The temptation to describe in detail his extraordinary series of successes and of unexampled marches over snow-clad and pathless mountains must be resisted.  The mobility and daring of Montrose’s irregular and capricious levies, with his own versatile military genius and the heroic valour of Colkitto, enabled him to defeat a large Covenanting force at Tippermuir, near Perth:  here he had but his 2500 men (September 1); to repeat his victory at Aberdeen {182} (September 13), to evade and discourage Argyll, who retired to Inveraray; to winter in and ravage Argyll’s country, and to turn on his tracks from a northern retreat and destroy the Campbells at Inverlochy, where Argyll looked on from his galley (February 2, 1645).

General Baillie, a trained soldier, took the command of the Covenanting levies and regular troops ("Red coats"), and nearly surprised Montrose in Dundee.  By a retreat showing even more genius than his victories, he escaped, appeared on the north-east coast, and scattered a Covenanting force under Hurry, at Auldearn, near Inverness (May 9, 1645).

Such victories as Montrose’s were more than counterbalanced by Cromwell’s defeat of Rupert and Charles at Naseby (June 14, 1645); while presbytery suffered a blow from Cromwell’s demand, that the English Parliament should grant “freedom of conscience,” not for Anglican or Catholic, of course, but for religions non-Presbyterian.  The “bloody sectaries,” as the Presbyterians called Cromwell’s Independents, were now masters of the field:  never would the blue banner of the Covenant be set up south of Tweed.

Meanwhile General Baillie marched against Montrose, who outmanoeuvred him all over the eastern Highlands, and finally gave him battle at Alford on the Don.  Montrose had not here Colkitto and the western clans, but his Gordon horse, his Irish, the Farquharsons, and the Badenoch men were triumphantly successful.  Unfortunately, Lord Gordon was slain:  he alone could bring out and lead the clan of Huntly.  Only by joining hands with Charles could Montrose do anything decisive.  The king, hoping for no more than a death in the field “with honour and a good conscience,” pushed as far north as Doncaster, where he was between Poyntz’s army and a great cavalry force, led by David Leslie, from Hereford, to launch against Montrose.  The hero snatched a final victory.  He had but a hundred horse, but he had Colkitto and the flower of the fighting clans, including the invincible Macleans.  Baillie, in command of new levies of some 10,000 men, was thwarted by a committee of Argyll and other noble amateurs.  He met the enemy south of Forth, at Kilsyth, between Stirling and Glasgow.  The fiery Argyll made Baillie desert an admirable position—­Montrose was on the plain, Baillie was on the heights—­and expose his flank by a march across Montrose’s front.  The Macleans and Macdonalds, on the lower slope of the hill, without orders, saw their chance, and racing up a difficult glen, plunged into the Covenanting