by John Buchan
Douglas and Ogilvy had been already dispatched to the Border to recruit, and on the 4th of September Montrose broke up his camp at Bothwell and began his advance towards Tweed. His plan was to march through the Lothians, and then descend by one of the passes of the Lammermoors to the country of Home and Roxburgh. But at the end of the first day he had to face a defection more serious than Alasdair’s. Aboyne had been rapidly getting out of humour, and his ill-temper was zealously fomented by Huntly, his father. He was insulted because Crawford, instead of himself, had been given the command of the cavalry. The return of Lord Ogilvy had restored to Montrose his oldest comrade, and to the Gordon it seemed that an Ogilvy was preferred before him. A narrative of the campaign by Sir William Rollo, which he had seen, was, in his view, insufficiently laudatory of his own doings, and Montrose refused to suppress it. Last and most important there was old Huntly, whose every letter upbraided his heir for alliance with an enemy of his house. The untamable perverseness of the Gordon blood triumphed over his loyalty to his king and his duty to his general. In spite of Ogilvy’s appeals he marched off with all the Gordon horse and foot. Nathaniel Gordon alone remained; for him the comradeship in arms begun after Tippermuir was to end only with death.
The Campaign of Philiphaugh
II
Montrose traversed the moorland country of the Lothians, avoiding plague-stricken Edinburgh, to Cranstoun, south-east of Dalkeith. It was now Saturday, the 6th of September, and on the following day it was intended that Wishart should preach to the army. But news was received from Lord Erskine which changed the situation. David Leslie, the future Lord Newark, and a soldier far abler than either Leven or Baillie, had, after the fall of Carlisle, taken his horse to the assistance of Leven at Hereford. He was then sent into the midlands in pursuit of the king, but the news of Kilsyth altered his plans. His men refused to continue the war in England while Scotland was defenceless, and, though his first intention was to take only half his force, he was soon compelled to take the whole 4,000. On 1st September the siege of Hereford was raised — it was the one direct result of Kilsyth in the king’s favour — while Leslie was hastening with all speed to the north. Had the king’s army been better handled he would never have reached the Border. There was one moment at Rotherham, as he himself admitted, when, if the adjacent royal forces had struck, he would have been destroyed. But he passed unchallenged, and, collecting reinforcements of foot from the garrisons of Newcastle and Berwick, he crossed Tweed on the 6th of September. John Middleton of Caldhame commanded his advance guard; he had served under Montrose at Aberdeen in the Bishops’ War, and was to live to receive an earldom and misgovern Scotland after the Restoration. Leslie followed the coast road to the Lothians, his aim being to cut off Montrose from the Highlands, and his plan to take up position somewhere on the neck of land between Forth and Clyde.
David Leslie, First Lord Newark,
after the portrait by Sir Peter Lely.
He had under him not less than 6,000 men. Of these more than 5,000 were mounted troops — his own regiment, the regiments of Dalhousie, Eglinton, Middleton, and Leven, Fraser’s Dragoons, Kirkcudbright’s Dragoons, and Sir David Barclay’s independent troop of horse. He had picked up 800 foot on the way from the regiments of Clydesdale, Tweeddale, Galloway, Montgomery, Strathearn, and Kenmure. He had also acquired at Berwick a more doubtful increment, no less than ten members of the Committee of Estates, most of them fugitives after Kilsyth, like Argyll, Lindsay, and Lanark. But he did not suffer the committee to interfere with the conduct of his operations as it had done at Kilsyth and was to do later at Dunbar. The crisis was too sharp for a peripatetic debating society.
Lord Erskine advised a retreat beyond the Highland Line while yet there was time, but Montrose refused. He was bound by his duty to the king to carry relief to England, and that at once. His problem was the old one of how to raise an army, but to go north among the clans again would mean an intolerable delay, and he believed that he could achieve the same result on the Border. Cavalry was his first need, for Aboyne’s defection had left him with scarcely a hundred troopers, most of them Lord Airlie’s Ogilvys. He hoped for large levies as a consequence of Douglas’s recruiting, and still more from Home and Roxburgh. His further plans we do not know — whether he intended to seek out and test the quality of David Leslie or to march boldly southward to the king. His immediate business was to get an army, so on the Saturday afternoon the royalists turned to their right and marched down Gala Water towards Tweedside. Next day, at Torwoodlee, Douglas and Ogilvy joined them with a large body of horse from Nithsdale and upper Clydesdale. The recruits were all lairds or lairds’ sons, and their immediate retainers — a half-hearted and unstable crew, who had none of the old moss-trooping fire. Somewhere, too, on Gala Water, Linton arrived with his Peeblesshire troop, and his father, Traquair, rode over to visit the viceroy. He came in all likelihood to spy out the nakedness of the land, with results which we shall see.
Marching slowly down Tweed, Montrose reached Kelso on the 8th or 9th. It was the appointed rendezvous, but he found no sign of Home or Roxburgh. He waited for a day, and then he heard ominous news. The Border earls were with Leslie — prisoners, so ran their own story, captured by Middleton and his advance guard. It was a tale which common opinion scouted, and indeed it is inconceivable that two powerful nobles, in their own countryside, twenty miles from Leslie’s line of march, and with complete knowledge of his coming, should not have been able to escape if they had wished it. It is far more probable that, knowing Leslie’s strength and Montrose’s predicament, they sought security by putting themselves in the enemy’s power.
To tarry at Kelso was mere folly, so Montrose turned wearily up Tweed. The spring he had most counted on was dry. Douglas held out hopes of raising the westlands — vain hopes, for in no quarter of Scotland was the power of the ministers so great; he rated the prestige of the Douglas name higher than was warranted by facts. Montrose accepted the plan, for in any case it would lead him back to the hills to which he had always turned his eyes for help. He marched to Jedburgh, but there was nothing to be looked for from the Kerrs, whose chief, Lothian, was a Covenanting general. Then he entered the Scott country, but Buccleuch was with Leslie, and the old raiding spirit was dying in the glens. The successors of Wat of Harden and Dickie of Dryhope were a peaceable folk, and brawls at a fair or a clipping were their only form of war. He would have fared better among the Armstrongs and Elliots farther south, who, as Cromwell was to discover, were still good men of their hands. There was another reason for his failure in the presence of his Irish contingent, for Border memories are long, and a hundred years before Hertford, in his invasion of Scotland, had used Irish in his work of destruction, and these Irish had taken no prisoners.
During the march Sir Robert Spottiswoode wrote a letter — never posted — to Digby, who was still nursing his vain dreams. He told him of Montrose’s desperate plight, and upbraided him for not detaining Leslie in England. He asked what had become of the promised cavalry. “You little imagine the difficulties my lord marquis hath here to wrestle with. The overcoming of the enemy is the least of them; he hath more to do with his seeming friends. . . . All these were great disheartenings to any other but to him, whom nothing of this kind can amaze. With the small forces he hath presently with him he is resolved to pursue David Leslie, and not suffer him to grow stronger.” Digby at the moment, and for a fortnight later, was full of hope and confidence, which even the disaster of Rowton Heath could not shake. Stories were reaching him of a mysterious fight in Westmoreland, in which Crawford and Ogilvy were said to have annihilated Leslie. Soon he was to hear from Byron that the soldiers in Poyntz’s army were celebrating a great victory which had shattered Montrose’s power. The first tale was false, the second only too true.
On the afternoon of the 12th of September Montrose arrived at the gate of the hill country, the flat of Philiphaugh, under the little burgh of Selkirk, where the two glens of Yarrow and Ettrick meet
. Just below the junction of the streams, on the left bank of Ettrick, is a level meadow a quarter of a mile wide, with the water on one side and a rugged hill on the other. Here he fixed his camp, and placed the few guns which had been part of the booty of Kilsyth. It was protected on the south and east by the Ettrick, on the north by the hills, and on the west by Yarrow and the steep wood called the Hareheadshaw. The position was a strong one, but as the army did not expect a battle it was very loosely held. There was no premonition of immediate danger. Leslie was believed to be far away on the Forth, and, in Sir Robert Spottiswoode’s letter to Digby, Montrose was said to be resolute to chase him. He did not know that the pursued had become the pursuer.
At Gladsmuir, in East Lothian, late on the 11th of September, Leslie had received a letter revealing the whereabouts and the weakness of the royalist force. Popular tradition made Traquair the sender, and there is no reason to disbelieve a tale so consistent with the character of a family which, during the Covenant, as during the later Jacobite wars, was uniformly treacherous. Traquair had also shown his hand by sending a message to his son, Lord Linton, to withdraw him and his troops from Montrose’s camp. Leslie, when he got the news, at once changed his plans. He marched straight down Gala Water, crossed the ridge at Rink by the old Edinburgh-Selkirk road, and forded Tweed below the Rae Weil. Late on the night of the 12th he reached the hamlet of Sunderland, which stood on the peninsula formed by the junction of Tweed and Ettrick. There to his relief he had news of the enemy. Some pickets, under Charteris of Amisfield, were in the village, and these were driven out with a few casualties. Leslie was now less than three miles from the royalist camp. He had caught his quarry, but only by the skin of his teeth, for another day would have seen Montrose safe in the hills.
A little trenching was done on the eastern and western flanks before Montrose’s small army settled down for the night. A mounted patrol was sent out under Ogilvy of Powrie, and returned to report that all was quiet; they were probably impressed local men, maybe Traquair’s tenants, and they may have taken their commander where nothing could be seen or heard. The king’s captain-general left the posting of the pickets to his officers, and retired himself with his cavalry leaders to a lodging in the West Port of Selkirk. Here for most of the night he busied himself with dispatches to the king. He had many heavy matters on his mind, and was suffering from one of those fits of bodily and mental languor which come at times upon the greatest commanders. No doubt he had given instructions that, except for the most urgent business, he was not to be disturbed. The night had fallen moonless and dark as pitch. Some time before midnight Charteris of Amisfield arrived with his story of having been driven out of Sunderland village. His account must have been confused, and the incident was apparently regarded by the headquarters staff as a drunken brawl among Charteris’ troopers or a brush with hostile country-folk — at any rate not of sufficient moment to break in upon the privacy of the captain-general.
The morning of the 13th dawned with one of those thick autumnal fogs, which in the valley bottoms in the early hours prevent a man seeing three yards before him. Scouts were sent out again at the first light, and reported that the country was clear. So it was to north, south, and west, on all sides except the east, the direction of Sunderland, and Amisfield’s report from that quarter had already been discounted. The army in the haugh cooked a leisurely meal, and Montrose, in his Selkirk lodging, with only an hour or two of sleep behind him, sat down to breakfast.
Meantime Leslie had launched his thunderbolt. He had divided his forces into two parts, and with one marched swiftly up the left bank of Ettrick. The other, 2,000 strong, which included Kirkcudbright’s Dragoons, under the command of James Agnew of Lochnaw, had crossed that water, and by way of Will’s Nick had reached the Selkirk road. The royalists, having finished their meal, were assembling for parade, when through the thinning mist came the rush of Leslie’s horse.
To Montrose in the West Port arrived his scoutmaster, Captain Blackadder, with the shattering news. He flung himself on his horse, and with Airlie, Crawford, and Napier, galloped to his army. He found the field in confusion. Douglas’s bonnet-lairds, in spite of their gallant leader, had fled at the first shot. The 500 Ulstermen, however, were fighting a desperate fight in their shallow trenches. Montrose collected a hundred troopers, and charged Leslie so madly that for a moment he drove back the whole Covenant horse. But 600 men taken by surprise, and with no advantage of position, cannot for long do battle with 6,000. Leslie’s other division harassed the royalist right flank with musketry fire from beyond the stream, and presently had forded Ettrick and were attacking it from behind. The Irish were beaten out of their trenches into a second position, the folds of Philiphaugh farm. Again and again the Covenant troopers charged, only to be driven back by the heroic Ulstermen; again and again Montrose’s hundred cut their way deep into the enemy’s ranks. Philiphaugh was less a battle than a surprise and a massacre. Soon only fifty horse were left, and of the Irish more than 400 were dead. The remnant under their adjutant, Stewart, were induced to surrender on a promise of quarter.
Archibald, Second Lord Napier,
after the portrait by Jameson.
Montrose fought with a gallantry and a desperation worthy of Alasdair, and but for his friends would have died on the field. Lord Douglas and Sir John Dalziel pled with him to take the chance of flight, urging that so long as he lived the king’s cause need not go down. He allowed himself to be constrained. With about thirty others, including the two Napiers, Lord Erskine, and Lord Fleming, as well as Dalziel and Douglas, he cut a road to the west and repulsed a feeble attempt at pursuit. The little party galloped up Yarrow vale, and at Broadmeadows took the drove-road across Minchmoor to Tweeddale. As they disappeared into the green hills, with them disappeared the dream of a new and happier Scotland. Montrose’s cycle of victories had proved like the fairy gold which vanishes in a man’s hand. The year of miracles was ended.
CHAPTER XIV. AFTER PHILIPHAUGH (September 1645-September 1646)
O truth of Christ,
O most dear rarity,
O most rare Charity,
Where dwell’st thou now?
In the Valley of Vision?
On Pharaoh’s throne?
On high with Nero?
With Timon alone?
— Carmina Burana, Miss Helen Waddell’s translation.
I
1645 September
Montrose did not draw rein till he reached the old house of Traquair, whose grey and haunted walls still stand among the meadows where the Quair burn flows to Tweed. Its lord shut his door on the fugitive; his welcome was reserved for the conquering Leslie, when, with Argyll and Lothian, he arrived later in pursuit. He did not cross Tweed at the bridge of Peebles, but rode up the right bank by the Sware to Manor, and thus to Stobo by the Glack. Thence the company pushed on to Biggar in Clydesdale, where they spent the night, and long before the next daybreak were in the saddle and heading for the north, guided by Dalziel, who was now in his own countryside. Fugitives were picked up by the way, including an Ulsterman, who had wrapped the colours of the foot round his breast, and, having found a horse, caught up Montrose and restored to him one of the standards. The other, the cavalry colours, was carried by Kinnoull’s brother, William Hay, into England, and months afterwards was brought to Montrose in the north. At a ford of Clyde they met, to their joy, old Airlie and Crawford, who had probably taken the route by Megget and upper Tweed, and had collected on the road some of Douglas’s fleeing troopers. Somehow the party made their way through the midlands, and by the 19th were safe in the Perthshire hills.
The Scots troops in Newcastle entertained the mayor and aldermen to a dinner to celebrate the victory of Philiphaugh. Elsewhere the celebrations were of a grimmer kind, for now came the harvest of the triumphant Covenant. It began on the day of the battle, when 300 Irishwomen, with their children, were butchered on the field. Those who wish to sup deep on horrors can find the details in Patrick Gordon
. The cooks and horse-boys also perished to the number of some 200. The remnant of the Irish under Stewart had surrendered on terms, but the ministers who accompanied Leslie remonstrated against the Lord’s work being hindered by a foolish clemency. They argued that quarter had been granted to Stewart alone, and not to his men; Leslie professed being himself convinced by this shameless quibble, and the unarmed Irish were cut down as they stood, or shot next morning in the courtyard of Newark castle. O’Cahan and another officer, Lachlan, were spared for the moment, only to be hanged later in Edinburgh without a trial. Stewart was also destined for death, but was fortunate enough to escape to Montrose.
The zeal of the Covenant against the daughters of Heth was not satiated by the butchery of Philiphaugh. Many had escaped, and were slaughtered singly as they wandered among the moors of Tweed and Clyde. In most county histories the slaying is ascribed to the infuriated country people, but for this there is no evidence. The Lowland peasantry have never had a taste for such brutalities, and the murders were probably the work of the soldiers of the Covenant, who beat the hills for royalists, as Lag’s dragoons were to beat them forty years later for Covenanters. One large party of the poor creatures was brought to Leslie’s camp at Linlithgow. They were flung over the bridge of Avon, and were either drowned in the river or stabbed with the pikes of the soldiers who lined the banks. The records of the Irish rebellion hold no more horrid cruelties. The inspiration was not Leslie’s; it came from the fierce bigots who accompanied him. Sometimes the soldiers sickened of the work, and asked their clerical advisers, as Leslie asked Nevoy at Dunavertie, “Mr. John, have you not once gotten your fill of blood?”
