Sword of State: The Remarkable Story of George Monck

by Richard Woodman

  Overton saw his opportunity in an instant. The ill-disciplined Clansmen could not rest content with throwing the English back, but must climb over the stone wall in pursuit, waving their long swords and hacking at their enemy. But the English infantry were less rattled than their precipitate retreat might suggest; here and there groups of them formed about their officers and sergeants who wielded their spontons to good effect. These clusters gave fire just as Overton’s two squadrons of heavy horse trotted forward and with studied deliberation rode the Highlanders down.

  Monck drew his sword, dropped his face-guard and spurred the black stallion. He followed the cavalry troopers as they passed through the Foot.

  ‘Officers to your posts!’ he bellowed at the disordered infantry. ‘Form line! Form line, reload and advance.’

  The Horse completed their grisly duty and, galled now by the rebel muskets as they came close to the enemy line, wheeled aside on each flank, retiring to reform. Seeing Monck, almost alone and conspicuously mounted among the infantry, Overton rode over to him.

  ‘Sir, please cover yourself, we cannot afford to lose you.’

  Monck ignored him. ‘Bring up the reserve, Bob! See! We have ’em now!’

  Monck pointed his sword to his front and Overton saw the line of advancing infantry scrambling almost unopposed over the dry-stone wall and throwing back what was left of the defenders. On the ground between them lay the mangled bodies of perhaps a hundred Highlanders and English infantry, more lay screaming and writhing, over-come by the pain of their savagely inflicted wounds. A few dazed Clansmen stood among the wreckage of their bold but useless sally.

  ‘Round them up! If any are fit to use as guides send them to Clarke.’

  Overton raised his gauntlet to his steel helmet and spurred his horse. Monck followed and rejoined his infantry as they reformed on the far side of the little village. Behind him flames were already crackling in a byre as the work of destruction was put in hand. Ahead of him the narrow road wound slowly upwards and beyond the scrubby trees the rock and heather-strewn slopes were covered by running men.

  ‘Form line of march! Then forward!’

  In the following three days strong detachments of Monck’s Army, both Horse and Foot, each with its scouts, fanned out from Aberfoyle. On his orders they burnt or destroyed every growing crop, or stored staple; they fired the roof of every bothy and croft they could find; they slashed the throats of livestock, chiefly sheep, carrying off some as fresh mutton and tossing the corpses into the rivers and burns to spoil the fresh-water. They pursued the remnants of Glencairn’s force, killing some and bringing others prisoners to Monck’s encampment at Aberfoyle; here Will Clarke interviewed them. The Horse rode the whole long length of Loch Lomond from Inverarnan to Balloch and burned every boat, even exploding a keg of powder in an attempt to close the narrow Pass of Balmaha. Nothing must be left to encourage the rebels, the wretched country being laid waste with terrible effect, its dismayed population – sparse though it was – terrified into leaving for the cities of Glasgow, Stirling or distant Edinburgh. Monck was utterly ruthless in the prosecution of this strategy, knowing it to be the only means by which he might pacify this wild country.

  ‘The great paradox,’ a horrified Clarke christened it, only half believing in his chief’s confident assertions that it would prove effective. He had witnessed Monck at work two years earlier, but there was a new savagery in his method that made Clarke anxious, if not down-right fearful. He knew Monck disapproved of Cromwell’s cruelty in Ireland, for they had spoken of it in private, and now Clarke considered Monck himself was over-reaching his authority and treading the same path to damnation as had Oliver. But he held his tongue, not least because as this harrowing of the Trossachs came to its frightful end, they received word from Morgan. Middleton was on the move, had moved already, had split up his forces and slipped south and west in small parties, advancing deep into Lochaber whither, no doubt, what was left of Glencairn’s remnant army, along with Glencairn himself, would join him. Here he might attempt to raise Argyle at Inverary and threaten Brayne only a march or two away at Inverlochy.

  Neither Monck nor his staff got any sleep that night. The light burned in the General’s tent and the comings and goings of the orderlies was ceaseless. The cavalry mounts in the horse-lines were infected with restlessness. Only the troops retained in camp not required for duty as sentinels or outlying vedettes got any sleep. Everyone knew Old George was planning something, even if they were ignorant of the details. They had had a hard fight at Aberfoyle, losses had been severe, but they had achieved something, for George had expressed his gratitude and now they were eager for more.

  As he called in his raiding parties, Monck assembled a detachment of Horse and Foot to establish themselves at Buchanan Smithy, near Balmaha on the east bank of Loch Lomond. These men would cover Glasgow and also escort a galloper to call up the Border Horse under Colonel Howard. Trusting Brayne to hold to his instructions, Monck sent Morgan’s messenger back to him under escort with orders of his own. As the daylight of the early mid-summer dawn began to filter through the canvas Monck head the first stirrings of the camp. When Clarke joined him ten minutes later, Monck passed his orders. The Army would march on Perth, directly through Strathallan, laying waste the country as it went.

  Pausing only long enough to bring up supplies and make good any deficiencies in his soldiers’ equipment, the column moved off through Strathtay. Turning west they followed the River Tay to lay-up supplies and establish a post at Weem, close to the head of Loch Tay. Here a strange officer galloper into the encampment with a troop of horse for escort, announcing he had despatches from Lieutenant General Morgan.

  On the evening of 11th June, Monck’s tent was full of his field officers. They had all dined, aware that the General intended a bold move. The toast had been ‘to fortitude’ and William Clarke’s face had told those familiar with Monck’s closest colleague that this was no empty gesture. Their forebodings proved right when Monck rose to address them.

  ‘Gentlemen, tomorrow we strike into the wilderness. You will be aware that we have received intelligence of the enemy movements from General Morgan. The Earl of Middleton is mustering in the forest of Kintail beyond the Great Glen. Besides reforming his dispersed force brought from the far north, he has ordered a gathering of the Clans loyal to his cause at the head of Loch Ness. I propose a concentration of our forces with the intention of squeezing the Scotch between us and General Morgan’s force. I have sent word by General Morgan’s aide that he should work north of Middleton and press him south onto the line of the lochs in the Great Glen. That is where we shall meet him, if the Lord of Hosts is willing.’ Monck judged the mood and temper of his commanders; an invocation of the Lord of Hosts was a commonality in the New Model Army. He resumed his exhortation.

  ‘Time is of the essence and we shall first rendezvous with Major Hill. Our line of march from this place will therefore be north-west to Loch Rannoch and along the northern shore of the lake until we open the valley of the River Ericht whereupon we shall move north until we discover the next lake, Loch Ericht. From here we will send word to Colonel Brayne to advance up the Great Glen.

  ‘Meanwhile our progress will then be north-east, along the lake and through Glen Truim to Ruthven where we shall effect our junction with Major Hill. It will be a hard march and we may encounter opposition from wandering Clansmen. These may sting us, but cannot detain us. We burn every dwelling house and farmstead; we garrison every strong-point, castle and tower, laying up a portion of stores therein. We seize such livestock as we require for ourselves and destroy the rest. There shall be no exceptions. I shall myself see to the placing of our nightly quarters. The Horse and Artillery will have a difficult time of it, but we may rely on forage after the recent rains. We can, of course, expect more rain and we shall likely be watched throughout our progress. The usual precautions will prevail; we do not move without our scouts out ahead, or our flank guards deployed. Should you
have an opportunity to take prisoners among the Clansmen, do so. Interrogate them if you are able to, though most speak only their own tongue. Offer them gold if they will work for us. If not, do not detain them, but disarm them and turn them loose, otherwise they will be an encumbrance.’

  He looked round the assembly; the faces of the colonels and majors were stern. They bore an air of determination. Some of them had marched into the Highlands with Richard Deane and knew what to expect, though Monck’s proposal was vastly more ambitious; some had campaigned in Scotland with Monck before his illness, or with Morgan after it. No-one was under any illusions as to the task ahead of them and they went to their beds sober and thoughtful.

  When they marched out next morning the sun was shining and the world bore a cheering aspect. Morale was high and as the terrain grew more difficult the column, with its cloud of scouts ahead and along their flanks – insofar as this was possible with a loch on one side and broken country on the other – moved with a seemingly unstoppable impetus. Not even a change in the weather seemed to make them waver as they dragged the guns through bog and over stony ground, and the pack-horses threaded their dogged way in the train of the buff and red-clad troops.

  Monck drove them hard, but few exceeded the General in activity. He traversed the line of march daily, dismounting and trudging for a while alongside the infantry. Occasionally he would dispense specifics for their ills, a dose for those complaining of a looseness in their bowels becoming a joke among the troops. Whatever the ridicule it caused, these ministrations headed-off the worst visitations of the bloody flux. Monck even tended the ruined feet of one young soldier whom he left in garrison in a tall stone broch near Dalwhinnie.

  ‘This is made-up from a prescript of my brother-in-law’s,’ he said, rubbing the salve into the poor boy’s bloodily blistered feet, to the marvelling of his handful of staff. ‘You need boots of a better fit. I shall speak to the regimental quartermaster.’

  He jested with the men when the teeming rain chilled them, encouraging them and guaranteeing them their rest and their mess at the end of each day’s traverse. At this time he was to be found with the vanguard of Horse and Dragoons, selecting and marking out the ground – always defensible – for the night’s encampment. And, before he himself slept, he always made the rounds of the vedettes and sentinels in the company of the duty officer, so that some asked if he ever slept, or if he had made a compact with the devil. But among men moved by religion, convinced they undertook the work of God on earth, there were others who saw in his kneeling and easing the blistered feet of a humble soldier, something Christ-like.

  The assiduous Clarke had secured them a guide – a man in Argyle’s service – who knew the way along the lochs towards Glen Truim. In addition to their bread and cheese, the country through which they passed, sodden though it was from the frequent rain and blustered by wind, yet on occasion yielded sufficient game and livestock to provide both broth and roast meat. There were among the men of the New Model Army those who had campaigned in gentle country under men of greater reputation and who had fared far worse.

  ‘Good Old George,’ they said, crouched at their bivouac fires which sizzled from the discarded entrails as they tore at the roasted carcass of a sheep.

  ‘He will not eat until he has seen us at our meat,’ remarked another.

  ‘An’ ‘e won’t let the officers mess until he does, neither,’ said a third.

  But they cursed him as well, particularly when the going was uphill over stony ground; when a man could turn an ankle in a careless instant on the wet rock and the rain ran streaming into his eyes. Men thus injured were a burden on their mates and Monck was always warning them to mind their footing. Then, tormented by mosquitoes until every man’s temper glowed like a slow-match nearing a powder-keg, they damned him and said he should have stayed at sea where the seamen were no better than beasts and were used to being treated like the swine they were.

  ‘Oliver would never have asked this of us,’ an old lag remarked, wet from the sweat of exertion within as he was rain-soaked without.

  ‘No,’ growled an old sergeant stumbling upwards behind him towards Loch Ericht, ‘Oliver would not, but then Oliver would never have dared anything like this.’

  And with that to think on, they trudged onwards for an hour in awed silence.

  But at last they came down into open country, into the plain carved by the now meandering Spey and at the hill of Ruthven they found Hill in his bulwarked encampment. And John Hill had further news from Thomas Morgan who, Monck was informed, was now in hot pursuit of Middleton’s force. Morgan intended to descend on the Great Glen from the north, hoping to nail Middleton at the head of Loch Ness and catch the great conclave of the Highland chiefs and their clans that Middleton had called.

  Monck, with Hill, Overton and Clarke poured ruminatively over the primitive map that Clarke laid before them. Between Ruthven and the shore of Loch Ness lay an emptiness; here there reared the Monadhliath Mountains, a natural barrier between the valley of the Spey – Strathspey, the map called the valley – and the monstrous fissure of the Great Glen. There was a circuitous route round the northern end of the range by way of Tomatin to Inverness, but from there they would still have to march the length of Loch Ness to make contact with the enemy. To the south and west a way lay towards Glen Roy beside Loch Laggan, through Glen Spean to the Braes of Lochaber, but the detour to regain the Great Glen at the southern end of Loch Lochy would take days to cover.

  ‘Middleton will have slipped through our hands and may even overwhelm Morgan in doing so,’ Monck said grimly as they considered their options. Scratching at a face pocked with cleg-bites, Overton expelled his breath in resignation. Despite all their endeavours, time and distance, and the rugged terrain – not to mention the damned midges – had beaten them.

  ‘We have done all we could,’ Overton muttered, speaking for himself and Hill. An air of defeat seemed to settle on the little knot of officers. They had accomplished much and knew the spirit of the Army was high in spite of the insect bites and the long marches. The augmentation of Hill’s force and a good meal had seen to that. Besides it had stooped raining again and, safe in their encampment on the banks of the Spey, there were a few who looked back and remarked on the beauty of the country through which they had come. To be defeated in their purpose now, simply because there was insufficient time to reach the crucial point, seemed a harsh conclusion – or no conclusion at all. Monck knew this intuitively without looking at his senior officers; their very silence attested to it.

  ‘Very well,’ he said, his voice hard, determined, inflexible, his right index finger laid on the map at Ruthven. He had their attention as he moved his finger tip west-north-west, directly over the mountains towards the narrow water-course that differentiated Loch Ness from Loch Lochy.

  ‘But the country is impassable, Excellency,’ said Hill in a low voice.

  ‘Absolutely impassable for the Horse and guns,’ added Overton.

  ‘We shall send all but the two light leather-bound guns to Inverness with most of the Horse by way of Tomatin.’ Monck’s finger, returned to Ruthven, wandered off to the north-east. ‘That done, our main body shall ascend the headwaters of the Spey,’ his index-finger repeated the traverse across the high wilderness, ‘cross the range by way of the Corrieyairack Pass and descend through Glen Tarff. The troopers can lead their horses. It is but thirty miles, less perhaps.’ Monck paused, ignoring Overton, adding: ‘You are new to us, Major Hill, I assure you our men are capable of it. Their example will spur yours to emulation.’

  The gauntlet was thrown and not even Overton could demur. Old George had clearly been considering his strategy for some time. Even Clarke wondered at the man. He had witnessed Monck’s physicking of the soldiers and heard the rumour that the religious zealots were likening Monck’s conduct to that of Christ. Clarke, who had himself been reminded of the parable of the Good Samaritan, could not square such assertions with the same man who order
ed an entire region laid waste, its population made homeless and claimed he did so all in the name of law and order. It was another facet of Clarke’s ‘great paradox’.

  And now this proposed assault, directly over the mountains. Such enterprises, Clarke thought, belonged to the ancients. He thought of Alexander, or Xenophon. To Clarke, Monck verged on foolhardiness – and courted disaster. The Highland Clansmen were masters of the ambush.

  ‘The library at Dalkeith was a place of great instruction,’ Monck explained later, when they were alone.

  ‘You think we can do it, sir?’ Clarke’s tone was anxious, even incredulous.

  ‘I know we can. I should not have ordered it otherwise.’

  ‘Opinion is, er…’ Clarke faltered. Even his close relationship with General Monck could not bridge that awesome divide between the commander and the commanded.

  ‘Against me?’ Monck asked, smiling.

  ‘Divided,’ Clarke temporised.

  ‘Well you, I trust were with me, William,’ Monck mocked, smiling, removing his coat and calling for his servant.

  ‘In truth, sir, I know not what to think,’ Clarke said, gathering up his papers. ‘I would not have anything said against Your Excellency’s good name.’

  ‘Who by? Overton?’

  Clarke looked embarrassed. ‘Perhaps; him and others, perhaps even Lambert in London.’

  Monck blew out his cheeks. ‘Time we forgot about the opinion of others, Will. Overton, Okey, Alured and the other Republicans, Fifth Monarchists and Anabaptists will all boast of their exploit and abandon their objections when London is cheering them. Do you go and get some sleep. Tomorrow we have work to do.’

  *

  Monck sat his black charger and listened to the report of the Cornet-of-Horse. He wore his red-orange sash round his steel cuirass and was helmed, his face-guard raised. Behind him reared the steep slopes of the Monadhliath Mountains over which the Army had struggled successfully. Before him, extending to left and right as far as the eye could see, the low fissure of the Great Glen, the pewter-coloured slash of the lochs fading into the distance. To their front, the far side of the glen, the forbidding terra incognita of the Highlands, fearsome home of the fierce Clans. Impassable they said, to Southron soldiery.