The most poetical chronicler would find it impossible to render the
incidents of Montrose's brilliant career more picturesque than the
reality. Among the devoted champions who, during the wildest and most
stormy period of our history, maintained the cause of Church and King,
"the Great Marquis" undoubtedly is entitled to the foremost place. Even
party malevolence, by no means extinct at the present day, has been
unable to detract from the eulogy pronounced upon him by the famous
Cardinal de Retz, the friend of Conde and Turenne, when he thus summed
up his character:--"Montrose, a Scottish nobleman, head of the house of
Grahame--the only man in the world that has ever realized to me the
ideas of certain heroes, whom we now discover nowhere but in the Lives
of Plutarch--has sustained in his own country the cause of the King his
master, with a greatness of soul that has not found its equal in our
age."
But the success of the victorious leader and patriot, is almost thrown
into the shade by the noble magnanimity and Christian heroism of the man
in the hour of defeat and death. It is impossible now to obliterate the
darkest page of Scottish history, which we owe to the vindictive cruelty
of the Covenanters--a party venal in principle, pusillanimous in action,
and more than dastardly in their revenge; but we can peruse it with the
less disgust, since that very savage spirit which planned the woful
scenes connected with the final tragedy of Montrose, has served to
exhibit to the world, in all time to come, the character of the martyred
nobleman in by far its loftiest light.
There is no ingredient of fiction in the historical incidents recorded
in the following ballad. The indignities that were heaped upon Montrose
during his procession through Edinburgh, his appearance before the
Estates, and his last passage to the scaffold, as well as his undaunted
bearing, have all been spoken to by eyewitnesses of the scene. A graphic
and vivid sketch of the whole will be found in Mr Mark Napier's volume,
"The Life and Times of Montrose"--a work as chivalrous in its tone as
the Chronicles of Froissart, and abounding in original and most
interesting materials; but, in order to satisfy all scruple, the
authorities for each fact are given in the shape of notes. The ballad
may be considered as a narrative of the transactions, related by an
aged Highlander, who had followed Montrose throughout his campaigns, to
his grandson, shortly before the splendid victory of Killiecrankie:--