21 The gene

ved and treated as prisoners of war. rosity and discretion of this mode of procedure were now to be, for the first time, fairly departed from by the barbarous oligarchy which governed Scotland; the spirit of revenge, it would appear, having there first got the better of all more humane and civilized principles of action, in precise conformity to the rule acknowledged by students of human nature, that the less removed a nation is from its primeval state of rudeness, so much the more predominant and unlimited is the desire of "blood for blood."

Leslie having returned to Lothian, and there ta ken under his protection the Committee of Estates and the Commission of the Kirk, the members of which had fled to Berwick after the battle of Kilsyth, a tour of vengeance was undertaken through the kingdom, by that tripartite tyranny of war, rebellion, and fanaticism, for the purpose of extirpating the last remaining roots, as they themselves would have said, of malignancy. The first victims were two Irish captains, O'Kane and Laughlane, who had been spared by some chance from the shambles of Newark. These unhappy young soldiers, one of whom had behaved with singular gallantry at the affair of Fyvie, while the other had been distinguished as one of the first men in the charge at Kilsyth, were hanged, without the least ceremony, upon the castle-hill of Edinburgh. In the progress of the army through West Lothian, a few days after, a much more extensive scene of destruction took place. About forty of the wives and children of the Irish, who had been taken and gathered together by the country-people, were precipitated from the high bridge over the river Avon, near Linlithgow, and drowned in the deep pool

below. Some of these unfortunate persons, even after their fall-one of at least fifty feet-and after being immersed in the water, had strength sufficient to gain the banks; but soldiers were placed for a considerable way down the stream, to push back all such into the water with their pikes, and to wait till they were sure that the whole were dead.22

At Glasgow, to which the army and the Committees next progressed, a present of fifty thousand merks, with a gold chain, was adjudged to Leslie, and a gift of twenty-five thousand merks to Middleton, the second in command, in token of the estimation in which they were held for their late services to the state. Before they removed from Glasgow, the citizens were compelled to pay a fine of twenty thousand pounds, in expiation of the heinous crime they had been guilty of, in giving fifty thousand to Montrose.23 The army was finally removed to Forfar, there to act as a guard over the Low Country, to protect it from the machinations of Montrose, who was understood to have again arrived at considerable strength, and to be meditating a renewal of the war.

CHAPTER VI.

SUPPRESSION OF MONTROSE'S INSURRECTION.

The Trojan youth about the captive flock,
To wonder, or to pity, or to mock.

DENHAM.

SMALL as Montrose's force had been at Philiphaugh, in comparison with the whole extent of his resources, and although it might have been supposed that he only required to throw himself into the Highlands, in order to gather as large an army as ever, it soon appeared that that defeat was to prove a complete death-blow to his hopes. No longer possessed of the invincible name which hitherto had mainly supported him; deprived of many of his best adherents and advisers; his remaining friends terrified by the fate with which their captive associates were threatened by the victors; the king's affairs in England every day verging nearer and nearer that point when they would be irretrievable; the very season unfavourable for any farther effort; it speedily became apparent that, in losing instead of gaining the battle of Philiphaugh, he had lost the last opportunity, of accomplishing the grand object with which he had entered the campaign. The party which the king dis

patched to his assistance about the time of the battle of Philiphaugh, had been, like many other parties of Charles's forces during this last and most disastrous of his campaigns, cut off by the triumphant republicans. To complete the difficulty of his circumstances, the Great Marquis had now to propose an attack, not upon a huge raw body of Lowland militia, but upon a large army of disciplined cavalry, which had already beaten him, and was confident in its ability to beat him again.

On his retreat into Athole, he had been able to raise only four hundred men; the rest being as yet engrossed in the repair of their ruined dwellings, and in providing stores for the winter. Then, having crossed the Grampians, and descended into Aberdeenshire, he exerted himself to rouse the vassals of the Marquis of Huntly, who had just before left his concealment in Sutherland, and returned home. Montrose expected that this nobleman would now join heart and hand in the common enterprise, and he made various overtures with the view of inducing him to rank under his banner. But Huntly, however zealous for the interest of the king, was by no means well-disposed towards Montrose. Either inflamed with a personal resentment against him, in remembrance of his capture at Aberdeen in 1639, or unwilling to vail his own commission as Lieutenant over the north of Scotland, to that which Montrose bore as Governor and Captain-General, he rejected all his intreaties; although these are said to have been at once respectful, urgent, and frequently repeated; constantly affirming that he entertained the strongest good-will towards the royal cause, but as constantly displaying a reluctance to take the method of showing it proposed by Montrose.

Having in the end succeeded in rousing the Earl of Aboyne, with a small band of the Gordons, though rather by force than any other method, the royal general marched southward with all haste, intending to attempt the rescue of his friends from the hands of parliament, or at least endeavour to awe the latter into mercy. He had the mortification, however, to see these unwilling levies all drop away from him in his march southward, under the pretext of defending their own country from the attacks of a party of the enemy's troops. He was further mortified at this time, by receiving intelligence that Sir Alaster MacCol could not be brought away from Argyleshire to join him; being there. engaged in matters more nearly concerning his own interests and feelings, than either Montrose's or the king's service. He at last found himself, on descending into the Lowlands, attended by only about three hundred horse and twelve hundred foot, chiefly Atholemen, Ogilvies, and adherents of the Lord Erskine; a miserable army to present against the six thousand horse commanded by Leslie and Middleton.

With this small army, however, Montrose did not hesitate, towards the end of October, to approach Glasgow, where the Committee of Estates was sitting in trial upon his friends, attended by a guard of three thousand horse. Planting himself upon the lands of the chief Covenanters of the district, he lay for some time contemplating the city, as the lioness regards the fortress within which she knows her stolen cubs to be immured. By ravaging these lands, he for some time hoped to bring out the Covenanting force to the country, where he might find an opportunity to attack it to advantage; but the Committee knew his weakness, and,