A battle upon which so much depended,was never more easily decided.The Lowland cavalry made a show of charging;but,whether thrown into disorder by the fire of musketry,or deterred by a disaffection to the service said to have prevailed among the gentlemen,they made no impression on the Highlanders whatever,and recoiled in disorder from ranks which had neither bayonets nor pikes to protect them.Montrose saw,and instantly availed himself of this advantage.He ordered his whole army to charge,which they performed with the wild and desperate valour peculiar to mountaineers.One officer of the Covenanters alone,trained in the Italian wars,made a desperate defence upon the right wing.In every other point their line was penetrated at the first onset;and this advantage once obtained,the Lowlanders were utterly unable to contend at close quarters with their more agile and athletic enemies.Many were slain on the held,and such a number in the pursuit,that above one-third of the Covenanters were reported to have fallen;in which number,however,must be computed a great many fat burgesses who broke their wind in the flight,and thus died without stroke of sword.
[We choose to quote our authority for a fact so singular:--"A great many burgesses were killed--twenty-five householders in St.
Andrews--many were bursten in the flight,and died without stroke."--See Baillie's Letters,vol.ii.page 92.]
The victors obtained possession of Perth,and obtained considerable sums of money,as well as ample supplies of arms and ammunition.But those advantages were to be balanced against an almost insurmountable inconvenience that uniformly attended a Highland army.The clans could be in no respect induced to consider themselves as regular soldiers,or to act as such.Even so late as the year 1745-6,when the Chevalier Charles Edward,by way of making an example,caused a soldier to be shot for desertion,the Highlanders,who composed his army,were affected as much by indignation as by fear.They could not conceive any principle of justice upon which a man's life could be taken,for merely going home when it did not suit him to remain longer with the army.Such had been the uniform practice of their fathers.
When a battle was over,the campaign was,in their opinion,ended;if it was lost,they sought safety in their mountains--if won,they returned there to secure their booty.At other times they had their cattle to look after,and their harvests to sow or reap,without which their families would have perished for want.
In either case,there was an end of their services for the time;
and though they were easily enough recalled by the prospect of fresh adventures and more plunder,yet the opportunity of success was,in the meantime,lost,and could not afterwards be recovered.This circumstance serves to show,even if history had not made us acquainted with the same fact,that the Highlanders had never been accustomed to make war with the view of permanent conquest,but only with the hope of deriving temporary advantage,or deciding some immediate quarrel.It also explains the reason why Montrose,with all his splendid successes,never obtained any secure or permanent footing in the Lowlands,and why even those Lowland noblemen and gentlemen,who were inclined to the royal cause,showed diffidence and reluctance to join an army of a character so desultory and irregular,as might lead them at all times to apprehend that the Highlanders securing themselves by a retreat to their mountains,would leave whatever Lowlanders might have joined them to the mercy of an offended and predominant enemy.The same consideration will also serve to account for the sudden marches which Montrose was obliged to undertake,in order to recruit his army in the mountains,and for the rapid changes of fortune,by which we often find him obliged to retreat from before those enemies over whom he had recently been victorious.
If there should be any who read these tales for any further purpose than that of immediate amusement,they will find these remarks not unworthy of their recollection.
It was owing to such causes,the slackness of the Lowland loyalists and the temporary desertion of his Highland followers,that Montrose found himself,even after the decisive victory of Tippermuir,in no condition to face the second army with which Argyle advanced upon him from the westward.In this emergency,supplying by velocity the want of strength,he moved suddenly from Perth to Dundee,and being refused admission into that town,fell northward upon Aberdeen,where he expected to be joined by the Gordons and other loyalists.But the zeal of these gentlemen was,for the time,effectually bridled by a large body of Covenanters,commanded by the Lord Burleigh,and supposed to amount to three thousand men.These Montrose boldly attacked with half their number.The battle was fought under the walls Of the city,and the resolute valour of Montrose's followers was again successful against every disadvantage.
