by John Buchan
Across the moor they saw
two figures advancing.
In a moment all quarrels were forgotten. Montrose produced his commission and Alastair promptly took service under him, thankful to be out of a plight which for weeks had looked hopeless. The Atholl Highlanders were carried off their feet by the grace and fire of their new leader, and 800 of them brought to his side those broadswords which that morning had been dedicated to cutting Ulster throats. Next morning the Royal Standard was unfurled on a green knoll above the river Tilt. The King’s lieutenant had got him an army.
II
I pass over the next two months. On the 1st September, with his ill-assorted forces, he met the Covenant army under Lord Elcho at Tippermuir, near Perth, and scattered it to the winds. Then he marched to Aberdeen, and on the 13th of that month soundly defeated another army under Lord Balfour of Burleigh. Thereafter his difficulties increased. He found that his Lowland gentlemen began to slip away, for they had no love for a mid-winter campaign conducted at Montrose’s incredible pace. Moreover, Alastair went off on an expedition of his own to the west, and the rest of the Highlanders had private grievances, the avenging of which they thought of far greater moment than any royal necessities.
The end of November came; the heavy rains in the glens told of the beginning of winter, and the hills were whitened with snow. Argyll was at Dunkeld, and for a moment the campaign languished. Then one morning at Blair, Alastair’s pipes announced his return, bringing with him the rest of his Ulstermen and a considerable levy of the western clans — MacDonalds of Glengarry, Keppoch, and Clanranald, Macleans from Morvern and Mull, Stewarts from Appin, and Camerons from Lochaber. The clans had only one object, to take order with Argyll, for they hated the house of Diarmaid far more than the Covenant. Now was the time to avenge ancient wrongs and to break the pride of a chief who had boasted that no mortal enemy could enter his country. The hour had come when the fray must be carried to Lorn.
Montrose had that supreme virtue in a commander which recognizes facts. He could not maintain his army without war, and Lowland war they would not as yet listen to. If he looked to their help in the future he must whet their valour and rivet their loyalty by fresh successes. In return for their assistance in the King’s quarrel they must have the help of the King’s lieutenant in their own. Besides, the plan could be justified on other grounds of strategy and politics. A blow at the Campbells in their own country would shatter Argyll’s not too robust nerve, and put fear into the heart of the Covenant.
But it was the wildest of wild adventures. Clan Campbell was the largest, most prosperous, and most civilized of all the Highland peoples. Indeed, they formed almost a separate state, and it was not without reason that Argyll had boasted that his land was impregnable. Strategically it had every advantage. On the eastern side, where it looked to the Lowlands, there were the castles of Roseneath and Dunoon to keep watch, and deep sea lochs to hinder the invader. South and west lay the sea, and the Campbells had what little navy existed in Scotland at the time. North lay a land of high mountains and difficult passes, where no man could travel save by permission of the sovereign lord. Moreover, the Campbells of Lochow and Glenorchy had flung their tentacles over Breadalbane and held the glens around the head-waters of Tay. There might be a raid of Macgregors or Maclarens on the east, or a foray from Appin on Loch Etive side, but it seemed that not even the King and his army could get much beyond the gates. “It is a far cry to Lochow,” so ran the Campbell watchword, and it was a farther cry to Inveraray.
When Montrose assented to Alastair’s wishes he resolved to strike straight at the enemy’s heart. He would wage war not on the outskirts but in the citadel. Through Breadalbane ran a possible route among wild glens and trackless bogs, which at this winter season would be deep in snow. This was the old raiding road out of Lorn, and Argyll flattered himself that his clan alone had the keys of it. But with Montrose were men who had made many a midnight foray into the Campbell country, and who knew every corrie and scaur as well as any son of Diarmaid. A Glencoe man, Angus MacAlain Dubh, is named by tradition as the chief guide, and he promised Montrose that his army could live well on the country, “if tight houses, fat cattle, and clear water will suffice.”
From Blair, past the shores of Loch Tay swept the advance till the confines of Breadalbane were reached and a country that owned Campbell sway. Up Glen Dochart they went, following much the same road as the present railway line to Oban, past Crianlarich and Tyndrum, and into the glens of Orchy. It was a raid of vengeance, and behind them rose the flames of burning roof-trees. Presently Loch Awe lay before them under a leaden winter sky, and soon the little peels of the lochside lairds smoked to heaven. It was a cruel business, save that the women and children were spared. All fighting men were slain or driven to the high hills, every cot and clachan was set alight, and rows of maddened cattle attested the richness of the land and the profit of the invaders. It was Highland warfare of the old barbarous type, no worse and no better than that which Argyll had already carried to Lochaber and Badenoch and the Braes of Angus.
Argyll was well served by his scouts, and to him at Edinburgh word was soon brought of Montrose’s march to Breadalbane. He must have thought it a crazy venture; now at last was his enemy delivered into his hands. No human army could cross the winter passes even if it had the key; and the men of Glenorchy would wipe out the starving remnants at their leisure. Full of confidence he posted across Scotland to Inveraray. There he found that all was quiet. Rumours of a foray in Lorn were indeed rife, but the burghers of Inveraray, strong in their generations of peace, had no fear for themselves. Argyll saw to the defences of the castle, and called a great gathering of the neighbouring clansmen to provide reinforcements, if such should be needed, for the Glenorchy and Breadalbane men, who by this time had assuredly made an end of Montrose.
Suddenly came a thunderbolt. Wild-eyed shepherds rushed into the streets with the cry that the MacDonalds were upon them. Quickly the tale flew. Montrose was not in Breadalbane or on the fringes of Lorn. He was at Loch Awe — nay, he was in the heart of Argyll itself. The chief waited no longer. He found a fishing boat, and, the wind being right, fled down Loch Fyne to the shelter of his castle at Roseneath. The same breeze that filled his sails brought the sound of Alastair’s pipes, and he was scarcely under weigh ere the van of the invaders came down Glen Shira.
Then began the harrying of Clan Campbell. Leaderless and unprepared, they made no resistance to Montrose’s army of flushed and battle-worn warriors. Macleans and MacDonalds, Stewarts and Camerons, satiated their ancient grudges with the plunder of Inveraray. The kerns thawed their half-frozen limbs at the warmth of blazing steadings, and appeased their ravenous hunger at the expense of the bakers and vintners and fleshers of the burgh. Never had the broken men of Lochaber and the Isles fared so nobly. For some happy weeks they ran riot in what for them was a land of milk and honey, while the townsmen, crouching in cellars and thickets, or safe behind the castle gates, wondered how long it would be before their chief returned to avenge them. There seems to have been no special barbarity about the business. Here and there a refractory Campbell was dirked, but Alastair’s men preferred victual and cattle to human blood.
Meantime word had gone from the exile at Roseneath to the Government in Edinburgh. It was for Argyll to avenge the shame of his clan, and he presently received 1,100 of the flower of the Scottish militia. His kinsman, Sir Duncan Campbell of Auchinbreck, was summoned back from Ireland. Seaforth was waiting with a northern army at Inverness, and the Scottish commander-in-chief, William Baillie of Letham, was at Perth. It looked as if Montrose had walked into a certain trap. He would be caught between Argyll and Seaforth, and if he tried to escape to the right Baillie would await him. It seemed the certainty on which Argyll loved to gamble.
Mid-winter that year was open and mild. Had it been otherwise Clan Campbell must have been annihilated and Montrose could never have led his men safely out of Argyll. About the middle of Ja
nuary 1645 he gave orders for the march. He had as yet no news of Argyll’s preparations, but he must have realized that the avenger would not be slow on his track. His immediate intention was to come to an account with Seaforth, who not only barred him from the Gordon country but was responsible for the opposition of the powerful clan of Mackenzie. He had guides who promised to show him an easy way out of Lorn into Lochaber. After that his road ran straight up the Great Glen to Inverness.
Laden with miscellaneous plunder and cumbered no doubt with spreaghs of cattle, the Highlanders crossed from Loch Awe to the shore of Loch Etive. Since they had nothing to fear in front of them, they continued up the steep brink of that loch to the site of the present house of Glen Etive. Crossing the beallach by the old drove-road, they marched through Appin and up Glencoe to the neighbourhood of Corrour, for the shorter road by Kingshouse and the Moor of Rannoch was no place for a heavily laden force in mid-winter. From Corrour the road was that now taken by the West Highland Railway. Passing Loch Treig they descended the valley of the Spean to the shores of Loch Lochy and the opening of the Great Glen. By the evening of Thursday, the 30th January, Montrose was at Kilcumin at the head of Loch Ness. Most of the Atholl men and the bulk of Clanranald had left him, after their custom, to deposit their booty. No more than 1,500 remained — Alastair’s Irish, a handful of Stewarts, Macleans, and Camerons, and sufficient cavalry to mount the Lowland gentry and provide an escort for the Standard.
At Kilcumin Montrose had definite news of Seaforth. He was thirty miles off at Inverness with 5,000 men — Frasers, Mackenzies, and regulars from the Inverness garrison. Montrose was preparing to make short work of Seaforth when he received graver tidings. Ian Lorn MacDonald, the bard of Keppoch, arrived to tell of Argyll at his heels. The Campbells were only thirty miles behind at Inverlochy, 3,000 men-at-arms eager to avenge the wrongs of Lorn. They were burning and harrying Glen Spean and Glen Roy and the Lochaber braes, and their object was to take Montrose in the rear what time Seaforth should hold him in the front.
The plight of the little army seemed hopeless; 1,500 very weary men were caught between two forces of 3,000 and 5,000. There was no way of escape to west or east, for the one would lead them to a bare sea-coast and the other into the arms of Baillie’s foot. Of the two hostile forces the Campbells were the more formidable. Montrose knew very well that the fighting spirit of Clan Diarmaid was equal to any in the Highlands, and now that they were commanded by a skilled soldier and infuriated by the burning of their homes, he could scarcely hope to fight them at long odds. But it is the duty of a good general when he is confronted by two immediate perils to meet the greater first. Montrose resolved to fight the Campbells, but to fight them in his own way.
Early on the morning of Friday, 31st January, began that flank march which remains one of the great exploits in the history of British arms. The little river Tarff flows from the Monadliadh Mountains to Loch Ness. Up its rocky course went Montrose, and the royal army disappeared into the hills. Scouts of Argyll or Seaforth who traversed the Great Glen on that day must have reported no enemy. From Tarff Montrose crossed the pass to Glen Turritt, and, following it downwards, reached Glen Roy. Pushing on through the night, he came to the Bridge of Roy, where that stream enters the Spean, on the morning of Saturday, 1st February. The weather had been bitterly cold, the upper glens were choked with snowdrifts, and the army had neither food nor fire. The road led through places where great avalanches yawned above the adventurers, and over passes so steep and narrow that a hundred men could have held an army at bay. As they struggled along at the pace of a deerstalker, Montrose walked by his men, shaming them to endurance by the spectacle of his own courage. If the reader wishes for a picture of that miraculous march he will find it in the words of young Elrigmore in Mr. Neil Munro’s John Splendid: —
“It was like some hyperborean hell, and we the doomed wretches sentenced to our eternity of toil. We had to climb up the shoulder of the hill, now among tremendous rocks, now through water unfrozen, now upon wind-swept ice, but the snow — the snow — the heartless snow — was our constant companion. It stood in walls before, it lay in ramparts round us, it wearied the eye to a most numbing pain. Unlucky were they who wore trews, for the same clung damply to knee and haunch and froze, while the stinging sleet might flay the naked limb till the blood rose among the pelt of the kilted, but the suppleness of the joint was unmarred.... At the head of Glen Roy the MacDonalds, who had lost their bauchles of brogues in the pass, started to a trot, and as the necessity was we had to take up the pace too. Long lank hounds, they took the road like deer, their limbs purple with the cold, their faces pinched to the aspect of the wolf, their targets and muskets clattering about them. ‘There are Campbells to slay, and suppers to eat,’ the major-general had said; and it would have given the most spiritless followers the pith to run till morning across a strand of rock and pebble. They knew no tiring, they seemingly felt no pain in their torn and bleeding feet, but put mile after mile below them.”
From Roy bridge to Inverlochy is some thirteen miles, but to take Argyll in the flank a circuit was necessary, and Montrose followed the northern slopes of the wild tangle of mountains, the highest in Britain, that surround Ben Nevis. In the ruddy gloaming of the February day the vanguard saw beneath and before them the towers of Inverlochy, “like a scowl on the fringe of the wave,” and not a mile off the men of Clan Diarmaid making ready their evening meal. Shots were exchanged with the pickets, but no effort was made to advance. Montrose waited quietly in the gathering dusk till by eight o’clock the rest of his famished column had arrived. There, supperless and cold, they passed the night, keeping up a desultory skirmishing with the Campbell outposts, for Montrose was in dread lest Argyll should try to escape. It was a full moon, and the dark masses of both armies were visible to each other. Argyll thought the forces he saw were only a contingent of Highland raiders under Keppoch or some petty chief. But after his fashion he ran no personal risks; so, with his favourite minister and one or two Edinburgh bailies, he withdrew to a boat on Loch Eil.
At dawn on Candlemas day his ears were greeted by an unwelcome note. It was no bagpipe such as Keppoch might use, but trumpets of war, and the salute they sounded was that reserved for the Royal Standard. The King’s lieutenant, who two days ago was for certain at Loch Ness, had by some craft of darkness taken wings and flown his army over the winter hills. There was no alternative but to fight. Till Montrose was beaten the Campbells could neither march forward to join Seaforth nor backward to their own land.
Auchinbreck drew up his forces with the fighting men of Clan Campbell in the centre and the Lowland regiments borrowed from Baillie on each wing. Montrose himself led the Royalist centre, with Alastair on the left and Alastair’s lieutenant, O’Kean, on the right. Sir Thomas Ogilvy commanded the little troop of horse which had managed to make its way with the infantry over the terrible hills. This was the one advantage Montrose possessed. Otherwise his men were on the point of starvation, having had scarcely a mouthful for forty-eight hours. He himself and Lord Airlie breakfasted on a little raw meal mixed with cold water, which they ate with their dirks.
The battle began with a movement by Ogilvy’s horse, which gravely disquieted the Lowland wings. Then the Campbell centre fired a volley, and immediately the whole Royalist front responded and charged. We may well believe that the firing of famished men was wild, but it mattered little, for soon they were come, as Montrose wrote, “to push of pike and dint of sword.” Alastair and O’Kean had little difficulty with the Lowland levies. In spite of the experience of many of them with Leven, a Highland charge was a new and awful thing to them, and they speedily broke and fled. Inverlochy was won by strategy, for of tactics there was little, and that little was elementary.
The gallant Campbell centre, indeed, made a determined stand. They knew that they could hope for no mercy from their ancestral foes, and they were not forgetful of the honourable traditions of their race. But in time they also broke. Some rus
hed into the loch and tried in vain to reach the galley of their chief, now fleeing to safety; some fled to the tower of Inverlochy. Most scattered along the shore, and on that blue February noon there was a fierce slaughter from the mouth of Nevis down to the mouth of Loch Leven. The Lowlanders were given quarter, but, in spite of all his efforts, Montrose could win no mercy for the luckless Campbells. The green Diarmaid tartan was a badge of death that day. On the Royalist side only four perished; on the Covenant side the slain outnumbered the whole of Montrose’s army. At least 1,500 fell in the battle and pursuit, and among them were Auchinbreck himself and forty of the Campbell barons. Well might Keppoch’s bard exult fiercely over the issue: —
“Through the land of my fathers the Campbells have come,
The flames of their foray enveloped my home;
Broad Keppoch in ruin is left to deplore,
And my country is waste from the hill to the shore —
Be it so! by St. Mary, there’s comfort in store.
“Through the braes of Lochaber a desert he made,
And Glen Roy may be lost to the plough and the spade;
Though the bones of my kindred, unhonoured, unurned.
Mark the desolate path where the Campbells have burned —
Be it so! From that foray they never returned.”
So ended one of the sternest and swiftest marches in the history of war. Inverlochy was in one respect a decisive victory, for it destroyed the clan power of Argyll, and from its terrible toll the Campbells as a fighting force never recovered. Alastair’s policy was justified, and the MacDonalds were amply avenged; the heather, as the phrase went, was above the gale at last. To Montrose at the moment it seemed even more. He thought that with the galley of Lorn fell also the blue flag of the Covenant. He wrote straightway to the King: —
