Before the king left St. Germains[b] he had given to Montrose a commission to raise the royal standard in Scotland.  The fame of that nobleman secured to him a gracious reception from the northern sovereigns; he visited each court in succession; and in all obtained permission to levy men, and received aid either in money or in military stores.  In autumn he despatched the first expedition of twelve thousand men from

[Footnote 1:  Carte’s Letters, i. 338, 355.  Whitelock, 430.  Clarendon, iii. 343.]

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1650.  March 15.] [Sidenote b:  A.D. 1649.  August.]

Gottenburg under the Lord Kinnoul; but the winds and waves fought against the royalists; several sail were lost among the rocks; and, when Kinnoul landed[a] at Kirkwall in the Orkneys, he could muster only eighty officers and one hundred common soldiers out of the whole number.  But Montrose was not to be appalled by ordinary difficulties.  Having received[b] from the new king the order of the garter, he followed with five hundred men, mostly foreigners; added them to the wreck of the first expedition, and to the new levies, and then found himself at the head of a force of more than one thousand men.  His banners on which was painted a representation of the late king decapitated, with this motto, “Judge and avenge my cause, O Lord,” was intrusted to young Menzies of Pitfoddels, and a declaration was circulated through the Highlands, calling upon all true Scotsmen to aid in establishing their king upon the throne, and in saving him from the treachery of those, who, if they had him in their power, would sell him as they had sold his father to English rebels.  Having transported[c] his whole force from Holm Sound to the Northern extremity of Caithness, he traversed that and the neighbouring county of Sutherland, calling on the natives to join the standard of their sovereign.  But his name had now lost that magic influence which success had once thrown around it; and the several clans shunned his approach through fear, or watched his progress as foes.  In the mean time his declaration had been solemnly burnt[d] by the hangman in the capital; the pulpits had poured out denunciations against the “rebel and apostate Montrose, the viperous brood of Satan, and the accursed of God and the kirk;” and a force of four thousand regulars had been collected

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1644.  October.] [Sidenote b:  A.D. 1650.  Jan. 12.] [Sidenote c:  A.D. 1650.  March.] [Sidenote d:  A.D. 1650.  Feb. 9.]

on Brechin Moor under the command of General Leslie, who was careful to cut off every source of information from the royalists.  Montrose had reached[a] the borders of Ross-shire, when Colonel Strachan, who had been sent forward to watch his motions, learned[b] in Corbiesdale that the royalists, unsuspicious of danger, lay at the short distance of only two miles.