Scotland's Greatest Warrior

On the night before D-Day, General Montgomery,

Commander of the Allied land forces,

sent a message to his troops that included four lines of poetry.

"He either fears his fate too much Or his deserts are small

"That puts it not unto the touch To win or lose it all."

To win or lose it all.

The lines perfectly summed up the Allies' desperate do or die

invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe in 1944.

The poem Monty quoted to inspire men on the Normandy beachhead

was written in the heat of another conflict

a vicious civil war that devastated 17th century Britain.

Its author? A Scottish aristocrat, the Marquis of Montrose.

Montrose was not solely a poet. He was a man of action.

Executed at the early age of 37, he is regarded by some as

the greatest general that Scotland - possibly Britain - ever produced.

To others, he is a pariah, who unleashed the bloodthirsty

Highlanders upon the raw recruits of the armies

of the Scottish Parliament, nurtured sectarian hatred between Protestant

and Catholic and created a great gulf between Highlands and Lowlands.

His was a century of religious and political revolution.

A complex man, he was also a patriot,

and he was greatly concerned about the future of his native

land at this crisis point in Scottish and British history.

In 1644 and '45, exactly 300 years before the D-Day invasion

and the Battle for Europe, Montrose led an outnumbered army

to victory in six major battles in a vicious civil war.

The events of that extraordinary 12-month campaign made the young

Montrose briefly Master of Scotland.

A brilliant young man. A glittering career. An epic adventure.

A contemporary said that Montrose acted the part of the hero

too much and lived as in a romance.

But this story is a tragedy.

Montrose was finally captured, betrayed, condemned as a traitor

and publicly hanged, his body decapitated, his limbs severed.

He was a man who dared to win - and lost it all.

Modern Scottish soldiers exercise in the Scottish mountains.

They're on a forced march over rough winter terrain.

It's an arduous expedition.

These well-equipped modern warriors are following in the footsteps

of an army led by Montrose.

His men crossed these mountains in mid-winter from Loch Ness

to modern Fort William to fall on an army of Campbells.

In 1645, Britain was in the grip of a mini ice age, so conditions

would have been much worse, with men struggling through thick snow.

They had snow and 1645 technology,

so I imagine it wasn't very enjoyable then.

I don't think this would come anywhere near as bad as what

it was for them. You have to take your hat off to the guys.

A leader, to ask that of his men,

has either got to be mad or very, very confident.

Novelist John Buchan, a biographer of Montrose, described the attack

as, "One of the greatest exploits in the history of British arms."

So, who was Montrose, and why was he struggling through

the depths of winter to slaughter Campbells?

James Graham was born in Montrose in 1612,

probably in late October, or early November.

His family was ancient and aristocratic.

BAGPIPES PLAY

In January 1627, the new head of this old and powerful family,

James Graham, came here to study at the University of St Andrews.

Since his father had died only two months earlier,

the young undergraduate was now the 5th Earl of Montrose.

The years the young Earl spent here were probably

the happiest of his life.

As well as studying, Montrose indulged his passion

for archery, horses, golf and cards and gambled on them all.

He won the Silver Arrow two years running in the university's

annual archery competition.

Today, the Royal Company of Archers is holding a commemorative

competition, but archery wasn't just a sport in Montrose's time.

He was to lead armies that included bowmen and musketeers.

This is where the young Earl would have worshipped

while at St Andrews, St Salvator's Chapel.

Like a majority of Scots, Montrose believed that monarchy was

essential to good government.

But he was also a Presbyterian who had imbued the Scottish

belief that the King had no right to dictate in matters of faith,

and had no direct line to God that made him infallible.

This tension between monarchy, religion

and civil society was to dominate Montrose's short life.

Montrose's education wasn't yet complete when he left St Andrews.

Marriage to Magdalen Carnegie,

when he was 17, didn't stop Montrose from making a Grand Tour

of Europe and studying at the famous French military academy at Angers.

The Thirty Years War was still raging in Europe, where

the Swedish King, Gustavus Adolphus, pioneered new, highly mobile,

aggressive tactics.

Young Montrose would certainly have met veterans of that war at Angers.

In 1636 Montrose returned to Scotland,

stopping off in London where the greatest Scottish aristocrat

of the day, the Marquis of Hamilton,

had arranged an audience with King Charles.

The meeting did not go well.

Charles allowed Montrose to kiss his hand,

but then he turned away at the last moment.

Montrose was bitterly disappointed.

At this point, Charles seemed intent on treating all his Scottish

subjects with utter disdain.

Since the Declaration of Arbroath in 1320,

Scots had claimed the right to depose tyrannical monarchs.

But monarchs didn't see it that way.

The 17th century Stuart Kings insisted that God had

given them a Divine Right to rule.

Within the whole notion of the God-given right of kings to rule

developed the idea that they have the right to rule

absolutely. Subjects are duty-bound simply to obey.

Even if a king rules tyrannically, then subjects must still obey.

They can only pray or pray to God for relief from a tyrant,

they can't actually take action against him.

Charles alienated the Scots' aristocracy by seizing former

Church land that had been given to them at the time of the Reformation.

He abolished hereditary legal rights that gave landowners

and Highland chiefs power over their tenants and clansmen.

And he increased taxes.

Charles also wanted to dictate how the Scots worshipped.

He could not thole the troublesome Presbyterians with their

egalitarian and anti-hierarchical views and he zealously strove

to clad the Scots Kirk in the garb of Anglicanism.

This made him so unpopular in Scotland that he never

came near the place for the first eight years of his reign.

When Charles was eventually crowned in Scotland,

at St Giles' Cathedral, it was the rites of the English Church,

not the Scottish Presbyterian Church, that were used.

Charles wanted a united church for his United Kingdom -

an Anglican Church of which he was the head.

To Presbyterian Scots, the Anglican Church with its bishops,

ritual and liturgy smacked of Popery.

Presbyterians wanted more of a direct line to God

un-mediated by priests, bishops or popes, let alone deluded monarchs.

When a new book of prayer, based on English ritual,

was read out here one Sunday in 1637, there was a riot.

Radical clergy had Edinburgh in turmoil.

They're very militant clergymen,

who we would describe as fundamentalists, basically,

we use the term zealot or fanatic sometimes,

but these are people who think that the laws of God override the laws

of men and anything that Charles or any monarch does that doesn't

conform to the word of God as they understand it, can be resisted.

Charles is married to a Catholic.

The innovations that he's making in worship, like kneeling

at communion, like a set prayer book with a set liturgy, all this

smacked of Popery as far the radical Presbyterians were concerned.

And even if they were being a little bit cynical in exploiting this,

the fear of Popery was so deep-rooted

by this time in the 1630s, this

is the kind of thing that's going to rouse people to oppose royal policy.

So they're evoking popular action against the Crown in ways...

This is playing with fire, this is potentially very, very dangerous.

At Greyfriars Kirkyard on the 28th of February 1638,

opposition to Charles' religious tyranny became organised.

Montrose was a key player.

He was also one of the first nobles to subscribe

the National Covenant.

Although the Covenant had been written by radical Presbyterians,

these nobles weren't just signing up to a religious cause.

In the absence of a Royal Court in Scotland,

religion had become a focus for Scottish political identity.

Frustrated by Charles' despotism,

those who signed the Covenant wished to wrest power back from him.

The Earl of Argyll, chief of Clan Campbell, declared for the Covenant.

'Gley'd eyed Erchie' as they called him,

was devout, ruthless and the most powerful of all clan chiefs.

He was also widely hated in the Highlands.

The scene was set for a religious and political revolution

and bloody civil war.

The Covenanters seized Edinburgh, Stirling and Dumbarton Castles.

Montrose was sent north to lead a Covenanting army against

King Charles' supporter, the Marquis of Huntly, head of Clan Gordon.

Montrose finally defeated the Royalist army at

the Brig o' Dee near Aberdeen.

Montrose was a Covenanter

and a member of the Parliament that the Covenanters dominated.

But he was desperately worried about the direction in which

Parliament appeared to be taking Scotland.

In 1639, Montrose met Charles again

and this time he was impressed and charmed.

The following year, Charles conceded almost every single

Parliamentary demand,

including acceptance of the Covenant and the abolition of the Bishops.

He also, more or less, handed over Royal authority to Parliament.

I have no doubt that Charles would have reneged on all of that,

but Montrose - an honourable man with a weakness for courtly honour - believed him.

Time would show that he was more of a military brain

than he was a political one.

But for hard-liners like the Marquis of Argyll fundamentalists

we'd call them today the King's concessions weren't enough.

There was loose talk of deposing a tyrant.

It may be that the shrewd Argyll saw through Charles' cynicism,

while Montrose didn't.

Scots Brigade will shoulder their muskets!

In 1640, Montrose began organising a moderate faction within

the Covenant movement to oppose hard-line extremists,

declaring that it was time,

"All honest men who respected the liberty of the country and this

"cause, to join themselves together to oppose the ways of tyranny."

People like Montrose and others begin to wonder if this isn't

going too far, and they perhaps begin to question whether what

they're doing is legitimate and what the long-term consequences might be.

Not just for the Crown but actually for them too.

Is this a case in history

where an individual really makes a colossal difference?

The personality, the character of Charles I?

It's awfully hard to avoid the conclusion that an awful

lot of it is to be put at the doorstep of Charles.

I mean, the man was totally inept as a politician.

Just say what you mean, Roger!

He loved his family, he liked dogs, he had a great art collection,

but in terms of running the country he was a bit of a dead loss.

The more extreme, like Argyll, suspected Montrose's loyalty,

had him imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle and tried for treason,

the penalty for which was death.

Montrose was finally released in 1642,

but by then his defection from the Covenanter Parliament was complete.

From now until the end of his life he would be a King's man.

The English Parliament was now at war with the King.

It had looked on in envy at the concessions the Scots had

won from Charles but talking had got them nowhere.

In October 1642 the first pitched battle was fought at Edgehill,

near Oxford.

Both sides were inexperienced and the result was inconclusive.

For the Scots, this was a chance to wield power south of the border.

What was once called the English Civil War is now more

accurately named the War of the Three Kingdoms.

A leading expert on the conflict is

Jane Ohlmeyer of Trinity College Dublin.

A contemporary chronicler of the activity in Scotland

says that there was a little black cloud over Scotland which eventually

engulfed Britain and Ireland, the whole of Britain and Ireland.

Do you think there's anything in that assessment?

I think actually there's an awful lot.

I think that we have taken a highly Anglocentric approach to

the study of these islands during the mid-17th century,

and let's face it,

the war began in Scotland and that de-stabilised Ireland, Ireland then

de-stabilised England, it's very very much a war of three kingdoms

and there are civil wars raging within each of the three kingdoms.

So the interconnectedness is of central importance.

And the reality is, the Scots started it.

In 1643, a Scottish army crossed the border and captured Newcastle.

The Covenanter Scottish Parliament had signed the Solemn League

and Covenant a promise to aid the English Parliament

against King Charles on the condition that the English

would adopt the Presbyterian form of worship.

The Solemn League went much further than the Covenant that

Montrose had so willingly put his name to at Greyfriars.

In October 1644, Montrose was made Captain-General of

the King's forces in Scotland.

His role was to open up a second front that would relieve

pressure on Charles' forces in England by drawing Covenanter

troops back home to defend Scotland.

Among the forces he commanded were the Irish

troops of Alasdair MacColla.

A giant, he was one of the greatest warriors of his day.

Raised on Colonsay, he was a refugee from the ever growing Campbell

empire and now served his kinsman, the MacDonald Earl of Antrim.

The Earl of Antrim is an extraordinary character.

He's the ultimate Catholic survivor.

He is the grandson of the great O'Neill of Tyrone

and then on the other side he is the heir of Clan Donald South and

sees himself as this great Scottish warlord, and not just sees himself,

but was perceived as one of the great leaders of the Scottish clans.

Anyone who hated the Campbells was a fan of the MacDonalds of Antrim.

While Alasdair MacColla was perfectly content to serve

the cause of King Charles, he was much more

interested in scoring points off his hereditary enemies, the Campbells,

and regaining the ancient MacDonald lands of Kintyre and Islay.

This potential conflict of motive was to haunt

the whole of Montrose's campaign.

Alasdair and his Irish marched to Atholl,

recruiting a few hundred Highlanders along the way.

But they had almost come to blows with local Stewarts

and Robertsons when four riders came into view.

Leading them was Montrose.

He was dressed as a Gael, in trews, shortcoat and Highland bonnet.

The Gaelic poet, Iain Lom,

described him as having the comeliness of a king's son.

Instead of fighting the Irish,

800 Atholl men immediately joined the cause.

Montrose now had the makings of an army.

And here at Truidh Hill, he raised the standard for King and country.

Montrose's brilliance was that he had a hotch-potch army.

Sometimes some attended, sometimes others attended.

He had the core of the Irish Brigade who were regular soldiers,

and they were good soldiers.

But his ability to mould them together as a team

and deploy them in the way he did.

He was an inspiring leader, there's no doubt about it.

He wasn't the size and stature of someone like Alasdair MacColla

but he was nevertheless an inspiring leader, and he used his skills

and talents, always, to defeat armies that outnumbered him.

Montrose led his hotchpotch little force towards Perth,

where Lord Elcho was mustering a Covenanting army

to crush the Royalist Rising.

On Sunday, 1st September,

the two armies met outside the city at Tibbermore.

It was a warm day, and the minister of Tibbermore,

Kirk Alexander Balneaves, gave Montrose a glass of water.

He was de-frocked for this act of kindness.

But he later told the ministers of Perth Presbytery

that there was not one among them who, had they been there that day,

would not have kissed Montrose's backside.

Elcho's line was strung out across the battlefield

with 500 cavalry on each flank.

The ministers wandered around among the pikemen and the musketeers,

telling them that God had promised them a splendid victory.

They highly commended the bloodthirsty war cry,

"Jesus and no quarter!"

Jesus and no quarter!

Facing the Covenanters, Montrose's line was stretched

and only three ranks deep.

He couldn't afford to be outflanked.

He himself commanded the right flank,

on foot and armed with a targe and pike.

Alasdair's Irish were in the centre and 500 bowmen on their left.

Covenanting cavalry attacked, but were driven off by the bowmen.

Montrose advanced.

The National Army Museum in London

has an expert on 17th century warfare - Julian Farrance.

You look at you there and you look pretty dangerous with this musket,

but of course it's absolutely useless to you as it is

because you've got no ammunition and without any ammunition,

this is just a big stick.

So before you can do anything really,

you're going to need to have this.

Now this is, sometimes you'll hear this thing called

the Twelve Apostles or something, it's actually an ammunition carrier.

Its proper name is a Bandolier of Box

and we still use bandoliers of ammunition today.

So stick that on, so that goes there and over your head like that.

Now, each one of these bottles carries a charge of gunpowder for the weapon.

This one down here with the long nose is fine meal gunpowder for the priming pan,

and in this little pouch here are musket balls like these fellas here.

This is the kind of thing that you're going to be shooting.

Assuming you've managed to get it all primed and loaded, you're ready to go.

When these muskets were fired, they were fired in teams of men, right?

In what way, how did it work?

Traditionally, and certainly the case in the English Civil War,

you'd have your first rank ready,

they would deploy and fire the weapon, then run round to the back

and start going through the loading procedure.

The next rank would then step forward, take up their position,

fire away, run round to the back and shuffle forward

until you get back to the front again,

when hopefully you were just about ready to present and fire again.

And that works fine if you've got enough guys to be able to do it,

-and if you've got enough muskets.

-But Montrose doesn't.

-Unfortunately.

So what does he do? He decides that you should all fire in one go.

Partially it's necessity, that they haven't got enough guys

to be able to do that kind of tactic.

It's also that they're looking at developing the way the musket's going to be working

and it's certainly something looking forward to the future which may well

work extremely well, is that you're getting quite close to the enemy,

you let them have a good solid volley of everything you've got,

which softens them up and then you pursue them

and follow them in with sharp things, and that will hopefully

then break up their positions and formations and they will go.

And once they start to go, it's all over.

And that becomes the Highland Charge, or part thereof at least,

which lasts for another century after the time of Montrose.

In the face of the Highland Charge,

Elcho's line broke in surprise and confusion.

The battle turned into a rout.

Fleeing Covenanters were cut down as they fled.

This was turning into an absolute disaster.

It is said that you could have walked on the backs of the dead

all the way to Perth.

That evening the Perth magistrates surrendered the keys of the city

and they also promised a huge lump sum to the Royalist cause.

Montrose's glorious year had truly begun.

Montrose marched on Dundee, but found the town well defended

and he moved north towards Aberdeen, the strategic key to the Northeast.

The city was held by a Covenanting army,

but its people were mostly Royalist sympathisers.

Montrose wrote this letter to Aberdeen's provost and magistrates

and sent an envoy and a drummer to deliver it.

The letter demanded the surrender of the city.

Women, children and the old were to leave.

Those who remained could expect no quarter.

As the envoy left, a Covenanting soldier shot the drummer dead.

Incensed, Montrose ordered that his men spare no-one.

Aberdeen was to pay a high price for that one life.

2,000 infantry defended Aberdeen. Montrose had 1,700.

The enemy had 500 cavalry. Montrose had 70.

When a troop of enemy cavalry charged,

the Royalist front line opened to let them through,

then swiftly and fatally closed behind them.

Surrounded, they were cut down.

The Royalist line hacked and slashed its way forward,

and the Covenant centre broke and fled.

But it was the bloodshed that followed the battle that left

the greatest stain on Montrose's career.

Once inside this Royalist city, his Royalist army

indulged in a three-day orgy of rape, pillage and slaughter.

It was said there was hardly enough men left alive to bury the dead.

One of Alasdair's Irish officers boasted, "The riches of this town

"have made all of our soldiers cavaliers."

The looting of the city was the price the Gaels demanded

in return for their services.

But Montrose must have known he was guilty of one of the most

unforgivable atrocities of the entire war.

There was now a £20,000 on Montrose's head - dead or alive.

And an army led by the Marquess of Argyll was hunting him.

But in these days it was thought impossible to maintain armies

in the field over the winter, and Argyll withdrew to his stronghold

at Inveraray.

It wasn't the elegant Georgian village that it is today,

but it was the political and military capital of the Campbells,

the most powerful clan in Scotland.

As Argyll rested here, an audacious plan was being hatched.

Alasdair MacColla wanted to destroy Argyll in his lair.

At first, Montrose was aghast,

but Alasdair argued that with Argyll and the Campbells destroyed,

more Highland clans would rally to the cause of King Charles.

He said that the Gaels knew their mountains,

and they could take Inveraray by surprise.

The breathtaking boldness of this plan captured Montrose's imagination,

so in early December, he marched his force

through the mountains from Blair Atholl to Argyll.

It was madness or genius.

Guided by a MacDonald of Glencoe,

they marched 104 miles through mountain, snow and bog.

Had their long ragged column been discovered

in some of the narrow passes, they could easily have been slaughtered.

With Montrose was his 14-year-old son and heir, John.

Montrose was daring to win or lose it all.

At Inveraray, a breathless Campbell scout broke the news to Argyll

that Montrose and Alasdair were advancing down Glen Shira.

He did not wait.

His galley was lying in Loch Fyne.

He jumped on board and escaped.

Although his castle was too well defended for Montrose to take,

the surrounding lands were ravished.

A century of naked clan and religious hatred

came to a head in an orgy of blood and plunder.

Barely a house was left unburned. All armed men were put to the sword.

At least 900 Campbells died and there was not even a battle.

Montrose wrote to the King,

"I was willing to let the world see that Argyll was not the man

"his Highlanders believed him to be,

"nd that it was possible to beat him in his own Highlands."

50 years later, the Campbells avenged the carnage

by slaughtering 37 MacDonalds in the Massacre of Glencoe,

some of the Campbells invoking their dead kinsmen

as they went about the gruesome work.

After some weeks of rest, and laden with plunder,

the Royalists began to rampage their way up the Great Glen.

Montrose may have planned to attack Covenanter troops

billeted at Inverness.

When Montrose reached Kilcumin, modern Fort Augustus,

he hit upon the rather splendid device of having his followers

subscribe a new band.

This was a document known as the Kilcumin Band

which was modelled, undoubtedly, on the National Covenant.

Except the difference here was that he invited Catholics

as well as Presbyterians, Episcopalians and anyone else really

who cared to do so, to subscribe this document,

which was not so much about religion obviously,

because it was non-sectarian, but it was about the maintenance

and defence of the person of Charles I.

If you like, Montrose was attempting at this date to reunite

the different factions in war-torn Scotland.

Even as he was drawing up this document,

word came that the Earl of Seaforth was heading down Loch Ness

with a Covenanting army.

Then more bad news.

Argyll and a large army, bent on revenge,

had occupied Inverlochy, further down the Great Glen.

Montrose was in danger of being crushed in a fatal pincer movement.

He reacted with breathtaking audacity.

These modern soldiers, a combined force of regulars

and territorials from the Royal Regiment of Scotland,

are re-enacting Montrose's greatest military feat -

a desperate forced march in the depths of winter

through the mountains to take a much stronger enemy by complete surprise.

The Royalist army's route was so challenging

that even the modern army sees this as an exercise that tests endurance,

leadership and navigation.

Some of the tactics that were used then are just as relevant

to the modern day in terms of arriving at the point of battle

when the enemy least expects it.

And so we can all draw lessons from the past.

I think in Montrose the lessons are particularly obvious.

His use of ground,

his tactical awareness has left an astonishing legacy in our history.

So what Montrose did, we still do today.

This is very, very good training for us,

and is very applicable to what we're currently doing in Afghanistan.

Troops have got to follow their commander.

Now, the commander has got to be respected

and I would say he was very well-respected by the sheer fact

that a lot of the battles he won he was outnumbered,

and because of that the guys would follow him anywhere.

But it also meant, towards his opposition,

that they also respected him and feared him as well.

From Loch Ness, Montrose and his 1,500 men took to the mountains,

travelling parallel to the Great Glen, but concealed by a ridge.

Their guide may have been a local MacDonald - Iain Lom,

the famous Gaelic bard.

They crossed over the 2,000 feet pass, down into Glen Turret,

marching in deep snow, wading waist-deep through freezing streams

and without food for two days. At the foot of Glen Roy

they met and killed a raiding party of Argyll's men.

The survivors fled to Inverlochy, by modern Fort William,

with the incredible news.

That night, Argyll withdrew to his galley on Loch Linnhe.

Montrose struck at dawn,

before Argyll's commander had time to properly organise.

About 2,000 Campbells held the centre,

with regular lowland Covenanters on the flanks.

Musketeers were posted on Inverlochy Castle walls

to fire down on Montrose's men.

Montrose wrote...

"A little after the sun was up both armies met

"and the rebels fought for some time with great bravery,

"as men that deserved to fight in a better cause.

"Our men, having a nobler cause, did wonders

"and came immediately to push of pike and dint of sword."

Modern warfare is barbaric enough but here men literally hacked

one another to death in a rage of bloodlust.

You could smell the fear on the breath of the man you killed.

You could taste his blood as it spurted and splattered over you.

The Campbells fought doggedly to the end.

It's believed that Argyll lost 1,500 men on that day here.

He himself took to the loch for safety.

By way of contrast, Montrose's losses were slight.

Iain Lom climbed a hill to watch the battle.

A MacDonald,

he gleefully turned the massacre of the Campbells into poetry.

TRANSLATION:

And then Iain Lom goes on to say at the end:

Was this an example of Gaelic charity towards the defeated?

Utter charity! This is an example of gruesome realism.

Iain Lom was there,

but he was in no way an impartial or independent witness.

He took as much joy and relish in the plight of the Campbells,

the destruction, the bloody, gruesome destruction

of the Campbells as Alasdair MacColla did.

And there is a rejoicing here, isn't there?

I mean, this is what they've wanted to see happen

to the Campbells for a long time.

There's gloating here. There's rejoicing and gloating.

There's no doubt they wanted this to happen to the Campbells.

On both sides in these battles there were terrible atrocities done.

And in the Gaelic tradition, if you can associate, well, manure

and the destruction of your enemies in this way,

this is very powerful iconography, very powerful symbolism.

Tragically, Montrose's 14-year-old son and heir, John, died

of an illness brought on by the exposure and hardship

of the winter campaign.

Within weeks, the Covenanters imprisoned Montrose's new heir,

his younger son James, in Edinburgh Castle.

History tells us very little about Montrose's wife, Magdalen.

Her father was a Covenanter, very much opposed to his son-in-law,

but we don't know if their marriage was a happy one.

There is no evidence of other women in Montrose's life,

and the Covenanters would have seized upon any suspicion

that their arch enemy was a fornicator.

We do know, however, that Magdalen lost her home, her estates,

her position and her sons, in her husband's cause.

Montrose kept on the move,

recruiting and avoiding the two armies that were now hunting him.

In early May, his force of 1,500 foot and 250 horse reached

the little village of Auldearn, two miles east of Nairn.

An army of well over twice that size, commanded by Sir John Hurry,

advanced on him in a rapid night march through torrential rain.

Close to the sea, Hurry's men had fired off

their sodden muskets to test them.

They were heard by Montrose's scouts.

He had a few precious hours to set a trap.

Montrose placed Alasdair and his Irish,

together with MacDonalds and Gordons just up here below the hill.

Behind them, he placed the Royal banner

to give the impression that this constituted the main body

of Montrose's army. In fact, they were bait.

This was a trap which was to lure the Covenanters into an attack.

To the north there were cavalrymen that Montrose disposed

over the top of the hill there.

And to the south, concealed behind the ridges, was Montrose

with 800 infantrymen and about 50 cavalrymen.

All faced west, towards Inverness, the direction from which

the Covenanting army was approaching,

here on the battlefield of Auldearn.

The plan was brilliant.

The enemy would be lured towards Alasdair's little force

beneath Castle Hill.

At the height of the battle, Montrose would launch a devastating flank attack.

The Covenanters took the bait.

But the hot-blooded Alasdair almost ruined everything.

Confronted by hated Campbell enemies, he actually attacked,

although vastly outnumbered.

Alasdair led from the front.

In the thick of battle he lost his sword, but he seized another one,

which he used to scythe away the pikes which were embedded in his shield.

He then clove his way through the enemy as his men fell around him.

Alasdair was only saved when the Royalist cavalry attacked

the Covenanters' flanks, throwing them into confusion.

This was the moment Montrose was waiting for.

His infantry poured down the hill

and onto the Covenanters in a devastating attack.

Hurry's cavalry ran for their lives,

although their commander was the last to leave the field.

His foot soldiers were slaughtered.

Auldearn was Montrose's greatest, bloodiest, victory.

Alasdair went on a recruiting drive to raise the clans in the west.

In the meantime, Montrose played cat and mouse with General Baillie's Army Of The Covenant.

Montrose and Baillie finally met at Gallowhill at Alford on Donside.

Baillie was a Scottish veteran of the Thirty Years' War,

and had commanded victorious Parliament troops at Marston Moor.

His scouts had reported that Alasdair and many of his savage Irish were missing.

This may be what tempted Baillie to fight here.

Montrose left most of his force behind Gallowhill.

Baillie thought Montrose had retreated, leaving only a rearguard.

He crossed the River Don at a narrow ford.

It would be almost impossible to retreat.

Lord George Gordon, commander of Montrose's cavalry on the right flank,

attacked a much larger force of Covenanting horse.

Gordon was supported by an Irish regiment of foot.

The Irish dropped their muskets and then

dived in between the horses' legs, using their dirks to hack

at their bellies and the hamstrings of the horses, thus disabling them.

The Covenanting cavalry was completely routed.

Montrose's Highland Infantry charged the centre,

firing at close quarters.

The outflanked Covenanters fought doggedly, but were doomed.

There was bad news from England.

Montrose now learned that the King's forces had been mauled at Naseby.

Montrose desperately wanted to take his "small but never conquered army" south to aid Charles,

but waited until Alasdair returned from the West with reinforcements.

By August, Montrose's army had 5,000 men.

It was the largest he had commanded

but General Baillie's new force was even bigger.

The two armies met at Kilsyth, eight miles north-east of Glasgow,

on a sweltering August day.

Max Hastings is a journalist and historian.

He's been a war correspondent, famously in the Falklands,

and has written a biography of Montrose.

Max, if you'd been a war correspondent

here on the 15th August 1645, what would you have seen?

A fantastically dramatic scene.

First of all, down in the bottom of the bowl there,

natural amphitheatre, Montrose's camp.

Not many tents because only the grandees had tents.

Most of the Irish and the clansmen would have been sleeping on the open ground.

Lot of baggage, women cooking, children,

all the ragtag of this wild, Highland army.

And then, over the hill there, comes Baillie's Covenanters' army.

First of all, Baillie made a colossal mistake.

There's nothing stupider you can do on any battlefield,

ancient or modern, but to cross your enemy's front,

and Bailie decided he was going to try and outflank Montrose, but Montrose knew he was there.

So what does he see, but the Covenanting Army streaming across his front up this hill.

Now, all right, the fact they were doing this meant his men

had to charge from the bottom there up the hill.

But these are phenomenally fit, wild clansmen, that to them,

leaping over the gorse with their swords in hand is nothing.

And they came sweeping up the hill and threw themselves upon Baillie's columns,

caught at a hopeless disadvantage.

Alasdair Macdonald and the Highlanders, they really got stuck in,

and already Baillie's people are breaking.

17th century battles were more like a rugger scrum.

Now, when armies clash, when they collide,

there's a terrible, heaving struggle, sometimes for hours,

with these desperate packs of men throwing themselves upon each other.

And suddenly Baillie's army breaks, and Baillie's army starts to run.

Then there was a terrible killing.

Some of it over here, at Slaughter Howe,

some of it 20 miles over there.

They were pursuing them ruthlessly.

Of course, in search of plunder as well as anything else.

Plunder, plunder, plunder is always what Highland armies are about.

Half of them don't give a damn about the King's cause.

What they care about is booty, loot. Fighting is their business.

And they did it brilliantly on that day here at Kilsyth.

And after they won they wanted the spoils of this terrific victory

when yet again they'd beaten what should have been a formidable Covenanting army.

Montrose was born into the heart of the Scottish aristocratic establishment.

Yet the greatest failure of his campaign was his inability

to win over members of his own peer group, even though many of them thought like him.

He called such waverers, "Vipers wasting at the bowels of their native nation

"for their own benefit."

They were not Presbyterian fanatics, but they did not join him.

The decision to use Irish Catholics is, I suppose, a mixed one in terms

of the impact it's going to have, because they may be great troops,

but they are going to alienate potential supporters back in Scotland,

and remember it's not just Irish Catholics, they're perceived to be truly barbaric as well,

and I think some of the behaviour of MacColla's troops at times fed, you know,

this notion that they're wild, uncivilised barbarians coming to massacre women and children.

Obviously dreadful things did occur, especially along the Western seaboard,

so from a PR perspective, it does not stand Montrose in good stead at all.

We have to be realistic. Alasdair was a brute.

I don't think anyone has ever suggested anything else.

He was a fighting machine. All he wanted to do was fight, loot, burn and kill.

But if you're going to fight wars, I'm afraid you need people like this,

and it's entirely understandable why the Lowlands of Scotland, most of the people hated Montrose,

because he brought this terrible wild army down upon them, wreaking havoc.

Alasdair MacColla had no desire to invade the land of the Sassenach.

His enemy was Argyll and Clan Campbell.

Alasdair left 500 of his Irish veterans and headed west.

The two men never met again.

Thousands of Scots Covenanters were fighting for the English Parliament against the King.

They were now sent north to deal with Montrose,

led by General David Leslie.

A veteran Scottish soldier, Leslie was an ally of Cromwell

and had played an important part in the defeat of the Royalists at Marston Moor.

On the 12th of September Montrose's small army was camped in a meadow by the River Ettrick at Philiphaugh.

Blood is still spilt here - it's the home of Selkirk Rugby Club.

Montrose was billeted in the town nearby,

where he was writing his dispatches to the King.

That night a party of scouts, patrolling three miles from the camp,

was surprised by Leslie's advance guard.

One escaped and rode like mad to warn Montrose.

But his staff did not believe the story.

They thought he'd been involved in a drunken brawl

and they refused to waken their commander.

As Montrose slept, and the scout raged,

Leslie's forces advanced on the sleeping army.

It was a disastrous failure of military intelligence.

In the morning, Leslie attacked.

Montrose just made it to the Royalist camp before dragoons occupied Selkirk.

His army was surrounded and outnumbered ten to one.

Men were fleeing in the confusion.

Montrose repeatedly led troopers in reckless charges against the Covenanter horse.

Of the foot soldiers, only the disciplined Irish

stood their ground and actually counterattacked.

Even the Covenanting propaganda admitted that

"The battle was very hotly disputed."

Battlefield archaeologist Tony Pollard has made a special study of Philiphaugh.

Montrose, as ever, has chosen his ground well.

He's disorganised on the day of the battle because he's

a mile away up in the town and a lot of his men are down here,

but nonetheless, he's picked a good strategic point if he is attacked.

Enclosures with ditches and hedges running across the flat terrain,

which the musketeers, largely the Irish troops,

used to very good effect as a defensive structure.

The thing with the Montrose campaign is a lot of the troops were

just levies, they were just local people who were recruited or

press-ganged into these small armies.

But the Irish who fought with Montrose throughout these campaigns,

these were professions, hardcore troops.

And they knew a thing or two about fighting.

And you'd think, well, you're outnumbered

and you're behind a fortified position,

you're going to stay there, but not the Irish.

They were all for charging forward and they did at one point.

They charged in to Leslie's bigger army but got pushed back into their defences.

And once they've been pushed back they were the only

element of Montrose's army which really remained in position.

But the odds were overwhelming.

Montrose seemed to be resolved to die in the battle,

but was persuaded to flee.

The army might be lost, but if he survived to fight another day, the cause might not be.

With a handful of horse, he cut his way out and escaped.

Captured Irish who had been persuaded to surrender were executed.

Their women and children were slaughtered.

After six brutal defeats which must have tested

the faith of the most devoted Covenanter,

the spawn of anti-Christ were finally delivered into the hands of the godly.

And here, on the Philiphaugh estate,

we have this remarkable monument which commemorates,

of all people, the Covenanters and not the many, many victims -

soldiers, women, children, who were slaughtered after the battle.

This is a monument to Covenanting triumph.

Montrose rallied the survivors of Philiphaugh, and began to form a new army.

But the King, desperate to keep his throne,

was prepared to do deals and was now negotiating with the Covenanter Parliament

that Montrose had led the Royalist rebellion against.

Charles ordered Montrose:

"You must disband your force and go into France,

"where you will receive my further directions.

"This at first may justly startle you, but I do assure you that if,

"for the present, I should offer to do more for you, I could not do so."

The only thing that was wrong with the Royalist cause

and the English Civil War was the King.

He was not a good master to Montrose, that here was this

devotedly loyal lieutenant who had achieved this miracle in Scotland

and Charles never sent him help and was negotiating behind his back

with half the Covenanting factions, as indeed his son did later.

And I'm afraid it must be said that Charles I was not worthy of Montrose.

Montrose went into exile.

His military fame made him a celebrity,

and he sat for this portrait.

He's wearing black armour like a candidate for martyrdom.

He was offered the rank of General in the French Army,

but his only desire was to return to Scotland to fight for his King.

Charles surrendered to the Scottish Covenant Army in 1646.

He still refused to accept their form of worship,

so the Scots handed him over to the English Parliament for a price.

Charles was beheaded in January 1649.

When told, Montrose fainted with shock.

When he came to he is said to have groaned:

"We must die, die with our gracious king.

"May the God of life and death be my witness,

"that henceforth life on earth will be bitterness and mourning."

Even the Covenanters did not want a republic.

They opened negotiations with the dead king's 18-year-old son,

Charles II, who turned out to be a double-dealer like his father.

He agreed that Montrose should land a force in the north of Scotland

but at the same time, he attempted to open negotiations with the Covenanting Government.

Montrose was to be used as a bargaining tool in these negotiations.

In April 1650, Montrose with 1,500 Danish mercenaries and Orcadian royalists,

landed on the Scottish mainland in Caithness,

but the northern clans did not rally to Montrose's Royal Standard.

His little army was routed at Carbisdale.

After three days on the run, disguised as a shepherd, Montrose was captured.

Montrose's fate was now sealed, and it had all been in vain.

King Charles had done a deal with the Scottish Covenanters.

He had agreed to enforce Presbyterianism in England,

if they supported him against Oliver Cromwell and the English Parliament.

I don't think Charles II ever really thought Montrose,

when he returned to Scotland, was likely to achieve success.

He was just another pawn on the board,

and Charles II treated Montrose as cynically as his father had done.

Montrose was taken to Edinburgh and cruelly paraded through the streets.

When brought before Parliament, he told his accusers:

"I did engage in the first Covenant, and was faithful to it.

"For the League, I thank God I was never in it, and so could not break it.

"How far religion has been advanced by it, and what sad consequences followed on it,

"these poor, distressed Kingdoms can witness."

Montrose was condemned to be hanged at the cross of Edinburgh like a common thief,

not beheaded as custom dictated an aristocrat should die.

After three hours his body was to be cut down, beheaded,

and his limbs hacked off and displayed in cities around Scotland.

His reaction to the sentence was typical of this young, romantic cavalier -

he composed a poem.

"Let them bestow on every earth a limb

"Then open all my veins that I may swim

"To Thee, my maker in that crimson lake

"Then place my parboil'd head upon a stake

"Scatter my ashes throw them in the air

"Lord, Since you knowest Where all these atoms are

"I'm hopeful you'll recover what's my dust

"And confident thou'lt raise me with the just."

This is electric stuff, it's unflinching, direct.

But I don't know if it's the bravado of belief

or if it's just this fierce defiance, this almost death wish.

The next day, Montrose walked down the High Street to the scaffold.

He dressed more like a bridegroom than a criminal going to the gallows.

11 years after Montrose's execution,

King Charles ordered that his remains be

reassembled for a sumptuous funeral in St Giles' Cathedral.

His head was removed from a spike on the Edinburgh tollbooth to be

replaced by that of his archenemy Argyll,

a victim of the King's revenge.

The two men now lie on either side of St Giles'.

CONGREGATION SINGS

Four centuries after the birth of James Graham, First Marquess Of Montrose,

this remarkable man is being commemorated in a service at St Giles'.

They've asked me to do the eulogy.

It was said of him that he took upon himself the role of the hero too much,

and lived as in a romance.

But if so, it was an unromantic romance, full of blood and guts.

But it was one which, Montrose had decided, must end tragically.

He died a Covenanter and a willing martyr to monarchical faithlessness.

At the end, he bequeathed to posterity his name and his charity.

No man can do more.

Above all, he remained true to his own creed,

which still strikes a powerful chord after 400 years.

"He either fears his fate too much Or his deserts are small

"That puts it not unto the touch To win or lose it all."

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