by John Buchan
The mounted arm was then at the height of its fame, and the current view was that in a well-equipped army the horse should in numbers be not less than half the foot. In England the old heavy cavalry were becoming obsolete, and their place taken by harquebusiers, who carried sword, pistols, and carbine, and by lightly armed dragoons, who were to all intents mounted infantry. They wore a light steel casque, a light cuirass, or often only a padded buff coat. Scotland stood to the old ways, and still armed her horse with four pistols, a carbine, and a lance. The light horse did the outpost work of the army, reconnoitred, seized bridges and passes in an advance, and covered a retirement. In action a cavalry charge was at first made slowly, at a trot rather than a gallop, and trusted largely to the volley from the saddle. The old formation was five deep; this Gustavus reduced to three, and his example was beginning to be followed in England, as also his instructions to cavalry to reserve their fire, to charge at top speed, and to charge home. Rupert owed much of his early success to adopting the Swedish plan, and Montrose followed suit. Rupert also insisted upon cavalry taking the offensive, and both he and Cromwell anticipated the later shock tactics. The charge was always made in close order, knee to knee. The Scottish cavalry had no Rupert to make tactical experiments, and had to wait for reform till David Leslie copied the methods of the New Model.
The field gun employed varied from the culverin, which fired a ball of nearly twenty pounds, had an extreme range of about 2,000 paces, and needed eight horses to move it, down to the little three-pounder. Loading a heavy piece was a cumbrous and perilous business, since the powder was usually carried loosely in a barrel. Scotland began by having a powerful artillery train, for Leven had learned from Gustavus the scientific use of that arm. His master of ordnance, Sir Alexander Hamilton (“dear Sandy” to his countrymen), had an ingenious turn, and in 1644 had invented a new kind of light twelve-pounder, which a single horse could carry. Though the New Model siege train was one of the chief factors in bringing the Civil War in England to an end, it cannot be said that cannon played a decisive part in the field, except at Langport in 1645. In Scotland, after her great effort in equipping Leven, it would seem that the zest for artillery was relaxed, and at Preston the Scots had not a single gun of any kind—”dear Sandy being grown old and doated, and giving no fitting orders for these things.” Yet the mere possession of field-guns, however antiquated and badly handled, was a conspicuous asset against a Highland force. The Highlander detested the “musket’s mother” as something outside the decent order of things, and needed much persuasion before he would face cannon.
The army’s intelligence was in the hands of the scoutmaster-general, but whatever the energy of this officer, he had in Lowland and English scouts material not comparable to that afforded by the Highland clans, to whom the most daring espionage was the breath of life. . . . Every regiment dressed as its commander ordained, but red was coming in fast; in Scotland the usual wear was probably hodden-grey, except for the officers and the cavalry. . . . The common soldier’s food was bread and cheese, except in garrison; the articles of war enjoined payment for all supplies commandeered, but the pay-chest was often empty. . . . Discipline was provided for by elaborate military codes, such as the one which Leven promulgated in 1644, which, in addition to much that was sensible and humane, enjoined the formation of a kirk-session in every regiment. Religion was amply provided for in the armies of both king and Parliament, but Baillie laments that in 1644 it was hard to get enough ministers. The army chaplain of these days was a useful person, and his duties were secular as well as sacred, for he was the historian of a campaign and the seventeenth-century substitute for the war correspondent.
Such is a rough sketch of the constitution of the regular armies of Scotland and England in the year 1644. The pick of the Scottish regulars were with Leven, who in January had taken across the Border twenty-one regiments of foot, nine troops of horse, a regiment of dragoons, and an artillery train. What Montrose had to meet was the Scottish second-line army, the home-defence force, raised and equipped like the first line, but a little ruder, clumsier, less disciplined. His own command was meagre and shabby in the extreme. Alasdair had about 1,100 men divided into three regiments — men who might be called regular soldiers, inured to discipline, and seasoned by hard campaigns. They had firearms, for the most part ancient matchlocks, an occasional claymore, and a variety of pikes and cudgels. The Badenoch men, mainly Gordons and Keppoch Macdonalds, numbered perhaps 300, and the Atholl clans provided another 800; both, at their own request, were commanded by young Inchbrakie. Of this total of 2,200, nearly half — the Highland contingent — were most inadequately armed. Some of the gentry may have carried flintlocks, there were a good many claymores, but the weapons of most were clubs and bows and arrows. These Highland warriors presented the same picture as the Highland contingent in Leven’s army of 1641 — lean, red-shanked mountaineers, plaided, armed with sword and bow, such deadly marksmen that with the latter they could kill a running deer. Nor was the lack of firearms all; ammunition was so scarce that only one round could be provided for such weapons as they possessed. There was no artillery of any kind, and not a plack in the treasury. The cavalry was limited to three horses, perhaps the unfortunate beasts which had carried Montrose and his friends from Carlisle — skin and bone, says Wishart, “omnino strigosos et emaciatos.”
Yet, in the then condition of Scotland, there was in that ragged levy the makings of a most formidable force. If it could find a leader and loyally follow him, it might gravely perplex the home-defence army, for it had none of its faults. The Highlander, accustomed to full meals of meat from the chase, was physically far superior to the bannock-fed Lowland peasant or the apprentice from the foul vennels of the little cities. He was swift where they were slow, cunning where they were simple, adroit where they were blundering, daring when they were supine. A Highland army could pursue a strict military purpose, for it had no civil preoccupations to compel the holding of town or fortress. Living on the country, it could do without pay-chests and transport wagons. It had no communications to be cut; its base could not be taken, for its base was the inviolable hills. Under a general who understood its peculiar virtues, it might be to the second line of the Covenant as a rapier to a ploughshare.
III
1644 August
It was the true opening of Montrose’s military career, and he seems to have undergone a change of spirit. He was now thirty-two years of age, and, as men went in his era, might be held to have left his youth behind him. Hitherto we have seen him perplexed and tormented, walking delicately and a little sadly in the difficult ways of conscience. He goes steadfastly on the path of duty, but with head bowed. To his contemporaries he must have seemed something of a dreamer and a doctrinaire, with nothing of that large impulsive power which carries men perforce to do its will. He had a good repute as a soldier, but that repute was largely academic. In the Bishops’ War he had shown no special gift except speed, and in the Border campaigning, earlier in the year 1644, he had fought with weapons which snapped in his hand. But now some seal is broken in him. Conscious of high talents for command, he sees an army spring up miraculously at his call, and he has the wit to perceive in that motley force the germ of a new kind of war. His spirit is suddenly enlarged, and he recaptures his youth and his humanity. Something goes out from him which kindles the ardour of Ulsterman and Highlander alike, and which makes Alasdair follow obediently a man the processes of whose mind are utterly beyond his ken. He discovers a boyish zest for adventure and the desperate chance. He indulges in a boy’s whimsies — the dress which captures the fancy, the proud word that stirs the heart. He strides at the head of his men, daring the wildest cateran to outvie in hardihood this intimate of scholars, this familiar of courts and senates, the king’s lieutenant-general.
The Campaign of Tippermuir and Aberdeen
Apparently he sent formal warning to Argyll, as befitted the holder of the royal commission to the king’s principal antag
onist. If a blow was to be struck it must be prompt, for the Council was arming fast against Alasdair, though as yet Edinburgh had no news of Montrose. Lord Elcho was at Perth with a large force drawn from the burghers of the second city of Scotland, men from Fife and the Perthshire lowlands, and the mounted gentry of the neighbourhood. Lord Burleigh had another army at Aberdeen, with the young Gordons serving under him; while from the west Argyll was leading his formidable clan to avenge the smoking homesteads of Morvern and Ardnamurchan. To wait in Atholl was to starve, to retreat farther into the hills was to court disaster. Montrose had no supplies, no ammunition, no means of increasing his force except by victory.
On the 30th day of August he left Blair and marched west up the Tummel valley in blue autumn weather. He did not take the shortest road to Perth, for Argyll was coming from the west, and it would be well by fetching a circuit to get news of him before engaging Elcho. Also he had hopes of collecting allies in Strathearn. Rounding Loch Tummel, the army crossed the hills by the eastern side of Schiehallion to Aberfeldy. At Castle Menzies, whose laird was an ally of Argyll, they encountered a slight opposition, and burned a hut or two and some corn in sheaf. Late that night they crossed Tay, and put the river between them and the hostile Menzieses. Next morning at dawn Black Pate led the Atholl men forward as an advance guard, and the army marched with Highland speed across Strathbran, and by the Sma’ Glen to the Almond. There at the Hill of Buchanty they fell in with an unexpected reinforcement. Lord Kilpont, the eldest son of the seventh Earl of Menteith; David Drummond, the Master of Maderty; and Sir John Drummond, a younger son of the second Earl of Perth, had raised 500 bowmen at the order of the Estates to oppose Alasdair’s invasion. The leaders were kin to Montrose — young Maderty was his brother-in-law — and when they learned who was advancing their purpose changed. They gladly joined the royal general, and brought him a welcome accession of stalwart peasants, who, living on the border-line between Highlands and Lowlands, had some of the virtues of both. The force crossed the ridge to Strathearn, and spent the night on the moor of Fowlis.
1644 September
It was now Sunday, the 1st of September. Elcho had something under 7,000 infantry, the levies of Fife and the Scottish midlands; 700 horse, composed of the local lairds and their following; and nine pieces of artillery, light pieces firing at the most a five-pound ball. He had ample munitions of war, and his troops were fortified by the Sabbath morning exhortations of an array of ministers. “To give them their due,” says Wishart, “they performed their part stoutly at the expense of their lungs, promising them in the name of God Almighty an easy and bloodless victory. Nay, one of them, Frederick Carmichael . . . did not hesitate to declare in his discourse, ‘If ever God spoke certain truth out of my mouth, in His name I promise you to-day a certain victory.’” With Elcho were many of the neighbouring Covenanting gentry, including Lord Murray of Gask, and some who were not Covenanters, like Lord Drummond, Perth’s eldest son; and he had the assistance of at least one experienced professional soldier, Sir James Scott of Rossie, who had just come from serving under the flag of Venice. Small wonder that the Covenant forces were in good heart. They had seen something of the Highlander in the Bishops’ War, and thought little of his prowess. They knew that Alasdair’s troops were in rags — as one of the ministers described them, “naked, weaponless, ammunitionless, cannonless men.” The view of the leaders was that of Elspeth’s ballad in The Antiquary:
“My horse shall ride through ranks sae rude
As through the moorland fern;
Then ne’er let the gentle Norman blude
Grow cauld for Highland kerne.”
Besides, they outnumbered the enemy by nearly three to one. So, very early in the day, Elcho with his army marched three miles westward to Tippermuir, accompanied by a host of Perth citizens who were not unwilling to see a surprising judgment fall upon their ancient foes. He took up a good position in open ground, where his cavalry, his most formidable arm, had room to manoeuvre. His battle-cry was “Jesus and no quarter!”
Montrose had at the most 2,700 men, all of them foot-soldiers, for his cavalry, as we have seen, was confined to the three lean horses from Carlisle. His artillery consisted of Kilpont’s bowmen. The most grievous lack was ammunition, for the Irish, who alone had guns, had but one round apiece. On Tippermuir, however, there were plenty of stones, and with these as missile weapons he bade the rest arm themselves. He put the three regiments of Irish under Alasdair in the centre of his little force, and Kilpont with his bowmen on the left, while he himself, carrying targe and pike, took command of the Atholl men on the right flank. Elcho’s dispositions were not unskilful. He commanded the right wing, Murray of Gask the centre, and Sir James Scott the left, opposite Montrose. The 700 horse, equally divided between the two wings, were under Lord Drummond.
Montrose, faced with so great a numerical superiority, had at all costs to avoid outflanking. So he abandoned the ordinary six-rank formation, and drew up his men in a long line only three deep. He saw further the danger from Drummond’s cavalry unless he scattered the enemy foot out of hand by striking at its heart. He knew something of the temper of the unwilling Lowland levies — men drawn from the counter and the plough-tail to a work for which they had no stomach. To such the wild charge of the clans would be a new experience. Then, true to his duty as a constitutional commander, he sent the Master of Maderty with a flag of truce to inform Elcho that he was acting under the royal commission, that he wished above all things to avoid shedding Scottish blood, and to summon him to remember his due and lawful allegiance; in any case, let there be a truce so that the Sabbath should not be profaned. Elcho replied that he had “made choice of the Lord’s day for doing the Lord’s will”; he had no mind for a truce which would give the doomed royalists a chance to slip away. Moreover, he made the envoy prisoner and dispatched him to Perth in the custody of two Forfar lairds, who told him genially that he would be hanged when the fight was over. The Covenanters were to show throughout their struggle with Montrose a strange reluctance to accept the etiquette of civilized warfare.
The battle began with a skirmish. As the two forces approached within cannon shot, Drummond sent forward a mounted squadron, in order to entice Montrose into one of those frontal attacks to which an undisciplined army is prone. It was Elcho’s one glimmer of tactical wisdom. But Montrose was ready. He had adopted the method used by Gustavus at Leipsic by which all three ranks fired at once, though the weapons of the third rank were only stones; and the first volley sent Drummond’s troopers flying and halted Elcho’s advance. Then he gave the order for a general charge. From behind the smoke came the fierce kerns of Ulster and Badenoch, with pike and claymore and Lochaber axe. The nine guns were submerged by the torrent. Elcho’s centre crumpled like paper, and in a few minutes was racing back on the road to Perth. The cavalry could do nothing in the face of such fury and speed. On the Covenant left alone was there any serious resistance, where on rising ground stood Scott, the wary professional soldier, with the best of the Fife levies. But Montrose presently won the ridge, and Scott fled with the rest. The plain was strewn with lathered horses and panting foot.
Then followed a grim business. Scarcely a dozen men fell in the battle, but nearly 2,000, according to Wishart, died in the rout, and the Irish officer, whose story has come down to us, declares that a man might have walked to Perth on the dead. Some perished from the swords of Montrose, some from sheer fatigue — for the pursuit lasted till nine in the evening of a hot autumn day — and we are told that ten of the Perth burgesses succumbed unwounded to their unusual exertions. Presently the enemy was at the gates of Perth, and the city surrendered without a word. Cannon, arms, supplies, tents, colours, drums, baggage, all became the spoil of the victors. Montrose held his wild forces in a stiff discipline. He refused to allow the captured guns to be turned on the fugitives, and he permitted no violence of any kind within the walls. He contented himself with fining the burghers £50 sterling, which went to Ala
sdair, who was in desperate straits for money, with compelling the Covenanting sheriff-clerk to copy out a summons to the local lairds, and with levying a large contribution of cloth to amend the “looped and windowed” raggedness of his army.
For three days Montrose tarried in Perth. He took up his quarters in the town, in the house of one Margaret Donaldson, and sent to Kinnaird for his old tutor, William Forrett, to act as his secretary, and for his two elder sons, Lord Graham and Lord James. Like Cromwell, he had the ministers to dinner, and one of them, Mr. George Haliburton, was afterwards taken to task by the Presbytery for saying grace at his table. The news of the victory carried consternation to the Covenant leaders in London, who had written off Montrose for good, and caused them heart-searching as to whether the judgment was due to the sins of Assembly, Parliament, army, or people. It drew off some of the Scots troops from Newcastle, but it did not give Montrose the recruits he had hoped for, Lord Dupplin being the only man of note who arrived at his camp. The Atholl and Badenoch men, according to their custom, made off to their homes to secrete their booty, and his force was soon reduced to little more than Alasdair’s Irishry. There were other armies waiting to be met, and one of them, Argyll’s, was approaching rapidly from the west. Montrose decided that his force was not sufficient to oppose Argyll, and at that time he was probably not aware of the existence of Burleigh at Aberdeen. His immediate aim was to collect recruits in his own county of Angus, and, if possible, capture Dundee. On the 4th of September he left Perth and, crossing the Tay, reached the neighbourhood of Coupar-Angus. On the 10th Lothian, with Argyll’s vanguard of horse, entered the city, and the following day at long last came Argyll himself.
On the night of the 6th the camp was stirred by a tragedy. Young Lord Kilpont shared a tent with one of his lieutenants, James Stewart of Ardvoirlich, whose castle still stands among the birch woods on the south shore of Loch Earn. A quarrel arose in the small hours, and Stewart stabbed Kilpont to the heart, killed two sentries, and with his son and some friends escaped to the Covenanters. Argyll three months later procured him a pardon from the Estates, who, on 12th September, to give further proof of their partiality for assassination, offered a reward of some £1,600 sterling to any one who would slay Montrose and exhibit his head to them in Edinburgh. The murderer was also to have a free pardon for any crimes he might have been unfortunate enough to commit in the past. Mr. Gardiner dryly points out the inconsistency of this course. “The favourable reception given by Argyll to the supposed murderer was a sign that all who joined in a Highland rising might be assassinated with impunity as far as the Covenanting authorities were concerned. It is seldom indeed that a civilized community metes out to a less civilized one the measure by which it judges itself. When Argyll desolated the Highland glens with fire and sword, he was but inflicting due punishment upon barbarians. When Montrose gathered the Highlanders to the slaughter of the burghers and the farmers of the Lowlands, he placed himself outside the pale of civilized warfare.” The natural presumption from Argyll’s reception of Stewart is that Stewart had been endeavouring to anticipate the wishes of the Estates, and had tried to persuade Kilpont, who had refused. For such a view there is no evidence, and it is intrinsically unlikely. Kilpont would have offered barren soil for any such proposal, and this Stewart must be assumed to have known. It is more probable that the account given in Stewart’s official pardon is the true one. He had proposed to desert, and Kilpont, divining his intention, tried to prevent him and was slain. Or, if we like, we can take the family tradition referred to by Scott in his Legend of Montrose, that Stewart had challenged Alasdair, and that afterwards, in their cups, Kilpont and Stewart had words which ended in the fatal blow. The Estates have so many deeds of violence on their shoulders that the historian is glad to relieve them of one.
