by John Buchan
As a strategist he showed an extraordinary eye for country. The tangled passes of the Grampians, little known except in patches to the different clans, were grasped by him as a geographical whole, and he arranged his marches accordingly. He had a boldness, too, which staggered even those inured to mountain warfare, and his flank march before Inverlochy seemed both to friends and foes outside the limits of human power. His incredible speed was a further strategical advantage, for he could march over twenty miles in a single night among snowy mountains, as in his pursuit of Argyll in December 1644; or in thirty-six hours cover sixty miles, with fighting between, as at Dundee. This swiftness, indeed, was apt to be a snare to him. He despised his slower antagonists, and was twice almost caught — at Fyvie and Dundee — before the final surprise came at Philiphaugh. For strategy in the widest sense he was given no scope. He could not plan a campaign to correspond with the king’s in England, for his hands were tied by the composition of his army; his Highlanders would not fight south of the Highland Line, and deserted in droves after each victory. In such circumstances there could be no continuity of purpose, and the marvel is that Kilsyth was ever fought. But it is clear that Montrose was fully alive to the need of the larger strategical intention, and that it was only the lack of response from the English side that confined him to mountain warfare. With a force such as Charles repeatedly frittered away, he would have swept these islands from Sutherland to Devon.
In tactics he had in a supreme degree the gift of suiting his scheme of battle to his material, using his horse now as mounted infantry and now as cavalry, and getting full value from the impetuous Highland charge. His power of rapid decision never failed him, and in the stress of fight he could keep his head and alter his arrangements at the shortest notice. As proofs, we have the sudden strengthening of the left wing at Aberdeen, and his rapid dispositions in the hurry of the surprise before Auldearn, as well as the marvellous retreat from Dundee. At leisure he could dispose a battle with great skill, as at Alford, and could defy the ordinary rules of war with success, as at Kilsyth. Kilsyth is, indeed, an interesting case, for there is every reason to believe that Montrose deliberately chose what seemed to be the worse position. He was probably convinced that the Covenanters, finding themselves with the hill in their favour, would take some foolish risk and so play into his hands, and he counted on the power of his Highlanders to charge up a slope and arrive unwearied at the top. He knew, too, the value of the sudden word in the strain of battle to turn the tide, and his insight into the hearts of fighting men was at least as great a factor in his success as his tactical skill.
More notable than even his gifts for strategy and tactics was his unique power of leadership. He discerned the fighting value of the clans, and welded into an army the most heterogeneous materials on earth. Hitherto it had seemed impossible to band two minor septs together for one purpose for more than a week; Montrose united the whole central Highlands in a campaign of a year’s duration. Nor did he win this strange authority by any pandering to the vices of savage warfare. Except for the sack of Aberdeen, there is no stain on his record. He refused to turn the captured cannon on the fugitives at Tippermuir; he tried to check the slaughter after Inverlochy; he punished looting severely, as at Glasgow; he observed scrupulously the etiquette of war; he never put a prisoner to death, not even when his dearest friends were being murdered by the Estates. He did not stoop, as his opponents did, to the methods of the dirk and the ambuscade. It should be remembered that he was no fire-eating giant like Alasdair, but a slim young man of middle height, somewhat grave and courtly in his manner, and fonder of a book than a drinking-bout. Yet no iron-fisted Hercules ever kept a wilder force in a sterner discipline. The man who, at Dundee, could draw off half-tipsy troops in the middle of a sack in the face of a superior enemy, and lead them, weary as they were, for thirty miles in the thick of night to the safety of the hills, had miraculous gifts as a leader. We may search for long in the annals of war to find an equal achievement.
Cromwell also had that moral authority which fused the forces under him into a single weapon for his hand to direct. But Cromwell, except at Dunbar, fought with numbers on his side, and he had the supreme advantage that his men were largely bound already by the tie of a strong religious faith. For Montrose there was no such aid to discipline. It was personal authority, and personal authority alone, that kept Gordon and Macdonald in the same firing line. The two great captains were fated never to meet, and their relative prowess must remain in the realm of hypothesis. The chief historian of the epoch rates Montrose the higher. “On the battlefield Montrose had all Cromwell’s promptness of seizing the chances of the strife, together with a versatility in varying his tactics according to the varying resources of the enemy, to which Cromwell could lay no claim, while his skill as a strategist was certainly superior to that of his English contemporary.” Probably the judgment is just. At any rate, we can say that Montrose performed feats not inferior to Cromwell’s best, with weaker resources and against greater odds.
Scale must not be confused with kind. Since Montrose’s day the technical equipment of the soldier has been inconceivably enlarged, armies have grown into armed nations, the advance in the variety and precision of weapons has made every problem more intricate. But modern inventions, which make levies of millions possible, have provided in an equal ratio the facilities for leading them. Military genius remains in its essentials the same, and it is still possible in this respect to compare the soldiers of all ages, and to rank one who commanded a few thousands in a moorland war among the masters of the art. In virtue of his achievement, Montrose must stand as the foremost Scottish man of action — perhaps the only Scot who approaches the confines of that small inner circle of the profession of arms, which, among men of our own blood, contains no other names than Marlborough, Wellington, and Lee.
III
Few careers have such romantic unity. In one aspect he is the complete paladin, full of courtesy and grace, a Volcker of Alsace with his sword-fiddlebow, whose every stroke is a note of music. He wins fights against odds, and scribbles immortal songs in his leisure, and dies in the end like some antique hero, with the lights burning low in the skies and the stage darkened. In another he is the thinker, who read, as no one else did, the riddle of his times, and preached a doctrine of government which had to wait for nearly two hundred years till it found an audience. In that fierce seventeenth century, when men died for half-truths or less, when the great forces of the State were apt to be selfish competitors for material gain, and the idealists were driven into the wilds or overseas — in that gross and turbid age he lit the lamp of pure duty and pure reason. There were those who followed duty, but it was too often blindly. There were those who loved reason, but they either retired from the struggle or, like Falkland, fought with the air of martyrs rather than of soldiers. Montrose was armed and mailed Reason, Philosophy with its sword unsheathed. He is a far rarer type than the quietist who has fascinated historians, or than the grim Ironside, “the most formidable of combinations, the practical mystic.” He had all the grave lucidity of a Falkland, but he had none of his sad despair, for he went out joyfully to do battle for his faith. He was as stubborn and passionate in his cause as any Ironside, but he was no fanatic; he was not even any kind of mystic. He saw life clearly and calmly, and his spiritual force did not come, as it often comes, from a hectic imagination or a fevered brain. The springs of his being were a pellucid reasonableness of soul, joined to a power of absorption in duty which is commonly found only in the ranks of fanaticism.
It is a figure which must always haunt those who travel the rough roads of Scottish history. We see him in the brave clothes which still dazzle us in his portraits, the long, north-country face, the broad brow, the inscrutable grey eyes. He is thinking, wondering, brooding on the needs of his land, while others are preying on them. Then he reaches his conclusions, and, with something between the certainty of the thinker and the enthusiasm of the boy, he sets out on his
desperate errand. We see him in battle, a flush on his cheek, a youthful ardour in his eye, but his mouth set like iron. We see him among his friends, conquering all hearts with his wit and grace. We see him in triumph and in failure, careless of self, his course set unfalteringly towards his dreams, carrying, in Keats’s words, “an awful warmth about his heart like a load of immortality.” He is always very human, very much the man, for Alasdair and his kerns would never have followed the ordinary dreamer. And then, when the last blow has been struck, he has neither fears nor reproaches. Clearly and reasonably he states his defence, and when it is flouted and he is condemned to a shameful death, he takes it meekly, knowing something of the fallibility of mankind. The Edinburgh mob is awed into a hush by his appearance; his enemies declared that it was his fine clothes and noble looks; more truly we may read it as that inward vision which is the beatitude of the pure in heart.
No great cause is ever lost or ever won. The battle must always be renewed and the creed restated, and the old formulas, once so potent a revelation, become only dim antiquarian echoes. But some things are universal, catholic, and undying — the souls of which such formulas are the broken gleams. These do not age or pass out of fashion, for they symbolize eternal things. They are the guardians of the freedom of the human spirit, the proof of what our mortal frailty can achieve. Of this happy company Montrose is one. His qualities in the retrospect seem to be drawn to a fine edge of burning light. But, as we wonder and revere, there comes a voice from behind the flame, and awe is changed to wistfulness; for it is a voice of comradeship and joy and youth which “sweetly torments us with invitations to his own inaccessible homes.”
APPENDIX. MONTROSE ON “SOVEREIGN POWER”
“Noble Sir, —
“In the letter you did me the honour to send me, you move a question in two words, to give a satisfactory answer to which requires works and volumes, not letters. Besides, the matter is of so sublime and transcendant a nature as is above my reach, and not fit for subjects to meddle with — if it were not to do right to sovereign power in a time when so much is said and done to the disgrace and derogation of it. Nevertheless, to obey your desire, I will deliver my opinion: First, concerning the nature, essential parts, and practice of the supreme power in government of all sorts. Secondly, I will shew wherein the strength and weakness thereof consists, and the effects of both. Thirdly, I will answer some arguments and false positions maintained by the impugners of royal power; and that without partiality, and as briefly as I can:
“1. Civil societies, so pleasing to Almighty God, cannot subsist without government, nor government without a sovereign power, to force obedience to laws and just commands, to dispose and direct private endeavours to public ends, and to unite and incorporate the several members into one body politic, that with joint endeavours and abilities they may the better advance the public good. This sovereignty is a power over the people; above which power there is none upon earth; whose acts cannot be rescinded by any other; instituted by God, for His glory and the temporal and eternal happiness of men. This is it that is recorded so oft, by the wisdom of ancient times, to be sacred and inviolable; the truest image and representation of the power of Almighty God upon earth; not to be bounded, disputed, meddled with at all by subjects; who can never handle it, though never so warily, but it is thereby wounded, and the public peace disturbed. Yet it is limited by the laws of God and Nature; and some laws of nations; and by the fundamental laws of the country; which are those upon which sovereign power itself resteth, in prejudice of which a king can do nothing; and those also which secure to the good subject his honour, his life, and the property of his goods.
This power — not speaking of those who are kings in name only, and in effect but Principes Nobilitatis or Duces Belli, nor of the arbitrary and despotic power, where one is head and all the rest slaves, but of that which is sovereign over all free subjects — is still one and the same, in points essential, wherever it be, whether in the person of a monarch, or in a few principal men, or in the Estates of the people. The essential points of sovereignty are these: To make laws; to create principal officers; to make peace and war; to give grace to men condemned by law; and to be the last to whom appellation is made. There be others, too, which are comprehended in those set down; but because majesty doeth not so clearly shine in them they are here omitted. These set down are inalienable, indivisible, incommunicable, and belong to the sovereign power primitively in all sorts of governments. They cannot subsist in a body composed of individuities; and if they be divided amongst several bodies, there is no government; as if there were many kings in one kingdom, there should be none at all; for whosoever should have one of these, were able to erase their proceedings who have all the rest; for the having them negative and prohibitive in that part to him belonging, might render the acts of all the others invalid, and there would be a superiority to the supreme, and an equality to the sovereign power, which cannot fall in any man’s conceit that hath common sense; in speech it is incongruity, and to attempt it in act is pernicious.
“Having in some measure expressed the nature of supreme power, it shall be better known by the actual practice of all nations, in all the several sorts of government, as well Republics and Monarchies.
“The people of Rome — who were masters of policy, and war too, and to this day are made patterns of both — being an Estate popular, did exercise, without controlment or opposition, all the forenamed points essential to supreme power. No law was made but by the people; and though the Senate did propone and advise a law to be made, it was the people that gave it sanction; and it received the force of law from their command and authority, as may appear by the respective phrases of the propounder — Quod faustum felixque sit, vobis populoque Romano velitis jubeatis. The people used these imperative words, Esto sunto; and if it were refused, the Tribune of the people expressed it with a veto. The propounder or adviser of the law was said rogare legem, and the people jubere legem. The election of officers was only made by the people, as appears by the ambitious buying and begging of suffrages, so frequent among them upon the occasions. War and peace was ever concluded by them, and never denounced but by their Feciales and with commission from them. They only gave grace and pardon; and for the last refuge, delinquents, and they who were wronged by the sentence of judges and officers, provocabant ad populum.
“So it was in Athens, and to this day among the Switzers and Grissons, the Estate of Holland, and all Estates popular. In Venice, which is a pure aristocracy, laws, war, peace, election of officers, pardon and appellation, are all concluded and done in Conciglio maggiore, which consists of principal men who have the sovereignty. As for the Pregadi, and the Conciglio di dieci, they were but officers and executors of their power; and the duke is nothing but the idol to whom ceremonies and compliments are addressed, without the least part of sovereignty. So it was in Sparta; so it is in Lucca, Genoa, and Ragusa, and all other Aristocracies; and, indeed, cannot be otherwise without the subversion of the present government.
“If, then, the lords in Republics have that power essential to sovereignty, by what reason can it be denied to a prince in whose person only, and primitively, resteth the sovereign power, and from whom all lawful subaltern power, as from the fountain, is derived?
“2. This power is strong and durable when it is temperate; and it is temperate when it is possessed (with the essential parts aforesaid) with moderation, and limitation by the laws of God, of Nature, and the fundamental laws of the country. It is weak when it is restrained of these essential parts; and it is weak also when it is extended beyond the laws whereby it is bounded; which could never be any time endured by the people of the western part of the world, and by those of Scotland as little as any. For that which Galba said of his Romans is the humour of them all — nec totam libertatem nec totam servitutem pati possunt — but a temper of both. Unwise princes endeavour the extension of it — rebellious and turbulent subjects the restraint. Wise princes use it moderately; but
most desire to extend it, and that humour is fomented by advice of courtiers and bad counsellors, who are of a hasty ambition, and cannot abide the slow progress of riches and preferments in a temperate government. They persuade the arbitrary with reflexion on their own ends; knowing that the exercise thereof shall be put upon them, whereby they shall be able quickly to compass their ends; robbing thereby the people of their wealth, the king of the people’s love due to him, and of the honour and reputation of wisdom. The effects of a moderate government are religion, justice, and peace; flourishing love of the subjects towards their prince, in whose hearts he reigns; durableness and strength against foreign invasions and intestine sedition; happiness and security to king and people. The effect of a prince’s power too far extended is tyranny — from the king, if he be ill; if he be good, tyranny or a fear of it from them to whom he hath entrusted the managing of public affairs. The effect of the royal power restrained is the oppression and tyranny of subjects; the most fierce, insatiable, and insupportable tyranny in the world; where every man of power oppresseth his neighbour, without any hope of redress from a prince despoiled of his power to punish oppressors.
The people under an extended power are miserable, but most miserable under the restrained power. The effects of the former may be cured by good advice; satiety in the prince; or fear of infamy; or the pains of writers; or by some event which may bring a prince to the sense of his errors; and when nothing else can do it, seeing the prince is mortal, patience is a sovereign and dangerless remedy in the subject; who in wisdom and duty is obliged to tolerate the vices of his prince as they do storms and tempests, and other natural evils which are compensated with better times succeeding. It had been better for Germany to have endured the encroachments of Ferdinand, and after his death rectified them before they had made a new election, than to have brought it to desolation, and shed so much Christian blood by unseasonable remedies and opposition. But when a king’s lawful power is restrained, the politic body is in such desperate estate that it can neither endure the disease, nor the remedy, which is force only. For princes’ lawful power is only restrained by violence, and never repaired but by violence on the other side; which can produce nothing but ruin to prince or people, or rather to both. Patience in the subject is the best remedy against the effects of a prince’s power too far extended; but when it is too far restrained, patience in the prince is so far from being a remedy, that it formeth and increaseth the disease; for patience, tract of time, and possession, makes that which was at first robbery, by a body that never dies, at last a good title, and the government comes at last to be changed.
