The Red Book of Heroes

We are not told why 'the men' did not do 'the business' to begin with, but the matrons and serving-maids seemed to have enjoyed themselves so much on this occasion that they were quite ready for a second effort a month later.

On August 28 Mr. William Annan preached in St. Giles', defending the Litany, and when the news was spread about what the subject of his sermon was to be there arose, says the chronicler, in the town and among the women a great din.

'At the outgoing of the church, about thirty or forty of our honestest women in one voice before the bishop and magistrates did fall a railing, cursing, and scolding, with clamours on Mr. William Annan. Some two of the meanest were taken to the Tolbooth,' or city prison, where Montrose in after years was himself to lie.

Mr. Annan got safely to his own house, but being troubled over these events in his mind resolved to ask counsel of his bishop. So that evening, 'at nine on a mirk night,' he set out in company of three or four ministers to the bishop's dwelling, but no sooner had the little party stepped into the street than they were surrounded by 'hundreds of enraged women with fists and staves and peats, but no stones. They beat him sore; his cloak, ruff, hat were rent. He escaped all bloody wounds, yet he was in great danger even of killing.'

This was the beginning of the struggle which was to rend Scotland for so many years. A bond or covenant was drawn up, part of which was copied from one of the reign of James VI., fifty years before, guarding against the establishment of 'popery.' But now new clauses were added, protesting against the appointment of bishops, or allowing priests of any sort power over the laws of the country. This document Montrose signed with the rest, and consented to act if necessary as one of the defenders of the religion and liberty of Scotland.

Charles of course declined to give way on the smallest point, and issued a proclamation, to be read at Edinburgh, declaring all who opposed him to be traitors. In answer the malcontents raised a scaffold beside the cross, and on it stood Warriston, with a reply written by the nobles representing the people, which was received with shouts of applause. Montrose sat at Warriston's side, his legs dangling from a cask.

'Ah, James,' cried old lord Rothes, as he saw him, 'you will never be at rest till you be lifted up there above the rest, with a rope.'

Strange words, which were exactly fulfilled twelve years later.

So the first covenant was read, and afterwards it was laid on a flat tombstone in Greyfriars churchyard, and signed by the earl of Sutherland as the first noble of Scotland, and then by others according to their degree. During two days it was borne round the city, followed by an immense crowd, sobbing and trembling with excitement; from time to time they all stopped for fresh signatures to be added, and copies were made and sent over the country, so that each man should place his mark. Next, subscription lists were opened, taxes apportioned, and a war committee chosen.

And Charles heard and grew frightened, though even yet he did not understand.

However, the king saw it was needful to do something, and, as was usual with him, he did the wrong thing. He chose the earl of Hamilton (in whom he believed blindly, though no one else did) to go down to Scotland as his commissioner, with leave to yield certain points when once the covenant had been retracted, but with secret orders to spin out as much time as possible, so that Charles might be able to get ready an army. Yet, secret as Hamilton's instructions were, old Rothes knew all about them, and on his side made preparations. As each week passed it became increasingly plain that the two parties could never agree. The General Assembly, which had been held in November in Glasgow Cathedral, was dissolved by Hamilton, who had presided over it. The covenanters answered by deposing the bishops, and suppressing the liturgy, and then dissolving itself; and the earl of Argyll, soon to be Montrose's deadliest enemy, joined the covenanters.

One town only remained loyal, and this was Aberdeen, situated in the country of the Gordons, whose chief, the marquis of Huntly, was Argyll's brother-in-law. Huntly, like Leslie, who held a command in the covenanting army under Montrose, had seen much foreign service, so Charles appointed him his lieutenant in the north, though he bound him hand and foot by orders to do nothing save with Hamilton's consent. Chafing bitterly under these restrictions, Huntly was forced to disband his army of two thousand men, and had the mortification of seeing the covenanters enter Aberdeen the following week, wearing their badge of blue ribbons in their Highland bonnets.

The citizens were granted easy terms, and all pillage was strictly forbidden. Huntly himself was given a promise of safe conduct, but was afterwards held as a prisoner and sent with his son to Edinburgh castle. It is not clear how far Montrose himself was guilty of this breach of faith. The covenanters had always detested Huntly, and it is possible that he found it difficult to act against them, but at any rate he does not appear to have taken any active steps to stop their proceedings, and in after days paid a heavy penalty for his weakness.

Shortly after the English army, consisting of nineteen ships and five thousand men, arrived in the Firth of Forth, but so dense were the crowds on both shores that Hamilton, who commanded it, saw that landing was impossible. Suddenly the multitude gathered at Leith (the port of Edinburgh) parted asunder, and down the midst rode an old lady with a pistol in her hand. Hamilton looked with the rest and turned pale at the sight, for the old lady was his own mother, who in a voice that almost seemed loud enough to reach the vessel where her son stood, declared she would shoot him dead before he should set foot on land.

The time was evidently not ripe for invasion, so the men encamped on the little islands in the Forth, and spent their days in drill.

As often during Montrose's wars, Aberdeen was again the centre of fighting, but again the general preserved the city from pillage, against the express wishes, and even orders, of the covenanters. Then came the news that a peace, or rather truce, had been signed at Berwick, by which Charles had consented that a parliament should assemble in August in Edinburgh, though, as he insisted that the fourteen Scottish bishops should be present at its sittings, wise men shook their heads, and prophesied that no good could come of the measure. Their fears were soon justified. Riots broke out in the capital, and Aboyne, Huntly's son, narrowly escaped violence; the people refused to allow the army to be disbanded or the fortresses to be dismantled, as had been stipulated by the peace, till the king had fulfilled the promise made by Hamilton at the assembly at Glasgow of abolishing the bishops.

This he showed no signs of doing, but merely desired a number of the leading covenanters to appear before him. Six only obeyed, at the risk, some thought, of imprisonment or death, but neither Rothes nor Montrose, who headed them, was given to think of peril to themselves.

The old covenanter seems to have told Charles some plain truths, and the king in return forgot the courtesy which so distinguished him, and retorted that Rothes was a liar. No man was present when Montrose was summoned to confer with the king, and neither he nor Charles ever let fall a word upon the subject; but after that day his friends noted that he was no longer as bitter as before against his sovereign, nor so entirely convinced that the covenanters were right in their acts. Yet, whatever his feelings may have been, he strongly opposed the king's desire of filling the bishops' vacant places with inferior clergy at the meeting of Parliament, and, as might have been expected, the assembly was prorogued, leaving matters precisely as they were.

After this the Scotch took on themselves the management of their own affairs, and a Committee of Estates was formed, to which was entrusted absolute power both in state and army. Leslie was one of this committee; Montrose was another, and immediately he set about raising troops from his own lands, and carried out the plan of campaign that had been agreed on by attacking Airlie castle. On its surrender he garrisoned it with a few men, and went away; but shortly after Argyll arrived, turned out the garrison, and burned the castle, at the same time accusing Montrose of treason to the covenant in having spared it. But the Committee of Estates declared Montrose 'to have done his duty as a true soldier of the covenant,' and the accusation fell to the ground.

Montrose, however, though entirely cleared of the charge, was not slow to read the signs of the times. He saw that the covenanters were no longer content with guarding their own liberties of church and state, but desired to set at naught the king's authority, perhaps even to depose him. So he and certain of his friends, Mar, Almond, and Erskine among them, formed a bond by which they swore to uphold the old covenant which they had signed in 1638, 'to the hazard of their lives, fortunes, and estates, against the particular perhaps indirect practising of a few.' This was the covenant to which Montrose held all his life, and for which he was hanged beside the city cross.

Having as he hoped taken measures to checkmate Argyll, Montrose joined the army, which had now swelled to twenty-five thousand men, was the first to cross the Tweed at Coldstream, and marched straight on Newcastle. The town surrendered without firing a shot, and Montrose sent a letter to the king again professing his loyalty. When later he was imprisoned on a charge of treason to the covenant in so doing, he answered that his conscience was clear in the matter, and that it was no more than they had all declared in the covenant, which no man could deny. But soon another storm was raised on account of the famous bond which he and his friends had made a short time before they were put in prison, and the clamour was so great that even his own party was alarmed, and gave it up to be burned by the hangman.

Montrose's next object was to induce the king to come to Edinburgh in order to persuade the Scotch that he was ready to keep his word, and to grant the country the religious and civil liberties demanded by the covenant. Charles came, and was gracious and charming as he knew how to be, even going to the Presbyterian service, which he hated. This pleased everyone, and hopes ran high; but the quarrel was too grave to be soothed by a few soft words spoken or a few titles given. Plots and rumours of plots were rife in Edinburgh, and the king was forced to employ not the men he wished, but the men whom the Parliament desired. In November he returned to England, first promising that he would never take into his service Montrose, who had just been released after five months spent in prison, where he had been thrown with the rest of his party after the discovery of the bond.

To one who knew Scotland as well as he it was apparent that the Scotch Parliament and the English would speedily join hands, and he retired to one of his houses to watch the course of events. The covenanters tried to win him back, but Montrose felt that they disagreed among themselves, and that it would be impossible for him to serve under them. Meanwhile in England things marched rapidly: Edgehill had been fought; episcopacy had been abolished by Parliament in England as well as Scotland; and Hamilton's brother Lanark was using the Great Seal to raise a Scotch army against the king, for, by a treaty called the Solemn League and Covenant, Scotland was to fight with the English Parliament against the king, and England was to abolish bishops and become presbyterian like Scotland. England, however, did not keep her promise.

It was then that Charles, in his desperation, turned to Montrose. Montrose was too skilful and experienced a general to think lightly of the struggle before him, but he formed a plan by which Scotland was to be invaded on the west by the earl of Antrim from Ireland, while he himself, reinforced by royalist troops, would fall on the Scotch who were on the border. But the reinforcements he expected hardly amounted, when they came, to one thousand one hundred men, and these being composed of the two nations were constantly quarrelling, which added to the difficulties of the commander. At Dumfries he halted, and read a proclamation stating that 'he was king's man, as he had been covenanter, for the defence and maintenance of the true Protestant religion, his majesty's just and sacred authority, the laws and privileges of Parliament, the peace and freedom of oppressed and thralled subjects.' Adding that 'if he had not known perfectly the king's intention to be such and so real as is already expressed' he would 'never have embarked himself in his service,' and if he 'saw any appearance of the king changing' from these resolutions he would continue no longer 'his faithful servant.'

Thus he said, and thus we may believe he felt, but none the less not a man joined his standard as he marched along the border. He tried to reach prince Rupert, the king's nephew, in Yorkshire, but Marston Moor had been lost before he arrived there. Then, dressed as a groom, he started for Perthshire, and after four days arrived at the house of his kinsman Graham of Inchbrackie, where he learned that the whole of the country beyond the Tay was covenanting, with the single exception of the territory of the Gordons. No one knew of his presence, for he still wore his disguise, and slept in a little hut in the woods, where food was brought him. All day he wandered about the lonely hills, thinking over the tangled state of affairs, and waiting for the right moment to strike.

One afternoon when he was lying on the heather, wondering if he ought not to come out of his hiding, and join either the Gordons or prince Rupert, he beheld a man running quickly over the moor, holding in his hand the Fiery Cross, which, as every Highlander knew, was the call to arms. Starting to his feet, Montrose stopped the man and asked the meaning of the signal, and whither he was going.

'To Perth,' answered the messenger, 'for a great army of Irishmen have swooped down in the Atholl country, and Alastair Macdonald is their leader. I myself have seen them, and I must not tarry,' so on he sped, leaving Montrose with his puzzle solved. The Irishmen whom he expected had arrived, and he would go to meet them.

There was no need for hiding any more, and glad was he to throw off his disguise and put on his Highland dress again. Then, accompanied by the laird of Inchbrackie, he walked across the hills to join Macdonald, bearing the royal standard on his shoulder.

As soon as he reached the meeting-place where the clans and the Irish were already waiting, he stuck the standard in the ground, and, standing by it, he read aloud the king's commission to him as lieutenant-general. Shouts of joy made answer when he had done, and next Montrose went round the ranks to inspect the troops he was to fight with, and find out what arms they had. The numbers only amounted to about two thousand three hundred, and it was not long before the clans began to quarrel with each other, and all with the Irish. As to their weapons, the Irish had matchlock guns, which took a long time to load, and one round of ammunition apiece, while the Highlanders had seized upon anything that happened to be in their cottages and showed a medley of bows, pikes, clubs, and claymores – a kind of broad sword. As to horses, they could only muster three.

With this ragged army Montrose marched, and his first victory was gained against lord Elcho, on the wide plain of Tippermuir, near Perth. The covenanting force was nearly double that of the royalists, but many of the troops were citizens of Perth, who thought more of their own skins than of the cause for which they were fighting. When Montrose's fierce charge had broken their ranks, they all turned and fled, and many of them are said to have 'bursted with running' before they got safely within the city gates.

In Perth Montrose fitted out his army with stores, arms, and clothes, and released some of the prisoners on their promising not to serve against him, while others enlisted under the royal banner. Before he set out for Aberdeen he was joined by his two eldest sons and their tutor, master Forrett; and in Forfarshire he found lord Airlie and his sons awaiting him, with the welcome addition of fifty horse, which formed his entire cavalry. These, and one thousand five hundred foot, were all the army he had when he crossed the Dee fifteen miles from Aberdeen, and the covenanters mustered a thousand more.

Two miles from the town the two armies met. As was his custom, Montrose sent an envoy summoning the enemy to surrender, and with the envoy went a little drummer-boy, who was wantonly shot down by a covenanter. When Montrose heard of this deed of deliberate cruelty his face grew dark, but he began to dispose his men to the best advantage. Both sides fought well, and for a moment victory seemed uncertain; then Montrose brought up reinforcements and decided the day by one of his rapid charges.

He had already bidden the magistrates of Aberdeen to bring out the women and children to a place of safety as he would not answer for their lives, but, as he had twice preserved the city from pillage, it is probable they looked on his words as a mere idle threat, and left them where they were. After the battle the sack began; houses were burned and robbed, and many fell victims, though the dead, including those who had fallen in battle, did not exceed a hundred and eighteen. But his friends lamented that this time also he had not restrained his soldiers, and a price of 20,000l. was set on his head by the enraged covenanters.

Never was Montrose's power of moving his men swiftly from one place to another more greatly needed than now. The Gordons were all in arms against him; Argyll was advancing from the south with a strong force, and Montrose had been obliged to send a large body of men into the west under Macdonald to raise fresh levies. With the remainder he retired into the Grampians, and turned and twisted about among the mountains, Argyll always following.

At Fyvie Montrose suddenly learned that his enemy was within two miles of him. Hastily ordering all the pewter vessels that could be found in the castle to be melted down for bullets, he disposed his troops on a hill, where a few trees and some outhouses gave them cover. Here they waited while the covenanters gallantly made the best of their way upwards. Then Montrose turned to young O'Gahan, who commanded the Irish, and said gaily, 'Come, what are you about? Drive those rascals from our defences, and see we are not troubled by them again.'

Down came the Irishmen with a rush which scattered the covenanters far and wide, and seizing some bags of powder that lay handy, the victors retreated up the hill again, while Montrose with some musketeers attacked Argyll's flank, till they retired hastily.

After this defeat the covenanting leader went into Argyllshire, where was his strong castle of Inverary, by the sea. But Montrose crossed the pathless mountains, deep in snow, drove Argyll to Edinburgh, and when he came back with all his clan, turned on them suddenly, destroyed them at Inverlochy, and caused Argyll to escape in a boat.

The hopes of the king's lieutenant rose high as he thought of all he had done with the few undisciplined troops at his command.

'I trust before the end of this summer I shall be able to come to your majesty's assistance with a brave army,' he wrote; but meanwhile he dared not go to Edinburgh, where he had been sentenced to death by the Committee of Estates, and his property declared forfeited. But though the campaign had been successful beyond his expectations, yet his heart was heavy, for his eldest son had died of cold and exposure and the second was a prisoner in Edinburgh castle.

Such was the state of things when he went west again into the country of the Macdonalds, who flocked to his standard. On the other hand the Lowlanders fell off, and began to cast longing eyes at the rewards promised to those who joined the covenant. If Montrose could only have forced a battle on Baillie, who commanded the covenanting army, another victory would probably have been gained, but Baillie was wise, and declined to fight. Then the Highlanders grew sullen and impatient, and every day saw them striding over the hills to their own homes. By the time he reached Dunkeld the royal army had shrunk to six hundred foot and two hundred horse.

With this small force he entered Dundee, the great fortress of the covenant, and his men took to drinking. At that moment news was brought him that Baillie was at the gates, and with marvellous rapidity he collected his men and marched them out of the east gate as the English entered by the west. The Grampians were within a long march, and once there Montrose knew he was safe.

And, far away in Sweden and in Germany, the generals who had been trained under Wallenstein and under Gustavus Adolphus looked on, and wondered at the skill with which Montrose met and defeated the armies and the wealth arrayed against him.

But to those who had eyes to see the end was certain. It was to no purpose that he, with the aid of the Gordons, now once more on his side, gained a victory at Auldearn, between Inverness and Elgin, and another at Alford, south of the Don, which cost him the life and support of Huntly's son, lord Gordon. In vain did Ogilvies, Murrays, and Gordons swell his ranks, and the covenanting committee play into his hands by forcing Baillie to fight when the general knew that defeat was inevitable. The battle of Kilsyth had been won near Glasgow on August 14, and the day was so hot that Montrose ordered his men to strip to their shirts so that they might have no more weight to carry than was strictly necessary. Baillie was not even allowed to choose his own ground, but though he did all that man could do, the struggle was hopeless, and the Fife levies were soon in flight.

Only a year had passed since Montrose, now captain-general and viceroy of Scotland, had taken the field, and yet the whole country was subdued, largely by the help of the Irish, and of their leader Macdonald, whom he had knighted after Kilsyth. But for the royalist cause Naseby had been lost, Wales was wavering, Ireland was useless, and Montrose was not strong enough to make up for them all.

From Kilsyth, which is near Glasgow, it was easy for Macdonald to lead his men across the hills and lay waste the territories of his hereditary enemy Argyll. He would, he said, return to Montrose if he was wanted; but the marquis took the words for what they were worth, and waited to see whose turn to desert would come next. It was young Aboyne, who was tired of fighting, which had not brought him any of the rewards he thought his due, and he took with him four hundred horse and many infantry. At the end there only remained five hundred of Macdonald's Irish, who had cast in their lot with Montrose, and about one hundred horsemen. With these he marched to the south, trusting in the promises of help freely given by the great border nobles, and hoping to enter England and help the king.

And doubtless these promises would have been kept had the king's cause showed signs of triumph, but the speedy advance of four thousand horsemen under David Leslie, the best cavalry officer of the day, turned the scale. Roxburgh and Home at once proclaimed themselves on the side of the covenant, and only Douglas reached Montrose's camp on the river Gala, and brought a few untrained and unwilling recruits with him. It was the best he could do, yet he knew well enough how little reliance could be placed on his country contingent, who had been taught to look on the king and Montrose as monsters of evil, seeking to destroy whatever they held most dear.

It was on September 12 that Montrose drew up his forces at Philiphaugh between a line of hills and the river Ettrick, while shelter was given on the west by some rising ground covered with trees. Trenches had been made still further to protect them, and the Irish foot soldiers were ordered to occupy the position, which seemed secure against attack. But on this day, which was destined to decide whether the king or the covenant should rule Scotland, Montrose's military skill – even his good sense – deserted him; he posted his horse and best generals at Philiphaugh, on the other side of the river close to Selkirk, and he himself slept in the town. More than this, instead of placing his sentinels himself, as was his invariable custom, he allowed his officers to do it, and also to send out whatever scouts they may have thought necessary without orders from himself, while he sat undisturbed, writing despatches, little knowing that Leslie was only three miles away, at Sunderland Hall.