Sword of State: The Remarkable Story of George Monck

by Richard Woodman

  Watching Monck and the cavalry-officer, Clarke could not hear what was being said, but he knew his man enough to know that the news did not please General Monck. When the Cornet had finished his report, Monck thanked him and told him to refresh himself from the staff canteen that Dick Cann bore on one of Monck’s spare horses. Spurring the black stallion, Monck walked the charger over to Clarke.

  ‘I love the man for his dash and fire. Hoowel or some such barbarity he calls it, but Tom Morgan has compromised us, by Heaven!’ Monck smote the cover of his right hand holster in a single betrayal of his annoyance.

  ‘What has happened, sir?’

  ‘Morgan has moved with such speed that instead of getting in the rear of Middleton, whose force moved but slowly, Tom got ahead, and met them debouching from Glengarry, over there.’ Monck pointed to the opposite side of the long valley where a cleft in the mountains revealed where the stream from Loch Garry drained into Loch Ness at Invergarry. ‘Apparently the engagement was fierce but instead of trapping Middleton, Morgan has driven him back towards the forest of Kintail.’

  ‘And after our passage of the mountains,’ murmured Clarke, sharing his commander-in-chief’s exasperation.

  ‘Just so, Will, just so, and after our successful junction with Colonel Brayne with all our poor fellows spoiling for a fight.’ Monck looked back across the lower slope where his encampment was taking shape. Brayne’s column from Ulster, which had marched up from Inverlochy, had brought with them Scotsmen from Inverary, men of Argyle’s pledged to the cause of the Protectorate. With Morgan not far away, Monck had gathered a potent force that might, had Morgan not acted with such characteristic impetuosity, have destroyed Middleton at a stroke, put out the fire of sedition and allowed Monck to settle the country to a peaceable and prosperous future. But it was not in Monck’s nature to waste much time in regret or recrimination.

  ‘What shall you do, sir?’ Clarke asked.

  ‘We are short of supplies, Will, and Middleton is, for the moment, incapable of much now that we have secured the line of the Glen and mewed him in his Highlands. We shall retire to Inverness and recruit our strength. Brayne will hold the lower line of the Glen; Morgan the upper. The season is not well advanced; time has swung in our favour and the men deserve a rest. Do you summon Colonel Brayne and I shall pass the word to him.’

  Clarke called an orderly, scribbled a note and set him on his way.

  But Monck’s column did not go directly to Inverness. Crossing the River Oich which links Loch Lochy with its northern and larger neighbour, Monck marched his Army up the western shores of Loch Ness, meeting Morgan at the mouth of Glen Moriston where he was encamped.

  ‘General Monck!’ Warned of the main body’s approach, Morgan rode out to meet the Commander-in-Chief, reining in his horse with a rearing flourish of hooves and reminding Monck of the little Colonel of Dragoons whose exploit at Alyth had crowned Monck’s earlier Scottish campaign with such success. Monck turned his horse aside, motioning for his staff to ride on, and for Morgan to follow him. Morgan swallowed, awaiting admonition. The two men drew off a little.

  ‘Forgive me, George…’ Morgan began contritely, ‘we had no warning. My vanguard ran into them and I had no option but to press forward or lose them in this God-damned country. Diawl, but my boyos fought like lions…’

  Monck was sensible that when he lay sweating with the spotted-fever Morgan had assumed effected command of the English Army in Scotland and with William Clarke’s guidance, carried out Monck’s intentions to the letter. Monck could not find it in him to reproach Morgan for his dash and verve. It was a quality much to be commended. He held out his gauntleted hand to restrain Morgan.

  ‘It is of no matter, Thomas. War is all chance and often miscarries. There is no blame attaching to you or your men. We have had our own miscarriages; we had a hard time of it at Aberfoyle, harder than we thought we should and lost more good fellows than I care for.’

  Monck looked up at the sky. It was heavy with cloud, already the summits of the mountains were lost in it and the first damps droplets of mist were forming on Morgan’s steel helmet. Morgan’s weather-beaten face cracked into a relieved smile.

  ‘’Tis like Wales, George, always bloody raining!’ Monck laughed and Morgan added, his tone admiring, ‘but you, you came over the mountains!’

  ‘Aye, we did,’ Monck said shortly, then asked: ‘What is Middleton’s condition?’

  ‘Beaten, George. His men are gallant but beaten. It will take him a month to recover. As I have heard tell he is quartered in Kintail forest.’

  ‘That is well.’ Monck fixed Morgan with a wry smile. ‘You must expiate your considerable sins and sit here in Glen Moriston. I am sending Brayne back to Inverlochy to hold the southern line of this Glen,’ Monck waved his gauntleted hand airily across their front, over the grey waters of Loch Ness. Do you keep in touch, sending your own scouts to the westwards and send word if Middleton moves. I am for Inverness; I have left stores at our strong-holds and must reprovision and recruit from our magazines there. Send after me for what you need and I shall replenish you. We shall move within a week, but you may expect orders sooner. I have it in mind to strike at Middleton’s base.’

  Monck tugged at his rein and dug his left heel into his horse’s flank. Morgan followed him as they cantered back to the head of the column. ‘I shall make a demonstration to the west,’ Monck called as the two men approached the Army, ‘marching by way of Glen Urquart and Strathglass, before returning to Inverness. I may catch a Clansman or two and I would keep Middleton’s intelligencers guessing. I give thee God’s love, General Morgan. Until we meet again!’

  ‘Until then my Lord General!’ cried Morgan, setting spurs to his horse and galloping off towards his own encampment at the foot of Glen Moriston.

  SCOTLAND

  July – December 1654

  Monck’s advanced guard encountered the watching Clansmen in Glen Urquart. They had not expected the Southron General to strike north, but to content himself with an easy route along the lochside towards Inverness. Monck harried the Highlanders and laid waste the glens in a savagely brutal few days before his van swung east and reached the magazines of Inverness. He himself took up quarters a few miles away on the shores of the great loch at Dunain House.

  Besides the promised victuallers, men-of-war lay off Inverness and Monck succeeded in securing the services of a gun-vessel to traverse Loch Ness and further secure the line of the Great Glen. At Dunain he rested his painful legs and wrote his despatches to the Lord Protector, his business correspondence to Clarges and his love-letters to Anne. To his wife he held out the prospect of her coming north once the present campaign is brought to a successful conclusion which I pray to Almighty God may not be afar off. As for accomplishing this, he considered a bold stroke, applying the lessons of naval war to those on land. If he severed Middleton’s line of supply from The Netherlands by taking Wick, in far Caithness, he would effectively starve the Royalist commander not of men, for the Highlands were full of Chiefs still purblind in their devotion to the Stuart cause, but of the sinews of modern warfare. He began drafting a series of orders: Morgan would break his camp in Glen Moriston, march to Inverness and embark on the State Navy’s squadron anchored there. He would then sail to Wick, land and scour Caithness. Middleton must either fall back and meet Morgan in the far north, or come south to plunder territory occupied by Monck’s forces and be caught between Monck in the north-east and Brayne in the south-west. As if confirming Monck’s skill at divination, word reached him that a column had been seen in Glen Urquart. He hurriedly cancelled Morgan’s orders as he prepared to embark, reasoning that Middleton knew of Morgan’s withdrawal from Glen Moriston. The following day, the 3rd July 1654, an alarming message reached him: the Governor of Blair Castle, many miles to the southward, sent him word that without doubt Middleton was near-by. Only eight days had passed since he and Morgan had met on the shores of Loch Ness. How Middleton had crossed the Great Glen unobs
erved was unclear but it seemed that he had deceived Monck.

  Monck called for Clarke and kicked his staff awake; the Army, shaken from its lethargy donned its boots, was paraded and reviewed and began a series of marches that put all that had gone before in the shade. Monck’s only consolation was that Middleton’s unobserved crossing of the Great Glen strongly suggested that his force was not large, for not only had it moved unobserved, but it had traversed country laid waste by Monck.

  ‘Even given the Clansmen’s reputation for rapid movement with little but a bag of oats for sustenance, he cannot hope to achieve much without cavalier infantry such as Glencairn had at Aberfoyle,’ he explained to the anxious Clarke. ‘Perhaps two or three thousand men; not much more.’ Monck then added, ‘and perhaps more Horse than we at first thought, for he has moved fast.’

  Clarke held his peace, dreading the marches to come. And he had reason, for the news from Blair Athol spurred Monck into a frenzy of orders. Morgan’s troops, halted in their embarkation, were sent south towards Braemar. Here they could cut off Middleton if, having drawn the English off to the south, he swung east and then north in an attempt to work round the eastern flank of his enemy. Morgan was summoned to a meeting at Inverness even as Monck’s main body was sent across Drummossie Muir to Tomatin and thence up the Spey valley towards Ruthven. Monck spent an hour in close conference with Morgan at Inverness; they consulted their maps and measured distances, after which both men jumped on their horses and rode after their respective forces.

  ‘Our present dispositions are made in anticipation of Middleton swinging east, through easier and more plentiful country,’ Monck briefed Clarke that evening. ‘But Middleton is a man of capacity and not to be underestimated. If he turns west and exploits the wilderness, General Morgan and I have concerted a plan of action.’

  ‘God grant Your Excellency judges correctly,’ said Clarke, who was increasingly worn-out by the burden of work he was obliged to undertake whilst being constantly upon the move. He felt age working against him and marvelled at Monck, by years his senior, but upon whom activity seemed to act like good wine. Once again he drove his men as they marched up the Spey past Ruthven, across Badenoch through Glen Truim. Once again the Dragoons laid waste the land as they went. Swinging south-east through the Pass of Drumochter cleft in the Grampians, the column tramped down Glen Garry into Athol country.

  As before Monck rode the length of the column; as before he staked out the nightly encampment; as before he saw to the harrowing of the sparse moorland; he seemed to be everywhere. Now he was a fiercer Monck, less jovial, harder, matching the changed mood of the men whose rest in Inverness had been too brief. They had received reinforcements and new boots and woollen stockings to go with them, but now Monck had an eye for those small signs betraying disaffection. He watched for those small, intense gatherings at the end of the day’s march, held before the troops had been at their messes, while they were still hungry and before they could submit to the balm of sleep on full stomachs. He warned his officers of the dangers of such ‘combinations,’ as the military phrase had it, ordering them broken-up immediately and he undertook the duty himself, being active throughout the Army’s halting places in that first hour. He was no longer ‘Old George,’ or ‘Good Old George,’ for by now they took his solicitude for his men for granted, seeing in it Monck’s means to an end. Now he was ‘Cunning George’ or the less respectful ‘Fox-face Monck’. And they cursed him more often.

  When the Athol country proved empty of the enemy some expected to turn back the way they had come. Middleton had given them the slip again. Where else could they go? They went west, plunging again into the wild hills, leaving half the Artillery and Horse behind so that they might not be held-up as Monck force-marched them along the line of the Tay, through Glen Dochart and Strathfillan, within fifteen miles of the Firth of Lorne and the Atlantic coast. From time-to-time their spies informed them that so hard was Middleton marching his own men, that the Highlanders were deserting him. Then, near Kilchurn Castle at the head of Loch Awe and the foot of Glen Strae, Monck’s van over-ran Middleton’s pack-horses, seizing provisions, baggage and the valuable animals themselves.

  ‘Their main body, which cannot be more than two thousand men, goes north, over Rannoch Moor towards the line of Loch Ericht.’ Monck was grim in his conviction as he explained to Clarke and his staff. The circularity of their own apparently fruitless march was not lost on them.

  ‘We go round in circles,’ muttered Overton, recalling their passing the steely waters of Loch Ericht only a few weeks earlier.

  But Monck’s thoughts were utterly concentrated on the present. Once Middleton had committed himself to a western march, Monck knew why, and he rode out with the Horse to reconnoitre Kilchurn, detaching Overton and a brigade of Foot and Dragoons to ravage Glen Orchy and Glen Strae. Middleton, Monck argued to himself, had come west to raise to the King’s cause the great Campbell chief, the Marquess of Argyle. No doubt he had been prompted by Argyle’s rebellious son, Lord Lorne. Middleton had caught the father in Glen Orchy’s castle and lay siege to it, but his men had not dug themselves in before word of the loss of the pack-train and the approach of Monck reached Middleton. His retreat was precipitate; unable to regain the Great Glen directly owing to the presence of Brayne who had thrown back an offensive led by the young Cameron of Lochiel and held the line of the lochs as Monck had required. Now Middleton must go north-east into the Grampians, seeking the fastest route through Glen Lyon to regain the road down the Spey near the Pass of Drumochter.

  Thither he went, disappearing again into the wilderness and while the English followed, their pace was slower, more measured and cumbersome, the troops worn-out, following Monck now because he shamed them with his own devotion to his task. Unbeknown to Monck, Middleton’s force was in like trouble, slowly disintegrating through the desertion of the Clansmen. Used as they were to highland campaigning, his Clan Chiefs were utterly confounded by the pursuit the Southron English subjected them to. Their own exhausted men faded away while their commanders fell to a fatal bickering and all the time the enemy were snap-snapping at their heels.

  Although Monck sent off an aide-de-camp escorted by a troop of horse to find Morgan, the fruit of the conference between the two senior Protectorate commanders at Inverness now ripened. Morgan, having reached Braemar and sent out cavalry patrols in quest of intelligence, rapidly discovered both that Middleton had not moved further east than Blair Athol, and that Monck had turned west. This he had learned from the Colonel-of-Horse responsible for covering the Artillery Monck had left behind, who had returned to the strong encampment at Ruthven from where he had acquainted Morgan of Monck’s diversion. Morgan marched immediately to Ruthven, then on through Badenoch. Like Monck, he rode with his advance-guard of cavalry and they sought for signs of the Royalists coming north from Rannoch Moor. Ever the dragoon, the dashing Welshman urged his horse on, eager to learn something before the end of the day. As the road swung south-east, Morgan rode over the summit of the Drumochter Pass. Ahead lay a cluster of roofless and empty stone cottages, evidence of Monck’s ruthless policy. They nevertheless recommended themselves as suitable for a night’s bivouac and Morgan rode forward, sending word for his column to come up with all speed, his men would find tolerable quarters in what remained of Dalnaspidal. A moment later his eye was caught by a movement in the lower ground beneath the mountains a mile or so to the south, where the gleam of Loch Garry reflected the grey sky.

  Monck’s column was now in Glen Lyon, pressing after Middleton who, crossing Rannoch Moor, had been told that Morgan had joined Monck. Accordingly, the Royalists headed directly over the hills, under the brooding summits of Beinn Mholach and Beinn a’ Chuallaich, to seek the passage of the Perthshire Glen Garry which would lead them to the Drumochter Pass and the clear road north. Evening was coming on and at the far end of the small loch lay the ravaged hamlet of Dalnaspidal. It would, nevertheless, give them quarters for the night.

 
; As the cavalrymen at the head of Middleton’s column caught sight of the stone dwellings, Middleton himself sent the cheering word back down the weary line that their night’s bivouac was in sight; so too was the empty road to the north. Coming up behind, those Clansmen still loyal to the rebel Earl hurried forward, eager to get some cover, to mix their porridge and catch some sleep.

  When but yards away, Middleton’s cavalry were met by a volley of musketry. The stone walls of Dalnaspidal seemed to spit fire from every chink. And before they had recovered from their astonishment, Morgan’s Horse was upon them, scattering them into the heather and whin bushes, cutting to pieces most of Middleton’s remaining cavalry, some eight-hundred strong, amid boggy ground where both sides struggled in their running fight. Seeing their Horse over-thrown and the wounded Middleton making off through the heather into the hills, the twelve-hundred Clansmen marching in their rear followed their fleeing commander. Morgan had accomplished complete surprise; in twenty-minutes the Royalist columns which Monck’s Army had been pursuing for days had disintegrated.

  ‘No more than a skirmish,’ Morgan said self-deprecatingly to Monck when they met next day, the 20th July. ‘Our losses were due not to the enemy but to the bog at the head of the loch. As for the rebels,’ he said, ‘the buggers’ll make no more trouble, George.’

  Morgan would prove correct, though Monck sent him into Caithness to ensure Middleton had no chance of rallying any support in the Royalist cause. Having considered smoking Glencairn off of the slopes of Beinn Lomond where he clung with some five hundred loyal Royalists, Monck gave orders to march west again. He was determined to utterly supress the rebellion and for some weeks continued to ravage the country without nailing Glencairn. In mid-August he had returned to Aberfoyle which, as he wrote to Cromwell, he was destroying because it had been the chief receptacle to the Enemy last winter. Glencairn, thus robbed of his storehouse, could not much longer hold out in the Trossachs and Monck’s troops cleared every glen of every living thing before the end of the month. By September, as the autumn gales drew on, the Royalist troops were surrendering piecemeal. Monck, knowing the Highlands to be enclosed by his chain of forts from which sallying garrisons harried any Clansmen seen in the vicinity, returned to Dalkeith Palace and awaited the inevitable submissions of the leading rebels.