Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 5.djvu/345

Rh advantage they had gained, and both once more joined battle. The struggle now, however, though bloody, was short and decisive. The shattered remains of the royal army sought shelter in York; leaving all their baggage, artillery, military stores, and above a hundred stand of colours in the hands of the conquerors. Upwards of three thousand men were left dead on the field; and upwards of fifteen hundred prisoners more than a hundred of whom were principal officers—fell into the hands of the conquerors. This victory was the death-blow to the affairs of the king, and greatly added to the reputation of Cromwell and Leslie, between whom the whole merit of the affair was divided; the independents claiming the largest share for Cromwell, and the presbyterians for Leslie. The combined army immediately laid siege to York, which surrendered by capitulation in a few days. The confederates, after the capture of York, separated; the Scottish troops marching north ward to meet the earl of Callander, whom they joined before Newcastle in the month of August.

General Baillie, in the meantime, had been recalled from England to command the raw levies that were raised for the defence of the country; but he was accompanied in his progress by a committee of the estates, who controlled all his movements; and contrary to the opinion of the general himself, commanded him to leave a strong position and expose himself with an army of inexperienced soldiers to certain destruction on the fatal field of Kilsyth, August 15th, 1645. The issue of this battle left the kingdom entirely in the power of Montrose and his army. In this emergency, David Leslie, with the whole of the cavalry attached to the Scottish army, then lying before Hereford, was recalled. Arriving at Berwick, whither the Estates had fled from the plague, which was then raging in Edinburgh, Leslie took measures for cutting off the retreat of Montrose to the north, amongst, whose mountains he had formerly found refuge. For this purpose he proceeded as far as Gladsmuir, about three miles to the west of Haddington, where he learned that Montrose was lying secure in Ettrick forest, near Selkirk. Leslie was no sooner apprized of this, than he wheeled to the left, and marched southward by the vale of Gala. The darkness of the night concealed his motions, and the first notice Montrose had of his approach was by his scouts informing him that Leslie was within half a mile of him. A sanguinary encounter soon followed; but Montrose's troops, though they fought with a desperation peculiar to their character, were completely broken and driven from the field, leaving- one thousand dead bodies behind them. Their leader, however, had the good fortune to escape, as did also the marquis of Douglas, with the lordk Crawford, Sir Robert Spotiswood, A. Leslie, William Rollock, Erskine, Fleming, and Napier. The lords Hartfield, Drummond, and Ogilvy, Philip Nisbet, William Murray, brother to lord Tullibardine, Ogilvy of Innerquharity, Nathaniel Gordon, Andrew Guthrie, son to the bishop of Moray, and two Irish colonels, O'Kean and Lauchlin, were made prisoners, and reserved for trial in the castles of Edinburgh and Stirling. Upwards of a hundred Irish soldiers taken, were, in conformity to a decree of the legislatures of both kingdoms, shot upon the field.

Leslie now proceeded with his victorious army to Lothian, and from thence, accompanied by the committee of Estates, to Glasgow, where, in conjunction with the committee of the church, they deliberated on the measures necessary for completing the reduction of Montrose, and securing the internal pence of the kingdom. Some of the prisoners taken at Philiphaugh were here tried and executed, and as a mark of gratitude, the committee, out of a fine they imposed on the marquis of Douglas, voted to Leslie fifty thousand merks, with a gold chain, and to Middleton, who was second in command, thirty thousand. Montrose, restless and intriguing, in the mean time wandered from place to place,