galloping to the gallant old Earl of Airlie, exclaimed

66

My Lord, you see into what a hose-net those poor fellows have fallen by their rashness! Unless relieved, they will be trodden down by the enemy's horse. The eyes and hearts of all men turn to your Lordship, and I know of none more worthy to repel the foe and bring off our comrades: forward, then, in the name of God." The brave old man, now nearly seventy years old, immediately made a furious charge on the Covenanters, seconded by Lord Aboyne and the Gordon horse; and the Highlanders, thus relieved, drove the enemy before them. The reserve brigade of three regiments of Fifeshire Whigs, whose comrades had suffered terribly at Tippermuir, deeming the day lost, fled without firing a shot. The whole Highland line now charged, and in a very short time the rout of the Covenanters was complete. They were pursued with great slaughter for many miles, 4,000 or 5,000 of them being slain. Baillie, with some of his officers and a remnant of his 7,000 escaped to Stirling; and Argyle, for the fifth time within a year, fled precipitately (as he had done at Dunkeld, Inverary, Inverlochy, and Alford) for dear life; till, reaching South Ferry and taking ship, he sailed to Berwick-on-Tweed, accompanied by some of his clerico-military friends.

Montrose was now master of the whole open country of Scotland. Outside a few fortresses the Covenanters

had no force to oppose him. He was received and

sumptuously entertained in Covenanting Glasgow. Glencairn and other Puritan lords of Ayrshire and the neighbouring counties fled to their brethren in Carrickfergus, and all the Whig western counties submitted to him.

IV.

Nevertheless, the day of disaster was at hand, and in less than a month the remnant of his force remaining with him was annihilated. Still bent on his project of uniting his troops with the King's, he encamped at Bothwell Muir on the Clyde, eight or ten miles from Glasgow, and soon after moved nearer the Border in hopes of receiving reinforcements from the Homes, Kers, Douglases, and other loyal lords of the Border counties. These hopes were grievously, if not traitorously, disappointed. It is hard to believe that Stewart, Earl of Traquair, did not act traitorously While at Bothwell Muir, where forty-four years after was fought the battle of Bothwell Brig, Monmouth commanding the troops of Charles II., and where the Covenanters were addressed, as tradition says, with pithy eloquence never surpassed, as the English force advanced to the charge:— :-"There they're comin', and

if

you dinna kill them they'll kill you;" and where a friend of mine was informed by a peasant of the

neighbourhood, "a famous battle had been fought,

lang syne, between the Catholics and the Christians.” Montrose was here joined by Sir Robert Spottiswoode, Secretary of State for Scotland, bearing a commission (for which crime he was put to death by the Covenanters) appointing the Marquis Lieutenant Governor and Captain General of the Kingdom; and here he reviewed his whole army, “and under the Royal Standard of Scotland opened his new commission, and delivered a brief but eloquent harangue, suited to the wild spirit of his hearers; and with his own good sword he knighted the flower of his Highland heroes-him of the long patronymic-Alaster MacColkeitach - MhicGillespie - MhicCholla - MhicAlasterMhicIanCattanach "*-Alexander the son of Coll the left-handed-son of Archibald-son of Coll-son of Alexander-son of Warlike John; the first and the two last chiefs of their family, the McDonnells of Isla Cantyre and the Glens, or Clan Donald South.

But now, to the grief of Montrose, at this culmination of his fame, his Highland army fell to pieces. The clans of Athole and the Macleans, 3,000 in number, hearing that their dwellings had been destroyed, and their families left to face the rigour of the coming winter homeless, departed to rebuild what the troops of Baillie in the north, and the Campbells in the west, had burned and overthrown. Others were urged by

* Grant, p. 288.

the necessity of securing their little harvests, lest if they did not their families should starve.

"Sir Alaster MacColkeitach, having unfortunately learned about this time that his friends, relations, and clansmen, who had fled from the vengeance of the Campbells to the Isles of Rachlin and Jura, were pursued thither by the Laird of Ardkinglas, the Captain of Skipness, and others acting under the orders of Argyle, became animated with a true Highland longing for reprisal; for the Covenanters treated his people with frightful severity, slaying women and children, even nurslings at the breast. All the influence of the Captain General, whom he loved so well, failed to restrain him. Every entreaty and argument were used by Montrose and by Airlie to induce him to stay, for they knew his value, and also that they never could deem themselves completely successful while the whole armed force of Scotland occupied the north of England, and could be recalled in a week. Sir Alexander replied that 'he would be no true Highlander if he preferred even the King's cause to that of his own blood and kindred'; and with 500 Highlanders and 120 chosen Irish musketeers he marched on the 3rd of September for the West country, bidding adieu to Montrose never to meet him more. Filial anxiety compelled Viscount Aboyne [now Huntly's eldest surviving son] to draw off his followers, to save from capture and destruction his father, who was lurking in Sutherland; and on the 4th of September he also left the camp at Bothwell; but Sir Nathaniel Gordon remained."*

Thus, independently of Sir Alaster's men, about 4,000 of his Highlanders left Montrose; the Irish, with the exception of 120 men, remaining.

These Highland deserters, as they are often calum

* Grant, pp. 290-1.

niously called, departed on an imperative call of duty, and in the exercise of their prescriptive right. Of this Montrose was perfectly aware, and though deeply grieved by their departure, never thought of forbidding or resenting it.

The further charge has often been urged against Sir Alaster, that his desertion, as it is called, was the cause of the disaster at Philiphaugh. The charge is simply absurd. It is probable that his 500 Highlanders would have gone home at this time, whether he had departed or not. I will assume, however, that he withdrew from Montrose every one of his 650 men. At Philiphaugh the Marquis had not quite 1,500 men. With the addition of MacColl's 650, his force would have numbered about 2,150. In the grey dawn of September the 13th, and shrouded in a thick mist, David Leslie fell upon him by a complete surprise with 6,000 of the flower of the horse of the Scottish army in England. It is therefore manifest that the sole consequence of the addition of Sir Alaster's men to the Royalist 1,500 would have been to have added some hundreds to the number of the slain, and perhaps fifty or sixty to that of the murdered. lack, however, of responsibility for the part of others, even of Charles himself. Leslie, as was well known, had to march from the siege of Hereford with 6,000 horse to attack Montrose, and was permitted to traverse a great part of England and Scotland entirely unmolested :

There is no disaster on the