by John Buchan
Suddenly came the thunderbolt. Wild-eyed shepherds rushed into the streets with the cry that the Macdonalds were upon them. Quickly the tale grew. Montrose was not in Breadalbane or on the fringes of Lorn; he was at Loch Awe — nay, he was in the heart of Argyll itself. The chief waited no longer. He found a fishing-boat and, the wind being right, fled down Loch Fyne to the shelter of his castle of Roseneath. The same breeze that filled his sails brought the sound of Alasdair’s pipes, and he was scarcely under way ere the van of the invaders came down Glen Shira. The miracle had happened, and the impregnable fortress had fallen. “We see,” commented Mr. Robert Baillie piously, but obscurely, “there is no strength or refuge on earth against the Lord.”
Then began the harrying of Clan Campbell. Leaderless and unprepared, they made small resistance to Montrose’s lean and battle-worn warriors. Macleans and Macdonalds, Stewarts and Camerons, satiated their ancient grudges with the plunder of Inveraray. The kerns thawed their frozen limbs at the warmth of blazing steadings, and appeased their hunger at the expense of the bakers and vintners and fleshers of the burgh. Never had the broken men of Lochaber and the Isles fared so nobly. For some happy weeks they ran riot in what for them was a land of milk and honey; while the townsmen, crouching in cellars and thickets, or safe behind the castle gates, wondered how long it would be before their chief returned to avenge them. There seems to have been no special barbarity about the treatment of Inveraray. Here and there a refractory Campbell may have been dirked, but Alasdair’s men sought victuals and cattle rather than blood.
The Campaign of Inverlochy
Meantime word had gone from the exile at Roseneath to the Estates in Edinburgh. William Baillie of Letham, the new commander-in-chief, was a natural son of Sir William Baillie of Lamington; an old soldier of Gustavus, he had done good service at Marston Moor and at the siege of Newcastle, and he brought to Scotland some of the best of Leven’s infantry, which he increased by local levies. He took up the task unwillingly, and his distaste was not lessened by the behaviour of Argyll, who required that he should take instructions from him. Baillie refused, and, says he in his “Vindication,” “My lord seemed to be displeased, and expressed himself so unto some, that if he lived he should remember it, wherein his lordship indeed hath superabundantly been as good as his word.” He was instructed by the Estates to repair to Roseneath and consult with Argyll on the best way of crushing Montrose. But at Roseneath he found the exile in a difficult humour. There must be no stranger general in the Campbell fastness. It was for the chief, and for the chief alone, to avenge the wrongs of his clan. Accordingly, the Estates ordered Baillie to transfer to Argyll sixteen companies of foot, representing the flower of the Scottish militia. Baillie himself was sent to Perth, and was presently given Sir John Hurry (who had been a royalist a year before and was to be a royalist again) as his second in command and master of horse. He was bidden keep in touch with the Covenanting garrison that had been left in Aberdeen and with Seaforth’s northern army in Inverness. Argyll, at Roseneath, had had a fall from his horse which incapacitated him from leading his troops in person, so he sent hastily to the army in Ireland to summon back his kinsman, Sir Duncan Campbell of Auchinbreck, the best soldier that the clan could boast. It looked as if the king’s lieutenant had walked into a final trap. He would be caught between Argyll and Seaforth, and if he tried to escape to the right Baillie and Hurry would await him. It seemed the certainty on which Argyll loved to stake. His view was that of the general’s ministerial cousin, Mr. Robert Baillie: “If we get not the life of these worms chirted out of them, the reproach will stick on us for ever.”
1645 January
Midwinter that year was open and mild; the sun shone brightly on Christmas Day. Had it been otherwise, Clan Campbell, driven out of house and home, must have been all but annihilated, and Montrose would never have led his men safely out of Argyll. About the middle of January he gave the order for the march. He had as yet no news of Argyll’s preparations, but he must have realized that the avenger would not be slow on his track. His immediate intention was to come to an account with Seaforth, who not only barred him from the Gordon country, but was chiefly responsible for the opposition of the Moray and Speyside gentry, and the powerful clan of Mackenzie. He had guides who promised to show him an easy way out of Lorn into Lochaber, whence the road ran straight by the Great Glen to Inverness. Laden with miscellaneous plunder, and cumbered no doubt with spreaghs of cattle, the army passed the north end of Loch Awe, where Alasdair is said to have rescued certain kinsmen from the dungeons of “a strong castle.” In the Pass of Brander legend says that an old woman with a scythe opposed the advance and killed a soldier, and that Montrose intervened to save her life. Arrived at the shore of Loch Etive, the bulk of the army turned west towards the narrows at Connel. The shorter road by Glen Etive, King’s House, and the Moor of Rannoch, was no route for a heavily-laden force in midwinter, but a detachment may, as tradition avers, have followed the steep brink of the loch to Glen Etive, and there crossed the beallach by the old drove road to Appin.
The march from Loch Awe had been in the teeth of a violent south-west gale, but at Connel a windless calm fell upon the sea. It was the weather for crossing, but there were no boats, the land behind them was a provisionless desert, and the great Campbell keep of Dunstaffnage lay menacingly on their flank. The situation was saved by Campbell of Ardchattan — a Macdonald on his mother’s side — who undertook to supply ferry-boats on condition that his lands were unmolested. By means of these, in two days of bright sunshine, the army crossed Loch Etive, the horses swimming alongside. The first camp in Benderloch was made memorable by the shipwreck of an armed sloop sent by Argyll to harass the flank of the march; it and its brass guns became the prize of the royalists. Also 150 young men of the Appin Stewarts arrived as recruits. Montrose hurried north through Appin, and was welcomed by the MacIans of Glencoe. Once again the weather broke, this time in a thunderstorm and a deluge of rain, and the roaring Cona seemed to offer an impassable barrier. But boats were somehow found, the river was crossed at its mouth, the sky cleared, and the advance continued — either by Glencoe, Loch Treig and Glen Spean, or by Loch Leven and Mamore. The king’s lieutenant was safe in Lochaber.
Montrose halted one night at Inverlochy, but no more. He had Seaforth in front of him, and Argyll behind, and dared not tarry. By the evening of Wednesday the 29th of January, he was at Kilcumin, at the head of Loch Ness, in a none too friendly country. The weather continued to be mild and dry for the season of the year. Most of the Atholl men and the bulk of Clanranald had left him, after their custom, to deposit their booty. No more than 1,500 remained — Alasdair’s Irish, a few hundred Macdonalds, Stewarts, Macleans, and Camerons, and sufficient horse to mount the Lowland gentry and provide an escort for the standard.
At Kilcumin Montrose had definite news of Seaforth. He was thirty miles off at Inverness with 5,000 men — Frasers, Mackenzies, and regulars from the Inverness garrison; a disorderly multitude, says Wishart, for, apart from the old soldiers of the garrison, it was “a mere rabble of new levies, peasants, drovers, shopmen, servants, and camp-followers.” Montrose was preparing to make short work of Seaforth, when he received graver tidings. Ian Lom Macdonald, the bard of Keppoch, arrived by the hill-road from Glen Roy to tell of Argyll at his heels. The Campbells were less than thirty miles behind at Inverlochy, 3,000 men-at-arms eager to avenge the shame of Lorn. They were burning and harrying Glen Spean and Glen Roy and the Lochaber braes, and their object was to take Montrose in rear what time Seaforth should hold him in front.
At Kilcumin Montrose had prepared a bond to which all the chiefs set their names. Such bonds and manifestos were favourite devices of the king’s lieutenant. They were his Covenants, the only means by which he could advertise to the world the principles for which he fought. The signatories swore to fight to the death for their sovereign and his legitimate authority against the “present perverse and infamous faction of desperate rebels now
in fury against him,” and never to swerve from their oath as they “would be reputed famous men.” The little army had need of all the heartening it could get, for its plight seemed hopeless. Fifteen hundred very weary men were caught between two forces of 5,000 and 3,000. There was no way of escape to west or east, for the one would lead them to a bare sea-coast, and the other into the arms of Baillie’s foot. Of the two hostile forces Seaforth’s burghers were the less formidable. Montrose knew well that the fighting spirit of Clan Diarmaid was equal to any in the Highlands, and, now that they were commanded by a skilled soldier and infuriated by the burning of their homes, he could not hope to fight them at long odds. But it is the duty of a good general, when he is confronted by two urgent perils, to meet the greater first. Montrose resolved to fight the Campbells, but to fight them in his own way.
1645 Jan.-Feb.
Early on the morning of Friday, the 31st of January, began that flank march which is one of the great exploits in the history of British arms. The little river Tarff flows north from the Monadliath mountains to Loch Ness. Up its rocky course went Montrose, and the royal army disappeared into the hills. Scouts of Argyll or Seaforth who traversed the Great Glen on that day must have reported no enemy. From Tarff Montrose crossed the pass to Glen Turritt, and following it downward reached Glen Roy. Pushing on through the night, he came to the bridge of Roy, where that stream enters the Spean, on the morning of Saturday the 1st of February.
1645 February
The weather on the high hills was deathly cold, and the march had been through a hyperborean hell. The upper glens were choked with snowdrifts, ravines had to be threaded where avalanches and cornices of ice overhung the adventurers, the rocks were glazed, and impassable save for Highland brogues. Passes were crossed so narrow and steep that a dozen men could have held an army at bay. But there were no patrols of Argyll among those inhospitable wastes; the only enemies were cold and hunger and the uttermost fatigue. The army had neither food nor fire. Now and then in a patch of wood a hind or roedeer may have been found, and its blood lapped and its uncooked flesh devoured by the fortunate discoverers. The rations for gentle and simple alike were oatmeal and water. As they struggled along at the pace of a deerstalker, Montrose walked by his men, shaming them to endurance by the spectacle of his own courage.
From Roy Bridge to Inverlochy is some thirteen miles. But to take Argyll by surprise a circuit was necessary, and Montrose followed the northern slopes of the wild tangle of mountains, the highest in Britain, that surround Ben Nevis. He crossed the Spean at a ford below the present house of Corriechoille, and seems to have met a foraying party of Argyll’s and stopped their mouths for ever. Hugging the skirts of the hills, he went by Kilchonate and Leanachan, and before darkness fell was at the base of Meall-an-t’suidhe. In the ruddy gloaming of the February day the vanguard saw beneath and before them the tower of Inverlochy scowling by the sea waves, and not a mile off the men of Clan Diarmaid making ready their evening meal. They had been within sight during the day of that spot, Mucomir, on the north bank of the Spean, where another Graham was to review the assembled clans on the eve of Killiecrankie.
Shots were exchanged with the enemy pickets, but no effort was made to advance. The surprise had been achieved; it need not be prematurely disclosed. Montrose waited quietly in the gathering dusk till, by eight o’clock, the rest of his famished column had arrived. There, supperless and cold, they passed the night, lighting no fires, and keeping up a desultory skirmishing with the Campbell outposts. The moon was full, and the dark masses of both armies were visible to each other. Argyll thought the force he saw only a contingent of Highland raiders under Keppoch or some petty chief. As Montrose watched the strip of moonlit loch between him and the dark hills of Loch Eil, he saw lights moving towards a little vessel which swung at anchor. Argyll had been persuaded by the Campbell chiefs to retire to his lymphad and take no part in the coming battle. There was little reason why he should, and charges of cowardice are foolish. Auchinbreck, not he, was in command; he was not by physique a useful fighting man, and he was still suffering from a damaged shoulder; he was the chief pillar of the Covenant in Scotland, and the head of a great clan; for him to risk his life, sword in hand, against desperate men was against every counsel of prudence and common sense. Alan McIldowie’s prophecy, too, may have influenced his clan in their determination to keep him out of action. His companions on the galley were Sir James Rollo, Wauchope of Niddrie, an Edinburgh bailie, and a minister, Mr. Mungo Law, whom we may take to have been the travelling committee which the Estates were accustomed to send out to fortify their generals.
At dawn on Candlemas Day, the 2nd of February, his ears were greeted by an unwelcome note. It was no bagpipes such as Keppoch might use, but trumpets of war, and the salute they sounded was that reserved for the royal standard. Then came the fierce Cameron pibroch, “Sons of dogs, come and I will give you flesh.” The king’s lieutenant, who two days before was for certain at Loch Ness, had by some craft of darkness taken wings and flown his army over the winter hills. There was no alternative but to fight. Till Montrose was beaten the Campbells could neither march forward to join Seaforth nor backward to their own land.
Auchinbreck drew up his forces with the fighting men of Clan Campbell in the centre, and the Lowland regiments borrowed from Baillie on each wing. A stiffening of Highlanders was added to the flanks, and behind the main battle was a strong Highland reserve with two field-pieces. Montrose placed the Irish on his wings — the right under Alasdair, and the left under O’Cahan; he himself led the centre, which was composed of the Atholl, Appin, and Glencoe men and the Camerons; Clanranald and Glengarry had the second line, and there was a mixed Highland and Ulster reserve. Sir Thomas Ogilvy commanded the little troop of horse which had managed to make its way with the infantry over the terrible hills. This was the one advantage Montrose possessed; otherwise he had an army inferior in numbers by at least a thousand, weary with travel and on the brink of starvation, having had scarcely a mouthful for forty-eight hours. He himself and Lord Airlie had no breakfast except a little raw oatmeal mixed with cold water, which they ate with their dirks.
Before battle the Catholics in his ranks knelt in prayer, while their priests signed their arms with the cross. The action began with the charge of Alasdair and O’Cahan against the enemy wings; they reserved their fire till, in Patrick Gordon’s words, “they gave it in their breath.” The firing of famished men with ancient muskets may have been wild, but in a second they were come, as Montrose wrote, “to push of pike and dint of sword.” The Lowlanders made no stand; in spite of the experience of many of them with Leven, a Highland charge was a new and awful thing to them, and they speedily broke and fled. This left the centre with naked flanks, and down upon it came Montrose. It was forced back on its second line, which, instead of opening ranks to receive it and so constituting a new battle-front, itself wavered and cracked. Inverlochy was won by strategy. Of tactics there was little, and that little was as rudimentary as at Tippermuir. The Campbell clansmen, outflanked and unsupported, did indeed make a valiant stand; “stout and gallant men,” says Wishart, “worthy of a better chief and a juster cause.” They knew that they could expect no mercy from their hereditary foes, to whom they had shown none, and they were not forgetful of the honourable traditions of their name.
But in time they also broke. Some rushed into the loch and tried in vain to reach the galley of their chief, now fleeing to safety; some fled to the tower of Inverlochy, where they presently surrendered. Most scattered along the shore, and on that blue February noon there was a fierce slaughter from the mouth of Nevis down to the narrows of Loch Leven. The Lowlanders were given quarter, but, in spite of all his efforts, Montrose could win no mercy for the luckless Campbells. The green Diarmaid tartan was a badge of death that day. The western Camerons, hitherto dubious allies of Argyll, now came over to the royal cause and joined in the pursuit. On the royalist side only four perished, but one of them was Sir Thomas Ogi
lvy, who died shortly after the battle. On the Covenant side the slain almost equalled the whole of Montrose’s army. At least fifteen hundred fell in the flight, and among them were the veteran Auchinbreck, and forty of the Campbell barons. Well might Keppoch’s bard exult fiercely over the issue:
“Though the bones of my kindred, unhonoured, unurned,
Mark the desolate path where the Campbells have burned —
Be it so! From that foray they never returned.”
Inverlochy was in one respect a decisive victory, for it destroyed the clan power of Argyll. From its terrible toll the Campbells as a fighting force never recovered. Alasdair’s policy was justified, and the Macdonalds were amply avenged; the heather, as the phrase went, was above the gale at last. To Montrose at the moment it seemed even more. He thought that with the galley of Lorn fell also the blue flag of the Covenant. He wrote straightway to the king, giving him a full account of the fight, and ending on a high note of confidence:
“The more your Majesty grants, the more will be asked; and I have too much reason to know that they will not rest satisfied with less than making your Majesty a King of straw. . . . Forgive me, sacred sovereign, to tell your Majesty that, in my poor opinion it is unworthy of a King to treat with rebel subjects while they have a sword in their hands. And though God forbid I should stint your Majesty’s mercy, yet I must declare the horror I am in when I think of a treaty, while your Majesty and they are in the field with two armies, unless they disband, and submit themselves entirely to your Majesty’s goodness and pardon.
“As to the state of affairs in this kingdom, the bearer will fully inform your Majesty that, through God’s blessing, I am in the fairest hopes of reducing this kingdom to your Majesty’s obedience. And if the measures I have concocted with your other loyal subjects fail me not, which they hardly can, I doubt not before the end of this summer I shall be able to come to your Majesty’s assistance with a brave army, which, backed with the justice of your Majesty’s cause, will make the rebels in England, as well as in Scotland, feel the just rewards of rebellion. Only give me leave, after I have reduced this country to your Majesty’s obedience, and conquered from Dan to Beersheba, to say to your Majesty then, as David’s general said to his master, ‘Come thou thyself, lest this country be called by my name.’”