by John Buchan
CHAPTER VIII. ABERDEEN AND FYVIE (September-December 1644)
There is dross, alloy, and embasement in all human tempers; and he flieth without wings who thinks to find Ophir or pure metal in any. For perfection is not, like light, centred in any one body; but, like the dispersed seminalities of vegetables at the creation, scattered through the whole mass of the earth, no place producing all, and almost all some. So that ‘tis well if a perfect man may be made out of many men, and, to the perfect eye of God, even out of mankind. . . .
If generous honesty, valour, and plain dealing be the cognizance of thy family, or characteristic of thy country, hold fast such inclination. . . . Fall not into transforming degeneration. . . . Be not an alien in thine own nation; bring not Orontes into Tiber.
— Sir Thomas Browne.
I
1644 September
Dundee proved beyond Montrose’s powers. It was too well garrisoned for 1,500 men to take, and the guns captured at Tippermuir were no siege pieces. He moved accordingly to the upper waters of the Esks in the hope of enlisting some of the loyal gentlemen of Angus. Here he had definite word of Burleigh’s army at Aberdeen, which determined his next step. The Angus recruits came in slowly. Lord Airlie indeed appeared, the father of Lord Ogilvy who had been captured at Ribble Bridge. No Ogilvy was ever anything but a king’s man, and two of his sons, Sir Thomas and Sir David, accompanied their father. With the Gordons Montrose fared no better than had Alasdair Macdonald. Huntly was still lurking among the bogs of Strathnaver; Aboyne, the second son, was fighting for the king in the garrison at Carlisle; and Lord Gordon, the heir, and his younger brother, Lord Lewis, were with Burleigh at Aberdeen. The clan, however, was not wholly unrepresented in the royal army. Nathaniel Gordon had been with Huntly in his rising, and now rode joyfully to join the king’s lieutenant. He was an intrepid and seasoned soldier, but as rash as any subaltern of Alasdair’s. It is a pity that no romancer has made him the subject of a tale, for his career, both early and late, offers rich material. Before he took part in politics, brigandage, kidnapping, piracy, and the baiting of Mr. Andrew Cant had been among the simple diversions of his life. He brought thirty horsemen with him, and Airlie had forty-five, so the little army was no longer without cavalry.
Montrose left his second son, Lord James, in his house of Old Montrose to continue his schooling, and then, keeping to the skirts of the hills, reached the Dee valley by the pass known as the Cryne’s Cross Mounth. The river was crossed about midway between Banchory and the Mills of Drum, and Crathes — the stately castle of the Burnets of Leys, which lay on the north bank — was peacefully occupied. Sir Thomas Burnet was that rare combination, a friend of Huntly’s and a staunch Covenanter; he hospitably entertained the royal lieutenant and his staff, and offered him a sum of money, which was refused. The following day, the 12th of September, the army advanced down the river to within two miles of the town of Aberdeen, where they found Burleigh awaiting them. Montrose had chosen his route to avoid the strongly fortified bridge of Dee, and in the hope of effecting a surprise; but the Covenanters had had ample warning, and had taken up a good position on the slopes of a hill. A lane, the present Hardgate, ran downwards from their centre, and around the foot of it were houses and gardens, which were strongly held. Burleigh had in all some 2,000 foot and 500 cavalry, and he possessed heavier artillery than the little pieces captured at Tippermuir. His cavalry seem to have been chiefly the Forbes, Fraser, and Crichton gentry, and eighteen horse under the separate command of Lord Lewis Gordon. His infantry were the usual Covenant levies, including a proportion of Aberdeen townspeople, and the remnants of Elcho’s Fife regiment. Montrose had 1,500 foot and some 70 horsemen. It was his business to beat his opponent as soon as possible, for Argyll, with a formidable army, was lumbering in his wake, and Fabian tactics would land him between two fires.
On the morning of the 13th, according to his custom, he sent an envoy to the magistrates of the city summoning them to surrender, advising them at any rate to send the women and children to a place of safety, and warning them that those who stayed could expect no quarter. The magistrates returned an embarrassed answer, summarizing his words as “no quarter except to old persons, women, and children” (which was not what he had written), and subscribing themselves first “your lordship’s faithful friends to serve you,” and then altering this to “your lordship’s as ye love us.” Why did Montrose preface this engagement with a threat so foreign to his character and practice? It would seem that he was in a mood of anger and strain. Kilpont’s murder had outraged his feelings; his force was heavily outnumbered and needed encouragement; he realized that his affairs stood on a razor edge, and that his failure now would mean destruction. His mood was to be further embittered. The magistrates courteously entertained his messenger and made a drummer-boy who accompanied him the present of a silver piece, but as the two returned under a flag of truce the child was treacherously shot by one of the Fife soldiers. A breach of the laws of war always revolted Montrose, and this breach was especially cruel and wanton. In a sudden fury he vowed to make the enemy pay dearly for the misdeed, and promised Alasdair the sack of the city if the day was won. Such a promise was as unjust as it was barbarous and unwise. It was not the city which had offended, but levies from the south that were little loved by the townsmen of Aberdeen.
The Battle of Aberdeen
Without further delay he deployed his forces for battle. He bade his men plunder the adjacent cornfields, and, in order to distinguish themselves from the enemy, stick each a bunch of oats in his bonnet. The Irish as before held the centre, and on the right wing Sir William Rollo and Colonel James Hay commanded, while Nathaniel Gordon had the left. He divided his scanty cavalry into equal portions, and placed one on each wing, following an old custom of the Thirty Years’ War by stiffening the score or two of horsemen with musketeers and bowmen interspersed among them — a thing only made possible by the discipline and skill of Alasdair’s men. The little force thus marshalled was the nearest approach to a regular army that Montrose had yet commanded, for most were adequately armed, and almost all had some experience of war. Burleigh, who was nothing of a general, was content with his strong position, superior numbers, especially in cavalry, and heavier guns. He had little authority and no plan of battle, and his lieutenants followed their own devices.
The action began with an attack on the houses and gardens which protected the Covenant centre. Alasdair had little difficulty in driving the enemy out of these and advancing up the slope. Lord Lewis Gordon charged with his eighteen horsemen on Montrose’s right wing — a mad boy’s escapade in the old cavalry style, discharging their pistols and retiring at the caracole. He made no impression, and Lord Fraser and Crichton of Frendraught followed vainly in the same manner; they knew nothing of the meaning of shock tactics, and sporadic and half-hearted assaults of this kind were easy to repulse. The rest of the cavalry on the Covenant’s left wing had apparently no orders, but sat staring at the battle.
Presently, however, the meaning of this manoeuvre was plain. It was a diversion against Montrose’s right to cover a dangerous attack upon his left. Following a mill road which was out of sight of the combatants, 100 Covenant horse and 400 foot worked their way to a position a little in the rear of Montrose’s left flank. A bold attack there might have decided the battle, but the assault was delivered half-heartedly, and Nathaniel Gordon, with his little body of horse and musketeers, was able to hold it until Sir William Rollo’s detachment was brought up from the right wing. With this accession of strength Gordon delivered a counter-attack, drove off the Covenant cavalry, and cut to pieces the Covenant foot.
But the denudation of the royalist right did not escape the eye of Sir William Forbes of Craigievar, who commanded on Burleigh’s left. There were now no horsemen there to stiffen the defence, and with his cavalry he charged forthwith on that weakened wing — no futile demonstration like Lord Lewis Gordon’s, but a charge to be pushed home in the manner of Rupert o
r Cromwell. Ordinary foot soldiers would have broken, but not Alasdair’s Irish. With perfect coolness they opened their ranks and let Forbes’s troopers thunder through; then, facing round, they pursued them with volleys. Saddles emptied fast, and the cavalry became a flying rout. Rollo returned from the now secure left wing, and completed Forbes’s destruction.
It was the turning-point of the fight, which had now lasted for several hours. Montrose, who had darted from place to place, reinforcing and heartening his men, called for a general advance. The Irish responded with enthusiasm, the whole army swept forward, and the Covenant centre broke and fled. The ground between the battlefield and the city walls became a shambles, and Alasdair’s men, mindful of Montrose’s promise before the fight, broke into the streets in pursuit. Patrick Gordon says that the victors lost but seven men and the vanquished a thousand, which is manifestly absurd; but beyond doubt the flying Covenanters were cut down without quarter, and stripped before the fatal blow, that their clothes might not be soiled with their blood. In the streets unarmed citizens were butchered, women were violated and slain or carried into captivity, and death did not spare the very old and the very young. For three terrible days the orgy lasted. Montrose had returned to his camp, and the miserable business continued unchecked, though Donald Farquharson, true to his character for gentleness and mercy, endeavoured to plead for the unhappy city. The mischief was done, and Montrose’s record had received its darkest stain.
What is the truth about the sack of Aberdeen? On the nature and magnitude of the atrocities it is hard to dogmatize. The damning evidence is that of the royalist Spalding, and it is explicit not only as to the giving of no quarter to men, but as to the slaughter of women. Alexander Jaffray, who served with the Covenant cavalry and fled as fast as his horse would carry him, says that “about seven or eight score men, besides women and children, were killed.” He may have spoken from hearsay, but the burgh records of Aberdeen record the slaughter of all found on the streets, “old and young,” and it is fair to assume that both sexes are included. There can be no ground for disbelief in the melancholy fact. As to the extent of the killing, one may be more sceptical; looting there was on a colossal scale, and no quarter was given to Covenanters in arms, but the slaughter of citizens was probably less than 200. Spalding, though his list does not profess to be exhaustive, enumerates only 118. Baillie, not likely to minimize the misdeeds of his opponents, puts the number of slain at seven score, and in another passage his words are: “A great many Aberdeen men were killed, and the town ill plundered.” This evidence scarcely suggests a general massacre. Moreover, the Cromwellian Richard Franck, visiting Aberdeen in 1657, had heard of a great battle there, but clearly of no atrocities, for he seizes the occasion for a panegyric on Montrose’s “incomparable conduct.”
But on Spalding’s evidence we must regard the main charge as proven: Montrose, faithlessly faithful to his rash promise to Alasdair, permitted the plunder of the city, the killing of men in cold blood to the number of over a hundred, and of some women, and the carrying off of other women as spoil by the Ulstermen. Among the female prisoners in Selkirk gaol after Philiphaugh are found names like Dunbar, Anderson, Forbes, Lamond, Young, Simson, Tait, Watson, Walker, Park, and Stuart — it may be, some of the unfortunates who were now compelled to follow Alasdair’s drum. On Saturday the 14th Montrose entered the city with Airlie, Dupplin, and others, and slept the night there, busied with trying to call his troops to order. But they had got out of hand, and when the march sounded on Monday morning many of the Irish were still at their evil work. When he saw the wretched townsfolk fruitlessly mounting his own whimsy of oats in their bonnets to save their lives, his heart may well have misgiven him. On that day he learned his lesson, and for the remainder of his campaigns he held his men in a grip of iron. Henceforth when he captured a town there might be looting, but there was no murder or outrage.
The sack of Aberdeen was not only a crime, it was a fatal error. This was no Covenanting city, and the majority of those who perished inside its walls had been forced into the fight — as Spalding says, “harllit out sore against their wills to fight against the king’s lieutenant.” Montrose had spoiled his chance of getting recruits for the king among the burghers of Deeside. All over Scotland, too, the tale, zealously disseminated by the Covenanters, and no doubt wildly embroidered, must have deterred moderate men from casting in their lot with one whose methods seemed more like a Tilly or a Wallenstein than a kindly Scot.
II
On Monday, the 16th of September, Montrose left the city and marched to Kintore on the Don. From there he sent a dispatch to the king by the hand of Sir William Rollo. On the 19th the heavy-footed Argyll entered Aberdeen and proceeded to exact contributions from the surviving citizens. Soon the news of the battle reached Edinburgh, and the Estates were gravely disquieted. Argyll might be a pillar of the Kirk, but he was very slow in bringing malefactors to book; he complained that his army was too small, so requisitions were promptly sent to Leven. Yet Argyll had at least 2,500 foot from the western levies, and Lothian, his master of horse, had 1,500 cavalry. Montrose continued up Strathdon to Kildrummie, whence he sent Nathaniel Gordon to Strathbogie (Huntly castle) and the Bog of Gight (Gordon castle) in a desperate appeal to the Gordons. But the clan was dumb. It would not stir without Huntly’s word, and Huntly, jealous of a royal commission which interfered with his own lieutenancy of the north, and not forgetful of his treatment by Montrose in the first Bishops’ War, refused to give it.
1644 Sept.-Oct.
The place was growing unhealthy for a loyalist with Argyll a day’s march off, so Montrose withdrew by way of Strathavon and Tomintoul to the vicinity of Rothiemurchus, that ancient pile on Loch-an-Eilean, of which Shaws and Mackintoshes and Grants have been successive masters. Somewhere on the road he buried the cannon which he had captured at Aberdeen. The Grants and the other Speyside families showed some inclination to dispute the way, so Montrose turned down the river to Abernethy, which brought him within twenty miles of Argyll, now at the Bog of Gight, and his 4,000 men. Presently he turned south again and made for the head of Spey and the Badenoch country, for he had been compelled to change his plans. Alasdair insisted on departing for the west on an expedition of his own, to raise recruits among the Clan Donald and to see to the security of his castles of Mingary and Lochaline. This left Montrose with no more than 500 men, and compelled a revision of his strategy. For the present he must content himself with troubling the soul of his enemies.
1644 October
In Badenoch he fell seriously ill; it was rumoured in the south that he was dead, and from a hundred pulpits the Almighty was publicly thanked for espousing the Covenanters’ quarrel. The illness lasted for several days, and seems to have been a fever caused by excessive fatigue. By the 4th of October he was on the move again and heading for Atholl. Now began what Baillie calls a “strange coursing,” Montrose leading the dance, and Argyll, some seven or eight days behind, footing it heavily from Spey to Tay and from Tay to Don. Alasdair with his female following had left him, and the king’s lieutenant travelled light. He passed into Angus, and, clinging as before to the flanks of the hills, crossed the Dee at his old ford on the 17th of October. Now he sanctioned for the first time the burning of the lands of Covenanting lairds, like the Frasers and the Crichtons, in retaliation for the fire and sword which Argyll had carried to every one suspected of loyalism. By the 21st he was in Strathbogie, busy once more with fruitless appeals to the Gordons. Here he had word of Argyll’s approach, reinforced by fourteen troops of horse under Marischal, the result of the appeal of the Estates to Leven. Accordingly he turned east into the bleak uplands of Buchan, and on the 24th was at Fyvie on the Ythan. He thought that Argyll was scarcely yet across the Grampians, when in reality he was almost within musket-shot. For once his intelligence failed him, and the king’s lieutenant was caught napping.
