But it was not in Montrose's nature to turn from his enemies without striking a blow. Dundee was but a day's march, as he had taught his men to march, from Dunkeld; it was a noted stronghold of rebellion, on which punishment would not be wasted. Leaving Dunkeld at daybreak on April 3rd, the next morning saw him before Dundee. The town would not surrender, and could make little resistance. It was carried by storm, and Highlanders and Irishmen were soon busy at their favourite work. In the midst of the tumult came the news that Baillie and Hurry, who were believed to be far on the other side of the Tay, were outside the walls. To fight them was impossible with a few hundred men wild with drink and plunder; to secure a safe retreat in such conditions seemed equally hopeless. No other man would probably have thought it worth his while to attempt what Montrose now successfully performed. He stopped the plundering, sent off his foot in such order as he could command, and with his cavalry and a few picked musketeers prepared to cover their retreat. As he marched out of the eastern gate in the gathering dusk, the enemy entered by the western. Baillie at once ordered his dragoons to charge, but they were driven back with some empty saddles. Seeing Montrose heading for the eastern coast, the wary Covenanter stayed the pursuit, and struck north to bar the way into the hills. Montrose had divined the move. At Arbroath he turned abruptly in his tracks, and slipping back past the unconscious Covenanters in the night, headed straight for the Grampians. The sun had risen before Baillie discovered his mistake. But Montrose was not yet safe. He had reached Careston Castle on the Esk; his men, worn out with the day's plundering and the night's marching, had flung themselves on the ground and were sleeping soundly when the enemy's cavalry came in sight. Only a few of the sleepers could be aroused, but they were enough. The dragoons remembered their reception on the previous evening, and drew off. Before the foot could come up Montrose had his men safe among the hills. Of all his extraordinary exploits none so impressed the great soldiers of Europe with his consummate generalship as the retreat from Dundee. "I have often," wrote Wishart, "heard those who were esteemed the most experienced officers, not in Britain only but in France and Germany, prefer this march of Montrose to his most celebrated victories."
But generalship without men will not win battles. The weary work of recruiting began again. Macdonald had already been sent to his old ground in the Western Highlands. Lord Gordon was now sent into his own country, whither his weathercock of a brother had just retired in a huff. On the other hand, Aboyne had made his way out of Carlisle and rejoined his chief. A Gordon was always welcome, nor had his young aide-de-camp yet shown Montrose any trace of those capricious humours which were destined to eventually wreck the King's cause and his own. Meanwhile the enemy had divided. Hurry had gone northward to take order with the Gordons, while Baillie was watching the Highlands from Perth. Macdonald had now returned with a fresh levy of his kinsmen. If Montrose could slip between the two armies and join hands with Lord Gordon, he might fight either at leisure. This was done. At Skene, on the upper Dee, he met Lord Gordon stronger than before in both foot and horse. Aboyne made a successful raid on Aberdeen, and returned with some much-needed powder and ball. By the end of April the King's Lieutenant was once more ready for battle. The Gordons were now his very good friends; he decided, therefore, for their sake to attack the northern army first.
Hurry, for all his inconstancy, was neither a timid nor an unskilful soldier, and as he far outnumbered the Royalists, he had no wish to avoid a battle; but he intended to fight on his own ground. He led Montrose on by cautiously retreating, till he had drawn him into the heart of a country where not a man called him friend, and then turned on him. On the evening of May 8th Montrose was encamped at the little village of Auldearn, midway between Inverness and Elgin. Here Hurry hoped to surprise him by a night march; but when within a few miles of the village some of his men discharged their muskets to clear them of the damp powder, and through the driving wind and rain the Royalist sentinels caught the sound. Montrose had little time to make his arrangements, but one glance at the ground in the gray morning light taught him all he needed to know.
The village of Auldearn stretched north and south along a ridge, and below the western front of the ridge the ground sloped down to a marsh. On the upper part of this slope, at its northern end, among the walled gardens and enclosures of the villagers, Montrose placed the Irishmen with the royal standard, to give them the appearance of the main body. The rest of his foot and all the cavalry he kept out of sight behind the southern end of the ridge. For his centre he had merely a few men placed in front of the cottages as though they were the pickets of a larger force. If Hurry fell into the trap, and Macdonald obeyed orders, Montrose could hurl the whole of his left wing on the right flank of the Covenanters when engaged with the Irish, where the ground was open and firm for cavalry. Hurry did fall into the trap, but Macdonald's rashness nearly caused disaster. Instead of keeping within his lines, he advanced down the hill to meet the full brunt of the main attack. The Irish fought bravely, and Alaster himself performed prodigies of valour. But they were outnumbered, driven back, and surrounded. It was whispered to Montrose that his right wing was broken. Any sign of uneasiness might be fatal. The knowledge that his trained troops were routed might damp the ardour of the others. He turned gaily to Gordon. "Why are we lingering here, my dear lord," he said aloud, "when our friend Macdonald is driving the enemy before him on the right? Shall all the glory of the day be his?" He then gave the word to advance. The chivalry of the Gordons sprang forward with their young chief at their head. They charged not in the old fashion under cover of pistol-fire, but as Cromwell's Ironsides had charged on Marston Moor. Sword in hand they rode straight at Hurry's flank, while Montrose and Aboyne brought up the rest of the infantry. The Covenanting dragoons could not stand the shock, and their flight threw the right wing into disorder. Montrose and Aboyne pressed on, while Macdonald rallied his Irishmen and led them down again on the centre. The day was won. Hurry escaped with the remnant of his horse to Inverness; most of the foot perished on the field. No quarter was given, and the pursuit followed fast and far. A few days before the battle a young Gordon, who had been carried wounded from a skirmish to a friend's house, had been murdered in his bed by a party of Covenanters, and this brutal deed had sharpened his kinsmen's swords. Between two and three thousand of the enemy are said to have fallen on the field or in the flight. All their baggage, ammunition, and money remained in the hands of the victors.
In the field the Covenanters seemed powerless to make head against Montrose, but they could strike a blow at him nearer home. The aged Napier, now past his seventieth year—"old and not fit for fighting," as he pathetically pleaded to the Committee—was heavily fined and flung into prison. His son, the young Master, had made his escape in time, and had fought gallantly by his uncle's side at Auldearn; but his two daughters, Lilias and Margaret, Lady Stirling of Keir, shared their father's fate. Among their fellow-captives, but not companions for no intercourse was permitted them, were Keir himself and young Lord Graham with his tutor. Their imprisonment was close, but their condition was easy compared with that of Crawford, Ogilvy, and the other Royalists, who suffered the treatment of the lowest criminals in the Tolbooth. To this time, too, belongs the only trace of Montrose's wife that history vouchsafes between the records of her marriage and her death, in a warrant of the Committee of Estates entrusting her with the care of her third son Robert. From this it would appear that she had either contrived to make her peace with her husband's enemies, or that her sympathies were known to be with her own family. Southesk and his son Carnegie had always been staunch, though passive, adherents to the Covenant.
But it was no time to brood on private wrongs, or to redress them. Hurry with the fragments of his scattered army had rejoined Baillie, and a fresh force under Lindsay was advancing from the Lowlands. Montrose had been obliged to pay the usual price of his victories, and had again retreated to the hills till the gaps in his ranks could be refilled. But in one respect he was stronger than he had yet been since he first raised the King's banner in Scotland. A warm friendship had sprung up between him and the heir of the Gordons, which, on the younger man's part, showed itself in a chivalrous and unquestioning devotion. Nothing could now separate him from his general's side; his father's commands were disregarded; fresh levies were raised, and the waverers recalled to their duty. Still, without the Highlanders, and with only half the Irishmen, Montrose could not have shown fight had not the Covenanters been divided against themselves. Baillie was not his own master. His movements were not only dictated from Edinburgh, but were still further hampered by a committee appointed to assist him in the field. This committee included such experienced commanders as Argyll, Balfour of Burleigh, and Elcho, and was unlikely therefore to inspire much confidence in any man who had heard of Inverlochy, Aberdeen, and Tippermuir. "Armies," it has been pertinently observed by the historian who has told how another and a worthier Argyll met his fate, "armies have triumphed under leaders who professed no very eminent qualifications. But what army commanded by a debating club ever escaped discomfiture and disgrace?" Moreover Lindsay professed himself unable to fight with his undisciplined troops, and Baillie was ordered to supply him with fifteen hundred of his own trained soldiers in exchange for less than half the number of raw recruits. Even then Lindsay would not fight, but turning southwards gallantly led his men to harry the unprotected lands of Athole. Montrose was thus left free to deal with Baillie and the committee.
Baillie was now in a strong position at Keith in Banffshire, from which he could neither be dislodged nor tempted by offer of battle. But the road to the Lowlands lay open, and if the Royalists took that road the Covenanters could not choose but follow. Montrose therefore marched due south, and crossing the Don took up his position at Alford, a small town some ten miles west of Kintore. By this time Baillie had learned how weak Montrose was, and thought that he might risk a battle. But when he came in sight of his enemy, on the morning of July 2nd, he hesitated. Montrose was posted, as at Auldearn, on the crest of a hill. Between him and the Covenanters lay a marsh, and beyond the marsh was the river which could be crossed at only one spot directly in front of his lines. These were conditions in which a more daring captain than Baillie might have been excused from engaging such an adversary as Montrose. But the committee would not hear of retreating, and even Balcarres, who commanded the cavalry, and who was something of a soldier as well as a brave man, was urgent to fight. Baillie was powerless to refuse. He gave the orders he could not withhold, crossed the river and advanced courageously to his fate.
Montrose had placed his few horse on either wing, mixed, as at Aberdeen, with some Irish musketeers. Lord Gordon commanded on the right, Aboyne on the left. The centre, where Huntly's Highland tenants fought, was led by the brave Glengarry, who had never left Montrose since he had charged at his side down the slopes of Ben Nevis. Here, too, was the General himself with the royal standard. The reserve was posted behind the crest of the hill under the Master of Napier. In infantry the two armies were equal, about two thousand strong on either side; but Montrose had only two hundred and fifty horse to meet the six hundred under Balcarres. The battle was begun by the cavalry. For a time the superior numbers of the Covenanting dragoons and the gallantry of their leader made the issue doubtful, till Nathaniel Gordon, who fought with his young chief on the right, cried to the Irish to throw down their guns and hamstring the enemy's horses with their swords. This was enough; the left wing broke at once, and the right, seeing their companions flying, soon followed their example. The victorious Gordons swept in from either flank on the centre; Glengarry led his claymores down the hill; Montrose and his nephew brought up the reserve, and another battle was won for King Charles.
The victory was complete; but it was dearly bought by the death of Lord Gordon, who fell, struck by a shot from behind, in the final charge. Montrose could have lost no more devoted friend or more staunch ally; and indeed the whole army mourned for the gallant young soldier, who had endeared himself to all by his courage and courtesy, his high spirits and winning manners. The body was conveyed under the escort of the General himself and a chosen guard to Aberdeen, where, with all the honours that the time permitted, it was laid in what is now known as the Gordons' aisle in the old cathedral church of St. Machar.