The Battle of Inverlochy occurred on 2 February 1645, during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, when a Royalist force of Highlanders and Confederate Irish troops under the overall command of James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose, routed and largely destroyed the pursuing forces of Archibald Campbell, 1st Marquess of Argyll, who had been encamped under the walls of Inverlochy Castle.

After being researched, the area was designated as a battlefield by Historic Scotland in 2011.

Background

After the Covenanter-controlled Scottish Committee of Estates decided to intervene in the English Civil War on the Parliamentarian side, the Royalist party sought to find ways of tying down Covenanter forces in Scotland to prevent them being employed in England. King Charles I had already given a commission to Montrose, a disaffected former signatory of the Covenant, to organise Royalist opposition in Scotland. The project was given impetus when Confederate Ireland, at the instigation of the Earl of Antrim and the Duke of Ormond, aided the Royalists by sending 2,000 experienced troops to Scotland under Antrim's relative Alasdair Mac Colla. The Irish landed at Ardnamurchan on the west coast in early July 1644.

Montrose and a small number of Royalist clansmen linked up with Mac Colla in August. By this time the Committee of Estates had sent armies into the field against them, under the overall command of the experienced general William Baillie. Montrose, however, won surprise victories against government troops at Tippermuir and Aberdeen in September. He then retreated into the Highlands, pursued by a force under the Marquess of Argyll, the head of Clan Campbell and one of the key figures in the Committee of Estates, while Baillie's main army blocked Montrose's path eastward. By late November, the Royalists had added another 1,000 recruits, largely from amongst the men of Clan Donald. Over the winter they conducted a fierce campaign of burning and plundering largely directed against the lands of Argyll himself, and culminating in the sacking of Inveraray. Montrose left Inveraray on 14 January 1645 and headed north. It is believed that he split his army at Glen Etive sending part of it up past Ballachulish while the bulk continued across Rannoch Moor, into Glencoe.

Baillie and Argyll believed that Montrose's force would easily be trapped or dispersed once the difficulty of supplying them in the Highlands in winter took hold. Indeed, by the end of January, Montrose had halted at Kilchummin in the Great Glen, with supplies exhausted and with his forces reduced to less than 2,000 due to sickness and desertions amongst the Highlanders, who were eager to return home with their plunder. At Kilchummin he learned that a large contingent of Northern Levies under the Earl of Seaforth blocked the route northward at Inverness, while Argyll – with a force made up of his own regiment, eight companies of Lowland foot sent by Baillie, and a large number of Clan Campbell levies – was camped to the south of him at Inverlochy. Further south, Baillie and Sir John Urry were assembling further troops. The Royalists were now effectively trapped.

Flank march

thumb|right|305px|The watercourse leading from Glen Buck to the hill of Carn na Larach. Montrose's men passed over this terrain, in winter, on the way to Inverlochy.

Montrose decided to face the threat by marching south and attacking Argyll. This course may have been chosen as Argyll's men now threatened the lands of several of Montrose's key supporters.thumb|Cairn at the place where the MacDonalds stopped chasing and killing the Campbells after the Battle .

The victory also secured the cooperation in Montrose's campaign of the Marquess of Huntly, whose Clan Gordon levies made him one of the most powerful nobles in Scotland.

The battle and the Royalist campaign of 1644–1645 in general feature in the 1937 novel And No Quarter by the Irish writer Maurice Walsh, told from the perspective of two members of O'Cahan's Regiment.

See also

  • Battle of Inverlochy (1431)
  • Scotland in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms

Citations

References

General references

  • The Battles of Inverlochy. February 2, 1645 at www.clan-cameron.org
  • ScotWars