Leaving Oxford, with a slender retinue of Scots, among whom were Aboyne and Ogilvy, Montrose went to York, and thence to Durham, where he attached himself to the Marquis of Newcastle, then engaged in resisting the advance of Leven's army. From that nobleman he implored, in the King's name, some troops for his convoy into Scotland. Newcastle, himself ill-supplied, could spare him but 200 horse, with two brass field-pieces. There was an accession from the Cumberland and Northumberland militia, so that the band with which Montrose entered Scotland (April 13, 1644) was about 1,000 strong. Hardly, however, had he entered Scotland when most of the English mutinied and went back. With what force he had left he pushed on to Dumfries, surprised that town into surrender, and displayed his standard in it with a flourish of trumpets. But nothing more could be done. Of Antrim's Irish contingent, which was to have been in the West Highlands by the 1st of April, there were no tidings; and Scotland all to the north of Dumfries was full of Covenanters now alarmed and alert. To try to dash through these at all hazards, so as to lodge himself in the Highlands, was his thought for a moment; but he had to give up the attempt as impossible. From Dumfries, therefore, he backed again, most reluctantly, into the North of England, pursued by the execration of all Presbyterian Scotland, and by a sentence of excommunication pronounced against him in the High Church of Edinburgh. [Footnote: Wishart, 52-55, Napier, 385-397, Rushworth, V. 927-9.]
"Montrose's foolish bravado is turned to nothing," Baillie was able to write early in May 1644. This was the general impression. True, in recognition of his bravery, a patent for his elevation to the Marquisate had been made out at Oxford. It was fitting that, if ever he did come to represent the King in Scotland, it should be a Marquis of Montrose that should contend with the Marquis of Argyle. But would there ever be such a contest? Few can have entertained the belief besides Montrose himself. For some weeks after his retreat into England we hear of him as mingling actively in the war in Northumberland and Durham, taking and pillaging Morpeth, and the like; then we hear of him hurrying southwards to join Prince Rupert in his effort to raise the siege of York, but only to meet the Prince beaten and fugitive from the field of Marston Moor (July 2). "Give me a thousand of your horse; only give me a thousand of your horse for another raid into Scotland," was the burthen of his talk with Rupert. The Prince promised, and then retracted. Though a younger man than Montrose, he had more faith in what he could himself do with a thousand horse in England than in what any Scot could do with them in Scotland. And so, though Lord Digby, Endymion Porter, and some others still spoke manfully for Montrose with the King, he is found back in Carlisle, late in July, with only his little band of Scottish adherents. Then ensued the strangest freak of all. With this very band he set out again distinctly southwards, as if all thought of entering Scotland were over, and nothing remained but to rejoin the King at Oxford. The band, however, had been but two days on their march when they found that their leader had given them the slip, and left the duty of taking them to Oxford to his second, Lord Ogilvy. He himself had returned to Carlisle. It was barely known that he had done so when he mysteriously disappeared (Aug. 18). No one, except Lord Aboyne, whom he had left in Carlisle with certain secret instructions, could tell what had become of him; but it was afterwards remembered, like the beginning of a novel, that on such an autumn day three persons had been seen riding from Carlisle towards the Scottish border, two gentlemen in front, one of whom had a club foot, and the third behind, as their groom, mounted on a sorry nag, and leading a spare horse. The two gentlemen were a Colonel Sibbald and a lame Major Rollo, intimate friends of Montrose, and the supposed groom was Montrose himself. [Footnote: Wishart, 56-64; Napier 396-413; Rushworth, V. 928]
There was a distinct cause for Montrose's entry into Scotland in this furtive manner. The Scottish Parliament (a regular Parliament, and not an informal Convention of Estates like that of the previous year) had met on the 4th of June, with Argyle, Loudoun, and twenty other Peers, more than forty lesser Barons, and about the same number of Commissioners from Burghs, present at the opening. On the 12th of July, when they were approaching the end of their business, there had been this occurrence: "Five several letters read in the House from divers persons of credit, showing of the arrival of fifteen ships, with 3,000 rebels in them, from Ireland, in the West Isles, with the Earl of Antrim's brother, and the sons of Coll Kittoch, and desiring the States with all expedition to send the Marquis of Argyle there by land, with some ships likewise by sea, and powder and ammunition." On subsequent days there were corrections of this intelligence, bringing it nearer to the exact fact. That fact was that Antrim's invasion of Scotland, arranged by him with the King and Montrose at Oxford six months before, had at last come to pass, not indeed in the shape of that full Irish army with Antrim himself in command which had been promised, but in the shape of a miscellany of about 2,000 Irish and Scoto-Irish who had landed at Ardnamurchan in the north of Argyleshire under the command of a redoubtable vassal of Antrim's, called (and here, for Miltonic reasons, the name must be given in full) Alastair Mac Cholla-Chiotach, Mhic-Ghiollesbuig, Mhic-Alastair, Mhic-Eoin Chathanaich, i.e. Alexander, son of Coll the Left-Handed, son of Gillespie, son of Alexander, son of John Cathanach. This long-named Celt was already pretty well known in Scotland by one or other of the abbreviations of his name, such as Mac-Coll Mac-Gillespie, or Alaster Mac-Colkittoch, or Alexander Macdonald the younger of Colonsay. His father, Alexander Macdonald the elder, was a chief of the Scottish Island of Colonsay, off the Argyleshire coast, but nearly related by blood to the Earl of Antrim, professing himself therefore of the same race, kin, and religion as the Irish Macdonnells, and sharing their ancient grudge against the whole race of the Campbells. He had the personal peculiarity of being ambidexter, or able to wield his claymore with his left hand as well as with his right; and hence his Gaelic name of Coll Kittoch, or Coll the Left-Handed. The peculiarity having been transmitted to his son Alaster, it was not uncommon to distinguish the two as old Colkittoch and young Colkittoch. The old gentleman had for some time been in durance in Edinburgh; but his sons had remained at large, and Alaster had been recently figuring in Antrim's train in Ulster, and acting for Antrim among the Irish rebels, with great repute for his bravery, and his huge stature and strength. Not inclined at the last moment for the command of the Scottish expedition himself, Antrim had done his best by sending this gigantic kinsman as his substitute. It was certainly but a small force, and most raggedly equipped, that he led; but, thrown as it was into the territories of King Campbell, and with a hundred miles of Highland glens before it, all rife and explosive with hatred to the name of Campbell, it might work havoc enough. So the Parliament in Edinburgh thought. On the 16th of July, or four days after the first rumour of the invasion, the Marquis of Argyle received a full commission of military command against the invaders, and left Edinburgh for the region of danger. [Footnote: Balfour's Annals, III. 215 et seq.; Napier, 416-7 and 504; Wishart, 67; Baillie, II. 217; Rushworth, V. 928. There is a curious, but confused, story of the wrongs which old Colkittoch and his family had received at the hands of Argyle in Walker's Hist. of Independency (1660), Appendix to Part I. pp. 3-6.]
This was what had caused Montrose's inexplicable restlessness about Carlisle through the latter part of July, and at length, on the 18th of August, his desperate plunge into Scotland in disguise, and with only two companions. By what route the three adventurers rode one does not know; but on the 22nd of August they turned up at the house of Tullibelton in Perthshire, near Dunkeld. It was the seat of Patrick Graham of Inchbrakie, a kinsman of Montrose. Received here by Inchbrakie himself, and by his eldest son, Patrick Graham the younger, locally known as "Black Pate," Montrose lay close for a few days, anxiously collecting news. As respected Scottish Royalism, the reports were gloomy. The Argyle power everywhere was vigilant and strong; no great house, Lowland or Highland, was in a mood to be roused. Only among the neighbouring Highlanders of Athole, or North Perthshire, known to Montrose from his childhood and knowing him well, could he hope to raise the semblance of a force. All this was discouraging, and made Montrose more eager for intelligence as to the whereabouts of Colkittoch and his Irish. He had not long to wait. Since their landing at Ardnamurchan (July 8) they had been making the most of their time in a wild way, roving hither and thither, ravaging and destroying, taking this or that stronghold, sending out the fiery cross and messages of defiance to Covenanting Committees. They had come inland at length as far as Badenoch, the wildest part of Inverness-shire, immediately north of Athole and the Grampians; and there were reasons now why they should be inquiring as anxiously after Montrose as he was inquiring after them. For their condition was becoming desperate. The great clan of the Seaforth Mackenzies, north of Argyleshire, from whom they had expected assistance, had failed to give any; other clans refused to be led by a mere Macdonald of Colonsay; the fleet of vessels in which they had landed had been seized and burnt by Argyle; that nobleman was following them; and orders were out for a general arming for the Covenant north of the Grampians. Accordingly, Colkittoch, imagining that Montrose was still in Carlisle, had written to him there. The rude postal habits of those parts being such that the letters came into the hands of Black Pate, Montrose received them sooner than the writer could have hoped. His reply, dated from Carlisle by way of precaution, was an order to Macdonald to descend at once into Athole and make his rendezvous, if possible, at Castle Blair. [Footnote: Napier, 413-419; Wishart, 64-68; Rushworth, V. 928-9. I have had the satisfaction of rectifying a portion of the tale of Montrose's romantic adventure into Scotland as it is told by his biographers. Wishart distinctly makes him first hear of the landing of Colkittoch and his Irish after he had come into Scotland and was hiding about Tullibelton; and Mr. Napier's narrative conveys the same impression. But the idea is absurd. As the landing of Colkittoch and his Irish at Ardnamurchan on the 8th of July was known in Edinburgh, and discussed in the Parliament there, on the 12th of the same month, it must have been well known about Tullibelton at that time too, or six weeks before Montrose appeared there; and the news must have reached Montrose about July 13 or 14, when he was yet in the North of England, and must have been, in fact, the cause of his resolution to make his way into the Highlands. It is possible, of course, that, after Montrose came to Tullibelton, he may have been uncertain for a time of Colkittoch's exact whereabouts; and there is a seemingly authentic anecdote to the effect that Montrose himself related that he first learnt that Colkittoch had broken into Athole by meeting in the wood of Methven a man running with a fiery cross to carry the dreadful news to Perth. A misconstruction of this anecdote, with inattention to dates, has led to the larger, and intrinsically absurd, hypothesis.]
A walk of twenty miles over the hills brought Montrose and Black Pate to the rendezvous. They found there a mixed crowd, comprising, on the one hand, the Irish, with a few Badenoch Highlanders, whom Colkittoch had brought with him, and on the other, the native Athole Highlanders, looking askance at the intruders, and, though willing enough to rise for King Charles, having no respect for an outlandish Macdonald from Colonsay. The appearance of Montrose put an end to the discord. He had put on the Highland dress, and looked "a very pretty man," fair-haired, with a slightly aquiline nose, grey eyes, a brow of unusual breadth, and an air of courage and command; but the Irish, noting his rather small stature, could hardly believe that he was the great Marquis. The wild joy of the Athole-men and the Badenoch-men on recognising him removed their doubts; and, amid shouts from both sides, Montrose assumed his place as Lieutenant-general for his Majesty, adopting the tall Macdonald as his Major-general. The standard was raised with all ceremony on a spot near Castle Blair, now marked by a cairn; and, when all was ready, the troops were reviewed. They consisted of about 1,200 Irish, with a following of women and children, and 1,100 Scottish Highlanders (Stuarts, Robertsons, Gordons, &c.). Artillery there was none; three old hacks, one of them for the lame Major Rollo, were the cavalry; money there was none; arms and ammunition were, for the most part, to seek, even clothing was miserably deficient. So began Montrose's little epic of 1644-5. He was then thirty- two years of age. [Footnote: Rushworth, V. 928-9; Napier, 419-422.]
It was the track of Mars turned into a meteor. Marches and battles, battles and marches: this phrase is the summary of the story. Flash the phrase through the Highlands, flash it through the Lowlands, for a whole year, and you have an epitome of this epic of Montrose and his triumph. Our account of the details shall be as rapid as possible.
Breaking forth southwards from Athole, to avoid Argyle's advance from the west, Montrose crossed the Tay, and made for Perth. Having been joined by his kinsman, Lord Kilpont, eldest son of the Earl of Menteith, Sir John Drummond, son of the Earl of Perth, and David Drummond of Maderty, he gave battle, at Tippermuir, near Perth, on Sunday, Sept. 1, 1644, to a Covenanting force of some 6,000 men, gathered from the shires of Perth and Fife, and under the command of Lord Elcho, the Earl of Tullibardine, Lord Drummond and Sir John Scot. The rout of the Covenanters, horse and foot, was complete. They were chased six miles from the field, and about 2,000 were slain. Perth then lying open for the victors, Montrose entered that town, and lie remained there three days, issuing proclamations, exacting fines and supplies, and joined by two of his sons, the elder of whom, Lord Graham, a boy of fourteen, accompanied him from that time. But movement was Montrose's policy. Recrossing the Tay, and passing north- eastwards, he came in sight of Dundee; but, finding that town too well defended, he pushed on, still north-east, joined on the way by the Earl of Airlie, and his two younger sons, Sir Thomas and Sir David Ogilvy, and came down upon Aberdeen. That city, too familiar with him in the days of his Covenanting zeal, was now to experience the tender mercies of his Royalism. Defeating (Sept. 12) a Covenanting force of Forbeses, Erasers, and others, who opposed him at the Bridge of Dee under Lord Burleigh and Lord Lewis Gordon (third son of the Marquis of Huntley, and for the time on this side), he let his Irish and Highlanders loose for four days on the doomed Aberdonians. Then, as Argyle was approaching with a considerable army, and no reinforcement was forthcoming from Aberdeenshire and Banffshire, he withdrew west, into the country of the upper Spey. Thence again, on finding himself hopelessly confronted by a muster of Covenanters from the northern shires of Moray, Ross, Sutherland, and Caithness, he plunged, for safety, into the wilder Highlands of Badenoch, and so back into Athole (Oct. 4). Not, however, to remain there! Again he burst out on Angus and Aberdeenshire, which Argyle had meanwhile been traversing on behalf of the Covenant. For a week or two, having meanwhile despatched his Major-general, Macdonald, into the West Highlands to fetch what recruits he could from the clans there, he made it his strategy, with the small force he had left, to worry and fatigue Argyle and his fellow-commander the Earl of Lothian, avoiding close quarters with their bigger force, and their cannon and horse. Once at Eyvie Castle, which he had taken October 14, they did surprise him; but, with his 1,500 foot and 50 horse, he made a gallant stand, so that they, with their 2,500 foot and 1,500 horse, had no advantage. As much of this time as he could give was spent by him in the Marquis of Huntley's own domain of Strathbogie, still in hopes of rousing the Gordons. At length, winter coming on, and the distracted Gordons refusing to be roused, and Argyle's policy of private dealings with Montrose's supporters individually having begun to tell, so that even Colonel Sibbald had deserted him, and few people of consequence remained to face the winter with him except the faithful Ogilvies, Montrose, after a council of war held in Strathbogie, retired from that district (Nov. 6), again by Speyside, into savage Badenoch. But here, ere he could take any rest, important news reached him. Argyle had certainly sent his horse into winter-quarters; but he had gone with all his foot to Dunkeld, whence the more easily to ply his craft of seduction among Montrose's trustiest adherents, the men of Athole. No sooner had Montrose heard this than, clambering the Grampian barrier between Badenoch and Athole, he brought his followers, by one tremendous night-march of twenty-four miles, over rocks and snow, down into the region in peril. He was yet sixteen miles off, when Argyle, bidding his men shift for themselves, fled from Dunkeld, and took refuge with the Covenanting garrison of Perth, on his way to Edinburgh. [Footnote: Wishart, 71-105; Napier, 426- 469; Rushworth, V. 929-931.]
Argyle's soldiering, it had been ascertained, was not the best part of him. He knew this himself, and, on his return to Edinburgh in the end of November, insisted on resigning his military commission. It was difficult to find another commander-in-chief; but at length it was agreed that the fit man was William Baillie, the Lieutenant-general, under Leven, of the auxiliary Scottish army in England. He had recently been in Edinburgh on private business, and was on his way back to England when he was recalled by express. Not without some misgivings, arising from his fear that Argyle would still have the supreme military direction, he accepted the commission. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 262: also at 416 et seq., where there is an interesting letter of General Baillie to his namesake and kinsman.] Then Argyle went off to his own castle of Inverary, there to spend the rest of the winter.
It was time that Argyle should be at Inverary. Montrose, left in assured possession of his favourite Athole, had been rejoined by his Major- general, Mac-Colkittoch, bringing reinforcements from the Highland clans. There was the chief of Clanranald with 500 of his men; there were Macdonalds from Glengarry, Glencoe, and Lochaber; there were Stuarts of Appin, Farquharsons of Braemar, Camerons from Lochiel, Macleans, Macphersons, Macgregors. What was winter, snow more or less upon the mountains, ice more or less upon the lakes, to those hardy Highlanders? Winter was their idlest time; they were ready for any enterprise: only what was it to be? On this point Montrose held a council of war. "Let us winter in the country of King Campbell," was what the Macdonalds and other clans muttered among themselves; and Montrose, who would have preferred a descent into the Lowlands, listened and pondered. "But how shall we get there, gentlemen? It is a far cry to Lochawe, as you know; how shall we find the passes, and where shall we find food as we go?" Then up spoke Angus MacCailen Duibh, a warrior from dark Glencoe. "I know," he said, "every farm in the land of MacCallummore; and, if tight houses, fat cattle, and clean water will suffice, you need never want." And so it was resolved, and done. From Athole, south-west, over hills and through glens, the Highland host moves, finding its way somehow—first through the braes of the hostile Menzieses, burning and ravaging; then to Loch Tay (Dec. 11); and so through the lands of the Breadalbane Campbells, and the Glenorchy Campbells, still burning and ravaging, till they break into the fastnesses of the Campbell in chief, range over Lorne, and assault Inverary. Argyle, amazed by the thunder of their coming, had escaped in a fishing-boat and made his way to his other seat of Roseneath on the Clyde; but Inverary and all Argyleshire round it lay at Montrose's mercy. And, from the middle of December 1644 to about the 18th of the January following, his motley Highland and Irish host ranged through the doomed domain in three brigades, dancing diabolic reels in their glee, and wreaking the most horrible vengeance. No one knows what they did. One sees Inverary in flames, the smoke of burning huts and villages for miles and miles, butcheries of the native men wherever they are found, drivings-in of cattle, and scattered pilgrimages of wailing women and children, with relics of the men amongst them, fugitive and starving in side glens and corries, where even now the tourist shudders at the wildness. [Footnote: Rushworth, V. 930, 931; Baillie, II. 262; Wishart, 106-108; Napier, 470-473.]
The Scottish Parliament had reassembled for another Session on the 7th of January, without Argyle in it, but in constant communication with him; and about the same time General Baillie and a Committee of the Estates had gone to consult with Argyle at Roseneath. About the middle of the month they became aware that Montrose was on the move northward, out of Arglyeshire by Lorne and Lochaber in the direction of the great Albyn chain of lakes, now the track of the Caledonian Canal. They knew, moreover, that directly ahead of him in this direction there was a strong Covenanting power, under the Earl of Seaforth, and consisting of the garrison of Inverness and recruits from Moray, Ross, Sutherland and Caithness. Evidently it was Montrose's intention to meet this power and dispose of it, so as to have the country north of the Grampians wholly his own. In these circumstances the arrangements of Baillie and Argyle seemed to be the best possible. Baillie, instead of going on to Argyleshire, as he had intended, went to Perth, to hold that central part of Scotland with a sufficient force; and Argyle, with 1,100 seasoned infantry, lent him by Baillie, and with what gathering of his own broken men he could raise in addition, went after Montrose, to follow him along the chain of lakes. Of this army Argyle was to be nominally commander; but he had wisely brought over from Ireland his kinsman Sir Duncan Campbell of Auchinbreck, a brave and experienced soldier, to command under him. The expectation was that between Seaforth, coming in strength from the north end of the trough of lakes, and Argyle, advancing cautiously from the south end, Montrose would be caught and crushed, or that, if he did break eastward out of the trough between them, he would fall into the meshes of Baillie from his centre at Perth. [Footnote: Balfour's Annals, III. 246 et seq.; Wishart, 109, 110; Napier, 475-477; and General Baillie's letter to his cousin Robert Baillie, in Baillie's Letters, II. 417t.]