A proper study of this important campaign is hampered by the quite dramatic imbalance in the available sources. During his later exile on the Continent Montrose’s personal chaplain, George Wishart, wrote his famous Memoirs of James, Marquis of Montrose, a politically inspired hagiography that naturally presented his master’s actions in the best possible light and employed considerable hindsight in explaining his decision-making. The central battle of this study, Auldearn, is traditionally represented as a carefully thought-out ambush in which Hurry was cunningly lured to his destruction. In reality it was a very confused, scrambling affair in which Hurry initially came perilously close to overrunning Montrose’s cantonments before eventually being defeated in a seesaw battle that raged all day. Another result of the imbalance in the sources is that the dominant Royalist accounts set the agenda and the story becomes an account of their wanderings, punctuated by random encounters with an enemy displaying all the ineptness of a stage villain. Only thanks to the survival of a remarkable dossier of evidence, prepared by William Baillie for an inquiry into the debacle at Kilsyth, do we have anything like a proper account of the planning and decision-making on the other side. Useful as Ballie’s dossier is, however, it is necessarily limited in its scope.
Highland bowman with helmet and mail shirt; this soldier’s rather old-fashioned appearance indicates that he belongs to one of the western clans who fought under MacColla at Kilsyth.
It is still possible, however, to reconstruct in outline something of the basic planning on both sides. Montrose’s primary objective was, quite clearly, to create enough havoc and diversion to force the recall of Leven’s army from England. Ultimately he might even bring about a pro-Royalist counter-revolution in Scotland. He first needed to seize and hold a substantial area of territory long enough to recruit and sustain the forces necessary. He would, in the longer term, attempt to overthrow the government itself. Despite some quite appalling tactical defeats, the Scots government was initially able to prevent him from establishing this secure base. His celebrated marches were thus rather less daring adventures than harried efforts to keep one step ahead of his pursuers. The victory at Auldearn, however, although limited in its immediate scope, neutralised the northern army, giving him a free hand to seek out and destroy the Government’s main field army under William Baillie.
The arrival of MacColla and his Irish mercenaries came as a salutary blow to the authorities in Edinburgh. Prior to the shocking disaster at Tibbermore it had been sufficient to merely march an undisciplined rabble of more or less armed men into a disaffected area in the confident expectation that any dissidents would either flee or obligingly surrender themselves. The moveable goods of the dissidents were plundered to defray the costs of the punitive expedition and compensate both the officers and soldiers for their time and trouble. Now faced by an enemy that not only stood and fought back savagely but proved even more adept at plundering and wasting hostile territory, the Government’s obvious remedy was to recall veteran units from England. This was of course exactly what Montrose and the King gambled on. Far from withdrawing Leven’s army in its entirety, however, the Government held its nerve and settled for recalling substantial detachments from the larger regiments in the north of England and from Ulster. Military operations in England were not compromised. Once returned to Scotland, these troops were then for the most part formed into a field army whose sole purpose was to hunt down and destroy the rebels. The remaining local forces were henceforth to be used, so far as possible, in a defensive role, restricting the rebels’ freedom of movement and above all denying them the opportunity to hold territory and attract recruits. The problem, however, was that while the field army was initially very successful in keeping the rebel army on the move, the local forces were too weak – and in some cases too unreliable – to pin the rebels down. They needed to be reinforced by units from the field army, which in turn reduced the latter’s combat effectiveness.
The Brig o’ Dee, Aberdeen. The scene of Montrose’s victory over the Aberdeen Militia in 1639, while he was still serving the Covenant. Five years later he by-passed the bridge by crossing further upstream and approaching Aberdeen from the west.