By the count of casualties Loup Hill was barely a skirmish - two dead, no follow-up, no maps in military histories. But the strategic consequence was significant. Kintyre, the long peninsula reaching south from Argyll toward Ireland, was the obvious supply route between the Jacobite forces in Ulster - where most of Ireland was held for James II by April 1689 - and Viscount Dundee's rebellion in the Scottish Highlands. With the major Scottish ports already held for William and Mary, small boats from Antrim were the lifeline. Lose Kintyre, lose that lifeline. After Loup Hill, the Scottish rising could no longer be easily resupplied from Ireland, and Dundee was left to fight his war alone.

The rising had its roots in the events of June 1688. James II and VII, a Catholic king ruling staunchly Protestant kingdoms, lost his political authority over two weeks. On 10 June his queen gave birth to James Francis Edward - suddenly a Catholic dynasty was possible, replacing the prospect of his Protestant daughter Mary succeeding him. On 30 June the Seven Bishops, who had refused to read James's Declaration of Indulgence in church, were acquitted of seditious libel. The acquittal destroyed James's standing. William of Orange landed at Brixham with 14,000 men on 5 November; James's army deserted; on 23 December he went into exile in France. By February 1689 Parliament had offered the throne to William and Mary jointly. The Convention in Edinburgh did the same in April. The next day John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee, raised the royal standard on Dundee Law for King James, and the Scottish rising was on.

In Kintyre the choosing of sides was less about William and James and more about Macdonalds and Campbells. The peninsula had long been Macdonald and Macalister country before the Campbells absorbed it in the 1670s. After Argyll's Rising of 1685 - when the Earl of Argyll, a Protestant dissident, was caught and executed by James II's government - the Macdonalds and Macalisters had regained some independence at Campbell expense. Now, with Argyll's son restored to favour by the new Williamite government, they faced losing it all again. Declaring for James was as much about keeping their estates from the Campbells as it was about religion or legitimate kingship. Gorrie Macalister of Loup, Macalister of Tarbert, Macneill of Gallachoille, and Macdonald of Largie all came out for the Jacobite cause.

Government-backed Campbell militia took Tarbert Castle in April 1689. Then a French merchant ship commandeered by Irish refugees arrived at Skipness, raising fears of an Irish invasion. The Williamite government was short of troops - regiments were still being raised in April - but they had to do something. They scraped together about 500 men under Captain William Young, ferried them across to Tarbert on 15 May, and pointed them south. Young ran into Macneill and Macalister's 200 men on Loup Hill. The exchange of fire was brief. The Jacobites broke first and fled. Young's troops, inexperienced and unfamiliar with the terrain, were not trusted with a night pursuit. He marched on to Clachan, joined up with local supporters, and the surviving Jacobite leaders escaped across to Ireland.

Several of the Loup Hill Jacobites fought at the Battle of Killiecrankie in July 1689, when Dundee's Highlanders famously charged downhill at General Mackay's government regulars and broke them at the cost of Dundee's own life. Without Dundee, the rising fell apart by 1690. The Loup Hill chiefs who survived Killiecrankie were outlawed for treason. The strategic logic that made Kintyre important in May 1689 had vanished by then - there was no resupply line to fight over, no rising left to resupply. The two anonymous men dead on Loup Hill remained the only casualties of an engagement whose consequences ran far beyond its weight.