A Legend of Montrose

by Walter Scott

  CHAPTER XV.

  But if no faithless action stain Thy true and constant word, I'll make thee famous by my pen, And glorious by my sword.

  I'll serve thee in such noble ways As ne'er were known before; I'll deck and crown thy head with bays, And love thee more and more.--MONTROSE'S LINES.

  We must now leave, with whatever regret, the valiant Captain Dalgetty,to recover of his wounds or otherwise as fate shall determine, in orderbriefly to trace the military operations of Montrose, worthy as they areof a more important page, and a better historian. By the assistance ofthe chieftains whom we have commemorated, and more especially by thejunction of the Murrays, Stewarts, and other clans of Athole, which werepeculiarly zealous in the royal cause, he soon assembled an army of twoor three thousand Highlanders, to whom he successfully united the Irishunder Colkitto. This last leader, who, to the great embarrassment ofMilton's commentators, is commemorated in one of that great poet'ssonnets, was properly named Alister, or Alexander M'Donnell, by birth aScottish islesman, and related to the Earl of Antrim, to whose patronagehe owed the command assigned him in the Irish troops. In many respectshe merited this distinction. He was brave to intrepidity, and almost toinsensibility; very strong and active in person, completely master ofhis weapons, and always ready to show the example in the extremity ofdanger. To counterbalance these good qualities, it must be recorded,that he was inexperienced in military tactics, and of a jealous andpresumptuous disposition, which often lost to Montrose the fruits ofColkitto's gallantry. Yet such is the predominance of outward personalqualities in the eyes of a mild people, that the feats of strength andcourage shown by this champion, seem to have made a stronger impressionupon the minds of the Highlanders, than the military skill andchivalrous spirit of the great Marquis of Montrose. Numerous traditionsare still preserved in the Highland glens concerning Alister M'Donnell,though the name of Montrose is rarely mentioned among them.

  [Milton's book, entitled TETRACHORDON, had been ridiculed, it wouldseem, by the divines assembled at Westminster, and others, on account ofthe hardness of the title; and Milton in his sonnet retaliates uponthe barbarous Scottish names which the Civil War had made familiar toEnglish ears:--

  . . . . why is it harder, sirs, than Gordon, COLKITTO or M'Donald, or Gallasp? These rugged names to our like mouths grow sleek, That would have made Quintillian stare and gasp.

  "We may suppose," says Bishop Newton, "that these were persons of noteamong the Scotch ministers, who were for pressing and enforcing theCovenant;" whereas Milton only intends to ridicule the barbarismof Scottish names in general, and quotes, indiscriminately, that ofGillespie, one of the Apostles of the Covenant, and those of Colkittoand M'Donnell (both belonging to one person), one of its bitterestenemies.]

  The point upon which Montrose finally assembled his little army, was inStrathearn, on the verge of the Highlands of Perthshire, so as to menacethe principal town of that county.

  His enemies were not unprepared for his reception. Argyle, at the headof his Highlanders, was dogging the steps of the Irish from the west tothe east, and by force, fear, or influence, had collected an army nearlysufficient to have given battle to that under Montrose. The Lowlandswere also prepared, for reasons which we assigned at the beginning ofthis tale. A body of six thousand infantry, and six or seven thousandcavalry, which profanely assumed the title of God's army, had beenhastily assembled from the shires of Fife, Angus, Perth, Stirling, andthe neighbouring counties. A much less force in former times, nay, evenin the preceding reign, would have been sufficient to have secured theLowlands against a more formidable descent of Highlanders, than thoseunited under Montrose; but times had changed strangely within the lasthalf century. Before that period, the Lowlanders were as constantlyengaged in war as the mountaineers, and were incomparably betterdisciplined and armed. The favourite Scottish order of battle somewhatresembled the Macedonian phalanx. Their infantry formed a compact body,armed with long spears, impenetrable even to the men-at-arms of the age,though well mounted, and arrayed in complete proof. It may easilybe conceived, therefore, that their ranks could not be broken by thedisorderly charge of Highland infantry armed for close combat only, withswords, and ill furnished with missile weapons, and having no artillerywhatever.

  This habit of fight was in a great measure changed by the introductionof muskets into the Scottish Lowland service, which, not being as yetcombined with the bayonet, was a formidable weapon at a distance, butgave no assurance against the enemy who rushed on to close quarters. Thepike, indeed, was not wholly disused in the Scottish army; but it was nolonger the favourite weapon, nor was it relied upon as formerly by thosein whose hands it was placed; insomuch that Daniel Lupton, a tacticianof the day, has written a book expressly upon the superiority of themusket. This change commenced as early as the wars of Gustavus Adolphus,whose marches were made with such rapidity, that the pike was very soonthrown aside in his army, and exchanged for fire-arms. A circumstancewhich necessarily accompanied this change, as well as the establishmentof standing armies, whereby war became a trade, was the introduction ofa laborious and complicated system of discipline, combining a varietyof words of command with corresponding operations and manoeuvres, theneglect of any one of which was sure to throw the whole into confusion.War therefore, as practised among most nations of Europe, had assumedmuch more than formerly the character of a profession or mystery, towhich previous practice and experience were indispensable requisites.Such was the natural consequence of standing armies, which had almosteverywhere, and particularly in the long German wars, superseded whatmay be called the natural discipline of the feudal militia.

  The Scottish Lowland militia, therefore, laboured under a doubledisadvantage when opposed to Highlanders. They were divested of thespear, a weapon which, in the hands of their ancestors, had so oftenrepelled the impetuous assaults of the mountaineer; and they weresubjected to a new and complicated species of discipline, well adapted,perhaps, to the use of regular troops, who could be rendered completelymasters of it, but tending only to confuse the ranks of citizensoldiers, by whom it was rarely practised, and imperfectly understood.So much has been done in our own time in bringing back tactics to theirfirst principles, and in getting rid of the pedantry of war, that itis easy for us to estimate the disadvantages under which a half-trainedmilitia laboured, who were taught to consider success as depending upontheir exercising with precision a system of tactics, which they probablyonly so far comprehended as to find out when they were wrong, butwithout the power of getting right again. Neither can it be denied,that, in the material points of military habits and warlike spirit,the Lowlanders of the seventeenth century had sunk far beneath theirHighland countrymen.

  From the earliest period down to the union of the crowns, the wholekingdom of Scotland, Lowlands as well as Highlands, had been theconstant scene of war, foreign and domestic; and there was probablyscarce one of its hardy inhabitants, between the age of sixteen andsixty, who was not as willing in point of fact as he was literally boundin law, to assume arms at the first call of his liege lord, or of aroyal proclamation. The law remained the same in sixteen hundred andforty-five as a hundred years before, but the race of those subjected toit had been bred up under very different feelings. They had sat in quietunder their vine and under their fig-tree, and a call to battle involveda change of life as new as it was disagreeable. Such of them, also, wholived near unto the Highlands, were in continual and disadvantageouscontact with the restless inhabitants of those mountains, by whom theircattle were driven off, their dwellings plundered, and their personsinsulted, and who had acquired over them that sort of superiorityarising from a constant system of aggression. The Lowlanders, who laymore remote, and out of reach of these depredations, were influenced bythe exaggerated reports circulated concerning the Highlanders, whom,as totally differing in laws, language, and dress, they were inducedto regard as a nation of savages, equally void of fear and of humanity.These various prepossessio
ns, joined to the less warlike habits of theLowlanders, and their imperfect knowledge of the new and complicatedsystem of discipline for which they had exchanged their natural modeof fighting, placed them at great disadvantage when opposed to theHighlander in the field of battle. The mountaineers, on the contrary,with the arms and courage of their fathers, possessed also their simpleand natural system of tactics, and bore down with the fullest confidenceupon an enemy, to whom anything they had been taught of discipline was,like Saul's armour upon David, a hinderance rather than a help, "becausethey had not proved it."

  It was with such disadvantages on the one side, and such advantages onthe other, to counterbalance the difference of superior numbers and thepresence of artillery and cavalry, that Montrose encountered the army ofLord Elcho upon the field of Tippermuir. The Presbyterian clergy had notbeen wanting in their efforts to rouse the spirit of their followers,and one of them, who harangued the troops on the very day of battle,hesitated not to say, that if ever God spoke by his mouth, he promisedthem, in His name, that day, a great and assured victory. The cavalryand artillery were also reckoned sure warrants of success, as thenovelty of their attack had upon former occasions been very discouragingto the Highlanders. The place of meeting was an open heath, and theground afforded little advantage to either party, except that it allowedthe horse of the Covenanters to act with effect.

  A battle upon which so much depended, was never more easily decided.The Lowland cavalry made a show of charging; but, whether thrown intodisorder by the fire of musketry, or deterred by a disaffection tothe service said to have prevailed among the gentlemen, they made noimpression on the Highlanders whatever, and recoiled in disorder fromranks which had neither bayonets nor pikes to protect them. Montrosesaw, and instantly availed himself of this advantage. He ordered hiswhole army to charge, which they performed with the wild and desperatevalour peculiar to mountaineers. One officer of the Covenanters alone,trained in the Italian wars, made a desperate defence upon the rightwing. In every other point their line was penetrated at the first onset;and this advantage once obtained, the Lowlanders were utterly unable tocontend at close quarters with their more agile and athletic enemies.Many were slain on the held, and such a number in the pursuit, thatabove one-third of the Covenanters were reported to have fallen; inwhich number, however, must be computed a great many fat burgesses whobroke their wind in the flight, and thus died without stroke of sword.[We choose to quote our authority for a fact so singular:--"A great manyburgesses were killed--twenty-five householders in St. Andrews--manywere bursten in the flight, and died without stroke."--See Baillie'sLetters, vol. ii. page 92.]

  The victors obtained possession of Perth, and obtained considerable sumsof money, as well as ample supplies of arms and ammunition. Butthose advantages were to be balanced against an almost insurmountableinconvenience that uniformly attended a Highland army. The clans couldbe in no respect induced to consider themselves as regular soldiers,or to act as such. Even so late as the year 1745-6, when the ChevalierCharles Edward, by way of making an example, caused a soldier to be shotfor desertion, the Highlanders, who composed his army, were affected asmuch by indignation as by fear. They could not conceive any principleof justice upon which a man's life could be taken, for merely going homewhen it did not suit him to remain longer with the army. Such had beenthe uniform practice of their fathers. When a battle was over, thecampaign was, in their opinion, ended; if it was lost, they soughtsafety in their mountains--if won, they returned there to secure theirbooty. At other times they had their cattle to look after, and theirharvests to sow or reap, without which their families would haveperished for want. In either case, there was an end of their servicesfor the time; and though they were easily enough recalled by theprospect of fresh adventures and more plunder, yet the opportunityof success was, in the meantime, lost, and could not afterwards berecovered. This circumstance serves to show, even if history had notmade us acquainted with the same fact, that the Highlanders had neverbeen accustomed to make war with the view of permanent conquest, butonly with the hope of deriving temporary advantage, or deciding someimmediate quarrel. It also explains the reason why Montrose, with allhis splendid successes, never obtained any secure or permanent footingin the Lowlands, and why even those Lowland noblemen and gentlemen, whowere inclined to the royal cause, showed diffidence and reluctance tojoin an army of a character so desultory and irregular, as might leadthem at all times to apprehend that the Highlanders securing themselvesby a retreat to their mountains, would leave whatever Lowlanders mighthave joined them to the mercy of an offended and predominant enemy. Thesame consideration will also serve to account for the sudden marcheswhich Montrose was obliged to undertake, in order to recruit his army inthe mountains, and for the rapid changes of fortune, by which we oftenfind him obliged to retreat from before those enemies over whom he hadrecently been victorious. If there should be any who read these talesfor any further purpose than that of immediate amusement, they will findthese remarks not unworthy of their recollection.

  It was owing to such causes, the slackness of the Lowland loyalists andthe temporary desertion of his Highland followers, that Montrose foundhimself, even after the decisive victory of Tippermuir, in no conditionto face the second army with which Argyle advanced upon him from thewestward. In this emergency, supplying by velocity the want of strength,he moved suddenly from Perth to Dundee, and being refused admission intothat town, fell northward upon Aberdeen, where he expected to be joinedby the Gordons and other loyalists. But the zeal of these gentlemenwas, for the time, effectually bridled by a large body of Covenanters,commanded by the Lord Burleigh, and supposed to amount to three thousandmen. These Montrose boldly attacked with half their number. The battlewas fought under the walls Of the city, and the resolute valour ofMontrose's followers was again successful against every disadvantage.

  But it was the fate of this great commander, always to gain the glory,but seldom to reap the fruits of victory. He had scarcely time to reposehis small army in Aberdeen, ere he found, on the one hand, that theGordons were likely to be deterred from joining him, by the reasons wehave mentioned, with some others peculiar to their chief, the Marquisof Huntly; on the other hand, Argyle, whose forces had been augmented bythose of several Lowland noblemen, advanced towards Montrose at the headof an army much larger than he had yet had to cope with. These troopsmoved, indeed, with slowness, corresponding to the cautious characterof their commander; but even that caution rendered Argyle's approachformidable, since his very advance implied, that he was at the head ofan army irresistibly superior.

  There remained one mode of retreat open to Montrose, and he adoptedit. He threw himself into the Highlands, where he could set pursuitat defiance, and where he was sure, in every glen, to recover thoserecruits who had left his standard to deposit their booty in theirnative fastnesses. It was thus that the singular character of thearmy which Montrose commanded, while, on the one hand, it rendered hisvictory in some degree nugatory, enabled him, on the other, under themost disadvantageous circumstances, to secure his retreat, recruithis forces, and render himself more formidable than ever to the enemy,before whom he had lately been unable to make a stand.

  On the present occasion he threw himself into Badenoch, and rapidlytraversing that district, as well as the neighbouring country of Athole,he alarmed the Covenanters by successive attacks upon various unexpectedpoints, and spread such general dismay, that repeated orders weredispatched by the Parliament to Argyle, their commander, to engage, anddisperse Montrose at all rates.

  These commands from his superiors neither suited the haughty spirit, northe temporizing and cautious policy, of the nobleman to whom they wereaddressed. He paid, accordingly, no regard to them, but limited hisefforts to intrigues among Montrose's few Lowland followers, many ofwhom had become disgusted with the prospect of a Highland campaign,which exposed their persons to intolerable fatigue, and left theirestates at the Covenanters' mercy. Accordingly, several of them leftMontrose's camp at this period. H
e was joined, however, by a body offorces of more congenial spirit, and far better adapted to the situationin which he found himself. This reinforcement consisted of a large bodyof Highlanders, whom Colkitto, dispatched for that purpose, had leviedin Argyleshire. Among the most distinguished was John of Moidart, calledthe Captain of Clan Ranald, with the Stewarts of Appin, the Clan Gregor,the Clan M'Nab, and other tribes of inferior distinction. By thesemeans, Montrose's army was so formidably increased, that Argyle cared nolonger to remain in the command of that opposed to him, but returned toEdinburgh, and there threw up his commission, under pretence that hisarmy was not supplied with reinforcements and provisions in the mannerin which they ought to have been. From thence the Marquis returned toInverary, there, in full security, to govern his feudal vassals, andpatriarchal followers, and to repose himself in safety on the faith ofthe Clan proverb already quoted--"It is a far cry to Lochow."