by John Buchan
CHAPTER X. THE RETREAT FROM DUNDEE (February-April, 1645)
I mean to proceed bridle in hand; for if the bubble bursts, and Madrid falls, we shall have a run for it. — Sir John Moore, Dec. 6, 1808.
1645 February
It was not till March that Charles received tidings of Inverlochy. By that time he had already rejected the proposals of the Treaty of Uxbridge, one of which was that Montrose should be exempted from the act of oblivion, and the news of Argyll’s disaster gave him hopes of a diversion in the north. He wrote to Montrose telling him that he was sending him 500 horse under Sir Philip Musgrave, and announcing that he himself with his army would make his way to Scotland with all possible dispatch. It was a scheme of Digby’s which Cromwell was soon to frustrate. Steadily since Marston Moor antagonism had been growing between the new great English soldier and the older generals of the Parliament. In especial Cromwell hated the Scots and the Presbyterians, and all who had art or part in the Solemn League and Covenant. “Against these” (the Scots), wrote Manchester in November 1644, “his animosity was such, as he told me, in the way they now carried themselves, pressing for their discipline, he could as soon draw his sword against them as against any in the king’s army.” Robert Baillie now christened him the “darling of the sectaries,” and had hopes of getting the firebrand removed from the army. But the firebrand prevailed. On February 15, 1644, his New Model was constituted — twelve regiments of foot, eleven regiments of horse, 1,000 dragoons — a total of 22,000 picked men under a new training, who were destined to be the undoing both of the Covenant and the king.
Inverlochy had an important effect on Leven at Carlisle, since it increased his reluctance to move south, as Parliament demanded, while Montrose was at large north of the Border. To the Estates in Edinburgh it brought disappointment and panic. Argyll arrived ten days after the battle, with his arm in a sling, to be publicly thanked for his services. Baillie and Hurry were exhorted to fresh efforts, and further calls were made upon Leven. On the 11th of February James Graham, sometime Earl of Montrose, was declared a traitor and his life and estates forfeited. The Kirk, not to be outdone in martial zeal, renewed the excommunication of the preceding spring, and proposed, since it was so hard to lay hold of the chief malefactor, to make a beginning with those in its power. Did not Crawford and Ogilvy and Wishart lie fast in the Tolbooth? Mr. David Dickson, Mr. Robert Blair, Mr. Andrew Cant, Mr. James Guthrie, and Mr. Patrick Gillespie attended as a deputation from the General Assembly to urge their immediate execution. Parliament commended the “zeal and piety” of the clergy, but hinted that, with Montrose victorious in the field, it would be as well to wait a little before making an end of his hostages. It contented itself with, for no apparent reason, outlawing Carnwath, and declaring “whosoever shall kill him to have done good service to his country.”
After resting a few days at Inverlochy, Montrose marched northward again. The right course, had it been possible, would have been an immediate descent upon the capital. But for Lowland warfare he needed cavalry, and cavalry could not be manufactured in Lochaber. To get them he must go where alone in the north they could be had — among the Gordon gentry. He found that the opposition had melted away. Having no war-chest, he was compelled to provide for his forces by fines and requisitions from the Covenanting lairds, and when these were not forthcoming there was burning and pillage. Inverness was too strongly garrisoned to take, so Montrose passed it by, having no nervousness about fortresses in his rear. On Friday, the 19th, he entered Elgin without sign of Seaforth or any other opponent. The Mackenzies had disappeared into the fastnesses of Kintail. At Elgin, to his joy, he found that recruits began to come in. The first was the laird of Grant with 300 men, and at a plundering of the houses of certain Covenanting absentees the new convert showed himself highly assiduous.
Presently came a far more welcome ally. Nathaniel Gordon’s politic desertion had been fruitful; he rode over from the Bog of Gight, bringing with him no less a person than Huntly’s heir, now weary of the ways of his uncle Argyll. Lord Gordon was accompanied by his brother, Lord Lewis, whom we have already seen twice arrayed against Montrose at Aberdeen, first with Aboyne and then with Burleigh. He was still in his teens, a fiery and perverse young man, of undoubted gallantry, but of an excitable and fantastic mind. With the Gordons, as an earnest of Gordon support, came 200 well-mounted troopers, a sight to gladden Montrose’s eyes, for cavalry could alone make possible that Lowland campaign on which he had set his heart. Lord Gordon was more than a comrade in arms; he was to prove, for the short span of life that remained to him, Montrose’s tenderest and truest friend. Last of all came Seaforth to make his peace; he had never been much of a Covenanter, but Mackenzie and Macdonald could not easily mix. Montrose received him joyfully, and dispatched him to hold his own countryside for the king. At Elgin, and at the Bog of Gight, which was the next halting-place of the royal army, the bond prepared at Kilcumin received further signatures. It is odd to read in the document, which is still preserved in the Montrose charter-chest, the names of Grant and Seaforth beside the scrawls of Alasdair and Clanranald, and to remember that, when the latter signed, the former were the foes against whom the bond was aimed.
1645 March
Montrose had now a compact force of 2,000 foot and about 200 horse. The backbone of his infantry was still Alasdair’s Irish, who may have numbered a thousand men. The Lochaber and Badenoch clans had gone home with their booty after Inverlochy, and the rest were Stewarts and Robertsons, the remnant of the Atholl levies, the 300 Grants, and small contingents from Moray, Nairn, and the Gordons. The cavalry, with the exception of the few who had been with Ogilvy, were wholly Gordon. Montrose may well have believed himself strong enough, what with the hope of further Gordon aid and the certainty of more recruits from Atholl, to meet Baillie on equal terms south of the Tay.
At Gight he suffered a sore bereavement. His eldest boy, Lord Graham, now in his fifteenth year, had been his father’s companion ever since William Forrett had brought him to Perth after Tippermuir. The swift marches over the winter hills had worn him out, and his life was part of the price paid for that miraculous descent on Inverlochy. He died in the early days of March, and was buried in the neighbouring kirk of Bellie. Shortly after, old Lord Airlie fell dangerously sick, and was sent to Huntly’s castle of Strathbogie, with a guard of several hundred men, which the royal army could ill afford. Montrose had to lock up his grief in his heart, for there was no time to spare for sorrowing. He marched east, and by the 9th of March was close upon Aberdeen. There had been much plundering of the little towns and the lands of Covenanting lairds, but no shedding of blood. Aberdeen had been evacuated by Covenant troops; a deputation of its burgesses met him at Turriff, and, remembering with regret his last visit, he undertook that his Irish should not come within eight miles of the city.
There, however, grave misfortune befell the royal army. Nathaniel Gordon, with eighty cavaliers, rode into Aberdeen from the camp at Kintore on a friendly errand of amusement. Word was sent by certain local Covenanters to Sir John Hurry, who was in the Mearns with his Covenant cavalry. This soldier of fortune, who at Oxford had given Rupert that warning of the Parliamentary convoy at Thame, which led to the battle of Chalgrove Field and John Hampden’s death, had the military virtue of speed. With a detachment of Balcarres’s horse, Hurry made a dash on the city in the evening. Such royalists as he found in the street were promptly cut down, most of the horses were driven off, and among the dead was Donald Farquharson, the bailie of Strathavon and the chief member of the great family of Braemar. It was an irreparable loss, for he had been one of the best of Montrose’s lieutenants. “One of the noblest captains among all the Highland-men of Scotland,” wrote Spalding, and Patrick Gordon is eloquent on his virtues. “He was beloved of all sorts of people, and could not be otherwise, for he was of such a harmless and innocent carriage that there was none alive whom he could hate; he was never seen to be angry, nor knew he what that unruly passion mean
t, and yet he gave proof of as much true courage as any man could have; he was so far from pride and vain-glory that he was all men’s companion, not out of silly simplicity, but out of a gentle and mild freedom, in a nature which did always dispose him to a joyful alacrity, for his conversation, even in the saddest and most desperate times, was ever jocund and cheerful.” Hurry made off as fast as he had come, and on his way back took prisoner the new Lord Graham, who was with his tutor at Montrose, and sent him to Edinburgh. The king’s lieutenant waited in Aberdeen to bury the dead Farquharson, at whose funeral Alasdair behaved with almost complete propriety; and then on Monday, the 18th of March, began his southward journey.
There was burning in the Mearns and the braes of Angus, now a laird’s house, now a manse, and, as the parish records show, there was a general upsetting of life and a fleeing of Covenanters to strong places. It was done under strict discipline, and unauthorized practitioners were hanged. On 21st March the town of Stonehaven was burned, and the outbuildings of Dunnottar castle. Marischal, who, like so many Scots nobles, blew hot and cold in turn, was for the present by way of being a Covenanter, and in the company of sixteen ministers watched from its impregnable keep the destruction of his lands, finding what comfort he could in the consolation of Mr. Andrew Cant that the smoke of his barns was “a sweet-smelling incense in the nostrils of the Lord.” By the end of March Montrose was at Fettercairn, with Hurry and his 600 horse only six miles off. There he all but made an end of Hurry. That general, confident in his cavalry, came out to battle near Halkerton castle, and, believing from his scouts’ reports that only 200 horse were opposed to him, charged them gaily. But behind the horse Montrose had concealed his best musketeers in a glen of a burn, and Hurry was received with a fire which emptied his saddles and put his cavalry in confusion. Then the royalist horse turned and charged, and Hurry fled in-continent across the South Esk, never drawing rein till he had covered the twenty-four miles between him and Dundee. Next day the royalists occupied Brechin, which was plundered, and the town of Montrose, which was spared by the general for the sake of old times.
1645 April
Here he heard of the advance of a more considerable opponent than Hurry. Baillie, with 3,000 seasoned infantry, was blocking the road to the south. Veteran troops had been recalled from Ireland, and Leven had given up some of his best regulars. Montrose hastened to meet him, and found him in the neighbourhood of Coupar-Angus. But Baillie was a cautious commander, and he respected his enemy. He was determined to fight only on the most favourable ground, and he knew that Fabian tactics were the likeliest to wear out an army which had no base, no reserves, and no coherence save in the personal influence of its leader. The river Isla ran between the two forces, and Montrose dared not try to wrest the passage in the face of superior strength. So in the true cavalier fashion he sent Baillie a challenge, offering to cross and fight him, if the passage were permitted, or to let him cross unhindered if he preferred the other bank. Baillie wisely replied that he would fight at his own pleasure, and not to suit his adversary’s convenience.
Seeing that it was hopeless to wait longer, Montrose devised a new plan. He struck camp and marched west to Dunkeld, with the intention of descending on the Lowlands by another road. At Dunkeld he could cross the Tay in safety, and after that he had a straight path to the Forth. Baillie could not keep up with him, and retired south — on his way to Fife, it was reported. Now was the chance for that avalanche from the hills which would sweep the Covenanting Lowlands, and gather up with it all the disaffected and anti-Covenant elements which Montrose believed to be plentiful in the south of Scotland. Baillie had obviously gone off to hold the bridges and fords of Forth, and it would be strange if Highlanders, with less ground to cover, could not get there before him.
But at Dunkeld Montrose was to be reminded of the nature of the Highland army which he led. Once more his forces began to melt away. The Atholl men slipped back to their homes, and so did the recent levies from the north of the Grampians. The Gordon cavalry, led by Lord Lewis, began to grumble, and, though they did not desert yet awhile, he knew that he could not long count on their assistance. Presently his strength had shrunk so gravely that any attempt on the Lowlands was out of the question.
Something must be done if only to keep his remnant together. Twenty-four miles off lay the town of Dundee, the chief base of the Covenant in Angus. To read Dundee a lesson might be a profitable employment, till he saw his way more clearly. Moreover, his soldiers were short of every kind of supply. Their clothes scarcely held together, and they were shod for the most part with sandals made of the raw hides of looted cattle. He had now no infantry but Alasdair’s Irish. Of them he sent the weaker half on to Brechin with the baggage, and with 600 foot and 150 horse left Dunkeld at midnight on the 3rd of April. By ten o’clock next morning he was under the walls of Dundee.
Dundee in the year 1645 was a little town with a big kirk and a market-place in the centre, from which radiated the four main streets. It had a volunteer garrison and substantial walls, and inside the walled area at the north-west corner was a mound called the Corbie Hill, long since levelled, on which guns had been mounted. Montrose sent a trumpeter, one John Gordon, a servant of the laird of Rothiemay, to summon the magistrates to surrender, but the reply tarried, and the assault was begun before it could be written, so the envoy was committed to the Tolbooth. Dundee was a strong place, but the walls were being mended in the north-west angle, and there the royalists soon made a breach. The guns on the Corbie Hill were captured and turned against the town, the defenders of the West Port and the Nethergait Port were taken in the rear, and presently the church and the market-place were in the invaders’ hands. Several houses were set on fire, but pillage rather than burning was the order of the day. The booths of the merchants were turned inside out, and the plenishing of many a well-doing citizen took to the streets on Highland backs. Stores of ale and wine were discovered, and soon many of the assailants, who had marched all night without a halt, were in that state of bodily and mental ease which Wishart describes as “vino paululum incalescentes.”
It was now late afternoon, and, as Montrose stood on the Corbie Hill watching the ongoings in the town, his scouts brought him startling news. Baillie and Hurry had not crossed the Tay on their way to Fife. With 3,000 foot and 800 horse they were now within a mile of the West Port of Dundee. It was as parlous a position as any commander ever stood in, and his colonels gave counsels of despair. Some urged him to leave his half-drunken troops to their fate and save himself, on the plea that another army could be found, but not a second Montrose. Others, of a more heroic temper, cried out that all was lost but honour, and were for dying in a desperate charge. Only Montrose kept his head. He was resolved to escape, not alone, but with his army — a decision which shows the flawless courage of the man. Somehow or other — how, Heaven only knows — he beat off his men from their plunder: a feat, says Mr. Gardiner, “beyond the power of any other commander in Europe.” Four hundred of his foot he sent on in front, and behind them he kept 200 of his best musketeers, as a support to the horse in case of a stand. Last, as rearguard, went his 150 cavalry. As the royalists rode out of the Seagait and the East Port, Baillie entered at the West Port, and Hurry’s van was within a gunshot of Montrose’s rear.
Night had now fallen, the clear night of a northern April, but the Covenanters were confident of their prey. Hurry followed hard on Montrose as he marched east along the sea-coast. A few miles from Dundee he tried to charge, but the picked musketeers among the royalist horse were too much for him, and their fire beat off his 800 troopers. He fell back, while the king’s lieutenant pushed on in the direction of Arbroath. The shock of peril had sobered the Irish, and they marched like heroes. Meanwhile Baillie had conceived a better plan. He knew that Montrose must break westward for the hills as soon as possible, not only for safety, but to pick up the men he had sent on to await him at Brechin. He observed, too, that his enemy was marching along the arc of a circle,
and he resolved himself to take the chord. He had made arrangements for guarding the nearest hill passes, and he hurried north-east towards Arbroath to hem his enemy between his troops and the sea.
It was precisely the strategy that Montrose had anticipated. At midnight he turned sharp in his tracks, marched south-west to Panbride, and then north by Carmyllie, Guthrie, and Melgund, and so quietly slipped round Baillie in the dark. By daybreak he was at Careston castle, a Carnegie house on the South Esk, with the friendly hills in sight and at hand. Here he had news from Brechin that the men who were to meet him there had already been given the alarm, and had betaken themselves to the mountains. He halted for a little to give his weary troops a breathing-space. In the past thirty-six hours they had marched fifty or sixty miles, fought several engagements, drunk quantities of liquor, and sacked a town. When the halt was sounded nearly every man dropped to the ground and slept like the dead.
The Campaign of Dundee and Auldearn
Meanwhile Baillie at the first light of dawn had discovered his mistake. Hurry had rejoined him, and Hurry’s cavalry were soon hot on the trail of the man who had so befooled them. Montrose got the alarm in time, but his sleepy soldiers would not stir. It looked as if the three miles which still intervened before the hills were won might be three miles too many, and the labours of that marvellous night rendered vain. But the officers, at the point of the sword, managed to beat up sufficient troops to make some sort of stand, and Hurry’s horse were checked. Then, with a last desperate effort, the exhausted royalists managed to struggle the last miles into a country of heath and bog, where cavalry could not follow them. Hurry fell back, and by midday Montrose was safe among the wilds of the North Esk.