant of the unpopularity of
their cause that the fugitives suffered more from the Lothian peasantry
than from the victorious soldiers.
The Government could now assume the virtue of those who are summoned to
quell an open rebellion. Dalziel was put in command of the insurgent
districts, and his little finger was indeed found thicker than Turner's
loins. Twenty men were hanged on one gibbet in Edinburgh and many others
in various parts of the country: crowds were shipped off to the
plantations: torture was freely applied, and the ingenious devices of
the boot and the thumbkin were in daily requisition.[12] Dalziel was in
his element. A prisoner reviled him at the council board for "a Muscovy
beast who roasted men." The old savage struck the man with the hilt of
his sword so fiercely in the mouth that the blood gushed out.
At length there came a lull.
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