Highland meets Lowland
The Battle of Harlaw on 24 July 1411 was one of the bloodiest engagements ever fought on Scottish soil — a collision between the Gaelic Highland world and the Scots-speaking Lowlands that has been called "the Scottish Flodden." Donald, Lord of the Isles, marched an army of perhaps 10,000 Highlanders and Islesmen eastward to claim the earldom of Ross. He was met at Harlaw, north of Inverurie in Aberdeenshire, by a smaller Lowland force under Alexander Stewart, Earl of Mar.
The battle was a savage, close-quarters fight that lasted most of the day. The Highlanders, armed with claymores, axes, and Lochaber axes, crashed into the Lowland knights and men-at-arms in a series of ferocious charges. Mar's heavy cavalry could not break the Highland ranks, and the fighting dissolved into a brutal melee. Casualties on both sides were enormous — the Gaelic name for the battle, Cath Gairbheach (the Red Battle), speaks to the bloodshed.
The battle was technically a draw, but Donald withdrew his army back to the Highlands, abandoning his claim to Ross for the moment. Mar's stand at Harlaw preserved the Lowland heartland from Highland occupation. For Lowland Scotland, the battle confirmed their worst fears about the Gaelic world: that an army of clansmen could march out of the mountains and threaten the prosperous towns of the northeast.
Harlaw is significant because it exposed the fundamental divide in medieval Scotland — between the Gaelic-speaking, clan-based Highland society and the Scots-speaking, feudal Lowland society. These two Scotlands had coexisted uneasily for centuries, and Harlaw brought the tension to a violent head. The battlefield, marked by a monument on the B9001 north of Inverurie, is a quiet and atmospheric place today. But in 1411, it was the site of a struggle for the soul of Scotland.