The Scottish Civil War
The Scottish Civil War of 1644-47 was part of wider conflict known as the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, which included the Bishops Wars, the English Civil War and Confederate Ireland. The war was fought between Scottish Royalists - supporters of Charles I, under James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose, and the Covenanters, who had controlled Scotland since 1639 and allied themselves with the English Parliament.
Origins of the War - Wars in Three Kingdoms
Scotland had helped to spark this series of civil wars in 1639, when it had risen in revolt against Charles I's religious policies. The National Covenant of Scotland was formed to resist the King's imposition of Anglicanism on Presbyterian Scotland. In practice, the Covenant also represented wider Scottish dissatisfaction with Charles' policies, especially the sidelining of Scotland since the Stuart Kings had also become monarchs of England in 1603. The Covenanters raised a large army from the dependants of their landed class and successfully resisted Charles I's attempt to re-conquer Scotland in the so called Bishops Wars.
The Scottish uprising triggered civil war in Charles' other two Kingdoms, first in Ireland, then in England. Charles and his minister Wentworth were unable to persuade the English Parliament, which itself was unhappy with Charles' civil and religious policies, to pay for an army to put down the Scots. As a result, they had proposed raising an army from Irish Catholics, in return for abolishing discriminatory laws against them. This prospect alarmed Charles' enemies in England and Scotland and the Covenanters threatened to invade Ireland. In response a group of Irish conspirators launched the Irish Rebellion of 1641, which quickly degenerated into a series of massacres of English and Scottish Protestant settlers in Ireland.
This in turn sparked civil war in England, because the Long Parliament did not trust Charles with command of an army to put down the Irish rebellion, fearing that it would also be used against them. The English Civil War broke out in 1642.
The Scottish Covenanters sent an army to Ulster in Ireland in 1642 to protect the Scottish settlers there. In 1643, following the signing of a treaty - The Solemn League and Covenant - with the English Parliament, the bulk of the Covenanters armed forces were sent south to fight on the Parliamentarian side in the English Civil War.
Scottish Royalists
However, some in Scotland continued to side with the King. These were most prominent in the Highlands and north-east of Scotland. There were several factors that inclined people towards Royalism. Among them were religion, culture, clan politics and political allegiance.
The Covenanters were committed to establishing Presbyterianism as the national religion of Scotland, however many people in the northern and Highlands regions were Anglicans or Roman Catholics.
Furthermore, the Highlands was a distinct cultural, political and economic region of Scotland. It was Gaelic in language and customs and at this time was largely outside of the control of the governments of England and Scotland. Some Highland clans preferred the more distant authority of Charles Stuart with the powerful and well organised Lowlands based government of the Covenanters.
However, the largest Highland clan, the Campbells, led by their chief, ], did side with the Covenanters. This meant that the Campbell's rivals in the violent world of clan politics, notably the MacDonalds, automatically took the opposing side. It should be said that some of these factors overlap, for instance the MacDonalds were Catholics, sworn enemies of the Campbells and had a strong Gaelic (Irish as well as Highland) identity.
Finally, there were those like James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose, who were both Lowlanders and Presbyterians but who saw allegiance to the King as more important than any other religious or political principal.
The Irish Intervention
Montrose had already tried and failed to lead a Royalist uprising by 1644, when he was presented with a ready made Royalist army. The Irish Confederates, who were loosely aligned with the Royalists, agreed in that year to send an expedition to Scotland. From their point of view, this would tie up Scottish Covenanter troops who would otherwise be used in Ireland or England. The Irish sent 1500 men to Scotland under the command of Alasdair MacColla MacDonald, a MacDonald clansman from the Western Isles of Scotland. Shortly after landing, the Irish linked up with Montrose at Blair Atholl and proceeded to raise forces from the MacDonalds and other anti-Campbell Highland clans.
The new Royalist army led by Montrose and MacColla was in some respects very formidable. Its Irish and Highland troops were extremely mobile, marching quickly over long distances - even over the rugged Highland terrain - and were capable of enduring very harsh conditions and poor rations. They did not fight in the conventional pike and musket formations used by most armies at the time, but launched rapid charges, firing their muskets at close range before closing with swords and half-pikes. This tactic swept away the poorly trained Covenanter militias that were sent against them. These locally raised levies frequently ran away when faced with a terrifying Highland charge , resulting in them being slaughtered as they ran.
On the other hand, the clans from the west of Scotland could not be persuaded to fight for long away from their homes - seeing their principal enemy as the Campbells rather than the Covenanters. The Royalists also lacked cavalry, leaving them vulnerable in open country. Finally, although they won a string of victories, the Scottish Royalists were unable to hold territory after they had taken it, retreating again and again to the safety of the Highlands.
Tippermuir, Aberdeen and Inverlochy
In the Autumn of 1644, the Royalists marched across the Highlands to Perth, where they smashed a Covenanter force at the battle of Tippermuir. Shortly afterwards, another Covenanter militia met a similar fate outside Aberdeen. Unwisely, Montrose let his men pillage Perth and Aberdeen after taking them, leading to hostility to his forces in an area where Royalist sympathies had been strong.
Following these victories, MacColla insisted on pursuing the MacDonald's war against the Campbells in Argyll in western Scotland. In December 1644, the Royalists rampaged through the Campbell?s country, killing around 900 civilian men of military age and burning their homesteads.
In response to the attack on his clansmen, Archibald Campbell, 1st Marquess of Argyll assembled the Campbell clansmen to repel the invaders. In February 1645, the Campbells met the Royalist and Highland force at the battle of Inverlochy, near Lochaber. The Campbells were crushed, taking heavy casualties.
Triumph and Disaster for the Royalists
Their victory at Inverlochy gave the Royalists control over the western Highlands and attracted other clans and noblemen to their cause. The most important of these were the Gordons , who provided the Royalists with cavalry for the first time. Several more Covenanter armies were then defeated at Auldearn, Kilsyth and Alford, giving Montrose temporary control over almost all of Scotland. In late 1645, such prominent towns as Dundee and Glasgow fell to his forces.
However, whereas Montrose wanted to further Royalist objectives by raising troops in the south east of Scotland and marching on England, MacColla showed that his priorities lay with war of the MacDonalds against the Campbells and occupied Argyll. Montrose, his forces having split up, was routed by the Covenanters at the battle of Philiphaugh. MacColla retreated to Kintyre, where he held out until the following year.
The Royalist victories in Scotland therefore evaporated almost overnight owing to the disunited nature of their forces.
The End of the Scottish Civil War
The first English Civil War had ended in May 1646, when Charles I surrendered to the Scottish Covenanter army in England. The Scots promptly handed him over to the English Parliament in return for a large cash payment. Experienced Covenanter troops could be brought back to Scotland to mop up the remaining Royalists there. In 1647, Montrose fled for Norway, while MacColla returned to Ireland with his remaining Irish and Highland troops to re-join the Confederates. Those who had fought for Montrose, particularly the Irish, were massacred by the Covenanters whenever they were captured, in reprisal for the atrocities the Royalists had committed in Argyll.
Scotland and the Second and Third English Civil Wars
Second Civil War
Ironically, no sooner had the Covenanters defeated the Royalists at home than they were negotiating with Charles I against the English Parliament. The Covenanters could not get their erstwhile allies to agree on a political and religious settlement to the wars, failing to get Presbyterianism established as the official religion in the Three Kingdoms and fearing that the Parliamentarians would threaten Scottish independence. Many Covenanters feared that under Parliament, "our poor country should be made a province of England". A faction of the Covenanters known as "the Engagers" therefore sent an army to England to try to restore Charles I in 1648. However it was routed by Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army at Preston. Charles was executed by the Rump Parliament in 1649.
Montrose's defeat and death
In June 1649, Montrose was restored by the exiled Charles II to the now nominal lieutenancy of Scotland. Charles also open negotiations with the Covenanters, now dominated by the radical Presbyterian "Kirk Party " or "Whigs". Because Montrose had very little support in the lowlands, Charles was willing to disavow his most consistent supporter in order to become a king on terms dictated by the Covenanters. In March 1650 Montrose landed in the Orkneys to take the command of a small force, composed mainly of continental mercenaries, which he had sent on before him. Crossing to the mainland, he tried in vain to raise the clans, and on 27 April he was surprised and routed at Carbiesdale in Ross-shire. After wandering for some time he was surrendered by Macleod of Assynt, to whose protection, in ignorance of Macleod's political enmity, he had entrusted himself. He was brought a prisoner to Edinburgh, and on 20 May sentenced to death by the Parliament. He was hanged on the 21st, with Wishart's laudatory biography of him put round his neck. To the last he protested that he was a real Covenanter and a loyal subject.
Third Civil War
In spite of their conflict with the Scottish Royalists, the Covenanters then committed themselves to the cause of Charles II, signing the Treaty of Breda (1650) with him in the hope of securing a independent Presbyterian Scotland free of English Parliamentry interference. Charles landed in Scotland at Garmouth in Morayshire on June 23 1650 and signed the 1638 Covenant and the 1643 Solemn League immediately after coming ashore.
The threat posed by King Charles II with his original Scottish Royalist followers and his new Covenanter allies was considered to be the greatest facing the new English Republic so Oliver Cromwell left some of his lieutenants in Ireland to continue the suppression of the Irish Royalists and crossed the Irish channel to Scotland. He arrived in Scotland on July 22 1650 and proceeded to lay seige to Edinburgh. By the end of August, his army was reduced by disease and running out of supplies, so he was fored to order a retreat towards England. A Scottish army assembled under the command of David Leslie tried to stop them, but the Scotts were defeated at the Battle of Dunbar on September 3. Cromwell's army then took Edinburgh and by the end of the year his army had occupied much of southern Scotland.
In July 1651 Cromwell's forces crossed the Firth of Forth into Fife and defeated the Scots at the Battle of Inverkeithing . The New Model Army advanced towards Perth, which allowed Charles at the head of the Scottish army to move south into England. Cromwell followed Charles into England leaving George Monck to finish the campaign in Scotland. Monck took Stirling on the August 14 and Dundee on September 1. The Scottish army commanded by Charles marched to the west of England because it was in that area that English Royalist sympathies were strongest but although some English Royalists joined the army the came in far fewer numbers than Charles and his Scottish supporters had hoped. Cromwell finally engaged the new king at Worcester on September 3, 1651, and beat him. Charles escaped to the European continet and with his flight the Coventers hopes for political independence from the Commonwealth of England were dashed.
From Occupation to Restoration
The next year, 1652, the remnants of Royalist resistance in Scotland was mopped up and under the terms of the "Tender of Union ", the Scots were given 30 seats in a united Parliament in London, with General Monck appointed as the military governor of Scotland. During the Interregnum, Scotland was kept under the military occupation of an English army under George Monck. Sporadic Royalist rebellions continued throughout the Commonwealth period in Scotland, particularly in western Highlands, where Alasdair MacColla had raised his forces in the 1640s. Monck garrisoned forts all over the Highlands - for example at Inverness, and finally put an end to Royalist resistance when he began deporting prisoners to the West Indies as slaves. However, lawlessness remained a problem, with bandits known as mosstroopers , very often former Royalist or Covenanter soldiers, plundering both the English troops and the civilian population.
Strangely, Monck, who had served Cromwell and the English Parliament thoughout the civil wars, was instrumental in the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, marching his troops south from Scotland to ensure the monarchy's reinstatement. Scotland's Parliament and legislative autonomy were restored under the Restoration, though many issues that had led to the wars; religion, Scotland's form of government and the status of the Highlands, remained unresolved. After the Glorious Revolution of 1689, many more Scots would die over the same disputes in Jacobite rebellions.
The Cost
Its is estimated that roughly 28,000 men were killed in combat in the Scottish Civil War. More soldiers usually died of disease than in action at this time, so it is reasonable to speculate that the the true military death toll is higher than this figure. In addition, it is estimated that around 15,000 civilians died as direct result of the war - either through massacres or by disease. More indirectly, another 30,000 people died of the plague in Scotland between 1645 ad 1649, a disease that was partly spread by the movement of armies throughout the country. If we also take into account the thousands of Scottish troops who died in the civil wars in England and Ireland, the Wars of the Three Kingdoms certainly represents one of the bloodiest episodes in Scottish history.
Sources
- David Stephenson, Alasdair MacColla and the Highland Problem in the Seventeenth century, Edinburgh 1980.
- Jane Ohlmeyer, John Kenyon (Ed.?s) The Civil Wars, Oxford 1998.(Chapter on the Civil Wars in Scotland by Edward Furgol).
See Also
History of Scotland
Last updated: 05-27-2005 23:53:54
