The Battle of Philiphaugh was a major battle of the Scottish Civil War which was fought on 13 September 1645 near Selkirk, Scotland between the Marquess of Montrose's Royalist army and David Leslie's Covenanter army. Even after the loss of Bristol, King Charles I still had cause to hope when the Marquess of Montrose led a royalist uprising in Scotland which came tantalizingly close to victory, but this brief spark, too, was extinguished. David Leslie utterly destroyed the army of Montrose at Philiphaugh, near Selkirk.
Background[]
When the Scottish Covenanters became allies of the English Parliamentarians in September 1643, King Charles I appointed the Marquess of Montrose as his Lieutenant General in Scotland. Montrose raised an army from Irish soldiers loyal to the royalist-allied Confederate Ireland and shifting numbers of clansmen from the Scottish Highlands, and he won a remarkable number of victories, including the Battle of Kilsyth, where he destroyed the last Covenanter army in Scotland and put the Scottish Lowlands at his mercy. Upon taking Glasgow, he summoned a Parliament to be held there, but his army disintegrated due to clan rivalries within his ranks. Montrose was forced to lead 500 Irish Catholic musketeers south to the Borders to search for Royalist recruits, but only a few Borders gentry joined him at Kelso. Meanwhile, the Earl of Leven, who was in command of the main Covenanter army in England, sent his general David Leslie back into Scotland with his army's cavalry. Leslie was reinforced by the Covenanter garrisons of Newcastle upon Tyne and Berwick upon Tweed, and he intercepted Montrose's army before Montrose could return to the Highlands.
Battle[]
The Covenanters' approach was hidden by the morning mist, and the Covenanter attack threw the Royalists into confusion. The Royalist infantry's strong defensive position enabled them to repel two Covenanter attacks before the arrival of Leslie's flanking force sealed their fate, and Montrose escaped to Peebles with 30 men, having been advised that the Royalist cause in Scotland would die without him. 100 Irish soldiers and 300 camp followers (many of them women and children) were taken prisoner and slaughtered in cold blood by the Presbyterian Scots.
Aftermath[]
Montrose was unable to raise another army against Leslie's Covenanters, and he fought a guerrilla campaign into the winter and spring of 1646 before King Charles I - himself a prisoner by then - ordered him and his men to lay down their arms.