Latest / The Story of Scotland: Clans, Crowns, and the Fight for Identity — Fexingo History / The Battle of Inverlochy 1645: Montrose's Highland Thunderbolt
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked about Montrose before — in the Glencoe episode, in passing, and in the Wars of Independence episode — but today I want to dig into what is arguably his most audacious victory: the Battle of Inverlochy in 1645. It's a story of a winter march that should have been impossible, and of one of the most stunning Highland upsets in Scottish military history. Luna: Inverlochy — isn't that near Ben Nevis? And wasn't Montrose on the Royalist side, fighting against the Covenanters? Lucas: Exactly right. By early 1645, the Wars of the Three Kingdoms were raging across Scotland, England, and Ireland. Montrose, a brilliant but controversial nobleman — he had actually been a Covenanter himself earlier — had switched sides to fight for King Charles I. Charles had appointed him his Lieutenant General in Scotland, and Montrose was tasked with winning back the north for the Crown. His army was a motley coalition: Highland clans loyal to the king, like the MacDonalds and the Camerons, plus a contingent of Irish soldiers under this remarkable commander named Alasdair Mac Colla — sometimes anglicized as Alexander MacDonald. Together, they were up against the Covenanter government in Edinburgh, which was allied with the Campbell clan under their chief, Archibald Campbell, the Marquess of Argyll. Luna: So this is Clan Campbell versus the Royalists — and Clan Campbell was the biggest, most powerful clan in the Highlands, right? Lucas: They were dominant. And Argyll was not just a clan chief; he was the de facto leader of the Covenanter cause. Montrose had already won a smaller victory at Tippermuir in September 1644 and another at Aberdeen, but Argyll had a much larger army gathering at Inverlochy, right at the foot of Ben Nevis — a strategic stronghold. Montrose's forces were outnumbered, low on supplies, and it was the dead of winter. The conventional wisdom was that you simply didn't campaign in the Highlands in February. The passes would be snowbound, the rivers swollen. Argyll thought he was safe. Luna: But Montrose marched anyway. Lucas: He did. On February 1st, 1645, Montrose led his army — about 1,500 men — out of their camp near Glencoe. They had to cross the frozen wastelands of the Mamore forest, then traverse the passes of the Great Glen. It was a nightmare march. Men collapsed from cold and exhaustion. Some accounts say they marched through waist-deep snow, climbing over the hills east of Ben Nevis. But they did it in less than two days — an astonishing feat. By the night of February 2nd, they had reached the outskirts of Inverlochy, completely undetected. Argyll's army, camped around the old castle, had no idea they were there. Luna: They must have been completely shocked when dawn came. Lucas: Absolutely. At first light on February 3rd, Montrose's Highlanders burst out of the mist and snow. They charged down the hillside straight into the Covenanter camp. The Campbells were caught utterly unprepared — many were still in their tents, some had to be woken by the sound of war cries. The battle was brutal and brief. The Royalist forces, with Alasdair Mac Colla's Irish veterans in the vanguard, smashed through the Covenanter lines. The Campbells tried to rally, but the terrain worked against them — they were hemmed in between the loch and the mountain. Within a couple of hours, it was over. Argyll himself wasn't even in the battle; he had fled by boat down Loch Linnhe the night before, leaving his army leaderless. His cousin, Sir Duncan Campbell, was left in command and died fighting. Luna: So Argyll ran? That must have been a massive blow to Campbell pride. Lucas: It was. For Clan Campbell, Inverlochy was a catastrophe. Between 500 and 1,500 of their men were killed — accounts vary — while Montrose's losses were maybe a few dozen. The battle shattered Campbell power in the Highlands for years. More than that, it was a psychological victory: the Campbells, who had dominated the region for generations, had been humiliated by a smaller, hungrier army. Montrose became a legend overnight. He followed up with more victories at Auldearn, Alford, and Kilsyth through the spring and summer. For a few months, he was master of Scotland. Luna: But it didn't last. Lucas: No, it didn't. Montrose's success was built on speed and surprise, but he could never hold territory or win the kind of set-piece battle that would destroy the Covenanter army completely. And the Covenanters regrouped. By September 1645, a larger Covenanter force under General David Leslie caught Montrose at Philiphaugh, near Selkirk, and crushed him. Montrose escaped but his army was destroyed. He spent the next few years in exile, trying to raise support in Europe. When he finally returned to Scotland in 1650 to fight for King Charles II, he was betrayed, captured, and taken to Edinburgh. He was hanged and then quartered — his body parts displayed in different towns. It was a brutal end for a man who had once been the toast of the Royalist cause. Luna: And his legacy? I know there's a statue of him in Edinburgh. Lucas: There is — a striking equestrian statue on the back of the Scott Monument, actually. Montrose is one of those figures who's been claimed by both sides: a hero to Jacobites and early nationalists for his defiance of the Covenanters, but also a traitor to the Presbyterian cause. The battle itself? Inverlochy is remembered as a textbook example of the power of mobility and surprise in Highland warfare. It showed that a smaller, motivated force could defeat a larger one if they were willing to endure hardships that others wouldn't. And it cemented the reputation of Alasdair Mac Colla as one of the great Highland commanders. But for the ordinary soldiers — the clansmen who died in the snow — it was just another bloody day in a brutal civil war. Luna: It's amazing how much turns on a single march, isn't it? Lucas: It really is. And it's a reminder that in Scottish history, the landscape itself is often a character — the mountains, the passes, the weather. Montrose's gamble at Inverlochy was only possible because he knew the ground and was willing to push his men beyond what seemed humanly possible. That's what makes it such a compelling story.