Hooptedoodle #129 - ECW - MacGonagall on Montrose

The Execution of James Graham, Marquis of Montrose

A Historical Poem

‘Twas in the year of 1650, and on the twenty-first of May,

The city of Edinburgh was put into a state of dismay

By the noise of drums and trumpets, which on the air arose,

That the great sound attracted the notice of Montrose.

Who enquired at the Captain of the guard the cause of it,

Then the officer told him, as he thought most fit,

That the Parliament dreading an attempt might be made to rescue him,

The soldiers were called out to arms, and that had made the din.

Do I, said Montrose, continue such a terror still?

Now when these good men are about my blood to spill,

But let them look to themselves, for after I am dead,

Their wicked consciences will be in continual dread.

After partaking of a hearty breakfast, he commenced his toilet,

Which, in his greatest trouble, he seldom did forget.

And while in the act of combing his hair,

He was visited by the Clerk Register, who made him stare,

When he told him he shouldn’t be so particular with his head,

For in a few hours he would be dead;

But Montrose replied, While my head is my own I’ll dress it at my ease,

And to-morrow, when it becomes yours, treat it as you please.

He was waited upon by the Magistrates of the city,

But, alas! for him they had no pity.

He was habited in a superb cloak, ornamented with gold and silver lace;

And before the hour of execution an immense assemblage of people were round the place.

From the prison, bareheaded, in a cart, they conveyed him along the Watergate

To the place of execution on the High Street, where about thirty thousand people did wait,

Some crying and sighing, a most pitiful sight to see,

All waiting patiently to see the executioner hang Montrose, a man of high degree.

Around the place of execution, all of them were deeply affected,

But Montrose, the noble hero, seemed not the least dejected;

And when on the scaffold he had, says his biographer Wishart,

Such a grand air and majesty, which made the people start.

As the fatal hour was approaching when he had to bid the world adieu,

He told the executioner to make haste and get quickly through,

But the executioner smiled grimly, but spoke not a word,

Then he tied the Book of Montrose’s Wars round his neck with a cord.

Then he told the executioner his foes would remember him hereafter,

And he was as well pleased as if his Majesty had made him Knight of the Garter;

Then he asked to be allowed to cover his head,

But he was denied permission, yet he felt no dread.

He then asked leave to keep on his cloak,

But was also denied, which was a most grievous stroke;

Then he told the Magistrates, if they could invent any more tortures for him,

He would endure them all for the cause he suffered, and think it no sin.

On arriving at the top of the ladder with great firmness,

His heroic appearance greatly did the bystanders impress,

Then Montrose asked the executioner how long his body would be suspended,

Three hours was the answer, but Montrose was not the least offended.

Then he presented the executioner with three or four pieces of gold,

Whom he freely forgave, to his honour be it told,

And told him to throw him off as soon as he uplifted his hands,

While the executioner watched the fatal signal, and in amazement stands.

And on the noble patriot raising his hands, the executioner began to cry,

Then quickly he pulled the rope down from the gibbet on high,

And around Montrose’s neck he fixed the rope very gently,

And in an instant the great Montrose was launched into eternity.

Then the spectators expressed their disapprobation by general groan,

And they all dispersed quietly, and wended their way home

And his bitterest enemies that saw his death that day,

Their hearts were filled with sorrow and dismay.

Thus died, at the age of thirty-eight, James Graham, Marquis of Montrose,

Who was brought to a premature grave by his bitter foes;

A commander who had acquired great military glory

In a short space of time, which cannot be equalled in story.

Though you might feel that you have once again identified the distinctive style of Miss Bentham’s class at Beaconsfield Primary School, this is, of course, the work of William Topaz MacGonagall (1830-1902), variously regarded as Scotland’s worst ever poet or Dundee’s favourite son. Yes, of course it's rubbish, but personally I admire his bold disregard for accuracy of rhyme and meter, and his overriding, earnest enthusiasm. Spike Milligan was a huge fan.

Was MacGonagall, I sometimes wonder, taking the mickey? Was he an early version of the off-beat Scottish humorists of whom Chic Murray and Ivor Cutler are more recent examples?

I've attempted to include an embedded YouTube clip of suitably improving tone - I had some difficulty getting this to work, which may simply be a problem with the version of Flash I have on my iMac. Here it is anyway - if it doesn't run, try clicking here to link directly.

ECW – The Battle of Auchinrivoch (1645)

View from behind the Covenanters' centre as they wheel right from the road
into line of battle

In truth, the forces are not quite ready yet, but I went ahead anyway and staged a wargame employing my new “Campaigns of Montrose” units. The Battle of Auchinrivoch is, of course, fictitious, but represents what the troops involved at the real Battle of Kilsyth might have done on the same ground, on the same date, if they had not been otherwise engaged.

The Marquis of Montrose has available 2 units of regular Scottish foot, being the regiments of Strathbogie and Gordon of Monymore, plus his Irish brigade of 3 regiments, under the command of Major-General MacColla, plus approximately 2500 highland clansmen, 2 regiments of horse and a very small unit of firelocks.

He is opposed by General William Baillie, with a Covenant Army consisting of 7 regiments of foot (mostly from Fife and the Lowlands) and 2 regiments of horse, the cavalry commander being Lord Balcarres.

The rules are the current version of my adaptation of Commands & Colors for the ECW. All regular units count as average, trained troops, all cavalry are Trotters, the highland levies have no firepower and count as “raw” (double retreats). There is no artillery present – Montrose doesn’t have any worthy of mention, and Baillie has left his behind on the march. To reflect his greater flair, Montrose has 6 Command Cards in his hand, Baillie has 5.

7 Victory Points for the win.

Set Up

Montrose took personal command of the (unpredictable) highlanders, on high ground on his right wing. MacColla’s Irish troops were in reserve in the centre, and the regular Scottish Royalist foot were on the left, commanded by Lord Gordon. The firelocks were installed in Auchinrivoch Farm, in the middle of the table.

Baillie’s initial dispositions were generated by dice rolls, since his force (historically) was in column of march, and faced right to form line of battle when he realized that the Royalists had an ambush waiting for him.

Both forces had cavalry on the flanks, but they had no involvement until the very end of the action.

Action

Baillie’s original plan was to attack the highlanders with his main thrust, but the brigade under Colonel Haldane was distracted by the firelocks in the farm, who were causing some loss and annoyance. Haldane swiftly took the farm, but was promptly driven out again by MacColla’s Irish, at which point the highlanders swept down from the hill and routed most of Haldane’s men.

Baillie and Balcarres showed considerable personal courage in taking advantage of a Leadership card to gain some temporary success against the Monymore regiment, but this, too, was swept aside and Montrose won the day in a little over 90 minutes – 7-3 on Victory Points. The Covenanters also lost Colonel Haldane, severely wounded and taken prisoner.

The Pictures

Overview of Baillie's forces, from his right flank

Balcarres' Horse, on the Covenanters' left flank - they did nothing all day

Montrose's initial deployment

MacColla's Irish brigade in the Royalist centre

 

Montrose on the high ground, taking special care of his brave but brittle highlanders

More underemployed horse - this lot are Ogilvy's regiment, on the Royalist right flank

Baillie gets cracking with a "March to Victorye" card - throwing his infantry forward

This is how they would have looked from a helicopter above the Royalist lines

MacColla takes a more belligerent stance

Haldane would have done well to ignore the farm, but couldn't resist driving
the firelocks out of the position

 

Of course, having taken the farm, Haldane's men could not hold it against the Irish...

…and were driven out again with heavy loss...

…which they managed to reduce with some lucky "Rallye" dice...

…after which they got a further seeing-to from the highlanders.

Suddenly there were some very big gaps in the Covenanter line

General Baillie felt decidedly isolated as his men left him to get on with it

When the cards are against you, they are against you all the way. In desperation,
Baillie played a "Hazzard a Chaunce" card, forcing Montrose to take a Chance Card.
Typically, this should not have been in Montrose's best interests, but today it resulted in the
Royalist Gordon Horse suddenly realising that this was, in fact, their day to be
unbeatable, and they became Rash Gallopers on the spot...

…and they duly celebrated by cutting down Loudon's Foot, to give Montrose
his decisive 7th Victory Point. Game over.

ECW - Mac Colla

Alasdair Mac Colla Chiotaich Mac Domhnuill (1610-47)

With some approximation in the tartan trews department, I have painted up the Mac Colla – otherwise known to you and me as Ali MacDonald – yet another figure I have assembled from Tumbling Dice parts. Alasdair was born at Colonsay, in the Inner Hebrides, the son of Col Chiotaich MacDonald – “Col the Left Handed”. Col was known as Colkitto, in Anglicised form, a name by which Nigel Tranter also refers to the son, Alasdair, in the Montrose novels. One would hesitate to suggest that Mr Tranter was mistaken, so let us assume that Alasdair was known as Colkitto as a sort of patronym.

Alasdair spent much of his life in Ireland, and he was appointed to command the Irish brigade which was sent over to Scotland to fight for the Royalist cause in the Civil War, joining forces with the Marquis of Montrose. Mac Colla is a bit nearer to the Warhammer end of things than I am used to – you will find a lot of stuff about him on the internet, frequently (apparently) confused with Conan the Barbarian, and representing a type of superhuman Celtic warrior hero much loved by American chaps with beards, many of whom would not know a Celt if they fell over one. 

The real Alasdair seems to have been a big, strong fellow – brave but sometimes a bit hasty. A head-banger, no doubt. He left Montrose, officially to raise more troops in the western highlands, but became distracted by the pursuit of his family’s traditional feud with the Campbells, who were – needless to say – staunch Covenanters.

My figure is simpler and calmer than most representations of this trusted lieutenant of Montrose.

ECW - The Marquis of Montrose

I'm not sure that Dame CV Wedgwood would fancy my version much

Since my armies for the campaigns of Montrose are pretty close to ready now, I need to provide a few leaders and a few more frame guns to fill in some remaining gaps. Since we are hardly spoiled for choice of specialty figures in 20mm, I'm having to raid the spares boxes for bits and pieces. Here is the Marquis himself, assembled from various Tumbling Dice bits and an SHQ horse.

He looks slightly more Neanderthal than his portrait, but those artists always took pains to flatter their clients, as we know. His personal standard (all right, actually the King of Scotland's flag, but Montrose used it as his personal standard) is carried on a separate base, which is unusually fiddly for me, but gives the advantage that I can use the Marquis's figure as someone else if I do it this way. Cheapskate Productions' corporate strategy in action once again.

Next on the bottle tops will be an improvised Alasdair Mac Colla, also from TD bits, which will require me to attempt some rough approximation to tartan. I failed to find any tartan paint in the Games Workshop catalogue, so I guess I'll have to try it the old fashioned way.

Once the leaders are better advanced, I'll put in a group photo of the new forces in their current state.

ECW - As You Were - Switchable FLAGS

Low-tech, cheap solution - job done!

Very many thanks to Steve and Gary and Martin for the advice. I had a go at making up some flags on the plastic tubing which forms the stem (stalk?) of a standard Cotton Bud - just to see how it went - and it went well enough to be the answer, I believe.

Above you see the pikemen from the (Royalist) Regiment of Foot of Gordon of Monymore, with their colonel's colour mounted in this new way. Since the flag swings around like a weather vane, I think I'll introduce a sliver of BluTak to hold it still. If I wish to switch them to the other side, to become a Covenanter regiment for Marston Moor or the Siege of York, for example, it is necessary only to slip on a suitable replacement flag.

A sample cotton bud is included in the picture - we also had some with blue stems, but they are a little thicker. All in all, one of the easier DIY jobs I've attempted recently - thanks again, gentlemen.

ECW - Switchable Standard-Bearers

…and other cunning stuff.

The man himself - in Montrose High Street

Work on my windfall acquisition of second-hand ECW troops is going ahead – there is quite a lot to do, but it’s a factory process, and it’s mostly a matter of making time to sit down and get on with it, ensuring I have plenty of music to listen to.

This is figure painting of a style I haven’t done much of for many years – the previous owner was a doctor, I understand; sadly, he passed away recently and his widow arranged for his enormous collection of figures to be presented to a local charity shop, who raised a considerable sum on eBay. I believe that there were over a hundred boxes of stuff, representing a huge range of periods and styles of warfare. I bought some of his ECW figures – mostly Scots and Irish type figures – and found, to my surprise, that they were flagged and organized to suit the campaigns of the Marquis of Montrose, which – by a complete coincidence – is exactly what I had in mind myself when I bought them.

The figures are mostly SHQ and Tumbling Dice, which fits right in with my existing armies, but they are painted in a way which I used to employ myself in the days when my main concern was to get as many soldiers ready for battle as I could, in the shortest time possible. They are, to use what I think is Mr Featherstone’s phrase, “effective in the mass” rather than individually exquisite. That is not to dismiss them as crude, you understand, but recently I have grown accustomed to commissioned paint jobs on my ECW chaps which make each man a little personality, and these new troops for the Montrose unpleasantness are not like that. The painting is OK, though I have a lot of rebasing to get on with, and the acreage of Humbrol gloss varnish is astonishing, but the overall impression is of a major invasion by a faceless horde which you wouldn’t wish to meet up with.

Somehow this fits quite well with my feelings about the Covenanters and their opponents – masses of rather dour, businesslike fellows in “hodden grey”, with blue bonnets. The Scots army, we must remember, was a national army, not a collection of individual units raised by wealthy or prominent individuals, so a mass-production approach is maybe appropriate.

The task in hand is to identify the figures I can use, organize them into sensible units, clean off the remains of the old basing, get the old tweezers busy removing the cat hairs which are tacked onto the old varnish (not embedded in the stuff, fortunately), wash everything, touch up any chips or outstandingly poor bits of painting, give a thorough application of Galeria acrylic matt varnish, paint the figure bases in the house Crested Moss #1 shade, stick them on new 60 x 60 MDF stands and prepare flags. When you get within tweezer range of someone else’s figures, it all gets very personal. While I’m tinkering away I find myself chatting idly to The Doc, as I refer to the previous owner, and Whiskers, as I have christened his cat.

A box of Scots - just the first of a big new contingent - no flags yet

I have already produced a unit of Scots horse, and I have enough figures for 6 regiments of bonneted Scottish foot, plus 5 of non-Scottish chaps of generally northern (grey/brown) appearance. The plan is that Montrose will get two of the first group (Strathbogie and Gordon of Monymore) plus three of the second (who will be his Irish Brigade), and the balance will be available to his opponents, as will my three existing Covenanter units. There are also 4 small units of highland levies, who are up for grabs to either side, depending on scenario.

Almost certainly not Whiskers

Flags are interesting. Those of Strathbogie and Gordon of Monymore, and of the Irish Brigade, are distinctively Royalist, but I do not wish to disqualify these units from being called up to pitch in on the other side in the Bishop Wars, or against the Marquis of Newcastle, or at Marston Moor, if need be, so I have come up with a Cunning Plan for flags. Montrose’s foot regiments will have their standard bearers elegantly tacked onto the bases with BluTak, and spare officers will be available with alternative flags, such that they may switch allegiance as required. The Scottish fellows (including the spares for Montrose’s people) are to have general-purpose Covenanter style colours, and the non-Scots (including the spares for Montrose’s Irish) will have generic English (Northumbrian) colours, appropriate to their faceless-mass role.

One of my generic Scots units will, of course, have a colour very similar to that of the Duke of Argyll, the cross-eyed, craven, dastardly villain of Dame Veronica Wedgwood’s very readable but extremely biased life of Montrose.

Booo! - Argyll, the Pantomime Villain

I have much work to do, but at least I now know what it is. It is a comfort to have plans to dovetail these new forces with North-of-England scenarios, since otherwise they might be seen as a distraction from my main effort, for which I haven’t yet produced a proper campaign in my intended Lancashire theatre.

What fun, what fun! More pictures will appear in due course.