d Hall, where Tweed and Ettrick meet; but the news was not
carried to Montrose, who lay at Selkirk. At breakfast, on September 13,
Montrose learned that Leslie was attacking. What followed is uncertain
in its details. A so-called "contemporary ballad" is incredibly
impossible in its anachronisms, and is modern. In this egregious
doggerel we are told that a veteran who had fought at Solway Moss a
century earlier, and at "cursed Dunbar" a few years later (or under
Edward I.?), advised Leslie to make a turning movement behind Linglie
Hill. This is not evidence. Though Leslie may have made such a
movement, he describes his victory as very easy: and so it should have
been, as Montrose had only the remnant of his Antrim men and a rabble of
reluctant Border recruits.

A news letter from Haddington, of September 16, represents the Cavaliers
as making a good fight. The mounted Border lairds galloped away. Most
of the Irish fell fighting: the rest were massacred, whether after
promise of quarter or not is disputed. _Their captured women were hanged
in cold blood some months later_. Montrose, the Napiers, and some forty
horse either cut their way through or evaded Leslie's overpowering
cavalry, and galloped across the hills of Yarrow to the Tweed. He had
lost only the remnant of his Scoto-Irish; but the Gordons, when Montrose
was presently menacing Glasgow, were held back by Huntly, and Colkitto
pursued his private adventures. Montrose had been deserted by the clans,
and lured to ruin by the perfidious promises of the Border lords and
lairds. The aim of his strategy had been to relieve the Royalists of
England by a diversion that would deprive the Parliamentarians of their
paid Scottish allies, and what man might do Montrose had done.

After his first victory Montrose, an excommunicated man, fought under an
offer of 1500 pounds for his murder, and the Covenanters welcomed the
assassin of his friend, Lord Kilpont.

The result of Montrose's victories was hostility between the Covenanting
army in England and the English, who regarded them as expensive and
inefficient. Indeed, they seldom, save for the command of David Leslie,
displayed military qualities, and later, were invariably defeated when
they encountered the English under Cromwell and Lambert.

Montrose never slew a prisoner, but the Convention at St Andrews, in
November 1645, sentenced to death their Cavalier prisoners (Lord Ogilvy
escaped disguised in his s