Excerpt from The Great Marquis of Montrose

The story of the Troubles in Scotland has attracted less attention than the history of the Civil War in England, partly because the conflict was on a smaller scale, but still more, perhaps, because the Scottish leaders were, on the whole, far less interesting than the distinguished men who came to the front on both sides in the southern portion of the island. The names of Strafford and Laud, of Pym, Hampden and Cromwell, are familiar to us as household words, and the innate force of character, the clearly defined aims of each and all of them, excite the interest, even when they do not enlist the sympathy of all readers. Scotland was deeply involved, and even led the way in the civil strife, yet it cannot be denied that, north of the Tweed, the great crisis called forth few men of striking eminence.

One man Scotland did produce whose claim to be called great cannot well be disputed, and that man was Montrose the great Marquis of Scottish history. He was recog nised in his own day as one of the most illustrious persons of the age in which he lived, and Cardinal de Retz saw in his greatness of soul a revival of the Spirit of the old classic heroes. But he whom Carlyle has called the Hero Cavalier was quickly forgotten in the very unheroic age which set in with the Restoration, and later on, the Whig historians of the earlier half of the nineteenth century still further obscured his fame by reproducing for their readers, as a portrait of Montrose, the false and distorted caricature which had been drawn of him by his bitter and unscrupulous enemies, Argyll, Archibald Johnston and Lauderdale.

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