indomitable energy giving him hope of being able to form yet another army in the loyal districts.

respects agreeable to the crafty and designing cha- | some stay at Raglan Castle, his high spirit and racter of the man; and it did not fail, as he had anticipated that it would, to make its own impression." The casualty-roll sent to Parliament stated that their loss was 1,000 slain. Among the wounded were General Skippon, Cromwell's sonin-law, Commissary-General Ireton, and Colonels Cook, Butler, and Francis. Ludlow asserts that Skippon was wounded by one of his own men.

Among the king's wounded were the young Earl of Lindsay, K.G. (whose father fell at Edgehill), the Lord Astley, of Reading, and Colonel John Russell, brother of the Earl of Bedford, and, after the Restoration, Colonel of the English Foot Guards. On the battle of Naseby, Lord Clarendon makes the remark that a difference was always

Naseby was chiefly fought in a large fallow field on the north-west side of the town, about a mile broad. There the holes in which the dead men and horses were buried were visible for years after.

On the 17th of June, the day after Parliament received tidings of the victory, both Houses were feasted by the City of London in the Grocers' Hall, where they sang hilariously the 46th Psalm, and then separated.

An oval medal was struck in commemoration of the battle. The captured standards were hung in Westminster Hall, and the prisoners were penned up like sheep in the artillery-ground near Tothill Fields.

CHAPTER XLIII.
KILSYTHE, 1645.

COLLATERALLY with the strife we have been nar- plague having now made its appearance in Stirling, rating in England, another of a similar nature was "for it seems to have followed as a faithful being waged in Scotland, where some of the loyal attendant wherever those at the helm of affairs Highland clans, under James Graham, Marquis of against the king migrated," the Ministry removed to Montrose, upheld the cause of the king against the Perth, to the annoyance of its Cavalier citizens, Scottish Parliament and Government. Over the while a four days' fast was appointed throughout troops of the latter he won in succession six pitched the land for the sins and misfortunes of the people. battles; and the last of these, which nearly laid all "Now," says a Scottish writer, "when it is conScotland at the feet of the king, was fought at Kil- sidered how these most unnecessary fasts were then sythe, exactly two months after the field of Naseby. kept with all the rigidity of a Jewish sabbath, and Descended from a long line of illustrious an- the people allowed to do nothing from morning till cestors, celebrated by the Cavaliers as comparable night but listen to long homilies, sermons, and to the greatest heroes of antiquity, and branded by exhortations, delivered by one preacher after the Covenanters as a malignant and traitor, James, another in quick succession, it is obvious that, in the first Marquis of Montrose, was a man inspired the circumstances of the Covenanting leaders, these by the most enthusiastic loyalty, the most lofty were just so many precious days utterly lost, while courage, and a deep love for the royal cause. He they were reducing the whole country to a state of was, says Cardinal de Retz, "the only man in the absolute idleness, rendered more so by the inworld who has ever reminded me of that descrip- fluence of religious zeal." tion of heroes who are no longer to be found except in the lives of Plutarch. He sustained the interests of the King of England in his own country with a degree of magnanimity which in that age was unrivalled."

The victory of the English Puritans over Charles I., at Naseby, afforded some consolation to their compatriots, the Scotch Covenanting Government, at that time smarting under five successive defeats, won over their numerous forces by a mere handful of Highland swordsmen, and, though an epidemic was ravaging Edinburgh, whither it had been brought by the English prisoners taken in Newcastle, the Covenanting leaders were still resolved to oppose the great marquis, who threatened by his continued success to overwhelm them. The Parliament, in consequence of the pestilence, met in Stirling, instead of the capital, and confirmed in the command of its army Lieutenant-General William Baillie, who had led a Dutch regiment in the German wars, and had more recently served with the Scots in England.

He fixed his head-quarters at Perth, while Montrose was coming on by the way of Aberdeen and Angus. To increase their army to 10,000 men, a force which they deemed sufficient to oppose the marquis, the Scottish Government issued edicts to all the Lowland counties to raise every fourth man capable of bearing arms, and dispatch him to Perth on or before the 25th of July, 1645. The

After gaining the battles of Auldearn and Alford, the Marquis of Montrose had marched to Aberdeen, to bury his lamented friend, Lord Gordon, after which he planned an expedition against the Covenanting garrison at Inverness, when tidings of the king's defeat at Naseby and of the muster at Perth reached him, and he was induced for the time to give up the thought of everything but marching south, in the cause of the king his master. Leaving Aberdeen, he marched to Fordoun, a small town in Kincardineshire, where he encamped till his active friend, Sir Alaster Maccoll, joined him with some recruits. Maccoll was, properly speaking, Alaster Macdonald, of the family of Colonsay, a branch of that powerful and numerous Highland clan whose head was the Lord of the Isles in ancient times. Though brave, and well qualified to lead irregular troops like the Highlanders, Sir Alaster permitted his desire for vengeance on the Campbells of Argyle to divert him frequently from the proper objects of the war.

General Stewart, of Garth, in his admirable work on the character and manners of the Highlanders, gives, as one reason among many for the strong attachment of the Highlanders to the House of Stuart, "the difference of religious feelings and prejudices that distinguished them from their brethren of the South. This difference became striking at the Reformation, and continued during the whole of the subsequent century. While many

Kilsythe.]

THE CASTLE OF GLOOM.

243

Lowlanders were engaged in angry theological dis- | Dupplin, and reconnoitred their infantry encamped putes, or adopted a sour and forbidding demeanour, in the long green strath or vale through which the the Highlanders retained many of their ancient river flows; yet, though they might easily have cut superstitions, and, from their cheerful and poetical him off, they sent no party against him. spirit, were averse to long faces and wordy disputes. They were, therefore, more inclined to join the Cavaliers than the Roundheads, and were on one occasion employed by the Scottish Ministry of Charles II. to keep down the republican spirit in the West of Scotland. The same cause, among others, had previously induced them to join the standard of Montrose."

"The denizens of Perth" (to quote a Scottish Episcopal historian), "especially the fair maids, would gladly have seen the long-visaged and solemn-looking Covenanters superseded by the handsome Montrose and his gay Cavaliers; but they were kept in sore restraint by a phalanx of ministers, who held forth several times a day on the subject of the Covenant, the alleged tyranny of the king, the malignancy of Montrose, as they termed his loyalty, and other favourite topics for clerical vituperation."

Montrose was now joined by Lord Aboyne, with 200 completely-armed cuirassiers, and sixty other troopers, who were mounted on coach-horses, but as some of these men had contributed to win his past victories, he deemed them second to none in spirit. After levying 200 cattle in Athole, he resolved at once to break down into the Lowlands, in the hope, with the claymores of his faith

With Alaster Maccoll, there came into Montrose no less than 700 men of the surname of Maclean, from Argyleshire and the Hebrides, all well skilled in the use of their weapons, and inspired by a ferocious hatred of the Campbells, who were the ruling spirits of the Covenanting War. Sir Alaster had also brought in the whole of clan Ranald, 500 strong men, under Ian Muidartach, a warrior whose memory is still renowned in the Highlands. The Athole Highlanders came in strong force, under the cousin of Montrose, Colonel Grahame, of Inchbrakie; as also the Macgregors, the Mac-ful Highlanders, to cut a passage to the king, then nabs, the Stewarts of Appin, and the Farquharsons of Braemar; and each tribe as it arrived, with pipes playing and colours flying, was warmly welcomed by the marquis, who disposed each clan by itself, as a corps under its own chief and his duinewassals.

He now found himself at the head of between 5,000 and 6,000 men; but he was greatly deficient in cavalry to protect his infantry when they descended into the Lowlands. Leaving the Earl of Aboyne in Aberdeenshire, and the Earl of Airlie in Angus, to negotiate with the loyalists of these districts for a supply of horses, he marched through Blairgowrie, crossed the Tay at Dunkeld, and encamped at Amulrie, a small village in Perthshire. He had at first intended to march direct upon Perth, and scatter the Covenanters at once, but the want of cavalry compelled him to abandon so bold a project, though the enemy's army lay in considerable force on the southern side of the Earn, and 400 of their cavalry lay near Perth; but aware that all their most trained troops were absent in England, under the Earls of Leven and Callendar, and in Ireland, where Leslie of Pitcairly commanded eight regiments, to defend the Ulster colonists, he never for a moment despaired of ultimate success.

One day he rode close to the gates of Perth, accompanied by the only mounted force he possessed, 100 Cavaliers on horseback; he also crossed the Earn among the beautiful woods of

struggling feebly with the overwhelming forces of England and Scotland, under Cromwell and Leven. On Charles defeat and disaster of every kind had pressed severely, and although in Scotland victory had followed victory, and the swords of the clans had swept away the armies of the Kirk as a storm sweeps the thistle's head, the royal banner had gone down rapidly since Naseby. The Scottish army had overrun Yorkshire; one of its columns captured Pontefract, another besieged Carlisle, Brereton blockaded Chester, and the power of the Independents was everywhere growing, even as that of Charles waned.

As the troops of Montrose, "with their tartans waving and weapons glittering, poured down the long winding vale of the Devon, where the hoarse brattle of their drums and the yell of their war-pipes awoke the echoes of the Ochills-that dark and magnificent range of mountains, whose shadows shut out the sun from many a secluded village for three months of the year-they came in view of Castle Campbell, an ancient and beautiful residence of the Earls of Argyle, which rises on that abrupt range of heights. Crowning a wild, precipitous, and almost inaccessible rock, it was one of the strongest of Scottish feudal castles. On one hand it overlooks a wilderness of foaming torrents, on the other a wide extent of sombre and solemn forest. A princely dwelling of the Campbells (this famous 'Castell of Gloom') presented an object too tempting to the vengeful Macleans, who

remembered all that they and their fathers had endured from the race of Diarmed. They left their line of march, and ascending to the fortress by its precipitous stair, which is hewn out of the solid rock, six feet wide and one hundred feet in length, they burst open the gates, crossed the inner fosse, expelled the inmates, and gave the mansion to the flames. All the other property of Argyle in Muckart and Dollar was destroyed. For these outrages Montrose gave no warrant ; but the flames of the fortress, blazing high upon the mountains, as they reddened the waters of the Sorrow and Care, which unite in the profundity of a chasm below it, must have filled the heart of Argyle with anger, as with Baillie's army he came down Glendevon, and was only one day's march beyond Montrose" (Memoirs of the Marquis, 1858).

General Baillie and Argyle, now a species of self-made dictator, crossed the Carron at Denny, by the old bridge which was built by the Templars, and encamped at a place called the Hollanbush, two miles from Kilsythe.

Hearing of the near approach of his chief, John Grahame, of Tamrawer, near that town, mustered and armed his followers to join the king's banner, but was accidentally killed three days before the battle on a hill near his house, where the place is yet marked by a rough cairn.

Passing the Forth by the deep and dangerous Ford of Frew, at the confluence of the Teith, eight miles above Stirling Bridge, Montrose passed in view of the castle at the head of 5,000 foot and 500 horse, with some pieces of artillery in front. He was anxious to attack the levies of the Covenant before the Earls of Eglinton, Cassilis, and Lanark, with their feudal forces, joined Baillie. Though a brave officer, the latter was most unwilling to encounter Montrose, while his actions were controlled and his plans canvassed by certain ignorant and officious nobles and divines, who formed what was called the Field Committee, a body which formed the bane of every Scottish general in those days. With the clan Campbell, Argyle, after occupying Stirling for a night, crossed the Carron by a ford which still bears his name, and rejoined Baillie again.

The thirty years' warlike experience of the latter, and of his major-general, Holbourn of Menstrie, or of his adjutant-general, Leslie - experience gained on the plains of Germany in the greatest battles Europe as yet had seen-availed them little now; for their Field Committee directed and controlled them in everything, chose the routes of the army, the plan of operations, and the very ground on which the battle was to be fought.

After

They determined that Montrose should be attacked on the morning of the 15th of August. To this General Baillie was quite averse. their recent forced marches, in following up the rapid movements of the marquis and his Highlanders, he urged that the troops required rest; that the junction with the Western Covenanters, under Cassilis and others, should be waited for: but compelled to yield to their noisy dictates, enforced by many texts from Scripture and much unmusical psalm-singing, this able but unfortunate officer put his troops in motion, and, at the head of 800 horse, 7,000 infantry, and a considerable train of guns, began his westward march against the lieutenant-general of King Charles, who was then in position near Auchincleugh, two miles eastward from the straggling village or little town of Kilsythe.

The immediate scene of the encounter was the district around the artificial lake or reservoir of the Forth and Clyde Canal-ground so broken and irregular that no man viewing it with a military eye could imagine it to have been the place chosen for a battle.

The day of Kilsythe was a bright and beautiful one; but the heat was intense, as many of the Lowlanders, in their buff coats and iron trappings, found to their cost when the strife began.

Trammelled and directed by the Field Committee, Baillie and his troops were seduced over soft bogs, up steep banks, through thick hedges and fields of ripening grain, till they reached Auchincleugh, where the deep and broad morasses impeded all further advance; but there, though his spirit revolted against the interference and folly of his maladvisers, he drew up his lines in the best order, to await the approach of Montrose, who was beholding this injudicious movement with astonishment.

At this time the Lowland infantry of Baillie were armed exactly as we have already described those of Leslie and Cromwell to have been; but the equipment of Montrose's Highlanders was somewhat different, and retaining their ancient dress, they looked with contempt upon their southern countrymen as Sassenachs and "bodachs in breeks." Their arms were the claymore, now basket-hilted, and the dirk or armpit dagger; a target, with a pike in its orb; a pair of steel pistols, and fre quently a long-barrelled Spanish musket; a skene in the right garter was the last weapon to resort to, if under a horse's belly or grappling on the earth with the foe; and in addition to these were still occasionally used the pike and the tremendous Lochaber axe, and even the bow and arrow,

THE GREAT AND LITTLE KILT.