by John Buchan
The retreat from Dundee, however we look at it, remains an astonishing feat of arms. Hurry’s cavalry were the troops which had done brilliant service under Leven, and Baillie’s foot contained some of the best first-line regiments that Scotland could show. Man for man the Gordon horse, sulky and mutinous as they already were, could not compare with them. The Irish were, of course, tried veterans, and superior to any of the Covenant infantry. But Montrose’s men were at the best bone-weary, and at the worst half-drunk and laden with their precious plunder. The general who could stop the sack of a town in a few minutes was a superb leader of men, and he who could execute such a flight was a consummate strategist. “Which,” wrote Wishart, “whether foreign nations or after times will believe I cannot tell, but I am sure I deliver nothing but what is most certain of my own knowledge. And truly, among expert soldiers and those of eminent note, both in England, Germany, and France, I have not seldom heard this expedition of his preferred before Montrose’s greatest victories.”
CHAPTER XI. AULDEARN AND ALFORD (April-July, 1645)
King. And is this not an honourable spoil?
A gallant prize? ha, cousin, is it not?
Westmoreland. In faith
It is a conquest for a prince to boast of.
— First Part of King Henry IV.
I
1645 April
The letter written by the king in March, promising a body of horse and holding out hope of his own coming to Scotland, was carried by a gentleman of the name of Small, and found Montrose somewhere among the Grampians. On his way back to the royal headquarters the messenger, disguised as a common beggar, was seized by the Covenanters on the south shore of the Firth of Forth, taken to Edinburgh on 28th April, tried and condemned, and hanged on 1st May. Small had been captured by the Estates the year before, and banished the kingdom under pain of death, so his fate was strictly in accordance with law. From the documents in his possession his captors had their first news of the king’s intention, and it deeply disquieted them. They disseminated wild reports of the flight from Dundee, declaring, in order to allay popular fears, that only a few royalists had escaped to the mountains. But Argyll could not deceive himself, and he knew that the coming north of the king, with Montrose unbeaten in the field, meant that he and his ambitions would be caught between two fires. He communicated his anxiety to the generals, and Covenanting strategy acquired a new vigour. The credit probably belongs to Hurry, for Baillie, though a competent soldier, never displayed any strategic ability. The Covenant army was divided. Instead of pursuing the elusive enemy in one cumbrous whole, it was resolved to try to hold him between two separate forces operating from different bases. The Estates ordered a levy of 8,800 infantry and 485 cavalry from the counties south of the Tay, and many cadets of Lothian and Border houses joined the Covenant standard. It was believed that north of the Grampians large forces could be raised, so Hurry, borrowing from Baillie 1,200 foot — the regiments of Loudoun and Lothian — and keeping 160 of his horse, hastened north to pick up these levies and to form the upper millstone for the projected grinding of Montrose. Baillie, with 2,000 foot and 500 horse, settled himself in the neighbourhood of Perth.
For Montrose there was once more the weary task of finding an army. Lord Gordon was dispatched to Strathbogie to try to raise Gordon troopers in place of those who had gone off with his petulant brother. Alasdair went west into the Macdonald country to whip up those of his clan who had departed after Inverlochy. Black Pate of Inchbrakie went into Atholl to organize the Robertsons and Stewarts. Montrose himself had to await the result of these missions before he could again take the field. But for him waiting was never inaction. He resolved to investigate the state of affairs on the Highland Line, and to keep Baillie out of mischief. He also wished to gather to his standard one or two gentlemen of his kin who had been hiding in Menteith, and he may have had hopes of pushing south to get some news from the royalists across the Border. He wrote to the king from Doune on 20th April; in that letter he spoke no longer of leading an army into England, for he had no army to lead. The most he could do was to keep the Covenant busy in Scotland.
Already with 500 foot and 50 horse he had swept down upon the Perthshire lowlands, halting for the night at the village of Crieff, twelve miles from Baillie’s camp. The Covenant general, as soon as he got the news, set off in the night to surprise him, and at dawn on the 17th found the little army drawn up for battle. A glance convinced Montrose that the odds were too great even for him, so, with his horse fighting a rearguard action, he retreated up the Earn past Comrie, and by the evening was safe from pursuit at the head of Loch Earn. Next day he turned south by Balquhidder, into the heart of the Trossachs. Here he fell in with a welcome ally — no less than Aboyne, Huntly’s second son, who had escaped with sixteen horsemen from beleaguered Carlisle, and had a dislocated shoulder, which did not affect him as did Argyll’s at Inverlochy. He found other friends, too, for by Loch Katrine side he met his nephew the Master of Napier, and a son of the Earl of Stirling, who had eluded the Covenant’s vigilance. Montrose had more than his share of family affection, and the kinsmen, says Spalding, “were all joyful of each other.”
Here he had news which put an end to his southern wanderings. Baillie was busy burning in Atholl, and Hurry, now north of the Grampians, was bidding fair to destroy Lord Gordon and his slender forces. Hurry had failed to raise dragoons on Deeside, had had trouble with a mutiny in Lothian’s regiment, and the day before had marched out of Aberdeen for the west. Montrose retraced his steps by one of those lightning marches which were the despair of his opponents and a confusion to the chroniclers of his day. He could not fight Baillie as he was, and to meet Hurry he must first find his Gordons. Some time on the 20th he was at Doune; by Strathyre he reached Lochearnhead, and thence sped by Glen Ogle to Loch Tay, and across the shoulder of Schiehallion into Atholl. Then by one of the Angus glens he reached Glen Muick, forded Dee, and by the last day of April was at Skene on lower Deeside. Somewhere on the road Alasdair joined him, and at Skene he found Lord Gordon with 1,000 foot and 200 horse. His army was badly off for ammunition, so Aboyne undertook an expedition to Aberdeen for the purpose of supplies. With eighty troopers the young soldier seized the town, found twenty barrels of gunpowder in two vessels lying in the harbour, and brought back the loot to headquarters the same evening. Whatever the faults of the Gordon blood, it had no lack of fire and speed.
Montrose’s force was now a little over 2,000 foot and some 250 horse. Hurry meantime had not been idle. The Covenanters of Moray and Elgin had risen at his call. Seaforth had recanted his lately professed loyalty and brought the Mackenzies to his side. Sutherland was hastening to his support with his clansmen, Lovat rallied the glens of Beauly, and Findlater was bringing the men of Easter Ross. The local gentry, who hated the Gordon name — Frasers, Forbeses, Roses, Inneses, Crichtons — carried their swords to his standard. He had under him four regular regiments, all first-line, and two of them among the best in the kingdom. Altogether he had in being and in immediate expectation a force of perhaps 4,000 foot and not less than 400 horse. While Montrose lay on the Dee, Hurry was on Speyside with the road to Strathbogie open before him. It was a vital matter for Montrose to keep the Gordons in good humour, and for this purpose their lands must be protected. So he hastened from Skene, by way of the upper Don, the Avon, and the Spey, to give battle with all speed to the enemy.
1645 May
Hurry was something of a strategist, and retired for two reasons. First, he wanted to draw Montrose out of the friendly hills and the Gordon country; and secondly, he had still to receive some of the promised forces of Seaforth and Sutherland. From Elgin to Forres he drew the royalists on, keeping only a little way ahead, but far enough to prevent Montrose doing him harm. The ruse succeeded. By the evening of the 8th of May Montrose had reached the little village of Auldearn, on the ridge of high treeless ground between the valleys of the Findhorn and the Nairn. He believed Hurry to be retreating on Inverness
, and meant to follow him thither the next day. It was a drizzling evening, and the neighbourhood was Covenanting to a man, loving not the Gordons nor the Highlanders, and least of all Alasdair’s Irish, whom it remembered after Inverlochy. No news of the enemy was likely to be got from the country-folk. Montrose pitched his camp, posted his pickets carefully, as was his custom, and settled down for the night.
The position needs exact understanding if we are to appreciate the events that followed. The hamlet of straggling cottages ran south from the parish kirk of St. Colm on the line of the present Boath road. East of the village curved a low ridge of upland. Below the houses to the west were the gardens and pig-styes of the villagers, and beyond them lay a flattish piece of ground covered with wildwood and sloping gently to the bog of a sluggish burn. North of this bog was the eminence of the Castle Hill, and beyond the burn the ground was hard. South of it, and nearly west of the hamlet of Auldearn, stood a bare hillock, now called Deadman’s Wood and planted with trees. The burn, which caused the bog, bent round to the south in a ravine, and so protected the south part of the ridge which curved behind the village. The position was therefore in the shape of a horse-shoe, if we take the firmer and higher ground to the east as the rim. In the middle lay the village, and enclosed between the points were the bog and the rough land which sloped from the gardens and pig-styes. The wet weather had swollen the stream and filled the marshes, and made even the higher ground heavy going.
II
Some time before midnight on the 8th Hurry turned to strike. It was a moonless night with drenching rain, and the royalist patrols were not inclined to go too far into the darkness. But Hurry gave notice of his approach, for his men, finding the powder in their muskets damp, fired them off to clear them. They were then five or six miles distant, but the quick ear of Alasdair’s sentinels caught the sound, and Montrose guessed at once what was afoot. A wet, misty dawn was breaking when he drew up his line of battle. He placed Alasdair with a portion of the Irish and some of the Gordon foot at the north end of the ridge, between the village and the Castle Hill, and into his keeping he gave the royal standard, in order that Hurry might believe the king’s lieutenant to be there in person and deliver there his chief attack. He boldly denied himself a centre, and instead scattered a few men in front of the cottages, with instructions to keep up a continuous firing so that the enemy might think the village strongly held. This — and the Castle Hill — was the place for his cannon if he had had any, but during the rapid marches of the past eight months he had not had time to recover the guns which he had buried after Aberdeen. The rest of his infantry he kept to the south of the village, concealed behind the crown of the ridge, with the cavalry under Lord Gordon in a hollow on his left wing. It was a brilliant disposition, made at the shortest notice in the half-light of morning. If Hurry attacked Alasdair under the impression that he was Montrose, he would have difficulty with his cavalry among the village gardens, while Montrose, at the right moment, would be free to swing round his horse from their cover and take him unprepared on his right flank.
Three-quarters of a mile off, at Kinnudie, Hurry put his column into line of battle. The front of advance, between the Castle Hill and the bog, was narrow, so a single regiment, that of Lawers, formed the van, with the three other regular regiments in support. On his left wing, a little withdrawn, were the northern levies, while his right wing was composed of a detachment of Moray horse under Major Drummond. The main body of cavalry, under his personal command, he held in reserve. His problem was more difficult than he realized. On that narrow front he could not properly deploy his men and reap the advantage of his superior strength. Montrose had calculated right.
But there was one mistake in his calculations. Alasdair was undermanned. He had no more than 500 men, all infantry, to oppose the attack of at least six times their number, aided by a strong cavalry contingent. If we remember that the musketeer of those days was held to be unable to face cavalry unless drawn up behind hedges or palisades, we get some notion of the desperate odds. They were increased by Alasdair’s own impetuous conduct. He was never the man to await an onset, and while Hurry’s army was struggling through the marshy burn he sacrificed the advantages of his higher and drier ground and rushed to meet them. Eight to one is odds reserved to the champions of fairy tales. “Why, how the devil,” asks Major Bellenden in Old Mortality, “can you believe that Artamines, or what d’ye call him, fought single-handed with a whole battalion? One to three is as great odds as ever fought and won, and I never knew any one who cared to take that, except old Corporal Raddlebanes.” But Alasdair’s deeds were worthy of the Fianna, and it is not hard to understand how in Gaelic legend his fame is made to outshine Montrose’s. He and his Irish conducted themselves like the fierce warriors of the sagas. They were forced back, fighting desperately, into the nest of enclosures in front of the village. Like Ajax by the ships, he himself was the last to retreat. His targe was full of pikes, but he swung his great broadsword round and cut off their heads like cabbage-stalks. He broke his blade, but got another from a dying comrade. Again and again he rushed out to help the stragglers to enter. One of his men, Ranald Mackinnon of Mull, fought swordless against a dozen pikemen, with an arrow through both cheeks and no weapon but his shield. So raged the Thermopylæ among the pig-styes, and every moment Alasdair’s case grew more desperate.
The Battle of Auldearny
Montrose, on the crest of the hill, learned from a galloper what was happening, and decided that the moment had come for that stroke on which the success of his tactics depended. The Gordon horse, in the hollow on his left flank, could see nothing of the fight in the village. They were not seasoned troops, and it was essential that they should go into action in high heart. So Montrose cried to Lord Gordon, their leader: “Macdonald drives all before him. Is his clan to have all the honours this day? Are there to be no laurels for the house of Huntly?” It was the word to fire their spirit. Moreover, they had a grim wrong to avenge. They had not forgotten the death of Donald Farquharson in Aberdeen at Hurry’s hands; and a few days before, young Gordon of Rynie, a mere boy, who had been wounded and left behind in a cottage, had been brutally murdered by two of Hurry’s lieutenants. With the cry on their lips, “Remember Donald Farquharson and James of Rynie!” the chivalry of Strathbogie wheeled to the charge.
It was the first time that Montrose had used shock tactics. Hitherto his horse had been so few that he had been compelled to employ them after the old fashion of the Thirty Years’ War, more like mounted infantry, trusting largely to their pistol fire. But he had not forgotten the new tactics which Rupert had introduced at Edgehill, and which in Cromwell’s hands had given the Ironsides the victory at Marston Moor. Now was the time for the arme blanche — for cold steel and the weight of thundering horses. Montrose had that high gift in war which can adapt its methods not only to its ends but to its material. He could make his cavalry play a defensive part, with musketeers interspersed, when he was too weak to do otherwise; but when the chance came he could use it as cavalry should be used, with all the dash and fury of a Murat; and he could inspire bonnet-lairds on cart-horses with the spirit of the Maison du Roi.
Hurry, happy in his belief that he was driving Montrose to his death in the village, was suddenly assailed by the cry of “Strathbogie!” as the Gordons, skirting Deadman’s Wood, came down on his right flank. His flank guard, Drummond’s horse, having had a difficult time crossing the bog, were in no case to withstand that assault of fresh cavalry with the impetus of the slope in their favour. Moreover, in this crisis Drummond gave the wrong word of command, and wheeled his horse to the left instead of to the right, so that he overrode some of his own infantry, and offered a naked rear to the Gordon assault. Presently his troopers were flying, and many a saddle was empty. Lord Gordon, with half his force, followed in pursuit, and Aboyne, with the rest, attacked the now defenceless flank of Hurry’s regular infantry. At the same time Montrose unleashed his reserves, hitherto concealed behind
the eastern ridge, and the whole line swept down upon the doomed four regiments. Meanwhile, among the pig-styes, Alasdair collected his men for a last effort. He had lost seventeen of his best officers, but the royal standard was safe, and with his bloodstained remnant he charged Hurry’s reeling centre. It was the last straw needed to turn the balance. The Covenant army became a mob, and the mob a shambles. The four regiments died gallantly, but the northern levies on their left rear, and the cavalry in reserve, fled without striking a blow. The blood of Ulster and the Isles that day had recovered its ancient berserk fury, and the Gordons were in no mood to spare their foes. Donald Farquharson and James of Rynie did not go unattended to the shades.
For fourteen miles the pursuit continued. Of the Ulstermen who had held the village many must have fallen, and almost all the rest were wounded, but otherwise the royalists had suffered little. It was very different with the Covenanters. The estimates of their dead vary, but the number cannot have been less than 2,000. Sir Mungo Campbell of Lawers, who fought in the centre against Alasdair, perished with most of his fine regiment. There fell, too, the flower of the Lowland officers with Lothian’s Border regiment — a Murray of Philiphaugh, two Gledstanes of Whitelaw, nine nephews of Douglas of Cavers. It was on the four regular regiments and a portion of the cavalry that the brunt fell. The northern earls, with their dishonoured levies, fled to Inverness, and Seaforth, in the wilds of Kintail, had leisure to reflect on the rewards of the forsworn. Hurry himself, with a remnant of 100 horse, escaped to Baillie. He was no coward, and was one of the last to quit the field.