[Sidenote: Importance of the Irish to Montrose.]
[Sidenote: Alaster Macdonnell deserts Montrose.]
The epic of Montrose belongs to Scotland, but it should be remembered that the Irish, as they are always called, formed the nucleus and the only stable part of his army, and that when Alaster Macdonnell forsook him, victory forsook him too. Antrim was Tyrone's grandson, and the remains of the Ulster clans had no objection to follow him, though some of his levies were islemen or Hebrideans settled in Ireland. Patrick Gordon calls them 'strangers and foreigners,' adding that they showed no pity or humanity, nor made any distinction between man and beast, 'killing men with the same careless neglect that they kill a hen or capon for supper. And they were also without all shame, most brutishly given to uncleanness and filthy lust; as for excessive drinking, when they came where it might be had, there was no limit to their beastly appetites.' Spalding, who was present when Montrose sullied his fame by allowing the sack of Aberdeen, says they murdered and ravished for four days. The corpses lay unburied until women ventured to move them, for no man could show himself: 'the wife durst not cry nor weep at her husband's slaughter before her eyes, nor the mother for the son, nor daughter for the father; which if they were heard, then were they presently slain also.' As long as the business consisted in harrying Campbells or Mackenzies, Alaster Macdonnell had no difficulty in getting recruits from his fellow tribesmen on the main land, but after Kilsyth he and his Highlanders, who were gorged with plunder, deserted Montrose that they might carry their acquisitions home. No commands or entreaties of their general could prevail, says Sir James Turner, 'to Cantire they would go, and to Cantire they did go.' They cared nothing for Lowland or English politics. Some 500 Irish remained faithful 'because they had no place of retreat,' and these were cut to pieces at Philiphaugh, 300 of their wives being butchered there, and many others later at Linlithgow, where the horrors of Portadown bridge were repeated with the parts reversed. Those who are disposed to deny the Ulster massacres may ponder the words of Spalding and Gordon, while nothing can excuse the cruelty practised in retaliation.[54]