The Battle of Harlaw is remembered by its aftermath: Red Harlaw. The moorland lay red for days in its wake. It would go down as one of the bloodiest battles in Scottish history.
On 24 July 1411, on a plateau north of Inverurie in Aberdeenshire, two Scottish armies tore each other apart over a political inheritance dispute. By the time it was over, the flower of north-east Scotland’s nobility lay dead in the mud, and neither side could claim a victory
It was, as historians would later point out, a dreadful waste of life over what amounted to a family quarrel.
A kingdom ripe for conflict
Scotland in the early fifteenth century was a country suffering from a lack of strong leadership.
Robert III had been a weak and ineffectual king. His younger, illegitimate brother, Alexander, was running a protection racket in the North. Meanwhile, his son, the future James I, was seized by English forces in 1406 and held captive for the next eighteen years. The broken-hearted king died shortly after hearing of his son’s kidnapping. Into this vacuum stepped the scheming Robert Stewart, Duke of Albany, Robert’s brother. Consequently, Albany was the de facto ruler of Scotland, and he used that position to maximum effect. He systematically began to extend his family’s reach.
Meanwhile, the young heiress to the Earldom of Ross was Euphemia Leslie. Poor Euphemia has been described as having a crooked back and, therefore, was not considered marriageable. At 13 years old, Euphemia retired to a convent, no doubt persuaded by her grandfatehr, none other than Albany, himself. He could claim wardship over her and thus claim her lands- and so he did! Ross was a vast territory in northern Scotland, strategically vital to anyone who wished to control the north.
However, there was a problem with this latest land-grab. Domhnall MacDonald, Lord of the Isles, also had a claim!
The Lord of the Isles and the claim to Ross
Domhnall was the most powerful magnate in Scotland after Albany. From his base on the western seaboard, he could command most of the west coast clans and could field an army drawn from across the Highlands and Islands.
His claim to Ross came through his wife, Mariota Leslie. Mariota was Euphemia’s aunt, the older surviving female heir of the Leslie family from the previous generation. The law was clear: in the absence of male heirs, the earldom should pass to “the elder daughter always.” On that basis, Domhnall’s claim was legitimate.
Albany ignored it.
Negotiations collapsed. But Domhnall was a man of action.
So in 1411, he assembled a great fleet at Ardtornish Castle on the Sound of Mull and sailed around the north of Scotland. His first move was swift and decisive.
The Lord of the Isles and the Battle of Dingwall
He took Dingwall, the principal stronghold of the earldom, after defeating a Mackay force there.
It was recorded:
This Angus-Dow Mackay fought against Donald, Lord of the Isles at Dingwall in Ross, because that Donald had molested some friends which Angus-Dow had in that country. At this conflict Angus Dow was overcome and taken prisoner, and his brother Rory-Gald, with divers others, were slain. Donald of the Isles having detained Angus-Dow a while in captivity, released him, and gave him his daughter in marriage, whom Angus-Dow carried home with him to Strathnaver, and had a son by her, called Niel-Wass, so named because he was imprisoned in the Bass.
— Sir Robert Gordon in A Genealogical History of the Earldom of Sutherland
He then absorbed local fighting men from his newly captured territory into his army, reportedly swelling his numbers to somewhere approaching 10,000 men.
Inverness was attacked next and its oak bridge was set aflame.
He turned south-east. Aberdeen, it was said, was his next target.
The Earl of Mar and the defence of the north-east
Word of the advancing host reached Alexander Stewart, Earl of Mar, at Kildrummy Castle. Alexander of Mar was Albany’s nephew and the illegitimate son of the Wolf of Badenoch. Mar was no innocent himself. He had seized his earldom through a forced marriage to Countess Isabel Douglas. Yet he had since made himself into a respected figure in the north-east, and chronicler Andrew Wyntoun praised him as “honest, able and elegant in person and behaviour.”
He was also the man standing between Domhnall and Aberdeen.
Mar gathered his forces over the winter of 1410 and into the spring and summer of 1411. He drew men from Buchan, Angus, and the Mearns. He had the support of Provost Robert Davidson of Aberdeen, who joined with a contingent of the city’s burgesses. Bishop Greenlaw of Aberdeen was also connected to the campaign, as the uncle of Sir Gilbert de Greenlaw, one of Mar’s knights.
By 23 July, Mar’s army camped on the farmland around Inverurie, between the settlements of Harlaw and Balhalgardy, directly below Domhnall’s position on the plateau above. He intended to attack at dawn.
Domhnall’s armies were camped at the foot of Bennachie, once the site of a Pictish Hillfort and one of the proposed sites for the Battle of Mons Gampius, where the Caledonian army had faced a brutal defeat at the hands of the Romans.
Mar’s force numbered roughly 1,500 to 2,000. It was heavily outnumbered. However, it was also heavily armoured. Sir Gilbert de Greenlaw’s grave slab, still visible in the ruins of Kinkell Church near the River Urie, shows exactly what Mar’s knights looked like: plate armour, chain mail, bascinet helmet, hand-and-a-half sword.
The blood-soaked plateau
At dawn on 24 July 1411, Mar’s army climbed the slope to meet Domhnall’s force on the plateau.
The Islesmen charged first. Lightly armoured but numerous, they swarmed over Mar’s advance guard and drove it back. According to a sixteenth-century ballad, Mar’s men were pushed back three acres or more in the initial assault.
Sir James Scrymgeour, Constable of Dundee and hereditary standard-bearer of Scotland, then led a cavalry counter-charge. It steadied Mar’s line. Scrymgeour, however, was killed. So was Sir Alexander Ogilvie, Sheriff of Angus. As was Robert Davidson, Provost of Aberdeen.
Wave after wave of the Islesmen broke against the armoured ranks of the Lowland infantry. The dead accumulated. Horses screamed and went down. Men were dragged from their saddles. Red Hector McLean, commanded the Islesmen’s right flank and was one of MacDonald’s finest commanders. Mclean got into a duel with Alexander of Drum. Alas, both men died in the resulting conflict. Many men succumbed not to their wounds but to dehydration and sheer exhaustion.
The fighting lasted most of the day. There was no decisive breakthrough on either side. As daylight faded, both armies drew apart. The battle must have lasted for somewhere close to sixteen hours.
Neither side was sure who had the upper hand.
That night, Mar’s survivors made camp on the bloodied ground. Between a quarter and a half of their number were dead. Those who remained, according to later tradition, believed they would not survive the following dawn.
They were wrong. When morning broke, Domhnall was gone.
Red Harlaw: the reckoning
Domhnall had lost around 900 men. That was significant, but from an army perhaps ten times larger than Mar’s, it was survivable. Mar’s losses were proportionally catastrophic. Six hundred dead from a force of 1,500 to 2,000 represents somewhere between thirty and forty per cent of his entire army.
The nobility of Aberdeenshire was, as one source puts it plainly, decimated. Provost Davidson was dead. Sir Gilbert de Greenlaw was dead. Sir James Scrymgeour was dead. The list of prominent men who never came home from Harlaw reads like a roll call of north-east Scotland’s leading families.
The Irish Annals of Connacht, one of the nearest contemporary sources, recorded under 1411 that “Mac Domnaill of Scotland won a great victory over the Galls of Scotland.” Both sides claimed victory. However, the townsfolk of Aberdeen could rejoice- they had been spared.
Was it really a Highland versus Lowland war?
Red Harlaw has always attracted a grand narrative. In later tradition, it became the battle that saved Lowland Scotland from being overwhelmed by the Gaelic north. John Hill Burton, writing in the nineteenth century, claimed it was felt in Lowland Scotland as “a more memorable deliverance even than that of Bannockburn.”
That interpretation shaped poetry, ballads and centuries of commemoration. It is not entirely without basis. Domhnall’s army was drawn from the Gaelic west. Mar’s was the product of north-east feudal society, Scots-speaking and aligned with the Stewart crown.
However, the underlying cause was a family inheritance dispute. Mar and Domhnall were, in fact, cousins by marriage. Euphemia Leslie connected them both.
The Harlaw Monument
Today, a monument marks the spot where the battle took place. This was erected in 1914 to mark the 500th anniversary of the battle. It commemorates Provost Robert Davidson and the Aberdeen burgesses who died at Harlaw. It is also a testament of how greed and avirice can lead to the wasted loss of lives. The land they were fighting over would eventually pass to Domhnall’s descendants regardless. Thirteen years after the battle, once James I had returned from captivity, the Earldom of Ross was officially granted to Domhnall’s son. All those men died on a plateau north of Inverurie for a settlement that could, conceivably, have been reached around a table.
