While wandering one day in despondent mood on the hills Montrose saw a man hastening towards him over the heather with the fiery cross, the Highland signal for war, in his hand. He had been sent to warn Perth of a great army of Irishmen that had entered Athole under Alaster Macdonald[14] threatening to burn and ravage the whole country unless it joined them for King Charles. Within a short time arrived, by a series of lucky accidents, a letter from Macdonald himself announcing his arrival to Montrose, whom he supposed to be still at Carlisle. Montrose answered at once, bidding Macdonald to make straight for Blair Athole, and promising to join him there with all speed.
In the prospect of action all doubts and difficulties vanished at once from Montrose's sanguine mind. He saw only that the time had come at last to make good his pledge to the King, and though all the armies of the Covenant were gathering to their prey, made good it should be. In a Highland dress, on foot, with no companion but Inchbrakie, he set off over the hills for the rendezvous with the King's commission in his pocket and the King's standard on his shoulder. He arrived at a critical moment. The men of Athole did not care to see these Irishmen in their country. They looked on Macdonald, though partly of their own race, as an upstart unfit to lead Highland gentlemen to battle. For the Highland chieftains were as jealous as the Lowland peers. No chief would serve under another chief; no clan would follow any but its hereditary lord. A Cameron would take no orders from a Macleod; the Macphersons, who numbered some four hundred in all, held themselves as good men as the Campbells, who could bring five thousand claymores into the field. Nor was the appearance of the Irishmen such as to inspire much respect. There were only about twelve hundred of them, indifferently armed and attended by a rabble of half-starved, half-naked women and children. Montrose found the Highlanders on the point of coming to blows with their unwelcome allies. But his arrival at once changed the spirit of the scene. Macdonald could not at first believe that this travel-stained, meanly-dressed man was the King's Lieutenant-General, the famous Marquis of Montrose; but the shouts of the Highlanders soon assured him. They knew the Marquis well by sight, and his companion, whom they had affectionately dubbed Black Pate, was their particular friend. Scots and Irish united in welcoming their chief. The royal commission was read, and the royal standard unfurled on a small hill below the castle and close to the modern house of Lude.
And now at last there was a royal army in Scotland, and the King's Lieutenant was something more than an empty name. Yet it was not one with which any general but Montrose would have cared to take the field. At the most it cannot have exceeded two thousand three hundred men. The Irish carried rusty matchlocks, with ammunition enough for a round a piece. A few of the Highlanders were armed with the claymore, but bows and arrows, pikes and rude clubs, were the more common weapons. Cavalry there was none, but the three horses on which Montrose and his companions had ridden from Carlisle, mere scarecrows of skin and bone, as Wishart calls them, omnino strigosos et emaciatos. Against this rude array there were no less than three armies in the field, one under Lord Balfour of Burleigh at Aberdeen, another under Elcho at Perth, while Argyll was coming up fast from the West to avenge the flaming homesteads and slaughtered herds that had marked the course of the hated Macdonald through the country of the Campbells. Montrose chose the nearest, and striking south through the hills crossed the Tay on the last day of August. As they marched through Glen Almond they were joined by five hundred men under Lord Kilpont and the Master of Maderty, Montrose's brother-in-law. They had come out at Elcho's summons to defend their lands against the public enemy, not to fight against their kinsman.[15] With these welcome succours Montrose continued his march upon Perth. Early on the morning of Sunday, September 1st, he came in sight of the Covenanters drawn up in order of battle on the plain of Tippermuir between him and the city.
Elcho's army was composed of six thousand foot, seven hundred horse, and a small park of artillery. But the odds were not so great as they looked. Elcho's military reputation did not stand high, and his soldiers were mostly townsmen and peasants ignorant of war and, despite the exhortations of their preachers, with no great stomach for it. Montrose, on the other hand, could trust every man in his little force. They were not indeed trained soldiers, but they had all been bred from their youth to keep their heads with their hands, were utterly fearless, and conscious of two important facts—that there was a powerful enemy in their rear, and a rich prize before them. He formed them in a long line three deep, with orders to the Irish to reserve their single volley till they were close on the enemy, while those who had no guns might use the stones of which there was a plentiful supply on the moor ready to their hands. But it was on the wild rush of the charge, and the stout arms of his men, that he relied. Could they once get home on the Perthshire cits, he had little fear of the result. His own place was on the right wing; Kilpont commanded on the left; Macdonald and his Irishmen were in the centre.
But first, that all things might be done in order, Montrose sent young Maderty, under a flag of truce, to inform Elcho that he was acting under the commission of their King, whose only desire was to persuade his subjects to return to their lawful allegiance and to avoid all bloodshed. Elcho's answer was to send the messenger a prisoner into Perth, with the assurance that he should pay for his insolence with his head so soon as the army of the Lord had done its work.
What followed can hardly be dignified with the name of a battle. The Irishmen fired their volley, the Highlanders hurled their pebbles, and both with a wild yell sprang straight at their foe. The Covenanters, horse and foot, broke and ran like sheep. Only on the right wing was there any resistance, where Sir James Scott, a brave man who had seen service in the Italian wars, held his ground for a time among some enclosures, till Montrose burst in at the head of the Atholemen. Not more than a dozen fell in the actual fight, which lasted but a few minutes; but many hundreds were cut down in the rout. The claymores and Lochaber axes did bloody work among the fugitives, and some of the fat burghers, untouched by either, are said to have dropped dead from sheer exhaustion. Before night fell Montrose was master of Perth, without the loss of a single man, and with but two wounded.
No plundering was allowed. The arms, ammunition, and baggage of the enemy were lawful spoil, and on the dead bodies the victors might work their will; but within the walls strict order was commanded and kept. Some of the prisoners took service under King Charles; the rest were released on parole. A fine was imposed on the town, and for three days Montrose and his men lived at free quarters. It was during these days that he was joined by his two eldest sons and his old tutor William Forrett; the two younger boys, with their mother, were at Kinnaird Castle under the care of her father Southesk.
On September 4th Montrose left Perth for Aberdeen. In point of equipment his force was now vastly superior to that he had led to victory at Tippermuir. His men were all well armed and clothed; ammunition was plentiful, and there was some money in the chest. A few gentlemen joined him on the march. Among them was the gallant old Earl of Airlie, with his two younger sons Sir Thomas and Sir David Ogilvy, who through good and evil fortune remained faithful to the end; and Nathaniel Gordon, one of the bravest and the most constant of his name. These brought a welcome addition to his force in the shape of a small body of cavalry, not indeed exceeding fifty troopers, but all well mounted and well armed. On the other hand there had been some serious defections. As usual, most of the Highlanders had gone off to the mountains to secure their booty. Lord Kilpont's men had withdrawn with the body of their young chief, after his mysterious death at the hands of his kinsman Stewart of Ardvoirlich, which had occurred in camp on the morning after they had left Perth.[16] When Montrose summoned Aberdeen on the morning of September 12th, he had at his back only fifteen hundred foot, fifty horse, and the few field-pieces taken at Tippermuir.
The Covenanters were two thousand strong in foot, with five hundred horse. Two of Huntly's sons were among them. It is idle to search for the causes which placed these scions of a loyal House in the ranks of their sovereign's enemies. One cause was undoubtedly jealousy of Montrose, whose treatment of their father they had not yet forgiven. Moreover, though Huntly's sons, they were also Argyll's nephews, and for the present the uncle had the upper hand of the father. There at all events they were, not only marshalled to fight against the King's troops, but marshalled side by side with their hereditary foes, the Crichtons, Frasers, and other families who welcomed the Covenant as a counterpoise to the overweening power of the Gordons. But though superior in numbers, and not inferior in arms and courage, the Covenanters were totally deficient in discipline, and their nominal leader, Lord Balfour of Burleigh, had neither knowledge nor authority to control them.
The bridge over the Dee had been fortified, and Montrose, remembering his former experiences at this place, led his army up the river to a ford some fifteen miles above the city. Here they crossed, and encamped for the night in the grounds of Crathes Castle, whose owner, though no King's man, thought the King's Lieutenant, with fifteen hundred men at his back, entitled to every courtesy. Next morning Montrose led his men down the north bank of the river within two miles of Aberdeen, where he found the Covenanters ready for battle. He summoned the magistrates to surrender, or at least to send the women and children to a place of safety. His summons was refused, and a drummer-boy, who had accompanied his messenger, was wantonly killed. Furious at this second and more brutal disregard of the laws of civilised warfare, Montrose promised Macdonald the sack of the rebellious town, and bade the battle begin.