The massacre of Drogheda did not suffice to arrest the bloodshed. Wexford defended itself in the same manner and suffered the same fate. In the parts in which success was more easy, it was yet sullied by great cruelties. Meanwhile the strictest discipline reigned in the army; the country districts were quiet, and the soldiers were careful to pay for everything they took. Cromwell had secretly recommenced his intrigues, at times causing the projects of his enemies to miscarry through their own dissensions, by means of the skillful agents whom he introduced among them. This man, who boasted of having slain all the friars of Drogheda, made useful service of the ecclesiastics as secret emissaries. His seductive efforts reached even the Marquis of Ormond, for whom he manifested great esteem, often saying, "What has Lord Ormond to do with Charles Stuart, and what favors has he received from him?" At the same time, and by an act of shrewd foresight, he authorized recruiting in Ireland for the service of foreign powers. In a few months this little Catholic kingdom, which had with great difficulty furnished an army of eight to ten thousand men for the service of the king, sent to France and Spain more than fifty thousand soldiers, fierce enemies of Protestantism and Parliament. The republican chiefs, in London, began to find that the absence of Cromwell and his new glory dangerously enhanced his greatness; they urged him to return to London, placing a part of Whitehall and of St. James's Palace at his disposal. Cromwell was profuse in his acknowledgments, but he delayed returning to England as he had delayed leaving it. Fresh events were preparing which were about to furnish him with an opportunity for displaying both his skill and genius.
Charles II. had left Ormond to fight for him in Ireland. At the first news of his defeat before Dublin, he had for a moment desired to throw himself in the midst of the struggle. It was represented to him that the moment was ill-chosen; that it was not well to go there to take part in a defeat. "Then I must go there to die," he nobly replied, "for it is shameful for me to live elsewhere." Recovering from this courageous impulse, he lived elsewhere, leaving his friends to die in Ireland. The same fate was soon to overtake in Scotland the most brilliant and devoted of his adherents.
The Parliament of Scotland had invited Charles to resume the negotiations previously entered upon at the Hague. The conditions of the Presbyterians were as harsh as ever, but Ireland was almost lost. Ormond no longer had any hope save in the diversion of a war between England and Scotland. The friends of the king urged him to lend ear to the proposals of the Scots; fresh conferences were held at Breda. While Montrose, still independent and ardently opposed to the Presbyterians, was seeking soldiers and money in Germany, Charles II. wrote on the 19th of September, 1649: "I entreat you to go on vigorously with your wonted courage and care, in the prosecution of those trusts committed to you, and not be startled with any reports you may hear, as if I were otherwise inclined to the Presbyterians than when I left you. I assure you, I am upon the same principles I was and depend as much as ever upon your undertakings and endeavors for my service."
Montrose was, in effect, preparing an important enterprise. He had recruited, with great pains, a certain number of soldiers; but his first division perished at sea; the second landed in the Orkney Islands, awaiting their general. It was there, at the beginning of March, 1650, that Montrose landed in his turn, accompanied only by a few Scottish noblemen and five hundred soldiers. He rallied the troops who had preceded him, and full of confidence in the promises which he had received and the popular risings upon which he counted, he disembarked at the northernmost extremity of Scotland, displaying with the royal banner a standard bearing an image of the decapitated head of Charles I., with these words: "Judge, and revenge my cause, O Lord."
Montrose advanced across the counties of Caithness and Sutherland; but the reinforcements which he expected did not arrive, the chiefs whose support he hoped for placed themselves, on the contrary, on the side of Parliament. An army corps sent by the government of Edinburgh, under the orders of Colonel Strachan, marched against him. Ill-guarded and destitute of information regarding the movements of the enemy, Montrose was attacked unawares on the 16th of April, near Corbiesdale, in the county of Ross. The soldiers whom he had brought from Germany fought valiantly; but the recruits from the Orkney Islands disbanded. At the moment when Montrose was vainly endeavoring to rally them, his horse was killed under him. His friend Lord Frendraught gave him his own. The rout was complete. The marquis threw away his uniform and decorations; he donned the clothing of a peasant and plunged into the country, seeking everywhere a shelter. He wandered about in this manner for a fortnight among the mountains, now well received by his partisans, now repulsed with terror. At length he was delivered up to his enemies on the 3rd of May, by Neil Macleod, formerly one of his friends, for four hundred bolls of meal. On the 17th of May, after moving from halting-place to halting-place, he was transferred to Leith, near Edinburgh. The last act of the tragedy was at hand.
On the same day, the Parliament, assembled in Edinburgh, voted that "James Graham, bareheaded and bound by a rope to a cart, should be brought by the executioner to the bar, there to receive his sentence, and that he should be carried to Edinburgh, and there be hanged on a gibbet; then to be taken down, his quarters to be nailed to the different gates of the city." The hatred of the enemies of Montrose took pleasure in such a sight, and persons who were indifferent were more terrified than revolted.
The noble partisan, the bold and brilliant captain, pale and wearied by the severities of his captivity, was accordingly conducted upon a sorry horse from Leith to Edinburgh. Being received by the magistrates and the executioner, preceded by thirty-two of his officers bound together two by two, Montrose entered the city in a cart. The vast crowd was hostile, and had come with the object of insulting the prisoner. His courage and gravity imposed silence upon their ill-will. As the procession passed before the house of the Earl of Moray, the cart stopped for a moment, and behind a half-opened window the Marquis of Argyle was seen feasting his eyes upon the humiliation of his enemy.
On arriving at the prison, Montrose was asked whether he had anything to say before receiving his sentence. He refused to reply; he did not know whether the king had concluded any arrangement with Parliament. The treaty was signed, and Charles II. was upon the point of proceeding to Scotland. This was made known to Montrose, who appeared somewhat moved, while persisting in his silence, notwithstanding the solicitations of the commissioners. Two days afterwards, at the bar of Parliament, where he appeared magnificently attired, defending himself from the cruelties which had been imputed to him during the war, he heard his sentence kneeling. "I kneel to render honor to the king my master, in whose name you sit," he said, "and not to Parliament." The execution was fixed for the morrow.
The soldiers and citizens were under arms; some attempt in favor of the condemned man was feared. "What!" said Montrose, "do these good people, who were so greatly in fear of me when I was alive, still fear me when I am about to die? Let them beware! When I am dead I shall haunt their consciences, and be far more formidable than when alive." He refused the services of the Presbyterian ministers, and spent the entire night alone in prayer save when he was composing verses of a beautiful and noble kind notwithstanding their subtlety. "I wish," he said, "I had limbs enough to be dispersed into all the cities of Christendom, there to remain as testimonies in favor of the cause for which I suffer." Proud and calm, he thus marched to the scaffold; the executioner wept on placing the rope round his neck. A sorrowful murmur arose among the crowd. Argyle himself was agitated and sad, as though smitten with some regret or with a presentiment of his own fate.