Montargis

“ The Castle of Montargis is my jointure; at Orleans there is no house. St. Cloud is not a part of the hereditary property, but was bought by Monsieur with his own money. Therefore my jointure produces nothing; all that I have to live on comes from the King and my son. At the commencement of my widowhood I was left unpaid, and there was an arrear of 300,000 francs due to me, which were not paid until after the death of Louis XIV. What, then, would have become of me if I had chosen to retire to Montargis? My household expenses amounted annually to 298,758 livres. ”

“ The first words he addressed to the young man showed him to be the farmer himself. He related how he had lost himself, and learned from the countryman that he was on the road to Pithiviers. Montargis was three leagues behind him.
The fog had insensibly changed into a drizzling rain, which was beginning to wet the young clerk through; he seemed afraid of the distance he had still to go, and the horseman, who saw his hesitation, invited him to come into the farmhouse. ”

“ Etienne twenty-one prisoners, among whom was Amouroux, who had only sent two delegates. A young workingman, Caton, distinguished himself by his intelligence and firmness.
The jury of Orléans was severe upon the accused of Montargis, all of whom they condemned to prison, and atrocious to those of Cosnes and Newry-sur-Loire, where there had been no resistance. There were twenty-three altogether, of whom three were women. Their whole crime had been carrying about a red flag and crying "Vive Paris! Down with Versailles!" ”

“ His earliest feat of arms was the surprise and rout in 1427 of the English, who were besieging Montargis—the first successful blow against the English power in France following a long series of French defeats. In 1428 he defended Orleans with the greatest spirit, and enabled the place to hold out until the arrival of Joan of Arc, when he shared with her the honour of defeating the enemy there in 1429. ”

“ One, an old fat man in a blouse, who stood on one leg and waved the other in the air when he played, ran great risks, with his sous, and usually won, to the discomfiture of a small man who hit feebly and lost steadily.——
“It is that you are wanting in courage, my child,” his successful rival kept telling him.
—The few soldiers left in Montargis were making the rounds of the town with great blowing of bugle and beating of drum when we went to our room in the Hôtel de la Poste. [154]
HOW WE FOUGHT THE WIND FROM MONTARGIS TO COSNE. FROM Montargis to Cosne we fought a mighty wind. ”

“ These newes being signified to the constable, and other the French capteins, asswaged their great mirth and triumphant ioy, concerned for the victorie of Montargis, that loth they were to attempt anie further enterprises against the English nation. But the duke of Alanson, who (as ye haue heard) was latelie deliuered out of captiuitie, reuiued againe the dulled spirits of the Dolphin, and somewhat aduanced, in hope of good spéed, the fainting harts of his capteins ”

“ Of all the fortresses in Scotland, Lord Nithsdale's Castle of Caerlaverock in Dumfriesshire was alone held for the King. From the Border to the North Sea the Covenant was supreme, save only in that dangerous district which called Huntly lord, and against the power of Huntly the arms of the Covenant were now turned.
The command was given to Montrose. His restless and enterprising spirit marked him for the work among men whose talents appeared to lie rather in debate than in the field. ”

“ Argyll had crept within two miles of the castle before Montrose knew that he had so much as crossed the Grampians. It was a dangerous moment for the King's Lieutenant. He dared not risk a battle on the open ground: the castle would not stand a siege; and to make matters worse, the Royalists had run short of ammunition. But behind the castle rose a rugged hill, crowned with trees and roughly defended with some farm enclosures. Here Montrose stood at bay. The pewter vessels of the castle were melted into bullets, and the first attack of the Covenanters supplied the defenders with powder. ”

“ Scots and Irish united in welcoming their chief. The royal commission was read, and the royal standard unfurled on a small hill below the castle and close to the modern house of Lude.
And now at last there was a royal army in Scotland, and the King's Lieutenant was something more than an empty name. Yet it was not one with which any general but Montrose would have cared to take the field. At the most it cannot have exceeded two thousand three hundred men. The Irish carried rusty matchlocks, with ammunition enough for a round a piece. ”

“ Montrose, well mounted, clad in coat and trews, with a bunch of oats in his bonnet—a whimsy adopted by all his infantry—was everywhere his keen eye told him there was need of his services. The fighting was hot while it lasted, and at one moment the left flank of the Royalists was within an ace of being turned. But Montrose brought up the horse and a fresh supply of musketeers from the right wing in the nick of time, and the Covenanters having no one to take advantage of the crisis, the danger was averted. The fifty troopers performed wonders, and the Irish fought like trained soldiers. ”

“ James Graham, the first Marquis of Montrose, began his marvellous career at the age of thirty-two, and crowded into two years the campaigns which made him master of Scotland. He died on the scaffold when he was only thirty-eight, leaving behind him the reputation of perhaps the greatest soldier ever born north of the Tweed, and certainly one of the purest and most chivalrous figures in his country's annals. Few men have ever covered country with his lightning speed, and the whole tale of his exploits is a tale of escapes and hurried journeys. ”

“ It is possible, indeed, that the enthusiasm of these new Royalists was in some degree due to the feeling that it would not be forced to submit to the dictation of a man whose ways were not theirs. Only among the Highlanders could Montrose have found allies, and among their mountains was his only battle-ground. They knew nothing of Kirk or Covenant, of Presbyterian or Independent. The men of Macdonald bore no grudge against the destroyer of the Campbells; the men of Athole would have heard without a murmur that every Mackenzie had been put to the sword from Kintail to Loch Broom. ”

“ The few loyalists who still stood out were mostly vain nobles who had some personal quarrel with the other side. But such was the ardour of the young Montrose that he impressed the King and his graver councillors like Hyde and Endymion Porter. He asked for little help. Lord Antrim was to raise troops in Ireland and land in the west of Scotland to keep Argyll occupied in his own country. Montrose himself hoped to borrow a body of horse from Newcastle's army in the north to help him to cut his way through the Lowlands to the Highland line. ”

“ With the battle of Philiphaugh the cause of the king was hopelessly lost, and with it also the fortunes of his followers. A hundred of the Irish surrendered on promise of quarter, and were shot down next day, while their wives and children were killed on the spot, or imprisoned, and hanged later. Strange as it may appear to us, Montrose did not recognise the meaning of the defeat, and, with the dash and energy that marked him to the last, he collected a fresh army of Highlanders, and prepared to set out for the south, hoping to rescue his personal friends, who were now prisoners in Glasgow. ”

“ The gallant Airlie and his son, Napier and the young Master, Crawford and Douglas and Nathaniel Gordon, fought like paladins at their General's side. It was of no avail. A force that had been detached to cross the river above Selkirk broke in upon the right wing from the rear. Man after man the Irish were falling in their ranks; horse after horse broke riderless from those desperate charges. But still Montrose fought on, as though determined to die on the field he could not save. ”

“ While affairs in Scotland were wholly managed by a Committee of the Estates and the Commission of the kirk, several of the nobles and the inhabitants of certain districts, chiefly in the Highlands, formed a tacitly royalist party. The young Earl of Montrose, raised to the rank of marquis, and invested by the king with a commission, set up the royal standard in Perthshire (August 1644) , and was soon surrounded, by three thousand men, part of whom were Irish papists. Montrose was a man of extraordinary genius, with conceptions far beyond his narrow sphere. ”

“ He spoke in very magnificent terms of his own power, and endeavoured as much as possible to extenuate that of Montrose. He extolled immoderately the glory and achievements of his ancestors, the Gordons; a race, worthy indeed of all due commendation, whose power had for many ages been formidable, and an overmatch for their neighbours; and was so even at this day. It was therefore, he said, extremely unjust to ascribe unto another, meaning Montrose, the glory and renown acquired by their courage, and at the expense of their blood. ”

“ At one end of the scaffold stood the chief magistrates of the city, at the other a group of the inevitable ministers. Beside the hangman was a bench on which were arranged in ghastly order the implements of butchery. A space was kept clear round the scaffold by a strong force of soldiers. As Montrose walked down the High Street from the Tolbooth, surrounded by his guards, in the same rich dress that he had worn before the Parliament, all were struck with his calm and noble bearing. ”

“ Montrose was made lieutenant-general of the King's forces in Scotland, and on a March morning in 1644 he left Oxford by the north road to win a kingdom for his master.
When St. Theresa, as a child, set out to convert the Moors, she was engaged in an adventure scarcely less hopeful than that which Montrose had now set himself. Where was he to find troops? The best of the old professional soldiers were with Leven. He could get nothing in the Scottish Lowlands, for on them the Kirk had laid an iron hand. The nobles and the gentry were jealous and self-centred. ”

“ No wilder project was ever hatched in mortal brain than that on which Montrose was now bent. It was clear even to him that the game for the present was up in the Lowlands; but the Highlands were still open. There, among his own people, he might at least wait in safety for Antrim's promised succours, which must surely now be on their road, and there he might hope to find the loyal hearts which had ceased to beat south of the Forth. ”

“ The mountains would soon be passable only for wolves and eagles. Argyll turned from a pursuit for which he had no heart, led his men back to Edinburgh, and resigning his commission to the Estates retired to his own country. The road into the Lowlands lay open. Now was the time to put in practice that plan which Montrose had always kept steadily in view. This mountain warfare against irregular levies led by incompetent generals was but a waste of good powder and shot. ”

“ The spirit of the city rose high. All ranks swore to stand their ground to the [Pg 76] last; and women, bringing meat and drink down to their gallant defenders, moved about unshrinking amid the storm of shot and the shouts of the combatants. All day the fight raged, and when the sun fell the Covenanters were forced to own themselves as far from Aberdeen as ever.
But his countrymen had now to learn that Montrose was one whose courage and resource only rose higher in the face of defeat. ”

“ If Montrose could strike one stout blow south of the Forth that union might yet be possible. Wherever he led Baillie must follow, or leave the Lowlands open; and Montrose had a shrewd suspicion that [Pg 171] the raw Perthshire levies might, like his own Highlanders, be unwilling to go too far or stay too long from their homes. His men were as keen for battle as their general. Till his reinforcements came in Montrose had been obliged to content himself with hovering round Perth, at one time mounting his infantry on baggage and cart horses, to convey the notion that he was strong in cavalry. ”

“ The Low Countries lay open before him without an army adequate to check his career, for Argyle's followers had left the Covenanters' host, when their master threw up his commission; and many other troops, tired of the war, had taken the same opportunity to disband themselves. By descending Strath-Tay, therefore, one of the most convenient passes from the Highlands, Montrose had only to present himself in the Low Countries, in order to rouse the slumbering spirit of chivalry and of loyalty which animated the gentlemen to the north of the Forth. ”

“ In the sudden onset, the struggle hand to hand, the headlong pursuit, a general need wish to lead no better soldiers; but in the calculated movements of a regular campaign they could not be trusted. They knew no discipline save obedience to their own chiefs, no mode of fighting save to shout and fall on. To rally them after defeat was as difficult as to keep them in hand after a victory. Montrose therefore held on northwards up the valley of the Ness, on the [Pg 158] road he was marching when he had turned back on Argyll. ”

“ He wore, we are told, a blue bonnet with a bunch of oats as a badge, and he carried a broadsword and a Highland buckler. Thus accoutred he entered upon the scene in the true manner of romance, unlooked-for and invincible.
Alastair and his ragged troops were waiting hourly on battle, when across the moor they saw two figures advancing. Black Pate was known to every Atholl man, and there were many who had seen Montrose. Loud shouts of welcome apprised the Ulsterman that here was no bonnet laird, but when he heard that it was indeed the King's lieutenant he could scarcely believe his ears. ”