The report was not encouraging. Huntly's abortive rising had only served to strengthen the hands of the Covenant. North of the Grampians Sutherland and Seaforth were in arms with the Forbeses, Frasers, and Grants, all hereditary enemies of the Gordons. To the south another force was mustering under Elcho at Perth. The men of Athole, the Stuarts, and the Robertsons, were sound at the core, but had looked in vain for a leader since the death of Montrose's friend and Argyll's sworn foe, the loyal Earl of Athole, and in the want of a leader they too had fallen under the universal yoke. Between Highlands and Lowlands there seemed in truth but little choice.

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.

As at Tippermuir the Irish held the centre; Rollo commanded on the right, Nathaniel Gordon on the left. The cavalry were on the two wings, interspersed with musketeers and bowmen. Montrose, well mounted, clad in coat and trews, with a bunch of oats in his bonnet—a whimsy adopted by all his infantry—was everywhere his keen eye told him there was need of his services. The fighting was hot while it lasted, and at one moment the left flank of the Royalists was within an ace of being turned. But Montrose brought up the horse and a fresh supply of musketeers from the right wing in the nick of time, and the Covenanters having no one to take advantage of the crisis, the danger was averted. The fifty troopers performed wonders, and the Irish fought like trained soldiers. In the end good leadership and discipline prevailed over numbers, and a general charge led by Montrose in person decided the day. Within two hours after the first shot was fired the army of the Covenant was in flight. Balfour, who seems to have played no part in the battle, galloped off north across the Don with his cavalry. The foot were cut down as they ran, and the victorious Royalists burst into the town at the heels of the fugitives. Then followed a hideous scene. Montrose would not, or could not, retract the promise he had given in a moment of anger, and the wild Irish ran riot through the defenceless town. The unarmed citizens were butchered like sheep in the streets; the better sort were stripped before death, that their clothes might not be soiled with their blood; women and little children were slaughtered for bewailing their dead, and those women were happiest who expiated their tears with life. For three days the sack continued, without any interference, so far as we know, on the part of Montrose. Hitherto we have invariably seen him courteous and humane to a defeated foe, and always where it was in his power active to spare a defenceless people, and as such we shall find him hereafter. On this solitary occasion he outdoes the worst brutalities of the German wars. It was a mistake as well as a crime. It turned the scale against him in many wavering minds; and it inflamed the anger and fear of his enemies to a savage and unrelenting hatred which was destined to bear bitter fruit upon a later day. A price was now set upon his head, and Argyll openly offered a reward of £1000 to any man who should bring it in by fair means or foul.

It was now felt that some more serious measures must be taken with this terrible enemy. Argyll's pursuit of Macdonald had slackened since he learned that the Irish had joined hands with Montrose; but he was still laboriously plodding after them with three thousand of his Campbells. To these were now added two regiments from the regular army in England, and a strong force of cavalry. These reinforcements did not quicken Argyll's pace, but they prevented Montrose from giving battle to a foe whom above all others he longed to meet on a fair field. His little force had been still further diminished by the despatch of Macdonald with half his men into the Western Highlands to beat up recruits among the men of his name, who had been from time immemorial the sworn foes of Mac Callum More. For some weeks therefore the nimble Cavalier was forced to content himself with leading his heavy-footed, heavy-hearted pursuer a chase backwards and forwards through the Grampians, till at last he rested at Fyvie Castle on the Ythan, in the north-east corner of Aberdeenshire.

Here he was nearly caught napping. Argyll had crept within two miles of the castle before Montrose knew that he had so much as crossed the Grampians. It was a dangerous moment for the King's Lieutenant. He dared not risk a battle on the open ground: the castle would not stand a siege; and to make matters worse, the Royalists had run short of ammunition. But behind the castle rose a rugged hill, crowned with trees and roughly defended with some farm enclosures. Here Montrose stood at bay. The pewter vessels of the castle were melted into bullets, and the first attack of the Covenanters supplied the defenders with powder. Argyll's men were half-way up the hill, when Montrose, turning to a young Irishman whom Macdonald had left in charge as his lieutenant, said, "Come, O'Cahan, what are you about? Take some of your handiest fellows, drive those rascals from our defences, and see that we are not troubled with them again." The brave young soldier rushed down the hill at the head of his men, drove the Covenanters pell-mell before him, and returned in safety with several bags of powder. As they came back into their lines, one of the Irishmen said, looking at the powder, "We must at them again; the stingy rogues have left us no bullets." The jest was soon made earnest. As Argyll's foot retired, the horse came up on another side against the little body of Royalist troopers. But Montrose saw the movement, and leading some of his musketeers round the brow of the hill, poured so hot a volley into the Covenanting squadrons, that they descended the slope much faster than they had climbed it. This was enough for Argyll. He withdrew his men beyond the Ythan, and Montrose marched back unmolested to Blair-Athole.

This extraordinary campaign—this "strange coursing" as Baillie shrewdly called it—could not continue. It was now November. The rains of autumn were already turning into the snows of winter. The mountains would soon be passable only for wolves and eagles. Argyll turned from a pursuit for which he had no heart, led his men back to Edinburgh, and resigning his commission to the Estates retired to his own country. The road into the Lowlands lay open. Now was the time to put in practice that plan which Montrose had always kept steadily in view. This mountain warfare against irregular levies led by incompetent generals was but a waste of good powder and shot. If he could descend into the Lowlands with a force sufficient to bring Leven back over the Border, his promise to the King would be redeemed. Macdonald had rejoined him with the rest of the Irishmen and five hundred stout fellows of his name, Macdonalds of Glengarry, Clanronald, Keppoch, and Glencoe. Camerons from Lochaber, Stewarts from Appin, Farquharsons from Braemar, had also gathered to the Standard. Surely now he was strong enough to put his cherished design into practice. But his Lowland officers demurred. They were weary of a campaign where victory brought no solid fruits, and where the advance of one day seemed to be inevitably followed by the retreat of the next. The invitations and promises of Argyll had begun to work. They knew that pardon and preferment awaited every deserter from the royal cause, and though they had no design of betraying Montrose, they thought the time favourable for making their own peace. Under pretence of being unfit to face the hardships of a winter campaign, one after another took leave of his general. The brave Airlie, for all his sixty years, and his sons alone stood by him, and Nathaniel Gordon, who, though he left his leader, left him on the King's service. Montrose let the recreants go without a word, and turned to the Highlanders. They too deprecated a descent on the Lowlands, but for a different reason. These Macdonalds and Camerons were ready enough to fight under the royal banner, but they must fight against their own foe. They hated King Campbell more than they loved King Charles. Between all who bore the name of Macdonald and all who bore the name of Campbell there had been war to the knife for many generations. There was hardly, indeed, a clan in all the Highlands of Scotland which had not a grudge to pay against the Race of Diarmid. Beyond the great mountain barrier with which Nature had guarded the domains of Mac Callum More lay a land, rough indeed and sparsely cultivated, but rich in fat cattle and well-stocked homesteads. Argyll was used to say that he had rather lose a hundred thousand crowns than that any mortal man should know the way by which an army could enter his country. There were men now at Montrose's side who knew that way as well as Argyll himself. Something clearly must be done. Neither his temperament nor his position would suffer Montrose to be idle. He could not hope to keep his men together without pay, and pay was only to be found in the pockets of a defeated enemy. Moreover, to strike a blow at Argyll in his own home was in some sort to do the King's service, and in a sort not uncongenial to himself when no better was possible. He agreed, therefore, to a plan which it was not altogether in his power to refuse, and in the first week of December the westward march began.

They marched in three divisions. Montrose led one, Alaster Macdonald another, and the third was commanded by the Captain of Clanronald. On December 13th they struck down through those mountains whose secrets had been so jealously guarded right into the heart of the promised land. At the first rumour of their approach Argyll had fled from Inveraray in a fishing-boat, leaving his clansmen to shift for themselves. For upwards of a month the triumphant Macdonalds carried fire and sword through the length and breadth of the country. Every unfortified dwelling was sacked and burned to the ground; every head of cattle not wanted for the destroyers' consumption was slaughtered. Montrose would have spared the people if he could; but a Macdonald with a sword in his hand could give no quarter to a Campbell, and when Montrose was not by to save him every son of the accursed race old enough to bear arms was ruthlessly cut down where he was found. By the end of January the work was done: to the lands of Argyll had been meted the measure their owners had never spared to measure to others; and leaving a smouldering waste behind him Montrose turned leisurely northwards through Lochaber.

He had reached Kilcummin, where Fort Augustus now stands, at the head of Loch Ness, when he heard news which made him pause. In front Seaforth was barring the way with five thousand men, his own Mackenzies and others from the hardy northern shires. Behind him Argyll was coming up with all the Campbells he could muster and some Lowland levies hastily gathered to his aid. To meet these two armies Montrose had only his Irishmen, a handful of Airlie's troopers, and such of the Highlanders as had not yet made off with their plunder, barely fifteen hundred men in all. He made his choice in an instant. Only thirty miles off, down the road by which he had just ascended the valley, Argyll lay at Inverlochy three thousand strong. But that road was certain to be watched by Argyll's scouts, and this time Montrose was determined that his enemy should not escape him. There was another road by which the Campbells might be reached in flank at a point where no retreat was possible. It was a road rarely trodden even in summer by any foot save that of the deer or wolf, and now, when winter lay white on the mountains and the passes were choked with snow, shunned even by those wild travellers. But any road that led to his enemy was a good road for Montrose, and the dauntless spirit of their general beat high in the hearts of his men. Striking southward over the rugged shoulder of Corryarrick, through the bleak wastes of Glen Roy and Glen Spean, now wading waist high through the snow, and now clambering among the bare mountain peaks of that lonely land, by day and by night the little host held on its painful way. On the evening of February 1st, on the second day after leaving Kilcummin, they saw from the skirts of Ben Nevis the towers of Inverlochy and the moonlit waters of Loch Eil.

The castle of Inverlochy stood, as all that is left of it still stands, at the juncture of Loch Eil and Loch Linnhe beneath the mighty shadow of Ben Nevis. The Campbells lay in the narrow strip of plain between the mountain and the shore. For them there was no escape if defeated; but unfortunately for his honour a way of escape lay open to their chief. His galley lay at her moorings on the lake, and in the middle of the night he was put secretly on board to await in ignominious security the chances of the day, leaving his people to fight for his name and their lives under his cousin Sir Duncan Campbell of Auchinbreck. He excused himself by an injury to his arm which disabled him from using a sword, an excuse that no other man then alive in Scotland would have ventured to plead in the face of his foe.

Though their scouts had brought word early in the evening of an enemy holding the passes above them in force, the Campbells could not believe that enemy to be Montrose. Even the imagination of a Highlander, inured as he was to every form of activity and endurance, could not conceive the possibility of that wonderful march; and supposing that they would have only to deal with some Macdonalds and Camerons gathered to defend their homes from ravage, they slept securely through the night. But when with the first rays of morning they heard from the dark mountain overhead the trumpets pealing the point of war which had been ever used by Scotsmen to salute the standard of their king, they knew too well who was before them. Auchinbreck was a brave and experienced soldier, but he had little confidence in the Lowland levies, and even his own men were better, he knew well, at giving than receiving the attack. Still numbers must be on his side, and his men were fresh. The enemy could not be many, and must be weary and ill-fed. Ill-fed in truth they were; they had not tasted bread since they left Kilcummin; even Montrose and Airlie had to break their fast on a little meal moistened with cold water. But all weariness had vanished at the sight of the enemy; and for the food, they comforted themselves with the assurance of better fare before sunset.

The battle of Inverlochy was little more than a repetition of the battle of Tippermuir. Montrose now led the centre, where the Highlanders fought who would follow no man to battle but the King's Lieutenant. Alaster Macdonald led on the right, and O'Cahan, the hero of Fyvie, on the left. Auchinbreck had placed the Lowland regiments on either wing, himself commanding the Campbells in the centre. The former discharged their muskets and ran so soon as they saw Montrose's fierce warriors burst from the mountain and heard the wild yell with which they came bounding over the plain. The Campbells fought bravely, but unsupported and overlapped they at last too broke and fled. Some pressed into the water to reach their chief's galley, but Argyll had hoisted his sails so soon as he saw that all was lost, and made off down the lake heedless of his drowning clansmen. Others fled southwards along the beach and were cut down as they ran. Some made for the castle, but were driven back by the troopers into the open ground. Quarter was given to the Lowlanders, but Montrose could win no quarter from his men for the Campbells. Fifteen hundred of the great clan perished on that fatal day, including Auchinbreck himself and many gentlemen of rank. On the other side only three private soldiers were killed; but many were wounded, and among them Sir Thomas Ogilvy, by whose death, a few days after the battle, Montrose lost a staunch friend and the King a brave and accomplished officer.

Montrose had won a great and important victory. He had completely broken Argyll's power in the Highlands, and indeed for many years to come the mighty Clan Campbell was but the shadow of its former name. It is small wonder that his head grew hot with success, and that he wrote to the King as though all Scotland lay already at his feet. "I doubt not," ran his triumphant words, "that before the end of this summer I shall be able to come to your majesty's assistance with a brave army, which, backed with the justice of your majesty's cause, will make the rebels in England as well as in Scotland feel the just rewards of rebellion. Only give me leave, after I have reduced this country to your majesty's obedience, and conquered from Dan to Beersheba, to say to your majesty then, as David's general did to his master, 'Come thou thyself, lest this country be called by my name.'"