This final rupture with the Covenant did not at once throw Montrose into the arms of the King. The malignant star of Hamilton was still in the ascendant. In spite of all that had passed Charles still believed that in the Scots he would find a counterpoise to the rebellious English, and Hamilton, for purposes known only to himself, encouraged him in the belief. Montrose knew better. He knew, from his own past experience, how good was the secret understanding between the two Parliaments. He knew that the army, now again mustering under the new Earl of Leven, was never destined to waste its strength on Irish rebels. He knew that the Covenant was only biding its time to join hands with the English Parliament; and he saw clearly that the only chance of preventing this fatal union was to strike such a blow at the former before it was ready for action as would leave it no leisure to meddle with matters outside its own borders. He would have warned the King of this before the war began, but Charles, mindful of his promise to the Estates, and careful always to keep promises it was not in his interests to break, refused to see him. He warnedHenrietta Maria of it at Bridlington Quay amid the thunder of English guns firing on an English Queen, and he renewed his warnings again when Newcastle had escorted her to York, and the harassed lady could breathe and listen in safety. But Hamilton was also at her side persuading her, as he had persuaded the King, that no danger was to be feared from Scotland so long as no violence was attempted, and that he might be relied upon to keep the country quiet and loyal to its engagements. It was known that after Edgehill, when Charles was marching on London, the Houses at Westminster had directly invited the Scots into England to keep Newcastle's northern army in check, while the King's own appeals to his "contented people" had been invariably rejected. Yet the general feeling seems to have been in favour of a temporising policy. The truth was that, though many Royalists looked coldly on Hamilton, few were as yet inclined to trust Montrose. Among the old thorough-going cavaliers the taint of the Covenant still hung about him; his repentance, they thought, savoured too much of personal pique to be altogether genuine. But with the majority it was not so much his good faith as his capacity that was distrusted. They considered him a brilliant adventurer, brave and daring, but too young and inexperienced for these high matters, too rash and headstrong. "Montrose," they said, "is a generous spirit, but Hamilton hath the better head-piece." The King showed his opinion of the two men in characteristic fashion; he wrote courteously to Montrose, and advanced Hamilton to a dukedom.
So, during the first year of the war, Montrose wasforced to eat his heart out in idleness, at home among his books, in strenuous efforts to keep alive the fainting loyalty of his party, or in despairing consultations with his friends on the approach of the inevitable hour that they were powerless to prevent. The Covenanters, aware of his situation, and conceiving that his proud and restless spirit, chafing under the sickness of hopes deferred and services rejected, would render him amenable to their designs, sought to win him again to their side. They offered him the command of their new army under Leven; they even offered, as they had once offered Huntly, to pay his debts. The Moderator Henderson (at Argyll's suggestion, it would seem, and certainly with his knowledge) was sent to solve some doubts he affected to entertain on the propriety of accepting these offers, and from him Montrose learned all that he expected and feared to know.
This curious interview took place on the banks of the Forth near the Bridge of Stirling. Henderson was accompanied by Sir James Rollo, who filled the embarrassing situation of brother-in-law to both Montrose and Argyll.[11]Montrose, who knew from the Queen that these Covenanting overtures had been reported to his disadvantage in England, had taken care to be accompanied by good guarantees for his integrity. He came with Napier and Napier's son the young Master, with Keir and Lord Ogilvy. For two hours the interview lasted by the water-side. Montrose, professing to have lived lately too much in retirement to be aware how matters were going in the great public world, askedthe Moderator what these offers meant, and what he was expected to do for them. Henderson, in the belief that he was talking to an apostate only anxious to find a plausible excuse for his apostasy, frankly admitted that it was intended to send an army into England to co-operate with the Parliamentary forces, and that in both countries it was resolved to push matters to the extreme against the King; and he urged Montrose to hesitate no longer, but to throw himself heartily into the good work, assuring him that he had only to state his terms, and that whatever they might be they would be accepted. Montrose then turned to his brother-in-law and asked if they came as the mouthpiece of the Estates, or only out of goodwill to him. Sir James answered that he understood the Moderator to have spoken by authority. But to this Henderson demurred. He was not exactly commissioned, he said, by the Estates, but he was sure that they would make all his promises good. "That will not do for me," replied Montrose. "I cannot commit myself in such important matters without the assurance of the public faith, especially when the messengers cannot agree among themselves as to the terms of their message."
The substance of this interview was at once reported by Montrose, first to the Queen at Oxford, and then to the King in his camp before Gloucester. Still they both hesitated, nor was it till Hamilton himself confessed his failure that their eyes were opened. A Convention of the Estates had been summoned to meet in Edinburgh at the very time of the conference on the banks of the Forth. It was soon made clear that Henderson had spoken no more than truth when he told Montrose that the King need hope fornothing from Scotland. Though the Convention had been summoned without royal warrant, Hamilton attended as the Royal Commissioner, and was urgent with all loyal subjects to be in their places to secure him that diplomatic triumph which he had promised his confiding master. With Montrose he had been especially urgent, but Montrose had refused to attend unless the Commissioner would promise, should fair words prove useless, to sanction an appeal to force. Hamilton would not give the promise. "I will protest," he said, "but I will not fight." He did not even protest. Argyll asked him scornfully if he had nothing to say on the King's behalf. Lanark answered for him that he would not wrong himself and them by protesting against the wisdom of a whole kingdom. Hamilton muttered some confused words to the same purpose, and the loyal peers, who had obeyed his summons, left the hall in disgust.
All went forward as Henderson had predicted. Whatever reluctance might have been felt by the moderate Covenanters to declare open war against the King had been removed by the recent capture of Antrim in Ireland, with letters in his pocket from Nithsdale and Aboyne concerning a rising in Scotland to be backed by a force of Irish Catholics. There was no proof that this plan had been proposed to the King, still less that he had accepted it; but the mere whisper of the hated wordPapistwas enough to set Presbyterian Scotland in a blaze. The elections for the new Convention resulted in a large majority in favour of a military alliance with England. At the same time Waller's defeat at Roundway Down removed the last scruple entertained at Westminster on employing aScottish army against Englishmen. The Commissioners from London, among whom was the younger Vane, were authorised to demand a force of eleven thousand men. Terms were soon arranged, and Lanark, as Secretary of State, set the seal on his treachery by affixing the King's signature to a warrant authorising the levy of an army to be employed against the King's authority. Then, to draw the bond still closer between the English Puritans and Scottish Presbyterians, a new Covenant was formed by Vane and Henderson for mutual adoption under the title of the Solemn League and Covenant, which, after ratification by the Estates, was accepted by both Houses at Westminster, and solemnly subscribed in Saint Margaret's Church on September 25th, 1643.
The King could no longer blind himself to the truth. Hamilton had failed, and it was now clear that his failure had been inevitable from the first. He came with his brother to Oxford to justify himself before his indignant master. But Montrose was there also, with many a loyal Scotsman, Crawford and Nithsdale, Ogilvy and Aboyne, who had been cajoled into attending the Convention, and in the face of their evidence no justification was possible. Whether he had been traitor or fool mattered little now; but even the long-suffering King was forced to own that, if an honest man, the favourite had at least shown his honesty after a strange and disastrous fashion. The brothers were arrested. Lanark made his escape to the Covenanters; but Hamilton was sent a prisoner under a strong guard to Pendennis Castle in Cornwall.
Then, at last, the King turned for help to Montrose.Was the plan he had been urging for the last twelve months on unheeding ears still practicable? The Scots had crossed the Tweed; all the garrisons and passes of the Border were in their hands; any day might bring Leven and Newcastle face to face. Even Montrose could not but confess the venture to be a desperate one. But desperate ventures only raised that dauntless spirit. The plan that had seemed so easy a few short months since could not be impossible now, with all his friends round him, with his sovereign at his back, and no Hamilton in his path. If Newcastle could spare a few troopers he could make his way through the Lowlands to his own lands beyond the Tay. There, among his own people, with the royal commission in his hand, with Aboyne and Ogilvy for his lieutenants, he would rally the loyal North to the King's standard, and, sweeping down on the rear of the invading Scots, would soon send them back over their borders faster than they had come. Meanwhile Antrim, who was at large again, must effect a diversion from Ireland on the west, and beard the Dictator in his own country. The plan was thought sheer madness at Oxford, where little confidence was felt in Montrose, and none at all in Antrim, a vain and foolish man, notorious for nothing, in Clarendon's contemptuous phrase, but for his marriage with the great Duke of Buckingham's widow. But Digby, who dearly loved a hazard and could persuade the King to anything, favoured the scheme. Antrim was despatched to Ireland, and Montrose made ready for his more perilous journey to the Border. He knew his jealous countrymen too well to come before them in the character Charles wished him to assume, of Viceroy and Captain-Generalof the Royal Forces in Scotland. On his own advice these sounding titles were conferred on the King's nephew, Prince Maurice, as whose Lieutenant-General Montrose left Oxford for the North early in March, 1644. Crawford, Nithsdale, Reay, Ogilvy, and Aboyne rode with him, and a miscellaneous following of gentlemen-adventurers and their servants, some hundred in all.
Their first point was Newcastle's camp at Durham, where Montrose hoped to make some additions to his scanty army. He was received with all the circumstance and courtesy befitting his new honours, but with small assurance of help. Indeed Newcastle seemed in no good condition to help himself. Montrose was a spectator of the inglorious affair at Kowdenhill, which, but for the bravery of Sir Charles Lucas who led the English cavalry, might have ended in disaster. Here he saw that valiant Amazon, Mrs. Peirsons, riding, armed to the teeth, at the head of a troop of horse conspicuous for a black flag showing the ghastly device of a naked man hanging from a gibbet, with the mottoI dare, the legendary banner of the House of Dalzell. The troop had been raised and armed at the charges of Carnwath, the head of that House; but the commission ran in the name of Captain Frances Dalzell, under which style the woman whom he called his daughter took the field. Carnwath's loyalty was of the sort too common at that time, and common especially among Scotsmen. The incompetence of an English general, though it might grieve him for his master's sake, could not, for the present at least, affect Montrose's plans. The jealousy of a Scottish peer might affect them seriously. It was this he feared more than all the swords of the Covenantor the subtleties of Argyll. For his enemies he could account. But who would undertake to account for those who should be his friends? The King had issued a commission for Carnwath as Lieutenant of Clydesdale where his lands lay, which was delivered to him by Aboyne as aide-de-camp to the Lord Lieutenant-General of the Northern Expedition. The petulant old nobleman, who had been secretly chafing at Montrose's authority and the respect paid to it in the English camp, conceived himself entitled to some better reward for the expense of equipping Captain Frances Dalzell and her men for the field than an appointment which placed him at the orders of a man young enough to be his son, and who at the best was but a renegade Covenanter. Refusing even to read his commission, he flung it from him with one of those full-mouthed Scottish oaths that were always at his command.
But it was no time to stand upon punctilios. All the aid Newcastle could give was a hundred badly-mounted troopers and two small brass field-pieces. With these, and his own personal following, Montrose struck westward for Carlisle. On the road he was joined by eight hundred foot of the Northumberland and Cumberland Militia and three troops of horse. Such was the army with which this dauntless leader of a forlorn hope went forth to conquer Scotland for King Charles.
The beginning was disastrous. He crossed the Border on April 13th, and on the first day's march up the Annan the English troops quarrelled with their Scotch allies and deserted in a body. Still he pressed on with his own men and occupied Dumfries. There, at the head of his little band, he read his commission to the fewtownsmen who had not cared to run away, and raised the royal standard. There too he published the first of those declarations with which he was henceforth careful to mark his actions as the deliberate result of convictions forced on him by the conduct of his former allies. Not he, but they had changed the point of view. He was King's man now, as he had been Covenanter, "for the defence and maintenance of the true Protestant religion, his Majesty's just and sacred authority, the fundamental laws and privileges of Parliaments, the peace and freedom of oppressed and thralled subjects." For this he had taken the oath of the Covenant; for this he had borne arms in its service; for this he was now in arms for the King against traitors who had broken their faith to their country and to him. "I do again," he concludes, "most solemnly declare that, knew I not perfectly his Majesty's intention to be such, and so real as is already expressed, I should never at all have embarked myself in this service. Nor did I but see the least appearance of his Majesty's change from these resolutions or any of them, I should never continue longer my faithful endeavour in it."[12]These brave words fell on dull or unbelieving ears. Without allies it was madness to advance; to linger idle in Dumfries was useless, even if he could hope to hold the town. For two days he waited for Antrim and his Irishmen and the loyal gentlemen of the Western Lowlands. He waited in vain. Not a Scotsman joined him; nothing could be heard of Antrim; from every side came news of mustering foes. A solitary welcome was sent to him from the faithfulhearts at Keir, urging him to make at once for Stirling, where Lord Sinclair, who held the bulwark of the North for the Covenant, was reported to be only waiting his chance to declare for the King. But he could not trust Sinclair; and learning that a strong force under the fickle Callendar was marching against him, he had no alternative but to fall back on Carlisle.
Yet, though foiled for the time, Montrose could not be idle. He contrived to draw a few troops together from the garrison at Newcastle and elsewhere, and with these he patrolled the Border, keeping Callendar in check on the Western Marches and gathering up forage and provisions everywhere for the English army. After some brisk fighting, and in the teeth of Leslie's cavalry, he took Morpeth Castle, a strong and important post, and a smaller fort at the mouth of the Tyne. From this most useful and not inglorious work he was summoned by an urgent message from Rupert, who was then marching to the relief of York, to join him at once with all the men he could muster. With all his haste he could not reach the prince till the evening after the fatal Second of July; and when the two men met in the little inn at Richmond the King had no longer an army in the north of England.
Still Montrose did not despair. If Rupert would give him a thousand horse he would cut his way into the heart of Scotland. But Rupert had neither horse, nor men, nor muskets to give. "When we came to the prince his occasions forced him to make use of the forces we brought along with us and would not suffer him to supply us with others; so that we were left altogether abandoned, and could not so much as find quarteringfor our own person in these counties." In such words was Montrose compelled to declare his forlorn situation to the King whom he had left but four short months earlier with every assurance of victory. But he added to them a characteristic postscript: "Forget not to show how feasible the business is yet, and the reason thereof if right courses be taken." And yet the outlook was dark enough to make even that stout spirit sink. His own reverses were but a small thing, the fortune of war which the next turn of the wheel might repair. It was the selfishness, the jealousy, the treachery, that made his heart sore. All he feared had come true. The commissions he had carried with him had shared the fate of Carnwath's lieutenancy, and these proud King's men would brook no master in the King's Lieutenant-General. The superior rank that his new patent of Marquis gave him over them, instead of confirming his authority, only aggravated his offence.[13]And still there was no sign of the Irishmen. All the Lowlands from the Forth to the Solway were in the hands of the Covenanters. Traquair, once the most trusted of the King's Scottish counsellors after Hamilton, had now openly declared for them, and was busy promising in their name pardon and preferment to all Royalists who should follow him. Huntly had indeed called his men out in the north, but had been easily routed by Argyll, and some gallant Gordons had paid the penalty for their chief's miscarriage with their heads.
Such was the substance of the report entrusted to Ogilvy for the King's hand. It was drawn up at Carlisle, whither the baffled adventurers had retiredafter the disaster at Marston. Nothing more could be done now but to make the best of their way back to headquarters at Oxford and there wait with their sovereign for a happier time. In this decision Montrose had seemed to acquiesce while secretly resolved on a very different enterprise. Early in August the melancholy cavalcade left Carlisle for the South. After nightfall on the second day, Montrose, having confided his plans to Ogilvy alone, privately left his companions, who, seeing his aide-de-camp, his horses, servants, and baggage still with them, continued their march for Oxford, never doubting that their chief was following. But they were not destined to reach their journey's end in safety. On their way through Lancashire they were attacked by a strong body of rebel horse, and after a stout resistance carried prisoners into Leven's camp before Newcastle. Their leader returned to Carlisle.
No wilder project was ever hatched in mortal brain than that on which Montrose was now bent. It was clear even to him that the game for the present was up in the Lowlands; but the Highlands were still open. There, among his own people, he might at least wait in safety for Antrim's promised succours, which must surely now be on their road, and there he might hope to find the loyal hearts which had ceased to beat south of the Forth. But to reach the Highlands he must first cross the Border where every pass and road was jealously watched by Covenanting patrols, and make his way through a country where every town and castle flew the blue flag. He knew that his enemies would give more to have him in their hands than for the Kingand all his armies, and he knew well that from those hands he need never hope to escape with life. In truth the design seems to match better with the brilliant romance of the great novelist than the sober record of history. He chose for his companions Sir William Rollo, a younger brother of the Laird of Duncruib, and Colonel Sibbald who had served under him in the Covenanting armies. They wore the dress of Leven's troopers, while the Marquis in the guise of a groom rode after them on a sorry nag and leading another by the bridle.
At the Border they were met by the startling intelligence that Montrose was known to be in the neighbourhood, and that the strictest watch was kept for him at all the passes. But a more serious danger soon threatened them. A Scots soldier, who had served under Newcastle and seen Montrose in the camp at Durham, at once detected him under his mean disguise and saluted him by name. The seeming groom would have maintained his character, but the soldier would take no denial. "What!" he said. "Do I not know my Lord Marquis of Montrose? But go your way and God be with you!" They gave him a few crowns, and the faithful fellow kept their secret well.
Thus, after four days of hard riding and continuous peril, Montrose reached the Highlands. He passed through his own lands without halting till he came to Tullibelton, on the Tay between Perth and Dunkeld, the seat of Patrick Graham of Inchbrakie the best loved and trusted of all his kinsmen. Here he could draw breath in safety, though the strictest concealment was still necessary till he could learn the state of thecountry. He passed his nights in a little hut among the woods, and his days in lonely rambles on the hills, while his two companions went on to Keir to report the wanderer's arrival, and to learn how things went in those parts for the King.
The report was not encouraging. Huntly's abortive rising had only served to strengthen the hands of the Covenant. North of the Grampians Sutherland and Seaforth were in arms with the Forbeses, Frasers, and Grants, all hereditary enemies of the Gordons. To the south another force was mustering under Elcho at Perth. The men of Athole, the Stuarts, and the Robertsons, were sound at the core, but had looked in vain for a leader since the death of Montrose's friend and Argyll's sworn foe, the loyal Earl of Athole, and in the want of a leader they too had fallen under the universal yoke. Between Highlands and Lowlands there seemed in truth but little choice.
While wandering one day in despondent mood on the hills Montrose saw a man hastening towards him over the heather with the fiery cross, the Highland signal for war, in his hand. He had been sent to warn Perth of a great army of Irishmen that had entered Athole under Alaster Macdonald[14]threatening to burnand ravage the whole country unless it joined them for King Charles. Within a short time arrived, by a series of lucky accidents, a letter from Macdonald himself announcing his arrival to Montrose, whom he supposed to be still at Carlisle. Montrose answered at once, bidding Macdonald to make straight for Blair Athole, and promising to join him there with all speed.
In the prospect of action all doubts and difficulties vanished at once from Montrose's sanguine mind. He saw only that the time had come at last to make good his pledge to the King, and though all the armies of the Covenant were gathering to their prey, made good it should be. In a Highland dress, on foot, with no companion but Inchbrakie, he set off over the hills for the rendezvous with the King's commission in his pocket and the King's standard on his shoulder. He arrived at a critical moment. The men of Athole did not care to see these Irishmen in their country. They looked on Macdonald, though partly of their own race, as an upstart unfit to lead Highland gentlemen to battle. For the Highland chieftains were as jealous as the Lowland peers. No chief would serve under another chief; no clan would follow any but its hereditary lord. A Cameron would take no orders from a Macleod; the Macphersons, who numbered some four hundred in all, held themselves as good men as the Campbells, who could bring five thousand claymores into the field. Nor was the appearance of the Irishmensuch as to inspire much respect. There were only about twelve hundred of them, indifferently armed and attended by a rabble of half-starved, half-naked women and children. Montrose found the Highlanders on the point of coming to blows with their unwelcome allies. But his arrival at once changed the spirit of the scene. Macdonald could not at first believe that this travel-stained, meanly-dressed man was the King's Lieutenant-General, the famous Marquis of Montrose; but the shouts of the Highlanders soon assured him. They knew the Marquis well by sight, and his companion, whom they had affectionately dubbed Black Pate, was their particular friend. Scots and Irish united in welcoming their chief. The royal commission was read, and the royal standard unfurled on a small hill below the castle and close to the modern house of Lude.
And now at last there was a royal army in Scotland, and the King's Lieutenant was something more than an empty name. Yet it was not one with which any general but Montrose would have cared to take the field. At the most it cannot have exceeded two thousand three hundred men. The Irish carried rusty matchlocks, with ammunition enough for a round a piece. A few of the Highlanders were armed with the claymore, but bows and arrows, pikes and rude clubs, were the more common weapons. Cavalry there was none, but the three horses on which Montrose and his companions had ridden from Carlisle, mere scarecrows of skin and bone, as Wishart calls them,omnino strigosos et emaciatos. Against this rude array there were no less than three armies in the field, one under Lord Balfour of Burleigh at Aberdeen, another under Elcho at Perth, while Argyllwas coming up fast from the West to avenge the flaming homesteads and slaughtered herds that had marked the course of the hated Macdonald through the country of the Campbells. Montrose chose the nearest, and striking south through the hills crossed the Tay on the last day of August. As they marched through Glen Almond they were joined by five hundred men under Lord Kilpont and the Master of Maderty, Montrose's brother-in-law. They had come out at Elcho's summons to defend their lands against the public enemy, not to fight against their kinsman.[15]With these welcome succours Montrose continued his march upon Perth. Early on the morning of Sunday, September 1st, he came in sight of the Covenanters drawn up in order of battle on the plain of Tippermuir between him and the city.
Elcho's army was composed of six thousand foot, seven hundred horse, and a small park of artillery. But the odds were not so great as they looked. Elcho's military reputation did not stand high, and his soldiers were mostly townsmen and peasants ignorant of war and, despite the exhortations of their preachers, with no great stomach for it. Montrose, on the other hand, could trust every man in his little force. They were not indeed trained soldiers, but they had all been bred from their youth to keep their heads with their hands, were utterly fearless, and conscious of two important facts—that there was a powerful enemy in their rear, and a rich prize before them. He formed them in a long line three deep, with orders to the Irish to reserve their single volley till they were close on the enemy,while those who had no guns might use the stones of which there was a plentiful supply on the moor ready to their hands. But it was on the wild rush of the charge, and the stout arms of his men, that he relied. Could they once get home on the Perthshire cits, he had little fear of the result. His own place was on the right wing; Kilpont commanded on the left; Macdonald and his Irishmen were in the centre.
But first, that all things might be done in order, Montrose sent young Maderty, under a flag of truce, to inform Elcho that he was acting under the commission of their King, whose only desire was to persuade his subjects to return to their lawful allegiance and to avoid all bloodshed. Elcho's answer was to send the messenger a prisoner into Perth, with the assurance that he should pay for his insolence with his head so soon as the army of the Lord had done its work.
What followed can hardly be dignified with the name of a battle. The Irishmen fired their volley, the Highlanders hurled their pebbles, and both with a wild yell sprang straight at their foe. The Covenanters, horse and foot, broke and ran like sheep. Only on the right wing was there any resistance, where Sir James Scott, a brave man who had seen service in the Italian wars, held his ground for a time among some enclosures, till Montrose burst in at the head of the Atholemen. Not more than a dozen fell in the actual fight, which lasted but a few minutes; but many hundreds were cut down in the rout. The claymores and Lochaber axes did bloody work among the fugitives, and some of the fat burghers, untouched by either, are said to have dropped dead from sheer exhaustion. Before night fell Montrose was masterof Perth, without the loss of a single man, and with but two wounded.
No plundering was allowed. The arms, ammunition, and baggage of the enemy were lawful spoil, and on the dead bodies the victors might work their will; but within the walls strict order was commanded and kept. Some of the prisoners took service under King Charles; the rest were released on parole. A fine was imposed on the town, and for three days Montrose and his men lived at free quarters. It was during these days that he was joined by his two eldest sons and his old tutor William Forrett; the two younger boys, with their mother, were at Kinnaird Castle under the care of her father Southesk.
On September 4th Montrose left Perth for Aberdeen. In point of equipment his force was now vastly superior to that he had led to victory at Tippermuir. His men were all well armed and clothed; ammunition was plentiful, and there was some money in the chest. A few gentlemen joined him on the march. Among them was the gallant old Earl of Airlie, with his two younger sons Sir Thomas and Sir David Ogilvy, who through good and evil fortune remained faithful to the end; and Nathaniel Gordon, one of the bravest and the most constant of his name. These brought a welcome addition to his force in the shape of a small body of cavalry, not indeed exceeding fifty troopers, but all well mounted and well armed. On the other hand there had been some serious defections. As usual, most of the Highlanders had gone off to the mountains to secure their booty. Lord Kilpont's men had withdrawn with the body of their young chief, after his mysterious death atthe hands of his kinsman Stewart of Ardvoirlich, which had occurred in camp on the morning after they had left Perth.[16]When Montrose summoned Aberdeen on the morning of September 12th, he had at his back only fifteen hundred foot, fifty horse, and the few field-pieces taken at Tippermuir.
The Covenanters were two thousand strong in foot, with five hundred horse. Two of Huntly's sons were among them. It is idle to search for the causes which placed these scions of a loyal House in the ranks of their sovereign's enemies. One cause was undoubtedly jealousy of Montrose, whose treatment of their father they had not yet forgiven. Moreover, though Huntly's sons, they were also Argyll's nephews, and for the present the uncle had the upper hand of the father. There at all events they were, not only marshalled to fight against the King's troops, but marshalled side by side with their hereditary foes, the Crichtons, Frasers, and other families who welcomed the Covenant as a counterpoise to the overweening power of the Gordons. But though superior in numbers, and not inferior in arms and courage, the Covenanters were totally deficient in discipline, and their nominal leader, Lord Balfour of Burleigh, had neither knowledge nor authority to control them.
The bridge over the Dee had been fortified, and Montrose, remembering his former experiences at this place, led his army up the river to a ford some fifteenmiles above the city. Here they crossed, and encamped for the night in the grounds of Crathes Castle, whose owner, though no King's man, thought the King's Lieutenant, with fifteen hundred men at his back, entitled to every courtesy. Next morning Montrose led his men down the north bank of the river within two miles of Aberdeen, where he found the Covenanters ready for battle. He summoned the magistrates to surrender, or at least to send the women and children to a place of safety. His summons was refused, and a drummer-boy, who had accompanied his messenger, was wantonly killed. Furious at this second and more brutal disregard of the laws of civilised warfare, Montrose promised Macdonald the sack of the rebellious town, and bade the battle begin.
As at Tippermuir the Irish held the centre; Rollo commanded on the right, Nathaniel Gordon on the left. The cavalry were on the two wings, interspersed with musketeers and bowmen. Montrose, well mounted, clad in coat and trews, with a bunch of oats in his bonnet—awhimsyadopted by all his infantry—was everywhere his keen eye told him there was need of his services. The fighting was hot while it lasted, and at one moment the left flank of the Royalists was within an ace of being turned. But Montrose brought up the horse and a fresh supply of musketeers from the right wing in the nick of time, and the Covenanters having no one to take advantage of the crisis, the danger was averted. The fifty troopers performed wonders, and the Irish fought like trained soldiers. In the end good leadership and discipline prevailed over numbers, and a general charge led by Montrose in person decided the day.Within two hours after the first shot was fired the army of the Covenant was in flight. Balfour, who seems to have played no part in the battle, galloped off north across the Don with his cavalry. The foot were cut down as they ran, and the victorious Royalists burst into the town at the heels of the fugitives. Then followed a hideous scene. Montrose would not, or could not, retract the promise he had given in a moment of anger, and the wild Irish ran riot through the defenceless town. The unarmed citizens were butchered like sheep in the streets; the better sort were stripped before death, that their clothes might not be soiled with their blood; women and little children were slaughtered for bewailing their dead, and those women were happiest who expiated their tears with life. For three days the sack continued, without any interference, so far as we know, on the part of Montrose. Hitherto we have invariably seen him courteous and humane to a defeated foe, and always where it was in his power active to spare a defenceless people, and as such we shall find him hereafter. On this solitary occasion he outdoes the worst brutalities of the German wars. It was a mistake as well as a crime. It turned the scale against him in many wavering minds; and it inflamed the anger and fear of his enemies to a savage and unrelenting hatred which was destined to bear bitter fruit upon a later day. A price was now set upon his head, and Argyll openly offered a reward of £1000 to any man who should bring it in by fair means or foul.
It was now felt that some more serious measures must be taken with this terrible enemy. Argyll's pursuit of Macdonald had slackened since he learned that theIrish had joined hands with Montrose; but he was still laboriously plodding after them with three thousand of his Campbells. To these were now added two regiments from the regular army in England, and a strong force of cavalry. These reinforcements did not quicken Argyll's pace, but they prevented Montrose from giving battle to a foe whom above all others he longed to meet on a fair field. His little force had been still further diminished by the despatch of Macdonald with half his men into the Western Highlands to beat up recruits among the men of his name, who had been from time immemorial the sworn foes of Mac Callum More. For some weeks therefore the nimble Cavalier was forced to content himself with leading his heavy-footed, heavy-hearted pursuer a chase backwards and forwards through the Grampians, till at last he rested at Fyvie Castle on the Ythan, in the north-east corner of Aberdeenshire.
Here he was nearly caught napping. Argyll had crept within two miles of the castle before Montrose knew that he had so much as crossed the Grampians. It was a dangerous moment for the King's Lieutenant. He dared not risk a battle on the open ground: the castle would not stand a siege; and to make matters worse, the Royalists had run short of ammunition. But behind the castle rose a rugged hill, crowned with trees and roughly defended with some farm enclosures. Here Montrose stood at bay. The pewter vessels of the castle were melted into bullets, and the first attack of the Covenanters supplied the defenders with powder. Argyll's men were half-way up the hill, when Montrose, turning to a young Irishman whom Macdonald had left in charge as his lieutenant, said, "Come, O'Cahan, what are you about?Take some of your handiest fellows, drive those rascals from our defences, and see that we are not troubled with them again." The brave young soldier rushed down the hill at the head of his men, drove the Covenanters pell-mell before him, and returned in safety with several bags of powder. As they came back into their lines, one of the Irishmen said, looking at the powder, "We must at them again; the stingy rogues have left us no bullets." The jest was soon made earnest. As Argyll's foot retired, the horse came up on another side against the little body of Royalist troopers. But Montrose saw the movement, and leading some of his musketeers round the brow of the hill, poured so hot a volley into the Covenanting squadrons, that they descended the slope much faster than they had climbed it. This was enough for Argyll. He withdrew his men beyond the Ythan, and Montrose marched back unmolested to Blair-Athole.
This extraordinary campaign—this "strange coursing" as Baillie shrewdly called it—could not continue. It was now November. The rains of autumn were already turning into the snows of winter. The mountains would soon be passable only for wolves and eagles. Argyll turned from a pursuit for which he had no heart, led his men back to Edinburgh, and resigning his commission to the Estates retired to his own country. The road into the Lowlands lay open. Now was the time to put in practice that plan which Montrose had always kept steadily in view. This mountain warfare against irregular levies led by incompetent generals was but a waste of good powder and shot. If he could descend into the Lowlands with a force sufficient to bring Levenback over the Border, his promise to the King would be redeemed. Macdonald had rejoined him with the rest of the Irishmen and five hundred stout fellows of his name, Macdonalds of Glengarry, Clanronald, Keppoch, and Glencoe. Camerons from Lochaber, Stewarts from Appin, Farquharsons from Braemar, had also gathered to the Standard. Surely now he was strong enough to put his cherished design into practice. But his Lowland officers demurred. They were weary of a campaign where victory brought no solid fruits, and where the advance of one day seemed to be inevitably followed by the retreat of the next. The invitations and promises of Argyll had begun to work. They knew that pardon and preferment awaited every deserter from the royal cause, and though they had no design of betraying Montrose, they thought the time favourable for making their own peace. Under pretence of being unfit to face the hardships of a winter campaign, one after another took leave of his general. The brave Airlie, for all his sixty years, and his sons alone stood by him, and Nathaniel Gordon, who, though he left his leader, left him on the King's service. Montrose let the recreants go without a word, and turned to the Highlanders. They too deprecated a descent on the Lowlands, but for a different reason. These Macdonalds and Camerons were ready enough to fight under the royal banner, but they must fight against their own foe. They hated King Campbell more than they loved King Charles. Between all who bore the name of Macdonald and all who bore the name of Campbell there had been war to the knife for many generations. There was hardly, indeed, a clan in all the Highlands of Scotland which had not a grudgeto pay against the Race of Diarmid. Beyond the great mountain barrier with which Nature had guarded the domains of Mac Callum More lay a land, rough indeed and sparsely cultivated, but rich in fat cattle and well-stocked homesteads. Argyll was used to say that he had rather lose a hundred thousand crowns than that any mortal man should know the way by which an army could enter his country. There were men now at Montrose's side who knew that way as well as Argyll himself. Something clearly must be done. Neither his temperament nor his position would suffer Montrose to be idle. He could not hope to keep his men together without pay, and pay was only to be found in the pockets of a defeated enemy. Moreover, to strike a blow at Argyll in his own home was in some sort to do the King's service, and in a sort not uncongenial to himself when no better was possible. He agreed, therefore, to a plan which it was not altogether in his power to refuse, and in the first week of December the westward march began.
They marched in three divisions. Montrose led one, Alaster Macdonald another, and the third was commanded by the Captain of Clanronald. On December 13th they struck down through those mountains whose secrets had been so jealously guarded right into the heart of the promised land. At the first rumour of their approach Argyll had fled from Inveraray in a fishing-boat, leaving his clansmen to shift for themselves. For upwards of a month the triumphant Macdonalds carried fire and sword through the length and breadth of the country. Every unfortified dwelling was sacked and burned to the ground; every head of cattle not wantedfor the destroyers' consumption was slaughtered. Montrose would have spared the people if he could; but a Macdonald with a sword in his hand could give no quarter to a Campbell, and when Montrose was not by to save him every son of the accursed race old enough to bear arms was ruthlessly cut down where he was found. By the end of January the work was done: to the lands of Argyll had been meted the measure their owners had never spared to measure to others; and leaving a smouldering waste behind him Montrose turned leisurely northwards through Lochaber.
He had reached Kilcummin, where Fort Augustus now stands, at the head of Loch Ness, when he heard news which made him pause. In front Seaforth was barring the way with five thousand men, his own Mackenzies and others from the hardy northern shires. Behind him Argyll was coming up with all the Campbells he could muster and some Lowland levies hastily gathered to his aid. To meet these two armies Montrose had only his Irishmen, a handful of Airlie's troopers, and such of the Highlanders as had not yet made off with their plunder, barely fifteen hundred men in all. He made his choice in an instant. Only thirty miles off, down the road by which he had just ascended the valley, Argyll lay at Inverlochy three thousand strong. But that road was certain to be watched by Argyll's scouts, and this time Montrose was determined that his enemy should not escape him. There was another road by which the Campbells might be reached in flank at a point where no retreat was possible. It was a road rarely trodden even in summer by any foot save that of the deer or wolf, and now, when winter lay white on themountains and the passes were choked with snow, shunned even by those wild travellers. But any road that led to his enemy was a good road for Montrose, and the dauntless spirit of their general beat high in the hearts of his men. Striking southward over the rugged shoulder of Corryarrick, through the bleak wastes of Glen Roy and Glen Spean, now wading waist high through the snow, and now clambering among the bare mountain peaks of that lonely land, by day and by night the little host held on its painful way. On the evening of February 1st, on the second day after leaving Kilcummin, they saw from the skirts of Ben Nevis the towers of Inverlochy and the moonlit waters of Loch Eil.
The castle of Inverlochy stood, as all that is left of it still stands, at the juncture of Loch Eil and Loch Linnhe beneath the mighty shadow of Ben Nevis. The Campbells lay in the narrow strip of plain between the mountain and the shore. For them there was no escape if defeated; but unfortunately for his honour a way of escape lay open to their chief. His galley lay at her moorings on the lake, and in the middle of the night he was put secretly on board to await in ignominious security the chances of the day, leaving his people to fight for his name and their lives under his cousin Sir Duncan Campbell of Auchinbreck. He excused himself by an injury to his arm which disabled him from using a sword, an excuse that no other man then alive in Scotland would have ventured to plead in the face of his foe.
Though their scouts had brought word early in the evening of an enemy holding the passes above them inforce, the Campbells could not believe that enemy to be Montrose. Even the imagination of a Highlander, inured as he was to every form of activity and endurance, could not conceive the possibility of that wonderful march; and supposing that they would have only to deal with some Macdonalds and Camerons gathered to defend their homes from ravage, they slept securely through the night. But when with the first rays of morning they heard from the dark mountain overhead the trumpets pealing the point of war which had been ever used by Scotsmen to salute the standard of their king, they knew too well who was before them. Auchinbreck was a brave and experienced soldier, but he had little confidence in the Lowland levies, and even his own men were better, he knew well, at giving than receiving the attack. Still numbers must be on his side, and his men were fresh. The enemy could not be many, and must be weary and ill-fed. Ill-fed in truth they were; they had not tasted bread since they left Kilcummin; even Montrose and Airlie had to break their fast on a little meal moistened with cold water. But all weariness had vanished at the sight of the enemy; and for the food, they comforted themselves with the assurance of better fare before sunset.
The battle of Inverlochy was little more than a repetition of the battle of Tippermuir. Montrose now led the centre, where the Highlanders fought who would follow no man to battle but the King's Lieutenant. Alaster Macdonald led on the right, and O'Cahan, the hero of Fyvie, on the left. Auchinbreck had placed the Lowland regiments on either wing, himself commanding the Campbells in the centre. The former discharged theirmuskets and ran so soon as they saw Montrose's fierce warriors burst from the mountain and heard the wild yell with which they came bounding over the plain. The Campbells fought bravely, but unsupported and overlapped they at last too broke and fled. Some pressed into the water to reach their chief's galley, but Argyll had hoisted his sails so soon as he saw that all was lost, and made off down the lake heedless of his drowning clansmen. Others fled southwards along the beach and were cut down as they ran. Some made for the castle, but were driven back by the troopers into the open ground. Quarter was given to the Lowlanders, but Montrose could win no quarter from his men for the Campbells. Fifteen hundred of the great clan perished on that fatal day, including Auchinbreck himself and many gentlemen of rank. On the other side only three private soldiers were killed; but many were wounded, and among them Sir Thomas Ogilvy, by whose death, a few days after the battle, Montrose lost a staunch friend and the King a brave and accomplished officer.
Montrose had won a great and important victory. He had completely broken Argyll's power in the Highlands, and indeed for many years to come the mighty Clan Campbell was but the shadow of its former name. It is small wonder that his head grew hot with success, and that he wrote to the King as though all Scotland lay already at his feet. "I doubt not," ran his triumphant words, "that before the end of this summer I shall be able to come to your majesty's assistance with a brave army, which, backed with the justice of your majesty's cause, will make the rebels in England as well as in Scotland feel the just rewards of rebellion. Only giveme leave, after I have reduced this country to your majesty's obedience, and conquered from Dan to Beersheba, to say to your majesty then, as David's general did to his master, 'Come thou thyself, lest this country be called by my name.'"
Had Montrose been strong enough to march at once on the capital, it is possible that he might have found himself master of Scotland, and his promise to the King fulfilled sooner than he had expected. It is certain that those in Edinburgh who knew the truth felt that they were for the moment powerless to stop him. On such a stroke, however, even he dared not venture. Cavalry he had none, save the few troopers who barely sufficed for an escort to the Standard, and without cavalry he could not hope to hold his own in Lowland warfare. Nor for such warfare could he rely on the Highlanders, even should they consent to follow him so far from their homes. In the sudden onset, the struggle hand to hand, the headlong pursuit, a general need wish to lead no better soldiers; but in the calculated movements of a regular campaign they could not be trusted. They knew no discipline save obedience to their own chiefs, no mode of fighting save to shout and fall on. To rally them after defeat was as difficult as to keep them in hand after a victory. Montrose therefore held on northwards up the valley of the Ness, on theroad he was marching when he had turned back on Argyll.
The news of his great victory had preceded him. As he advanced, Seaforth and his Mackenzies fell back, and when he halted at Elgin the proud chief of Kintail appeared before him as a suppliant for the royal pardon. Nor was Seaforth the only waverer who had taken to heart the lesson taught Argyll. Sir James Grant came in with three hundred of his men, and many of the smaller lairds. Now, too, appeared a more welcome ally than all the Grants and Mackenzies could furnish. Nathaniel Gordon's errand had been done. Weary of a yoke at which he had always secretly fretted, and of a cause which seemed to lead only to defeat and disgrace, Lord Gordon now frankly offered his sword to Montrose. Nor did he come alone. His brother Lord Lewis, whom he brought with him, was destined indeed to prove a hindrance rather than a help, but a well-mounted and well-furnished troop of the gentlemen of his house had also followed their young chief. Thus reinforced on the side where he was weakest, Montrose turned to face his enemies once more.
The Estates had now recovered from their panic. In the first transports of their fear, when the news came down from Inverlochy, they had sought comfort in solemnly pronouncing doom of death and forfeiture on the traitor James Graham, sometime Earl of Montrose, and on all who abetted him in his treason; and the Kirk had as solemnly discharged against him the thunders of its excommunication. For himself such idle words were nothing to Montrose; but it was nothis cue to pass any accusation of his enemies unchallenged, or to let any judgment go against him by default. It was on the justice of his cause, on his own consistency that he wished especially to be understood to rely. He therefore published an answer to this sentence, framed on the same lines as his Declaration from Dumfries, but in a bolder spirit and more explicit terms. He recapitulated the causes which led Scotland to renew her ancient Covenant "as the only safest and fairest way for preservation of religion and liberty, which was so opposed by the prelates and their adherents that, by misinformation, they moved our dread sovereign to threaten us on both sides with arms." He reminded his countrymen that for this purpose he had gone with the Covenant even farther than was strictly warrantable till the King, "being informed of the lawfulness of our proceedings and honest intentions," had granted, first at Berwick and afterwards more fully at Ripon, all that they could fairly and reasonably ask. Thus far he had gone with them; farther, no true subject of the Crown, no true lover of his country, no true Covenanter could go. It was when he found "the prevailing party to intend more than they did pretend," to the prejudice of religion and liberty, to the ruin of lawful authority, to the abuse of the real spirit of the National Covenant,—it was then that he left them. It was then that "we were constrained to suffer them to deviate without us, with the multitude misled by them, whose eyes they seal in what concerns religion, and hearts they steal away in what concerns loyalty,—and there we left them."[17]
The Estates, however, could not afford to rely on the spiritual arm alone. James Graham, the excommunicated traitor, was still, outside the walls of Edinburgh, the Marquis of Montrose; and the Marquis of Montrose at the head of an army was not a foe to be safely left to the vengeance of Church and Parliament. The strongest force they had yet put into the field was despatched northwards under General Baillie, who had been recalled from England for the purpose, and Sir John Hurry, a Cavalier who had apparently found in his prison at Newcastle convincing arguments in favour of the Covenant.
But before the southern march began a heavy blow fell on Montrose from no earthly hand. His eldest son, a gallant lad in his sixteenth year, died at Gordon Castle. He had followed his father through the winter's campaign, and the strain had proved too heavy for his young constitution. Nor was this all. The second son, a boy of eleven, was snatched from his lessons by Hurry in a raid on the town of Montrose, and sent a prisoner to Edinburgh. At the same time old Airlie fell dangerously sick, and was removed to Strathbogie under a strong escort of Highlanders. Thus weakened in numbers, and with a heavy heart, Montrose took the field.
He was now resolved at all hazards to make for the Lowlands. The answer to his despatch from Inverlochy had urged him to press southwards with all speed to meet the King, who was now bent on carrying the war into Scotland, and had promised an immediate reinforcement of cavalry. The summons matched too well with his own wishes to be disregarded. But as thedays passed, and the little army drew steadily down the coast to the Tay, no sign could be seen of the promised succours. And the little army grew daily smaller. Baillie, a brave man, but a cautious rather than a brilliant soldier, would not be forced into a battle. Montrose had not spared his enemies by the way. Royalist and Covenanter made war in the same fashion, and as Argyll had done, so did Montrose. From Inverness to Stonehaven his course was marked by blackened walls and wasted fields. From his strong castle of Dunnottar Marischal saw his broad lands harried by the soldiers of his old friend whom he had not the courage to join, and derived what comfort he could from the assurance of the godly Mr. Cant, that the smoke which he saw rising from his worthless worldly goods would be a sweet-smelling incense in the nostrils of the Lord. But an army marching through a hostile country cannot be burdened with spoil, and the Highlanders, who looked for each morning to bring a repetition of Inverlochy, deserted daily. Some of the gentlemen asked leave to return for the protection of their own lands, on which, so soon as the coast was clear, a summary vengeance was sure to fall, and the leave could not in prudence be refused. When Montrose reached Dunkeld he could muster only six hundred foot and two hundred horse. For the present the Lowlands were safe.
But it was not in Montrose's nature to turn from his enemies without striking a blow. Dundee was but a day's march, as he had taught his men to march, from Dunkeld; it was a noted stronghold of rebellion, on which punishment would not be wasted. Leaving Dunkeld at daybreak on April 3rd, the next morningsaw him before Dundee. The town would not surrender, and could make little resistance. It was carried by storm, and Highlanders and Irishmen were soon busy at their favourite work. In the midst of the tumult came the news that Baillie and Hurry, who were believed to be far on the other side of the Tay, were outside the walls. To fight them was impossible with a few hundred men wild with drink and plunder; to secure a safe retreat in such conditions seemed equally hopeless. No other man would probably have thought it worth his while to attempt what Montrose now successfully performed. He stopped the plundering, sent off his foot in such order as he could command, and with his cavalry and a few picked musketeers prepared to cover their retreat. As he marched out of the eastern gate in the gathering dusk, the enemy entered by the western. Baillie at once ordered his dragoons to charge, but they were driven back with some empty saddles. Seeing Montrose heading for the eastern coast, the wary Covenanter stayed the pursuit, and struck north to bar the way into the hills. Montrose had divined the move. At Arbroath he turned abruptly in his tracks, and slipping back past the unconscious Covenanters in the night, headed straight for the Grampians. The sun had risen before Baillie discovered his mistake. But Montrose was not yet safe. He had reached Careston Castle on the Esk; his men, worn out with the day's plundering and the night's marching, had flung themselves on the ground and were sleeping soundly when the enemy's cavalry came in sight. Only a few of the sleepers could be aroused, but they were enough. The dragoons remembered their reception on the previous evening, and drew off. Beforethe foot could come up Montrose had his men safe among the hills. Of all his extraordinary exploits none so impressed the great soldiers of Europe with his consummate generalship as the retreat from Dundee. "I have often," wrote Wishart, "heard those who were esteemed the most experienced officers, not in Britain only but in France and Germany, prefer this march of Montrose to his most celebrated victories."
But generalship without men will not win battles. The weary work of recruiting began again. Macdonald had already been sent to his old ground in the Western Highlands. Lord Gordon was now sent into his own country, whither his weathercock of a brother had just retired in a huff. On the other hand, Aboyne had made his way out of Carlisle and rejoined his chief. A Gordon was always welcome, nor had his young aide-de-camp yet shown Montrose any trace of those capricious humours which were destined to eventually wreck the King's cause and his own. Meanwhile the enemy had divided. Hurry had gone northward to take order with the Gordons, while Baillie was watching the Highlands from Perth. Macdonald had now returned with a fresh levy of his kinsmen. If Montrose could slip between the two armies and join hands with Lord Gordon, he might fight either at leisure. This was done. At Skene, on the upper Dee, he met Lord Gordon stronger than before in both foot and horse. Aboyne made a successful raid on Aberdeen, and returned with some much-needed powder and ball. By the end of April the King's Lieutenant was once more ready for battle. The Gordons were now his very good friends; he decided, therefore, for their sake to attack the northern army first.
Hurry, for all his inconstancy, was neither a timid nor an unskilful soldier, and as he far outnumbered the Royalists, he had no wish to avoid a battle; but he intended to fight on his own ground. He led Montrose on by cautiously retreating, till he had drawn him into the heart of a country where not a man called him friend, and then turned on him. On the evening of May 8th Montrose was encamped at the little village of Auldearn, midway between Inverness and Elgin. Here Hurry hoped to surprise him by a night march; but when within a few miles of the village some of his men discharged their muskets to clear them of the damp powder, and through the driving wind and rain the Royalist sentinels caught the sound. Montrose had little time to make his arrangements, but one glance at the ground in the gray morning light taught him all he needed to know.
The village of Auldearn stretched north and south along a ridge, and below the western front of the ridge the ground sloped down to a marsh. On the upper part of this slope, at its northern end, among the walled gardens and enclosures of the villagers, Montrose placed the Irishmen with the royal standard, to give them the appearance of the main body. The rest of his foot and all the cavalry he kept out of sight behind the southern end of the ridge. For his centre he had merely a few men placed in front of the cottages as though they were the pickets of a larger force. If Hurry fell into the trap, and Macdonald obeyed orders, Montrose could hurl the whole of his left wing on the right flank of the Covenanters when engaged with the Irish, where the ground was open and firm for cavalry. Hurry did fallinto the trap, but Macdonald's rashness nearly caused disaster. Instead of keeping within his lines, he advanced down the hill to meet the full brunt of the main attack. The Irish fought bravely, and Alaster himself performed prodigies of valour. But they were outnumbered, driven back, and surrounded. It was whispered to Montrose that his right wing was broken. Any sign of uneasiness might be fatal. The knowledge that his trained troops were routed might damp the ardour of the others. He turned gaily to Gordon. "Why are we lingering here, my dear lord," he said aloud, "when our friend Macdonald is driving the enemy before him on the right? Shall all the glory of the day be his?" He then gave the word to advance. The chivalry of the Gordons sprang forward with their young chief at their head. They charged not in the old fashion under cover of pistol-fire, but as Cromwell's Ironsides had charged on Marston Moor. Sword in hand they rode straight at Hurry's flank, while Montrose and Aboyne brought up the rest of the infantry. The Covenanting dragoons could not stand the shock, and their flight threw the right wing into disorder. Montrose and Aboyne pressed on, while Macdonald rallied his Irishmen and led them down again on the centre. The day was won. Hurry escaped with the remnant of his horse to Inverness; most of the foot perished on the field. No quarter was given, and the pursuit followed fast and far. A few days before the battle a young Gordon, who had been carried wounded from a skirmish to a friend's house, had been murdered in his bed by a party of Covenanters, and this brutal deed had sharpened his kinsmen's swords. Between two and three thousandof the enemy are said to have fallen on the field or in the flight. All their baggage, ammunition, and money remained in the hands of the victors.
In the field the Covenanters seemed powerless to make head against Montrose, but they could strike a blow at him nearer home. The aged Napier, now past his seventieth year—"old and not fit for fighting," as he pathetically pleaded to the Committee—was heavily fined and flung into prison. His son, the young Master, had made his escape in time, and had fought gallantly by his uncle's side at Auldearn; but his two daughters, Lilias and Margaret, Lady Stirling of Keir, shared their father's fate. Among their fellow-captives, but not companions for no intercourse was permitted them, were Keir himself and young Lord Graham with his tutor. Their imprisonment was close, but their condition was easy compared with that of Crawford, Ogilvy, and the other Royalists, who suffered the treatment of the lowest criminals in the Tolbooth. To this time, too, belongs the only trace of Montrose's wife that history vouchsafes between the records of her marriage and her death, in a warrant of the Committee of Estates entrusting her with the care of her third son Robert. From this it would appear that she had either contrived to make her peace with her husband's enemies, or that her sympathies were known to be with her own family. Southesk and his son Carnegie had always been staunch, though passive, adherents to the Covenant.
But it was no time to brood on private wrongs, or to redress them. Hurry with the fragments of his scattered army had rejoined Baillie, and a fresh force underLindsay was advancing from the Lowlands. Montrose had been obliged to pay the usual price of his victories, and had again retreated to the hills till the gaps in his ranks could be refilled. But in one respect he was stronger than he had yet been since he first raised the King's banner in Scotland. A warm friendship had sprung up between him and the heir of the Gordons, which, on the younger man's part, showed itself in a chivalrous and unquestioning devotion. Nothing could now separate him from his general's side; his father's commands were disregarded; fresh levies were raised, and the waverers recalled to their duty. Still, without the Highlanders, and with only half the Irishmen, Montrose could not have shown fight had not the Covenanters been divided against themselves. Baillie was not his own master. His movements were not only dictated from Edinburgh, but were still further hampered by a committee appointed to assist him in the field. This committee included such experienced commanders as Argyll, Balfour of Burleigh, and Elcho, and was unlikely therefore to inspire much confidence in any man who had heard of Inverlochy, Aberdeen, and Tippermuir. "Armies," it has been pertinently observed by the historian who has told how another and a worthier Argyll met his fate, "armies have triumphed under leaders who professed no very eminent qualifications. But what army commanded by a debating club ever escaped discomfiture and disgrace?" Moreover Lindsay professed himself unable to fight with his undisciplined troops, and Baillie was ordered to supply him with fifteen hundred of his own trained soldiers in exchange for less than half the number of raw recruits. Eventhen Lindsay would not fight, but turning southwards gallantly led his men to harry the unprotected lands of Athole. Montrose was thus left free to deal with Baillie and the committee.
Baillie was now in a strong position at Keith in Banffshire, from which he could neither be dislodged nor tempted by offer of battle. But the road to the Lowlands lay open, and if the Royalists took that road the Covenanters could not choose but follow. Montrose therefore marched due south, and crossing the Don took up his position at Alford, a small town some ten miles west of Kintore. By this time Baillie had learned how weak Montrose was, and thought that he might risk a battle. But when he came in sight of his enemy, on the morning of July 2nd, he hesitated. Montrose was posted, as at Auldearn, on the crest of a hill. Between him and the Covenanters lay a marsh, and beyond the marsh was the river which could be crossed at only one spot directly in front of his lines. These were conditions in which a more daring captain than Baillie might have been excused from engaging such an adversary as Montrose. But the committee would not hear of retreating, and even Balcarres, who commanded the cavalry, and who was something of a soldier as well as a brave man, was urgent to fight. Baillie was powerless to refuse. He gave the orders he could not withhold, crossed the river and advanced courageously to his fate.
Montrose had placed his few horse on either wing, mixed, as at Aberdeen, with some Irish musketeers. Lord Gordon commanded on the right, Aboyne on the left. The centre, where Huntly's Highland tenantsfought, was led by the brave Glengarry, who had never left Montrose since he had charged at his side down the slopes of Ben Nevis. Here, too, was the General himself with the royal standard. The reserve was posted behind the crest of the hill under the Master of Napier. In infantry the two armies were equal, about two thousand strong on either side; but Montrose had only two hundred and fifty horse to meet the six hundred under Balcarres. The battle was begun by the cavalry. For a time the superior numbers of the Covenanting dragoons and the gallantry of their leader made the issue doubtful, till Nathaniel Gordon, who fought with his young chief on the right, cried to the Irish to throw down their guns and hamstring the enemy's horses with their swords. This was enough; the left wing broke at once, and the right, seeing their companions flying, soon followed their example. The victorious Gordons swept in from either flank on the centre; Glengarry led his claymores down the hill; Montrose and his nephew brought up the reserve, and another battle was won for King Charles.
The victory was complete; but it was dearly bought by the death of Lord Gordon, who fell, struck by a shot from behind, in the final charge. Montrose could have lost no more devoted friend or more staunch ally; and indeed the whole army mourned for the gallant young soldier, who had endeared himself to all by his courage and courtesy, his high spirits and winning manners. The body was conveyed under the escort of the General himself and a chosen guard to Aberdeen, where, with all the honours that the time permitted, it was laid in what is now known as the Gordons' aisle in the old cathedral church of St. Machar.
Matters had now come to a crisis in Scotland. Lindsay was the only general left in arms for the Covenant, and on Lindsay alone no reliance could be placed. Parliament had been driven by the plague from Edinburgh to Stirling. On July 8th, six days after the disaster at Alford, a vote was passed for levying ten thousand foot and five hundred horse from the counties south of the Tay. Perth was appointed for the muster, and on the 24th of the month Parliament was transferred to that city to watch and hasten the work. Baillie was retained in command, but against his urgent entreaties, for the same committee that had driven him to defeat at Alford was to ensure his failure again.
Meanwhile reinforcements were pouring in to Montrose. Macdonald had rejoined him with the rest of the Irish and fifteen hundred Highlanders. Patrick Graham brought up the Atholemen. Stout old Airlie, now restored to health, rode in with a troop of Ogilvies; and after some delay Aboyne appeared with a strong following of Gordons. In the first days of August Montrose was ready to take the field again with the largest force that had yet been mustered under the King's banner in Scotland. He was anxious for battle, but he was resolved to choose his own ground. The King's affairs were now desperate indeed. Naseby had been lost; Wales was growing cold; there was no hope from Ireland; a union with Montrose seemed almost the sole chance left. If Montrose could strike one stout blow south of the Forth that union might yet be possible. Wherever he led Baillie must follow, or leave the Lowlands open; and Montrose had a shrewd suspicion thatthe raw Perthshire levies might, like his own Highlanders, be unwilling to go too far or stay too long from their homes. His men were as keen for battle as their general. Till his reinforcements came in Montrose had been obliged to content himself with hovering round Perth, at one time mounting his infantry on baggage and cart horses, to convey the notion that he was strong in cavalry. In one of the skirmishes provoked by these demonstrations, a party of the Covenanters had fallen on a body of women in Methven Wood, near the city, the wives, or, as Captain Dalgetty would have said, the leaguer-lasses of the Irish soldiers, and had butchered them all. The men clamoured for vengeance, and Montrose was now strong enough to promise it. Slipping down from Dunkeld, he passed almost under the walls of Perth over the ground of his old triumph at Tippermuir, and, crossing the Forth above Stirling, came on the evening of August 14th to Kilsyth about nine miles from Glasgow. Here he learned that Lanark, with a strong muster of the Hamilton tenantry from Clydesdale, was on the march to join Baillie, while Eglinton and Glencairn were raising the Western Lowlands. The blow must be struck before these reinforcements could come up, and must be struck at once, for Lanark was reported to be only twelve miles distant.