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atrocities. It has been estimated that nearly 15,000 men died in the fighting associated with Montrose’s campaigns in 1644 and the following year: easily the lion’s share of the deaths on Scottish soil in these years (see Map 5). From Tippermuir he marched on Aberdeen, many of the Highlanders returning home but his army augmented by troops from Angus. On 13 September he arrived before Aberdeen, whose capture was preceded by the murder of a drummer boy and followed by a massacre in a town not known for its Covenanting sympathies. Over the following winter Montrose led a successful march into the Highlands, aiming at the heart of Argyll power. This campaign culminated in a victory at Inverlochy over Argyll’s army, close to his heartland. Although Leven had not removed troops from England in response to Tippermuir and Aberdeen, he was forced to now. Inverlochy offered the prospect of breaking the power of the Covenanters and, hence, of reopening the war in the north of England. When the English campaigns recommenced in the spring, Leven’s movements were influenced by the fact that he needed to remain in a position from which to go back to Scotland, if that proved necessary. In the event, Montrose was never able to find a way of keeping his Highlanders together in order to pursue a more sustained campaign outside the Highlands. The strategic significance of his campaigns was nonetheless considerable: the victory at Marston Moor had closed the northern front in England but Montrose had effectively opened a new northern front in Scotland, and that served to limit Parliament’s operations in the south.32

It is often said that the intervention of the Covenanters made Parliament’s victory inevitable, but that verdict is clearly questionable in two ways. Firstly, the best chance of catching the King in 1644 was in the early spring, and only indirectly a result of the presence of the Scots. It owed much more to the victories of Waller and the march of Essex the previous autumn. Secondly, in so far as the victory at Marston Moor was decisive, it can be said to have resulted from Rupert’s error in seeking a battle and from the intervention of Cromwell’s cavalry during the battle. The subsequent failure to take Oxford, or the King, similarly owed a lot to problems of command and, it is possible to argue, the shortcomings of Essex. Essex had launched an ultimately disastrous adventure in the west, the more damaging since it had involved him in disobeying direct orders from the Committee of Both Kingdoms. His adventure, ending in ignominy at Lostwithiel and the disappointments of the battle of Newbury, pointed up problems in the prosecution of the war. Leven and Manchester, having left the field in apparent defeat at Marston Moor, were presented with a resounding victory, but were then extremely reluctant to follow it up. These misjudgements and hesitations meant that the war was not concluded and Montrose was able to launch a fantastically successful campaign in Scotland.

Modern historians disagree about the blame for these failures and contemporaries certainly did. Since military mobilization was essentially political, it is hardly surprising that this was interpreted politically: military complaints raised political differences and the critics of Manchester and Leven, for example, tended also to be critics of their religious and political views. There was even a hint of resentment about aristocratic power in the parliamentary counsels.33 Without the benefit of hindsight, and a certainty about the structural advantages on their side, many parliamentarians saw this as a political problem: in the sense both of who should be running the war, and of what those running the war ought to be trying to achieve. As in other wars involving coalitions, credit for victory was claimed by different parties with a view to making political capital from the victory; the blame for failure was rarely accepted.

These military frustrations coincided with signs of fracture over war aims, in particular the church settlement. In 1641 leading Puritan divines