It was Saturday, April 27th. Montrose had heard of the advance, but his scouts had seen only a single weak troop of horse. Strachan had divided his force into three divisions; one he led straight forward upon the enemy, the others he kept out of sight among the wooded and broken ground on either side of his main advance. Montrose was deceived. He sent his few horse forward under Hurry, and drew up his foot on a piece of flat exposed ground at the head of the Firth. It was Philiphaugh over again. The enemy were upon him before he was aware of their strength. He at once ordered his foot to retreat to a rough and wooded hill at the rear of their position. Before they could reach it the cavalry was among them. The wretched islanders fled without firing a shot. The Germans fought bravely, but were ridden down right and left by the troopers; within two hours they were all killed, taken prisoners, or drowned in flight across the Firth. The rout was complete. Douglas, Ogilvy, Menzies (who bore the royal standard), were dead; Hurry and most of the surviving officers were prisoners. Wounded and dismounted Montrose still fought on for life or death, when young Frendraught, himself covered with wounds, pressed to his side with the offer of his own horse. It was little matter what became of him, said the gallant lad, so long as his Majesty's general was safe. Montrose leaped into the saddle, and followed by Kinnoull and a few others galloped off to the hills. Frendraught surrendered, and was committed to the care of his uncle Sutherland at Dunrobin. The pursuit was maintained till dark, and for many days afterwards the country people hunted out and slew the unfortunate Orkneymen till it was said that there was not a family in the islands which had not to mourn a son or a brother. Within the present century the place of slaughter was popularly known by a Gaelic name signifying the Rock of Lamentation.
The little band of fugitives soon separated. There was no safety in numbers, and the ground was unfit for horsemen. Montrose dismounted, threw away his cloak, star, and sword, exchanged clothes with a peasant, and, accompanied only by Kinnoull and an Orkney gentleman named Sinclair, struck off into the heart of the mountainous wilderness that forms the western part of Sutherlandshire. His design was to make for his garrison in Caithness, whence, should the disaster prove irretrievable, he might escape to the Continent. But neither he nor his companions knew the country. For two days and nights they wandered aimlessly up the Oikel river without food or shelter. On the third day Kinnoull's strength failed him, and he lay down to die. His companions must have shared the same fate, had they not come at evening to a little cottage where they were supplied with bread and milk. Through the night and the next day they pressed on, ignorant of their course, but supposing at least that they were leaving their enemies behind them. They were in truth heading straight for the toils. The direction of their flight had been betrayed by the discovery of Montrose's star and sword, and word sent into Assynt to be on the watch, with promise of reward to whomsoever should take James Graham alive. The fugitives were discovered in the last extremity of hunger and brought to the Laird's house at Ardvrech. The Macleods of Assynt had long been followers of the Earls of Sutherland with whose family they were connected by marriage, and Neil Macleod, the present Laird, had been recently appointed the Earl's Deputy-Sheriff of that district. From such a man at such a time a fugitive Royalist with a price upon his head had little to hope for. Montrose tried at first to buy his captor's favour, then, finding this useless, prayed at least for death rather than to be delivered alive into his enemies' hands. To prayers and bribes Macleod was alike inexorable. The great news was at once despatched to Leslie, who hurried north with a strong body of soldiers to secure the prize. Argyll had won the last move in the deadly game; Montrose was the prisoner of the Covenant.[24]
[CHAPTER XII]
THE END
And now for Montrose the end had come, the end to all the high ambitions, the wild dreams, the long struggle. The time of delusion was for ever past; nothing was left but the bare and terrible reality. Still Leslie was a brave soldier, and his fallen enemy might at least have hoped to be spared in his hands from insult. He was spared from no insult that the savage exultation of his foes could desire. For six years they had fled before his face and trembled at his name; that long debt of terror and humiliation was now to be amply repaid. Leslie was the soldier of the Covenant, and the orders of the Covenant were strict to leave nothing undone that might add a sting to the bitterness of death. In a fever from his still undressed wounds, clad in the mean peasant's garb in which he had been taken, with a pad of straw for saddle and a bridle of rope, Montrose was set on the back of a ragged Highland pony, with his feet tied beneath its belly, and led as in a triumphal procession through all the chief towns of the North. Wherever he passed the people were incited by the ministers of the Kirk to rail and hoot at their once terrible enemy. At Inverness, where the gloomy pageant was increased by the prisoners from Invercarron, the women came out to curse him for the ruin he had wrought. At Keith he was compelled to listen to a long and violent sermon on the text, "And Samuel said, As thy sword hath made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women." Yet there were some, even among the clergymen, whom this spectacle of fallen greatness moved to gentler feelings; and it should at least be remembered to Leslie's credit that those who were not ashamed or afraid to own their friendship for his prisoner were allowed free access to him. It is remarkable that at Dundee, which had suffered so much from his soldiers, he was received with general expressions of pity; and here Leslie was persuaded to allow him to exchange the filthy rags in which he had hitherto been paraded for clothes more becoming his quality.[25] But the compassion of friends and the triumph of foes, pain and pity and scorn, were endured with the same equanimity. "All the way," wrote an eye-witness of the sorry march, "the Marquis never altered his countenance; but, with a majesty and state becoming him, kept a countenance high." Even the sight of his two youngest children, who were brought to take leave of him at Kinnaird Castle, could not shake his composure.
Meanwhile great preparations were being made in Edinburgh. The glorious news had thrown the Parliament and the Kirk into transports of delight. One thousand pounds and a chain of gold with a diamond clasp were at once voted to Strachan; the city bells were rung, bonfires lit, and a public thanksgiving decreed throughout the country. Macleod was rewarded partly in money and partly, it is said, by four hundred bolls of meal; he was also appointed by Sutherland captain of the garrison of Strathnaver. Of the prisoner's sentence there could be no question. The attainder passed on him in 1644 had never been repealed, and without the formality of a trial Parliament, with one voice, pronounced for death. But the manner of his death must be signal; and a committee was appointed to prepare plans for the ceremony as if for some national rejoicing.
At four on the afternoon of May 10th Montrose was brought from Leith to the Water Gate at Holyrood, and handed over by the soldiers to the civil power. The orders of Parliament were read to him by the provost, in his robes of state, at the head of the chief magistrates of the city. He answered that he was ready to submit to them, regretting only to think that his master, whose commission he bore, should be dishonoured through him. The cruel pageant then began. Hurry, with the rest of the prisoners from Invercarron, came first, walking two and two in chains. A cart followed, driven by the common hangman of the city in the hideous livery of his office. In the cart was a high chair, and on the chair sat Montrose, bareheaded and tightly bound. The long ascent of the Canongate was crowded with people, mostly of the lowest class, whose minds had been artfully inflamed by the fierce eloquence of the pulpits to greet the enemy of their country and religion in a manner worthy of his crimes and the occasion. It was even secretly hoped that their greetings might not be confined to empty execration, and the prisoner's hands had been drawn behind his back that he might not defend his face. But the sad and shameful sight turned these rough hearts to pity. Many were even moved to tears to see with what serene and lofty composure this man, who had once known the height of glory, could now endure the extremity of disgrace. From the Water Gate to the Nether Bow only one voice was raised in scorn; the voice of a woman, of Jean, Countess of Haddington, the daughter of Huntly, the sister of Gordon. The wretched creature is even said to have spat upon her dead brother's friend as the cart passed below the balcony in which she sat. In the same balcony was Argyll, with a party of guests met to celebrate the marriage of his son Lorne to a daughter of the Earl of Moray. Either by accident or design the cart was halted at this point, and Montrose looked up. As his eyes met those of Argyll, the latter was seen to turn pale and shrink back from the window. An angry murmur rose from the crowd, and an English voice was heard to cry that Argyll might well shrink from the man he had not dared to face for seven years.[26]
So dense was the crowd and so slow the pace of the procession that it was seven o'clock before the Tolbooth was reached. As the prisoner passed through the Nether Bow Port and entered within the city walls, the last hope that he might at least be spared the ignominious death reserved for the lowest criminals must have vanished. Before his eyes a monstrous gibbet rose to the height of thirty feet from a scaffold covered with black cloth. It rose close by the old city cross, the spot, as his memory must have recalled with peculiar bitterness, where his young and ardent enthusiasm had first displayed itself before the admiring eyes of so many who were now clamouring for his blood.