Montrose's greatest triumph
The Battle of Kilsyth on 15 August 1645 was the crowning victory of the Marquess of Montrose's extraordinary Highland campaign — a year-long rampage through Scotland that produced six consecutive victories and briefly threatened to overturn the entire Covenanting government. At Kilsyth, north of Glasgow, Montrose's army of Highlanders and Irish destroyed the last Covenanting field army in Scotland.
Montrose had been commissioned by Charles I to raise Scotland for the royalist cause during the English Civil War. Landing with almost nothing, he gathered a small force of Irish soldiers under Alasdair MacColla and Highland clansmen from the MacDonald, MacLean, and Cameron clans. What followed was one of the most remarkable military campaigns in British history. Victory at Tippermuir, Aberdeen, Inverlochy, Auldearn, and Alford preceded the triumph at Kilsyth.
At Kilsyth, the Covenanters attempted a flanking movement across rough ground. Montrose spotted the error and launched an immediate attack. The Highland charge — the terrifying, screaming rush of clansmen with broadswords and targes — smashed into the disordered Covenanting ranks. The rout was total. An estimated 6,000 Covenanters were killed, many cut down in the pursuit. For a brief, intoxicating moment, Montrose was master of Scotland.
The triumph was short-lived. Within weeks, Montrose's Highland army melted away as clansmen returned home with their plunder. At Philiphaugh near Selkirk on 13 September, a small Covenanting force under David Leslie destroyed what remained of Montrose's army. The great campaign was over. Montrose himself was eventually captured and executed in Edinburgh in 1650. But Kilsyth — the moment when a handful of Highlanders overthrew a government — remains one of the most dramatic episodes in Scottish military history.