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Graham part of Scottish descent connected with the race of the Macdonalds. They were consequently extremely hostile to the Campbells, by whom they or their ancestors had been driven out of Scotland. At Tippermuir Montrose depended upon them and some highlanders from Athol and the neighbourhood. He had no cavalry, and won by a rush upon a new-levied and undisciplined army. At Aberdeen he had very few highlanders, and his cavalry numbered only forty-four. He consequently had recourse to the expedient of interspersing musketeers among the horse, so as to put them in a state of defence, and to use them as cavalry after the enemy was shaken. At Inverlochy, where he attacked the Campbells, he relied on a great gathering of the Macdonalds, and as the Campbells had no horse at all, he was able to make the most of his own little force of cavalry. These three battles had been gained over troops either undisciplined or only disciplined in the highland fashion. In his latter battles he had to do with regular troops. At Auldearn, where he defeated Henry, he had at last a respectable body of horse, through the accession of the Gordons, and he won the battle partly by his excellent arrangements, but still more by his adoption of the new cavalry system, which had recently been introduced into England, the old plan of preluding with an interchange of pistol shots having been abandoned in favour of an immediate charge. Alford, again, was won by Montrose's choice of a splendid defensible position. Baillie, his antagonist, was lured across a river and a bog, so that when he was repulsed his destruction was unavoidable. Kilsyth, the most splendid in its results of all Montrose's victories, was the one in which his qualities as a commander were the least shown; but this was simply because the blunders of the enemy were so enormous that it would have been very difficult not to beat him.

Montrose's object had always been to shake himself free of the highlands and to organise the lowlands, so as to hold out a hand to Charles in England. If he failed it was because his statesmanship was inferior to his military genius. When he entered Glasgow after the victory of Kilsyth he found himself in the air. The Macdonalds went off because they wanted to fight the Campbells and not to succour Charles. Other highlanders went off because they could not be allowed to plunder in the south as they had plundered in the north. The Gordons went off because they no longer occupied the first place in Montrose's counsels. Montrose had no population in the lowlands from which he could draw fresh support. He summoned a parliament to meet at Glasgow, but before the appointed day arrived he, with the small force which remained to him, was defeated at Philiphaugh (13 Sept. 1645) by David Leslie, who had come back from England with a strong body of cavalry. Montrose had no national force behind him, and the varying elements of his armies had each fought for sectional interests and deserted him when he sought to use them for a common object. To the population of the lowlands his conduct of the war had given dire offence. He was himself clement to prisoners, and often liberated them on parole; but his wild followers could not be restrained. The carnage after battle was enormous, and on one occasion, after the battle of Aberdeen, he was so enraged by the murder of a drummer as to make no effort to restrain his men from outrage and slaughter when the town was entered. It is true that Argyll had burned and pillaged before Montrose entered Scotland, but Argyll's violence had been mostly confined to the highlands, and it is in the nature of civilised nations to think much more of injuries done to themselves by a ruder people than they do of the injuries which they themselves inflict on those whom they account to be barbarous. For some months Montrose attempted to raise fresh forces in the highlands, but he had no longer Macdonald with him, and between him and the Gordons cooperation was henceforth impossible.

Charles, indeed, valued Montrose's services highly, and had insisted in his negotiations with the Scottish covenanters that Montrose should be included in any pacification made, and that his army should join the Scottish army in the then projected attack upon the new model. When this proposal was rejected, he proposed to send Montrose as his ambassador to France. As the Scots would not hear of this, he despatched orders to Montroso from his confinement at Newcastle to disband his troops, but he accompanied his public message with secret orders to keep them together. Resistance, however, became impossible, and on 31 Aug. 1646 Montrose escaped in a small vessel to Bergen.

Montrose's first thought was to renew the war. He sent Lord Crawford to Paris to explain to Henrietta Maria his readiness to take the field in Scotland at the head of thirty thousand men. To do this would require money, but Henrietta Maria either had not the necessary supply or was not inclined to trust it to Montrose. When he arrived in Paris in the spring of 1647, he found no intention to support him.

In or about March 1648 Montrose was in treaty with Mazarin for a high position in