directed, the stones which lay around. The whole of the Lowland army then gave way, and sought a disgraceful refuge in flight, except a party of musketeers under Sir James Scott, who, throwing themselves into the ruins of a few houses upon the top of a neighbouring piece of rising ground, fired incessantly and steadily for some time upon every party which approached. Montrose was at last only able to carry this point, by dashing upon it in person at the head of the brave Atholemen; a body of men constituting the flower of his army, and whom he had chosen to take under his own immediate command.

In the battle, brief as it had thus been, scarcely á dozen men were killed. It was only in the flight which followed, that the carnage took place, for which this fight was so memorable. Betwixt the battle-field and the town of Perth, to which the flight was chiefly directed, it is stated by the most credible authorities, that nearly four hundred persons were killed, including the young Laird of Reires in Fife, Patrick Oliphant younger of Bachilton, George Haliburton of Keilor in Angus, David Grant, captain for the burgh of Perth, and many other persons of local consequence. The slaughter was particularly great among the townsmen of Fife, who, although they had been the first to fly, were by no means the cleverest in flight; many of them being men of such grossness of body, as to burst with fatigue, and so die without stroke of sword.10 Of the single town of St Andrews, twenty-five householders perished. The horse alone succeeded in achieving an unannoyed retreat; though it is probable, had Montrose had cavalry, the greater part of them would have been

also cut off, as well as a much greater number of the foot.

Montrose had not a single man killed in the battle of Tippermuir; perhaps the only instance of such a thing on record; nor had he above two wounded. Among the advantages of his victory, besides the mere severity of the blow he had given the enemy, might be reckoned his seizure of their baggage and arms, which enabled him to equip his own forces with the very articles of which they had hitherto been chiefly in need. He had now only to take possession of the wealthy town of Perth," in order to complete his equipments by a supply of money.

He accomplished this feat in the very evening of his victory; the wreck of the army which had fallen back upon the town, being quite unable to hold it out against him. The terms upon which it surrendered were, that it should be without prejudice to the Covenant, that the citizens should be exempt from plundering, so long as they lived as the king's loyal subjects, and that the victors should have free quarter for four days.12 Montrose found in the town eight hundred of the Fife Covenanters, whom he put into confinement in the church of St John; and he immediately ordered a subsidy to be raised by the citizens to the extent of nine thousand merks.13

CHAPTER XIV.

BATTLES OF ABERDEEN AND FYVIE.

"Tis ours by craft and by surprise to gain;
'Tis yours to meet in arms, and battle on the plain.

PRIOR.

MONTROSE spent three days at Perth, in the expectation of assistance from the well-affected gentlemen of the neighbourhood, who, he calculated, would now venture to break with the Cove→ nanting government, by which they had hitherto been held in such restraint and terror. He was

accordingly joined by Lords Dupplin and Spynie, and by some gentlemen of the Carse of Gowrie, each with a small band of armed retainers. As yet, however, the most of those who would have been inclined to rank under his standard, were too much depressed by the religious tyranny which had so long prevailed, to be either able or willing to make an open declaration in his favour.

With the small accessions which he had procured, he left Perth on the 4th of September, and, crossing over the Tay, directed his course towards Forfarshire and Aberdeenshire, where he hoped to raise a number of loyal clans, and especially the Ogilvies and the Gordons. He halted the first night in the open fields near Collace, where next

morning an event occurred of a very distressing nature. In the grey of the dawn, before the sounding of the réveille, an alarm arose in the bivouack, that Lord Kilpont had been assassinated, and was now lying weltering in his blood. Montrose, on rushing to the spot, found it to be too true. This young nobleman had slept in the same bed with a Highland gentleman, James Stuart of Ardvoirlich, whose friend he had been from early youth. Stuart, who was a man of ungovernable passions, had requested him, early in the morning, to walk out, that they might commune together upon a subject which nearly concerned both. When they were alone, and at a little distance from the camp, he disclosed to Kilpont a project for assassinating the Marquis of Montrose, and then flying to the Covenanters, who would be sure to reward them well for so valuable a piece of service. The young nobleman expressed the utmost horror at the proposal, and perhaps also used some severe language in remonstrating against it, when Stuart, either provoked by his words, or afraid lest he should denounce him to Montrose, pulled out his dirk, and at once stabbed him to the heart. He then immediately rushed forth, brandishing the bloody poniard in his hand, after the fashion of the Malays; a sentinel whom he crossed in his path, and who endeavoured to intercept him, he prostrated by one stroke of the weapon; and he was then lost in the mist, which happened that morning to be so dense, that it was impossible for the keenest eyesight to see a pike's length through it.

Montrose deplored this unfortunate incident with the keenest sorrow; for Kilpont was not only his kinsman and friend, but his death would be likely

to occasion a general desertion of his numerous and valuable retainers. The Covenanters rejoiced over it with proportionate exultation, not even scrupling to receive and promote into their service the wretched man who had perpetrated the deed. It seems to be one of the evils of civil discord, that the principles of honourable warfare are sure to be lost sight of in the exigencies of the time. This is the second instance of assassination, attempted or executed, which has been recorded in these pages; and it is certainly a most remarkable proof of the obliquity of the moral sense of the party, that Baillie, one of the most gentle and amiable of their number, speaks somewhere of the death of Kilpont as "justly inflicted."

Montrose now altered his course a little, and fell down upon Dundee, the wealth of which promised even a better prize than Perth. But Argyle was by this time fast coming up behind him, and the citizens, on being summoned to surrender, resolved to hold out till relieved by that general. Montrose, on the other hand, saw that, even if he should sit down to besiege the town, Argyle would probably beat him up before he should be able to capture it, or else would perhaps take advantage of his thus lying aside, to form a junction with the army mustering against him at Aberdeen. Seeing it necessary, therefore, to accomplish his original intention of marching northward, and raising the Aberdeenshire loyalists, before coming to a collision with Argyle, he suddenly quitted the environs of Dundee, and directed his route through Angus. In the course of this march, he was joined by the venerable Earl of Airly, with his two sons, Sir Thomas and Sir David Ogilvy, as well as by a considerable portion of the minor gentlemen and