Blood of the Clans (2020): Season 1, Episode 1 - The Year of Victories - full transcript
Neil Oliver recounts the 17th century conflict between Royalist clans and Parliamentarians
This programme contains some scenes
which some viewers may find upsetting.
For centuries,
the Scottish highlands
have been a law unto themselves.
Beyond the rule of any king.
A world where ruthless clans
scheme...
You would throw us to the wolves,
for what?
And slaughter.
They'll cut you into bits!
In a violent struggle
for dominance.
Issue powder and shot now!
But in this new era,
a king of Scots
is on england's throne.
Two kingdoms, one king.
And the clans, they've become
britain's mightiest fighting force.
Gunfire
we must make a stand
in the highlands.
In this world of gunpowder,
broadswords and treason,
the highland clans
have a new-found power -
to make or break the kingdom.
God in heaven.
Trust me, blood will be spilt.
1644.
All hell has been unleashed
in Scotland.
An army of wild clansmen
rampage through the highlands.
They make war in the name
of king Charles I,
raining down fire and sword
upon his enemies.
The king's greatest enemy in
Scotland is Archibald of argyll,
chief of clan Campbell.
He fights for parliament
in alliance with the English.
Archie's cause is the will
of the people,
or at least that's what
he tells himself.
There's a dark place
in Archie's soul
that just wants to be rid
of the king in Scotland.
This is a story of old world loyalty
versus new world politics.
An epic conflict that will kick off
a century of clan warfare and chaos
in Scotland and threaten the future
of the emerging British state.
The explosive events to come
were triggered six years earlier
in London.
Charles I is king.
He is the grandson
of Mary, queen of Scots...
The second Stuart monarch
to rule both Scotland and england.
Headstrong, and with no time
for subtle politics,
Charles is trying to align
his northern kingdom of Scots
with his southern one
to create a one rule fits all
nation of Great Britain,
but the Scots aren't having it.
His majesty was born in Scotland,
but he's spent precious little
time there.
The truth is, he doesn't really
understand the place.
His reforms have made him
wildly unpopular.
There's even talk of a rebellion.
What he needs is someone
from a powerful clan
to act as an enforcer
by royal appointment.
And Charles is assuming
that this guy
will be up for doing
the king's dirty work.
Archibald of argyll.
He runs the strongest clan
in Scotland - the Campbells.
Archie Campbell, or squint-eyed
Archibald, as he's known in Gaelic,
in many ways,
he's a typical Campbell.
There's a ruthlessness about him,
there's a pride about him
which is very much
what we expect from the clan.
Archie Campbell is probably the
most powerful person in Scotland
in around 1638, 1640.
Apart from the king, of course.
But will Archie actually agree
to enforce the king's reforms?
The Campbells have always backed
the Stuart kings and queens
and the Stuart kings and queens have
been most generous in return.
But this particular Campbell
is a thoroughly modern man.
He just doesn't buy this nonsense
about a king having the divine right
to do as he pleases,
so this wee chat
could be a bit awkward.
I am a humble servant
of your kingdom of Scots.
A kingdom you are absent from.
Your majesty knows it not,
nor our minds.
We do not uphold that a king
has divine rights.
It may well be your will, sire,
to raise taxes, gift lands,
dictate what is uttered in prayer...
But it is not the will
of your people.
I cannot in good conscience
aid your majesty
in executing these, your...
Despotic policies.
Tell it like it is, Archie,
why don't you?
It's one thing to turn down
the king of Scots and england,
quite another to call him
a tyrant.
He's got balls, you've got to
give that to Archie,
but for such talk,
people lose their heads.
Charles could have Archie arrested,
but believes he can punish him
in a more painful way.
He makes a royal decree and grants
a vast tract of Campbell territory,
the lands of kintyre,
to the clan's great rivals,
the macdonalds.
Taking land from the Campbells
and giving it to the macdonalds?
If you want to start a fight in
the highlands, that's how you do it.
The Campbell MacDonald feud goes
back to about the 14th century
and it came about
because the macdonalds had,
for a long period of time, been
the top dogs in highland politics.
At the height of MacDonald power,
they stretch across
much of the hebrides
and into mainland Scotland
and even across to Ireland as well.
By the 1600s, this dominance
is really on the out.
Their lands are greatly diminished
and we start to see,
rising from the ashes, this new
power, and that is clan Campbell.
The lands of kintyre were once
an ancient MacDonald heartland -
part of the clan's origin story.
The Campbells took it from them
in the ongoing power struggle
for highland dominance,
and this remote peninsula
lies right in the heart
of the Campbell territory
of argyll.
Archie is not the kind of guy
that gives up anything very easily
so he is absolutely incensed
by this development.
It's very bad news indeed
and it makes him really question
what is the crown doing.
By granting kintyre
back to the macdonalds,
Charles is trying to demonstrate
who is boss
and bring Archie to heel,
but he's failed to realise
that it's always been the Campbells
who have enforced his royal will
in Scotland,
especially in the highlands.
In these parts,
the Campbells are the law.
No other single clan is going to be
brave enough or daft enough
to come here and challenge them.
They're not going to surrender
kintyre
on the say-so of a distant king.
Charles? He can go whistle.
Six years have passed
since Archibald Campbell
first defied the king.
In that time,
the chief of the Campbells
has made his opposition
to Charles formal.
Gradually, he's taken complete
control of the Scottish parliament
and forcibly curbed the king's power
north of the border.
Any who've opposed him
have been imprisoned,
even tortured.
And not one MacDonald has dared
make a claim on kintyre.
Remember down in London,
Archie called Charles a despot,
a tyrant.
Well, nowadays, some people are
talking about pots and kettles.
Some people are labelling
Archie Campbell king Campbell
and it seems like there's only
one man with enough bottle
to take him on.
Step forward Jamie, chief of
clan Graham and Earl of montrose.
A daring general with
an impressive war record,
Jamie is a leader that men
will follow into battle.
He thinks himself a warrior poet.
Jamie has an old sword
over his fireplace
that one of his ancestors used to
fight alongside William Wallace.
His friends say Jamie himself is
like a character from a bygone age.
He's loyal, chivalrous.
He's a knight in shining armour.
James Graham, like other royalist
and indeed like other
moderate parliamentarians,
sees the king's authority
as divinely ordained
and that there needs to be a balance
between the power the king has
and the power that parliament
and the church have.
Jamie is really suspicious
of Archie.
He sees the power he has,
he sees the dominance he has
over parliament, and he thinks that
Archie is aiming for something more.
Whether that's dominance
of Scotland,
whether he wants to see himself
as king Campbell,
Jamie is concerned and he sees
the only way to counter
what Archie is doing is to
secretly cooperate with the king.
He did not totally approve
of that king,
he thought the king
made many mistakes,
but his belief was
that as a nobleman,
he had to defend the king,
so that's the issue.
And that is the issue that
he has to follow through.
But if Jamie is going to
take on Archie Campbell
in support of his sovereign king,
then he'll be risking everything,
including the safety of his family.
His relationship with his wife,
magdalene, is beginning to suffer
as he gets deeper into
the politics and plotting.
Magdalene knows that she
and the couple's children
would become targets
if her husband gets in too deep.
And right now, Jamie is torn
between loyalty to his king
and his loved ones.
But his hand is about to be forced.
Archie Campbell has put Scotland
on a war footing.
Charles I, politically naive
as ever, has made no secret of
his intentions to regain authority
over Scottish affairs.
We desire all men at arms be
mustered by forenoon of the morrow.
None to be levies or conscripts.
Only those who've stood
shot and horse.
Tighter, man.
And now Archie is sending
a massive Scottish army
over the border into england
to fight against Charles
in the name of
parliamentary freedom.
Archie is fired up against
the king, no question,
but is he fighting
for Scotland's parliament
or is he fighting for clan Campbell?
Archie has been angered by
the potential loss of kintyre,
he's angry about what Charles I
is doing
in terms of trying to bring about
uniformity across his kingdoms.
He sees the king as wanting to bring
Scotland into line with england.
Now, that offends him
in national terms
because he thinks Scotland should
retain its ancient laws
and liberties, but it also offends
him in his position of clan chief.
It questions his autonomy
as clan chief over his people
and he doesn't like that.
He very much believes in this ideal
of the almost semi-mythological
Scottish constitution
whereby parliament has the power
to constrain the king, but this
allegation is made against him
that he's going too far and that
he's seizing political power
for himself, and there's even
allegations that he plans
to make himself the dictator
of Scotland.
But Archie is not alone in sending
troops against the king.
Charles stands accused of tyranny
south of the border too
and the English parliament has
also declared war on the king
and his royalist supporters.
Jumping on the bandwagon,
Archie has turned the whole thing
into a crusade.
There's even been a document
published
legitimising this
anti-royalist enterprise.
As a massive PR exercise,
thousands of copies of this document
are being printed
with the undeniably pompous title
of the solemn league and covenant,
full of righteous declarations
about the kingdom of Christ
and the grace of god.
There was also a key passage
concerning preserving the rights
and privileges of parliament.
Now, as Archie Campbell leads
his Scots army into england
to make war on the king,
Jamie Graham enters the fray.
Jamie seeks permission from
king Charles to raise an army
to make war on
the Campbell-controlled Scottish
parliament.
He has one aim - to bring this
troublesome northern kingdom
back under royal command.
Charles offers no resistance,
but harbours little hope.
In fairness, he has no idea
of the detail of Jamie's plan.
The chief of the grahams
is about to raise an army
the like of which
Scotland has never seen.
Alone, the chief of the grahams
heads north into the highlands.
This is where he will find
an army for the king.
A clan army.
Part of clan DNA
is loyalty to the chief.
For many, the Stuart king,
with his own clan lineage,
is the ultimate chief.
It's all in a noble cause,
the cause of the Stuart king,
but Jamie Graham is about to do
a deal with the devil himself.
Meet alasdair Mac colla,
the demon warrior of clan Donald.
He's been in Ireland taking up arms
and bloodying his sword
for any cause that will have him.
He's returned to Scotland
with a war band
of Irish MacDonald mercenaries.
Decades ago, the Campbells took
his ancestral lands of kintyre,
the very lands the Stuart king
granted back to clan Donald.
Now alasdair is here
to make good on that claim.
This chap kept the Gaelic ports
in business.
They wrote that when he was born,
all the swords in his father's house
leapt out of their scabbards,
the mares gave birth,
and there's more.
Mac colla, they said, eats toads
and can twist the legs off cows.
That's quite the cv.
These stories are told to really
accentuate his warrior status.
They allow people to be fearful
of him.
They don't want to face such
a legendary figure in combat.
And they also give him this aura
of invincibility
that perhaps also emboldens
his own followers.
This is a man that they would
like to follow into battle.
And he brings a united
highland Irish force
into Scotland at this time
in an attempt to regain
his ancestral lands.
That's what he wants to do
and that has a huge anti-Campbell
agenda attached to it.
Alasdair had hoped that
other clans would flock
to his anti-Campbell cause.
A handful of macdonalds from the
wild west highlands have joined him,
so, before marching on kintyre,
he heads to the central highlands,
into clan Stewart
and clan robertson territory.
They're no friends of the Campbells
but the reception he receives
is not warm.
The truth is, most are scared
of alasdair Mac colla
and terrified of his
Irish MacDonald mercenaries.
Even to the wild highlanders,
the Irish branch of clan Donald
are mad, bad and dangerous to know,
to be feared and defended against.
There are clans out there
who might just be persuaded
to join Jamie's fight
against the Campbells,
but for now, they're running around
absolutely terrified
that Mac colla's Irish are going to
chop them up and roast their babies.
This could all end badly.
Alasdair and his McDonald
mercenaries soon find themselves
confronted by heavily armed
Stewart and robertson clansmen,
out to defend their lands against
those they take to be Irish raiders.
Just as it seems bloodshed
is inevitable,
a lone figure walks between
the two opposing groups.
He's dressed as an ordinary
highlander,
but the stewarts and robertsons
know him.
His name goes from man to man
and they let out a cheer.
Cheering
it is Jamie, chief of the grahams,
and he is quick to introduce himself
to alasdair Mac colla,
addressing him in Gaelic.
Basically, alasdair needs Graham.
Alasdair has got some very, very
powerful battle-hardened veterans
in his army from the Irish wars,
but he lacks legitimacy.
He lacks respectability.
He needs to show
the rest of Scotland
that he's just not leading
an Irish invasion into the country.
On the other hand, Graham needs men,
and he gets that aplenty
with alasdair's soldiers.
It was a very unlikely alliance
between Jamie and alasdair
and you've kind of got
two sections of a force
that have completely different
agendas.
Jamie really wants to
restore Scotland,
restore Charles's position,
alasdair wants to restore
his clan lands
and fight an anti-Campbell agenda,
so Jamie has to try and somehow
keep that force united
when there's very disparate agendas
at play, and that's not easy.
That'll be a yes, then.
Knowing he's got no time to lose,
Jamie wheels his little clan force
away from Campbell territory and
south towards the Scottish lowlands.
But already the Scots parliament
has got word
of this newly-raised royalist force
and the alarm has been sounded.
The royalist clans make for Perth,
the nearest town.
If they can take it,
they can get food and ammunition.
But blocking Jamie's path
on the plain of tippermuir
is an army hastily assembled
by the Scottish parliament.
The cream of the Scots army is south
of the border with Archie Campbell,
joining up with English roundheads
to take on king Charles.
This Scottish parliament force
is composed of conscripts,
cow herders and farm hands,
but they're heavily armed with
muskets, gunpowder and ammunition.
Jamie's mob, though, only have
enough powder for one shot each,
but the royalists now have
a secret weapon -
alasdair Mac colla
and his MacDonald mercenaries.
Alasdair and Jamie Graham's army
looks as if it's going to be
on the losing side.
They're outnumbered, it seems,
by government forces.
The auspices aren't good.
The royalist army is low
on ammunition
so they can't afford to have
a prolonged firefight.
So their flanks, which are
normally meant to be six deep,
they've only deployed three,
and that is simply to match
the frontage of the government army.
They then advance very quickly
towards the government line.
In fact, it's said that Mac colla
would tell his men
to wait until they could fire
into the beards of the enemy.
We're talking 25, 30 metres away.
They unload a single volley
and then they charge.
Fire!
Gunfire
so when the fire actually happens,
there's noise, there's smoke,
and you can't even really see
what's then coming at you
as highlanders and Irish charge in
with their broadswords.
The battle of tippermuir
is warriors against farm hands.
It's a rout.
We have a thousand parliamentary
soldiers dead by the end of the day
but Mac colla, the highlanders
and the Irish are chasing them
until 9pm at night,
so it's really the rout
that causes the mass casualties
that we see at tippermuir.
Never turn your back
on a broadsword.
Afterwards, they say you could
walk the four miles into Perth
standing on corpses.
Hell has indeed been unleashed.
But one victory,
no matter how total,
will not win Scotland for the king.
Archie Campbell has returned,
furious at the news
of Jamie's uprising.
Having left his Scots army
to fight in england,
Archie is here to crush this
royalist threat on his home turf
by whatever means he can.
Bear in mind, Archie Campbell
is a ruthless operator.
When he fights, he fights dirty,
attacking his enemy where
he'll be most vulnerable,
and that includes going after his
enemy's family, and Jamie knows it.
The clan Graham family home
is at auchterarder,
just ten miles from the scene
of Jamie's victory,
so immediately after the battle,
he races for home.
He tells his wife, magdalene,
that he's going to take
their 14-year-old son John with him
on his campaign to protect him,
to keep him safe from kidnap
or worse.
All that magdalene feared
about Jamie's playing the hero
is coming true.
It's one thing for her husband
to hurl himself into war,
but to drag their son into it too?
With Archie Campbell now raising
a fresh parliamentary army,
Jamie speed-marches his force
towards the ancient university
borough of aberdeen.
Take aberdeen,
and he can win the north-east.
Aberdeen, though, is garrisoned
by parliament troops
under orders to hold out
against the royalists,
so Jamie is going to try
a spot of negotiation.
A drummer boy is sent to the city's
defences to issue an ultimatum.
All women, children and elderly
are ordered to leave.
Any men can surrender
and come to the king's side.
Those who stay to fight
will be given no quarter.
A trigger-happy soldier
Manning the walls of aberdeen
takes offence at the threat.
Gunshot
Shooting dead the drummer boy,
it's cold-blooded,
heartless insanity,
but there's worse to come.
The troops defending aberdeen
haven't heard about tippermuir.
They think they're being attacked
by some half-cocked highland rabble.
They rush out and they're wiped out.
Now aberdeen is undefended.
What happens next will be
justified as revenge
for the cold-blooded killing
of a drummer boy.
But if that was a war crime,
then the behaviour
of Jamie and alasdair's army now
is pure bloody mass murder.
Mac colla allows his mad,
bad MacDonald mercenaries
a free hand to plunder aberdeen.
For three days,
they pillage, murder, rape.
Men are forced to strip
before being shot
so that their blood
doesn't soil their clothes,
which are then taken as Booty.
The dead are not permitted
to be buried.
They must rot where they lie.
Any woman who dares wail for
her dead husband or son is abused.
This is now total war.
The supposedly gallant
and chivalrous Jamie Graham
does nothing to stop it.
Or perhaps he can do nothing.
It should never have been
looted for three days.
There should never have been all
these casualties, right down to
washer women and a student at
the university who were killed.
Jamie was really out
to lunch on this one
and I think it got to him,
he really felt it.
It was very, very sad.
This is about much more
than avenging the death
of the drummer boy.
Could it be that Jamie
is thinking about his own son?
Could it be that he's feeding
the legendary bloodlust
of Mac colla and his men?
Whatever the motivation,
his reputation is forever tarnished.
He's the man who stood by while an
entire town was put to the sword.
News spreads of the aberdeen
atrocities.
Church ministers across Scotland
preach that Jamie Graham
is the antichrist,
in league with Satan.
Archibald comes after the royalist
army with a parliament force
but loses them
in the cairngorm mountains.
Better still for Jamie,
more highlanders are flocking
to his royalist banner.
After the victory at aberdeen,
Jamie and alasdair are joined
by the macdonalds of glencoe,
the MacDonald's of keppoch
and of glengarry.
So it's as if the victory there
has developed some kind of momentum
and so more clans join the cause.
The question is now,
what shall we do with the army?
Jamie Graham has got
very clear plans.
He wants to take the army south
and then he wants the army to
support the royalist cause,
possibly even in england,
in order to get king Charles
back in power,
but alasdair has other ideas.
We have to remember that Mac colla
and a lot of the highlanders
and the Irish within his following
are really here
to try and take the fight
to the clan Campbell,
so Mac colla actually suggests what
to Graham seems an audacious move,
which is to launch
a winter campaign -
a raid into argyll.
But as far as Jamie's concerned,
argyll is a deathtrap.
Jamie really has to think hard
about this
because nobody has ever tried
this before. It's preposterous.
They say, actually,
that the number of hurdles
they've got to go through
are like a comb.
You went one after the other.
And that each one was more
dangerous than the last.
And, of course, the final thing that
you have to deal with is Campbells.
I think this is where you
start to see the first cracks
in this partnership.
Even though he knows that it's a
straight route to an early grave,
at least for Jamie, he really
questions how far he can go
without Mac colla and his men.
Really, what choice does he have?
Jamie Graham isn't the only one who
thinks that the Campbell territory
of argyll is an impenetrable
mountain fortress.
When Archie Campbell failed to
catch up with Jamie and alasdair
in the north-east of Scotland,
he retreated west
to his castle in argyll,
to brood, plot his next move
and mutter the odd prayer
with his pious wife Margaret.
Archie knows Mac colla is mad
and that he'd give his right arm
to take back the old
MacDonald lands in kintyre,
but is he actually mad enough
to attack the mighty Campbells
on their home patch?
Archie doesn't think so.
No-one has ever dared attempt
an assault on argyll.
Besides, the last Archie heard,
the royalist army was 100 miles
away to the east.
Amen.
But then news comes.
News that Archie can hardly believe.
Turns out Mac colla and Jamie
do fancy their chances.
They've swept across the country,
they're swarming through argyll,
and they've caught mighty
clan Campbell
with their plaids
around their ankles.
Issue powder and shot now!
Margaret, you must take
to the cellars.
Keep the doors bolted throughout.
I'll take what men I have here
and hold the gates.
Archie, you must not.
You will fall.
And if you fall,
clan Campbell falls with you.
You must run now.
And so Archie Campbell
takes to his heels...
Leaving Mac colla, the avenger,
to sweep through argyll
and burn everything in his path.
To drive off cattle
and put any who resist to the sword.
To the Campbells, alasdair Mac colla
would be known evermore
as "the destroyer".
His name, one to terrify
children with.
It may be that alasdair had hoped
to press on through argyll
to clan Donald's old heartland
of kintyre and lay claim to it.
But for now, that's an
audacious step too far.
Archie Campbell is marshalling
3,000 of his clansmen against them.
Just as Jamie predicted,
there's a terrifying danger that his
army won't get out of argyll alive.
Mac colla and the macdonalds
have had a taste
of what they came for,
but now it's their turn to flee.
With captured boats,
they cross loch after loch,
move out of argyll
and into the great Glen.
But this great canyon cutting
Scotland in half is another trap
and the royalists have stirred
a hornet's nest.
Hot on their heels
and hellbent on revenge,
Archie positions his army
at inverlochy castle,
blocking the great Glen's
southern end.
Not only that, he's called out
his clan allies in the north,
the frasers and the mackenzies.
Their orders? March on the royalists
with all haste,
drive them down the great Glen
towards me.
Archie has got every reason
to think this is checkmate.
He's got his enemy trapped,
hasn't he?
Jamie and Mac colla's forces
have made it to the middle
of the great Glen, so they're on
the southern tip of Loch Ness,
and they find out that
Archie Campbell is on the move
and he's out for revenge.
So he's got a force
of about 3,000 men
at the southern end
of the great Glen,
but then, obviously, marching down
from the north is his allies,
so the frasers and the mackenzies,
and Jamie and Mac colla
are right there in the middle
with nowhere to go.
It looks as if
they're going to be ground
between these two armies,
pulverised into dust.
That's where the masterstroke
comes in.
Jamie Graham had seen
what highland armies could do.
They were able to move quickly
over mountains,
which would be impossible
for regular armies of the time.
So Mac colla suggests
a daring strategy.
He tells Graham that his highlanders
can show them the way
through the mountain passes
just to the east of the great Glen.
So they conduct this insane march
over the mountains.
They travel in 36 hours 50km through
difficult terrain in the winter...
And come out just near inverlochy.
It is possibly the greatest military
manoeuvre in Scottish history.
24 hours earlier,
at inverlochy castle,
Archie Campbell was told
by his scouts
that Graham and Mac colla had
vanished somewhere near Loch Ness.
Now his enemy has suddenly appeared
as if from nowhere
right on his doorstep.
Before Campbell troops
can be properly positioned,
the royalist clansmen are already
priming muskets and lining up,
preparing to launch their now
infamous highland charge.
Fire!
Gunfire
charge!
Clansmen bellow
the battle of inverlochy has begun
but maybe somebody should have told
clan Campbell.
Once again,
they've been caught napping.
In their proud 400-year history,
this will be their biggest
and bloodiest defeat.
And the scene of slaughter is
immortalised in a Gaelic poem.
For the second time,
Archie Campbell flees.
This time, it'll be all the way
to Edinburgh.
The crushing of the Campbells
at the battle of inverlochy
is a sweet victory for Mac colla
and his macdonalds.
But for Jamie Graham,
it's come at a dreadful cost.
His teenage son John
has fallen fatally ill.
The 200-mile trek from aberdeen
to argyll,
the frantic escape
out of Campbell country,
the forced march through
the mountains from Loch Ness
to inverlochy, it's all taken
a terrible physical toll on the boy.
John won't see tomorrow.
When Jamie's wife, magdalene,
learns of her son John's death,
she will become increasingly
estranged from her absent husband.
Soon, she will apply to the Scots
parliament for sole custody
of the couple's remaining children
and they'll Grant it.
With the death of his son,
a fatalism consumes Jamie Graham.
If his sacrifices
are to have any meaning,
he must win for his king
at all costs.
Soon, all Europe will talk
of Jamie Graham
and his army of invincible celts...
As they continue to sweep aside
all and any that dare face them.
After inverlochy, Graham and
Mac colla decide to strike north
and they go to nairnshire
and aberdeenshire,
where they win two more battles
in quick succession.
We've got the battle of auldern
and the battle of alford.
So they head south, and the last
force ready to oppose them
starts to gather at kilsyth
near falkirk.
Mac colla seizes the opportunity,
orders a highland charge,
and this is followed up in force
by Graham's whole army
and it leads to a complete rout,
and, again, thousands are killed
at kilsyth.
This, of all the battles
in the year of victories,
is perhaps the greatest victory
of all.
It's certainly the most decisive.
After kilsyth, the royalist army
is in full command of the field.
There are no other government forces
available to oppose them in Scotland
and this leaves James Graham
in control of the kingdom
for the first time.
But now, a year into his campaign,
Jamie Graham's cause
begins to falter.
Once again, the conflicting agendas
of his bigger picture mission
to restore king Charles, and that
of his clan army, come to the fore.
The kingdom of Scotland
belongs to Jamie.
These last 12 months will be forever
remembered as the year of victories.
But there's a problem.
Now Jamie wants to march
into england and save the king,
but his great ally,
alasdair Mac colla, isn't so keen.
He's out to get what he came for -
his ancestral lands in kintyre.
Alasdair's timing couldn't be worse.
Things are going badly
for king Charles
and the royalist cause down south.
If Jamie could only unleash his
invincible clan army in england,
then he might turn the tide of war.
But it's not to be.
The army splits in half.
Alasdair takes off for kintyre...
Jamie, the Scots English border.
Even now, the king's champion
thinks himself unstoppable.
This will prove
his greatest mistake.
That, and underestimating
the determination
of Archibald Campbell.
Jamie has forgotten that Archie
still has an army
in his back pocket.
The battle-hardened Scots troops
that he sent across the border
to fight with the English parliament
against king Charles.
Well, Archie has called them
home to Scotland
with orders to get a move on.
Archie knows that there's still a
chance to turn things around here.
Although he's not really got
the strength in Scotland
to support him, as he does that,
he knows there is an army
in england that he can call back
to support him here
and that's exactly what he does,
he puts the call out,
and they march back up to Scotland
with frightening speed, really,
and Jamie just has no idea
that they're coming.
Graham seems to lose quite a lot
of his military acumen here.
He fails to scout this vast
approaching parliamentary army
so he's not fully prepared
when the actual battle ensues
and he's really lucky
to escape with his life.
The same cannot be said
for the vast majority of his army.
They are massacred, almost to a man.
Jamie has snatched defeat
from the jaws of victory,
but there's worse news to come.
King Charles Stuart has surrendered
to the parliamentarians
and commanded Jamie to stand down,
to give up the fight.
It's over.
Archie Campbell offers Jamie
an ultimatum.
Exile or death.
There is no choice.
The king's champion must flee
the country.
Across the north sea,
Sweden offers him sanctuary.
After all the humiliating defeats,
all the running away
to save his skin,
Archie Campbell is triumphant.
He has Charles Stuart's
capitulation,
Jamie Graham out of the way.
King Campbell is back.
But there's one thing left
on Archie's to-do list.
Just one wee thing.
He wants alasdair Mac colla's head
on a plate.
After he left Jamie Graham, alasdair
did indeed march into kintyre.
Finally, the MacDonald warrior
was back
in his clan's ancient heartland.
The moment was sweet.
The prophecy of alasdair Mac colla
had come true.
The great hero of clan Donald
restoring his people to greatness.
But for how long?
News arrives that his former ally
Jamie is defeated,
king Campbell is on the march
towards kintyre
with the Scots army at his back.
Now it's alasdair Mac colla's turn
to flee,
all the way back to Ireland.
On arrival in kintyre,
king Campbell's army
find that alasdair has vanished
like the demon he is.
Or, rather, was.
Rumours soon reach Archie Campbell
that alasdair Mac colla is no more.
He's been slain.
After leaving kintyre in may 1647,
alasdair flees eventually to Ireland
and he ends up at the very other
extremity of the Gaelic world,
in the south of Ireland, in munster,
where he's fighting for the Irish
against government troops.
How he actually died,
I don't think we'll ever know.
There's various interpretations.
Some suggest that it's
a highland charge gone wrong -
he gets too far ahead of his forces
and he's cut down in battle.
Others suggest that he surrendered
and then was subsequently
murdered by his captors.
Whatever way he died,
all of them seem to suggest
something of the legend
of alasdair Mac colla -
that how he died is exactly how
he would have killed someone else.
He wouldn't have hesitated
about killing somebody
who had surrendered,
he wouldn't have hesitated
about cutting somebody down.
He died as he lived, essentially.
And we don't even know really
where he was buried.
It's a mystery.
The details?
No-one knows the details.
But there's no question,
the man is dead.
The great warrior hope
of clan Donald's revival is gone
and the Stuart king that he
and Jamie had fought for,
he's met his end too,
executed by order
of the English parliament.
When Jamie Graham received
the news in exile
that king Charles I had been tried
and then beheaded
by the English parliament,
he returned to Scotland.
Vowing revenge, he set out
to raise the clans once again
and visit another year of miracles
on the disloyal.
But he was betrayed, captured,
taken to Edinburgh and put on trial.
Jamie is counting down the moments
to his dreadful fate.
He'll be hanged
and then he'll be cut apart,
his limbs sent to be displayed
in Scotland's towns,
his torso buried in a pit.
Payback for all the hell he
and Mac colla unleashed on Scotland
and the hell they unleashed
on clan Campbell.
Archie has the power to stop it,
but he says nothing.
Instead, king Campbell
is going to watch.
Jamie, chief of the grahams,
is going out in style, though.
He's going to get strung up
in his best suit of clothes
and make sure his hair looks good.
His captors query
why a man about to die
would take so much care
over his looks.
Today, mine head is mine own,
tomorrow, it will be yours.
Do what you please with it.
As Jamie Graham nears his end,
Archie Campbell's heavily pregnant
wife goes into labour.
Margaret moans
As he's led out to the gallows
on Edinburgh's high street,
security is tight.
Concerns that someone might attempt
to rescue Jamie reach his ears.
When a criminal comes to suffer...
He may not forget the crime.
Margaret moans
Jamie Graham doesn't flinch as
the noose is placed around his neck.
He's not permitted a final speech.
At a prearranged signal, the hangman
pushes him off the ladder.
As Jamie dies, Margaret gives birth
to a new Campbell heir.
Baby cries
one life ends in suffering.
Another begins with it.
Can we measure who suffers the most?
That symbolism,
that's not lost on Archie.
They look for such symbolism,
it's important to them,
and Archie will have really
taken that on board,
that Jamie's life has come to an end
as his succession is being
continued,
and, to him, that speaks of Campbell
dominance that will continue.
The tarred head of the king's
champion is stuck on a spike
above Edinburgh's main gate,
a warning to any and all
who would ever think to challenge.
King Campbell again.
It's been a colourful
and tragic tale.
Jamie Graham failed to save
the Stuart king.
Alasdair Mac colla
failed in his quest
to restore clan Donald to greatness.
But where they succeeded
was in giving Scotland's clans
a sense of their own power -
that they could sweep aside
their enemies and defy
the will of parliament,
and I'll bet you any money,
the clans will rise again.
The year of victories, which was
also a year of bloody atrocities
as well, we have to remember,
proves to the outside authorities
how significant
highland clan armies could be.
They were fast, they were Hardy,
they had this astonishing new
tactic, the highland charge,
which could cause devastation
in opposing armies.
It creates a myth
of the highland clans,
both outside the highlands
and also within the highlands.
It alerted the establishment
at large
to the threat posed
by the highlanders.
If they ever got organised again,
perhaps under a rebellion
and a cause that they
truly believed in,
they could potentially pose
real danger to the state.
40 years on from the death
of Jamie Graham,
the clans are still proving
to be a problem.
They still represent a military
threat to the will of parliament.
And one clan is made an example of.
Rumours began reaching Edinburgh
a few days ago
the macdonalds of glencoe have
been massacred by government troops.
Word is the soldiers accepted food
and shelter from the macdonalds
before killing them, men, women
and children, in cold blood.
An unforgivable act,
breaching the ancient code
of highland hospitality.
And who led this massacre?
A Campbell, that's who.
Robert Campbell of glenlyon,
commander of the red-coated troops
responsible for the killing spree
in glencoe,
now tours the taverns of Edinburgh,
drunkenly trying to tell
his side of the story.
He was just carrying out
government orders.
The soldiers were indeed
obeying orders,
but no government official will ever
be found guilty of issuing them.
Events in glencoe will, over time,
be conveniently blamed
on the old feud between
Campbells and macdonalds,
and if the massacre was supposed
to suppress the rebellious spirit
of the clans, then it failed.
A generation from now, the bitter
memory of the glencoe atrocity
will be exploited
to rally the clans again.
It will be an uprising
that will shake the foundations
of a newly united britain.
At its heart, a man whose name
will become legend.
From the Gaelic raibeart ruadh,
meaning red Rob,
comes the English Rob Roy.
He's just a boy now,
but in a few years, he'll be
known as Rob Roy macgregor,
the highland rogue,
so we'll be keeping an eye on him.
Next time,
the story of the most infamous
of highlanders.
A cattle thief,
a conman...
Damn macgregor's verminous hide.
A rebel...
Gunshot
a rogue...
I'm not quite sure
how I got into this...
But I'll get out of it somehow.
Who became a legend
in his own lifetime.
I am Rob Roy macgregor.
which some viewers may find upsetting.
For centuries,
the Scottish highlands
have been a law unto themselves.
Beyond the rule of any king.
A world where ruthless clans
scheme...
You would throw us to the wolves,
for what?
And slaughter.
They'll cut you into bits!
In a violent struggle
for dominance.
Issue powder and shot now!
But in this new era,
a king of Scots
is on england's throne.
Two kingdoms, one king.
And the clans, they've become
britain's mightiest fighting force.
Gunfire
we must make a stand
in the highlands.
In this world of gunpowder,
broadswords and treason,
the highland clans
have a new-found power -
to make or break the kingdom.
God in heaven.
Trust me, blood will be spilt.
1644.
All hell has been unleashed
in Scotland.
An army of wild clansmen
rampage through the highlands.
They make war in the name
of king Charles I,
raining down fire and sword
upon his enemies.
The king's greatest enemy in
Scotland is Archibald of argyll,
chief of clan Campbell.
He fights for parliament
in alliance with the English.
Archie's cause is the will
of the people,
or at least that's what
he tells himself.
There's a dark place
in Archie's soul
that just wants to be rid
of the king in Scotland.
This is a story of old world loyalty
versus new world politics.
An epic conflict that will kick off
a century of clan warfare and chaos
in Scotland and threaten the future
of the emerging British state.
The explosive events to come
were triggered six years earlier
in London.
Charles I is king.
He is the grandson
of Mary, queen of Scots...
The second Stuart monarch
to rule both Scotland and england.
Headstrong, and with no time
for subtle politics,
Charles is trying to align
his northern kingdom of Scots
with his southern one
to create a one rule fits all
nation of Great Britain,
but the Scots aren't having it.
His majesty was born in Scotland,
but he's spent precious little
time there.
The truth is, he doesn't really
understand the place.
His reforms have made him
wildly unpopular.
There's even talk of a rebellion.
What he needs is someone
from a powerful clan
to act as an enforcer
by royal appointment.
And Charles is assuming
that this guy
will be up for doing
the king's dirty work.
Archibald of argyll.
He runs the strongest clan
in Scotland - the Campbells.
Archie Campbell, or squint-eyed
Archibald, as he's known in Gaelic,
in many ways,
he's a typical Campbell.
There's a ruthlessness about him,
there's a pride about him
which is very much
what we expect from the clan.
Archie Campbell is probably the
most powerful person in Scotland
in around 1638, 1640.
Apart from the king, of course.
But will Archie actually agree
to enforce the king's reforms?
The Campbells have always backed
the Stuart kings and queens
and the Stuart kings and queens have
been most generous in return.
But this particular Campbell
is a thoroughly modern man.
He just doesn't buy this nonsense
about a king having the divine right
to do as he pleases,
so this wee chat
could be a bit awkward.
I am a humble servant
of your kingdom of Scots.
A kingdom you are absent from.
Your majesty knows it not,
nor our minds.
We do not uphold that a king
has divine rights.
It may well be your will, sire,
to raise taxes, gift lands,
dictate what is uttered in prayer...
But it is not the will
of your people.
I cannot in good conscience
aid your majesty
in executing these, your...
Despotic policies.
Tell it like it is, Archie,
why don't you?
It's one thing to turn down
the king of Scots and england,
quite another to call him
a tyrant.
He's got balls, you've got to
give that to Archie,
but for such talk,
people lose their heads.
Charles could have Archie arrested,
but believes he can punish him
in a more painful way.
He makes a royal decree and grants
a vast tract of Campbell territory,
the lands of kintyre,
to the clan's great rivals,
the macdonalds.
Taking land from the Campbells
and giving it to the macdonalds?
If you want to start a fight in
the highlands, that's how you do it.
The Campbell MacDonald feud goes
back to about the 14th century
and it came about
because the macdonalds had,
for a long period of time, been
the top dogs in highland politics.
At the height of MacDonald power,
they stretch across
much of the hebrides
and into mainland Scotland
and even across to Ireland as well.
By the 1600s, this dominance
is really on the out.
Their lands are greatly diminished
and we start to see,
rising from the ashes, this new
power, and that is clan Campbell.
The lands of kintyre were once
an ancient MacDonald heartland -
part of the clan's origin story.
The Campbells took it from them
in the ongoing power struggle
for highland dominance,
and this remote peninsula
lies right in the heart
of the Campbell territory
of argyll.
Archie is not the kind of guy
that gives up anything very easily
so he is absolutely incensed
by this development.
It's very bad news indeed
and it makes him really question
what is the crown doing.
By granting kintyre
back to the macdonalds,
Charles is trying to demonstrate
who is boss
and bring Archie to heel,
but he's failed to realise
that it's always been the Campbells
who have enforced his royal will
in Scotland,
especially in the highlands.
In these parts,
the Campbells are the law.
No other single clan is going to be
brave enough or daft enough
to come here and challenge them.
They're not going to surrender
kintyre
on the say-so of a distant king.
Charles? He can go whistle.
Six years have passed
since Archibald Campbell
first defied the king.
In that time,
the chief of the Campbells
has made his opposition
to Charles formal.
Gradually, he's taken complete
control of the Scottish parliament
and forcibly curbed the king's power
north of the border.
Any who've opposed him
have been imprisoned,
even tortured.
And not one MacDonald has dared
make a claim on kintyre.
Remember down in London,
Archie called Charles a despot,
a tyrant.
Well, nowadays, some people are
talking about pots and kettles.
Some people are labelling
Archie Campbell king Campbell
and it seems like there's only
one man with enough bottle
to take him on.
Step forward Jamie, chief of
clan Graham and Earl of montrose.
A daring general with
an impressive war record,
Jamie is a leader that men
will follow into battle.
He thinks himself a warrior poet.
Jamie has an old sword
over his fireplace
that one of his ancestors used to
fight alongside William Wallace.
His friends say Jamie himself is
like a character from a bygone age.
He's loyal, chivalrous.
He's a knight in shining armour.
James Graham, like other royalist
and indeed like other
moderate parliamentarians,
sees the king's authority
as divinely ordained
and that there needs to be a balance
between the power the king has
and the power that parliament
and the church have.
Jamie is really suspicious
of Archie.
He sees the power he has,
he sees the dominance he has
over parliament, and he thinks that
Archie is aiming for something more.
Whether that's dominance
of Scotland,
whether he wants to see himself
as king Campbell,
Jamie is concerned and he sees
the only way to counter
what Archie is doing is to
secretly cooperate with the king.
He did not totally approve
of that king,
he thought the king
made many mistakes,
but his belief was
that as a nobleman,
he had to defend the king,
so that's the issue.
And that is the issue that
he has to follow through.
But if Jamie is going to
take on Archie Campbell
in support of his sovereign king,
then he'll be risking everything,
including the safety of his family.
His relationship with his wife,
magdalene, is beginning to suffer
as he gets deeper into
the politics and plotting.
Magdalene knows that she
and the couple's children
would become targets
if her husband gets in too deep.
And right now, Jamie is torn
between loyalty to his king
and his loved ones.
But his hand is about to be forced.
Archie Campbell has put Scotland
on a war footing.
Charles I, politically naive
as ever, has made no secret of
his intentions to regain authority
over Scottish affairs.
We desire all men at arms be
mustered by forenoon of the morrow.
None to be levies or conscripts.
Only those who've stood
shot and horse.
Tighter, man.
And now Archie is sending
a massive Scottish army
over the border into england
to fight against Charles
in the name of
parliamentary freedom.
Archie is fired up against
the king, no question,
but is he fighting
for Scotland's parliament
or is he fighting for clan Campbell?
Archie has been angered by
the potential loss of kintyre,
he's angry about what Charles I
is doing
in terms of trying to bring about
uniformity across his kingdoms.
He sees the king as wanting to bring
Scotland into line with england.
Now, that offends him
in national terms
because he thinks Scotland should
retain its ancient laws
and liberties, but it also offends
him in his position of clan chief.
It questions his autonomy
as clan chief over his people
and he doesn't like that.
He very much believes in this ideal
of the almost semi-mythological
Scottish constitution
whereby parliament has the power
to constrain the king, but this
allegation is made against him
that he's going too far and that
he's seizing political power
for himself, and there's even
allegations that he plans
to make himself the dictator
of Scotland.
But Archie is not alone in sending
troops against the king.
Charles stands accused of tyranny
south of the border too
and the English parliament has
also declared war on the king
and his royalist supporters.
Jumping on the bandwagon,
Archie has turned the whole thing
into a crusade.
There's even been a document
published
legitimising this
anti-royalist enterprise.
As a massive PR exercise,
thousands of copies of this document
are being printed
with the undeniably pompous title
of the solemn league and covenant,
full of righteous declarations
about the kingdom of Christ
and the grace of god.
There was also a key passage
concerning preserving the rights
and privileges of parliament.
Now, as Archie Campbell leads
his Scots army into england
to make war on the king,
Jamie Graham enters the fray.
Jamie seeks permission from
king Charles to raise an army
to make war on
the Campbell-controlled Scottish
parliament.
He has one aim - to bring this
troublesome northern kingdom
back under royal command.
Charles offers no resistance,
but harbours little hope.
In fairness, he has no idea
of the detail of Jamie's plan.
The chief of the grahams
is about to raise an army
the like of which
Scotland has never seen.
Alone, the chief of the grahams
heads north into the highlands.
This is where he will find
an army for the king.
A clan army.
Part of clan DNA
is loyalty to the chief.
For many, the Stuart king,
with his own clan lineage,
is the ultimate chief.
It's all in a noble cause,
the cause of the Stuart king,
but Jamie Graham is about to do
a deal with the devil himself.
Meet alasdair Mac colla,
the demon warrior of clan Donald.
He's been in Ireland taking up arms
and bloodying his sword
for any cause that will have him.
He's returned to Scotland
with a war band
of Irish MacDonald mercenaries.
Decades ago, the Campbells took
his ancestral lands of kintyre,
the very lands the Stuart king
granted back to clan Donald.
Now alasdair is here
to make good on that claim.
This chap kept the Gaelic ports
in business.
They wrote that when he was born,
all the swords in his father's house
leapt out of their scabbards,
the mares gave birth,
and there's more.
Mac colla, they said, eats toads
and can twist the legs off cows.
That's quite the cv.
These stories are told to really
accentuate his warrior status.
They allow people to be fearful
of him.
They don't want to face such
a legendary figure in combat.
And they also give him this aura
of invincibility
that perhaps also emboldens
his own followers.
This is a man that they would
like to follow into battle.
And he brings a united
highland Irish force
into Scotland at this time
in an attempt to regain
his ancestral lands.
That's what he wants to do
and that has a huge anti-Campbell
agenda attached to it.
Alasdair had hoped that
other clans would flock
to his anti-Campbell cause.
A handful of macdonalds from the
wild west highlands have joined him,
so, before marching on kintyre,
he heads to the central highlands,
into clan Stewart
and clan robertson territory.
They're no friends of the Campbells
but the reception he receives
is not warm.
The truth is, most are scared
of alasdair Mac colla
and terrified of his
Irish MacDonald mercenaries.
Even to the wild highlanders,
the Irish branch of clan Donald
are mad, bad and dangerous to know,
to be feared and defended against.
There are clans out there
who might just be persuaded
to join Jamie's fight
against the Campbells,
but for now, they're running around
absolutely terrified
that Mac colla's Irish are going to
chop them up and roast their babies.
This could all end badly.
Alasdair and his McDonald
mercenaries soon find themselves
confronted by heavily armed
Stewart and robertson clansmen,
out to defend their lands against
those they take to be Irish raiders.
Just as it seems bloodshed
is inevitable,
a lone figure walks between
the two opposing groups.
He's dressed as an ordinary
highlander,
but the stewarts and robertsons
know him.
His name goes from man to man
and they let out a cheer.
Cheering
it is Jamie, chief of the grahams,
and he is quick to introduce himself
to alasdair Mac colla,
addressing him in Gaelic.
Basically, alasdair needs Graham.
Alasdair has got some very, very
powerful battle-hardened veterans
in his army from the Irish wars,
but he lacks legitimacy.
He lacks respectability.
He needs to show
the rest of Scotland
that he's just not leading
an Irish invasion into the country.
On the other hand, Graham needs men,
and he gets that aplenty
with alasdair's soldiers.
It was a very unlikely alliance
between Jamie and alasdair
and you've kind of got
two sections of a force
that have completely different
agendas.
Jamie really wants to
restore Scotland,
restore Charles's position,
alasdair wants to restore
his clan lands
and fight an anti-Campbell agenda,
so Jamie has to try and somehow
keep that force united
when there's very disparate agendas
at play, and that's not easy.
That'll be a yes, then.
Knowing he's got no time to lose,
Jamie wheels his little clan force
away from Campbell territory and
south towards the Scottish lowlands.
But already the Scots parliament
has got word
of this newly-raised royalist force
and the alarm has been sounded.
The royalist clans make for Perth,
the nearest town.
If they can take it,
they can get food and ammunition.
But blocking Jamie's path
on the plain of tippermuir
is an army hastily assembled
by the Scottish parliament.
The cream of the Scots army is south
of the border with Archie Campbell,
joining up with English roundheads
to take on king Charles.
This Scottish parliament force
is composed of conscripts,
cow herders and farm hands,
but they're heavily armed with
muskets, gunpowder and ammunition.
Jamie's mob, though, only have
enough powder for one shot each,
but the royalists now have
a secret weapon -
alasdair Mac colla
and his MacDonald mercenaries.
Alasdair and Jamie Graham's army
looks as if it's going to be
on the losing side.
They're outnumbered, it seems,
by government forces.
The auspices aren't good.
The royalist army is low
on ammunition
so they can't afford to have
a prolonged firefight.
So their flanks, which are
normally meant to be six deep,
they've only deployed three,
and that is simply to match
the frontage of the government army.
They then advance very quickly
towards the government line.
In fact, it's said that Mac colla
would tell his men
to wait until they could fire
into the beards of the enemy.
We're talking 25, 30 metres away.
They unload a single volley
and then they charge.
Fire!
Gunfire
so when the fire actually happens,
there's noise, there's smoke,
and you can't even really see
what's then coming at you
as highlanders and Irish charge in
with their broadswords.
The battle of tippermuir
is warriors against farm hands.
It's a rout.
We have a thousand parliamentary
soldiers dead by the end of the day
but Mac colla, the highlanders
and the Irish are chasing them
until 9pm at night,
so it's really the rout
that causes the mass casualties
that we see at tippermuir.
Never turn your back
on a broadsword.
Afterwards, they say you could
walk the four miles into Perth
standing on corpses.
Hell has indeed been unleashed.
But one victory,
no matter how total,
will not win Scotland for the king.
Archie Campbell has returned,
furious at the news
of Jamie's uprising.
Having left his Scots army
to fight in england,
Archie is here to crush this
royalist threat on his home turf
by whatever means he can.
Bear in mind, Archie Campbell
is a ruthless operator.
When he fights, he fights dirty,
attacking his enemy where
he'll be most vulnerable,
and that includes going after his
enemy's family, and Jamie knows it.
The clan Graham family home
is at auchterarder,
just ten miles from the scene
of Jamie's victory,
so immediately after the battle,
he races for home.
He tells his wife, magdalene,
that he's going to take
their 14-year-old son John with him
on his campaign to protect him,
to keep him safe from kidnap
or worse.
All that magdalene feared
about Jamie's playing the hero
is coming true.
It's one thing for her husband
to hurl himself into war,
but to drag their son into it too?
With Archie Campbell now raising
a fresh parliamentary army,
Jamie speed-marches his force
towards the ancient university
borough of aberdeen.
Take aberdeen,
and he can win the north-east.
Aberdeen, though, is garrisoned
by parliament troops
under orders to hold out
against the royalists,
so Jamie is going to try
a spot of negotiation.
A drummer boy is sent to the city's
defences to issue an ultimatum.
All women, children and elderly
are ordered to leave.
Any men can surrender
and come to the king's side.
Those who stay to fight
will be given no quarter.
A trigger-happy soldier
Manning the walls of aberdeen
takes offence at the threat.
Gunshot
Shooting dead the drummer boy,
it's cold-blooded,
heartless insanity,
but there's worse to come.
The troops defending aberdeen
haven't heard about tippermuir.
They think they're being attacked
by some half-cocked highland rabble.
They rush out and they're wiped out.
Now aberdeen is undefended.
What happens next will be
justified as revenge
for the cold-blooded killing
of a drummer boy.
But if that was a war crime,
then the behaviour
of Jamie and alasdair's army now
is pure bloody mass murder.
Mac colla allows his mad,
bad MacDonald mercenaries
a free hand to plunder aberdeen.
For three days,
they pillage, murder, rape.
Men are forced to strip
before being shot
so that their blood
doesn't soil their clothes,
which are then taken as Booty.
The dead are not permitted
to be buried.
They must rot where they lie.
Any woman who dares wail for
her dead husband or son is abused.
This is now total war.
The supposedly gallant
and chivalrous Jamie Graham
does nothing to stop it.
Or perhaps he can do nothing.
It should never have been
looted for three days.
There should never have been all
these casualties, right down to
washer women and a student at
the university who were killed.
Jamie was really out
to lunch on this one
and I think it got to him,
he really felt it.
It was very, very sad.
This is about much more
than avenging the death
of the drummer boy.
Could it be that Jamie
is thinking about his own son?
Could it be that he's feeding
the legendary bloodlust
of Mac colla and his men?
Whatever the motivation,
his reputation is forever tarnished.
He's the man who stood by while an
entire town was put to the sword.
News spreads of the aberdeen
atrocities.
Church ministers across Scotland
preach that Jamie Graham
is the antichrist,
in league with Satan.
Archibald comes after the royalist
army with a parliament force
but loses them
in the cairngorm mountains.
Better still for Jamie,
more highlanders are flocking
to his royalist banner.
After the victory at aberdeen,
Jamie and alasdair are joined
by the macdonalds of glencoe,
the MacDonald's of keppoch
and of glengarry.
So it's as if the victory there
has developed some kind of momentum
and so more clans join the cause.
The question is now,
what shall we do with the army?
Jamie Graham has got
very clear plans.
He wants to take the army south
and then he wants the army to
support the royalist cause,
possibly even in england,
in order to get king Charles
back in power,
but alasdair has other ideas.
We have to remember that Mac colla
and a lot of the highlanders
and the Irish within his following
are really here
to try and take the fight
to the clan Campbell,
so Mac colla actually suggests what
to Graham seems an audacious move,
which is to launch
a winter campaign -
a raid into argyll.
But as far as Jamie's concerned,
argyll is a deathtrap.
Jamie really has to think hard
about this
because nobody has ever tried
this before. It's preposterous.
They say, actually,
that the number of hurdles
they've got to go through
are like a comb.
You went one after the other.
And that each one was more
dangerous than the last.
And, of course, the final thing that
you have to deal with is Campbells.
I think this is where you
start to see the first cracks
in this partnership.
Even though he knows that it's a
straight route to an early grave,
at least for Jamie, he really
questions how far he can go
without Mac colla and his men.
Really, what choice does he have?
Jamie Graham isn't the only one who
thinks that the Campbell territory
of argyll is an impenetrable
mountain fortress.
When Archie Campbell failed to
catch up with Jamie and alasdair
in the north-east of Scotland,
he retreated west
to his castle in argyll,
to brood, plot his next move
and mutter the odd prayer
with his pious wife Margaret.
Archie knows Mac colla is mad
and that he'd give his right arm
to take back the old
MacDonald lands in kintyre,
but is he actually mad enough
to attack the mighty Campbells
on their home patch?
Archie doesn't think so.
No-one has ever dared attempt
an assault on argyll.
Besides, the last Archie heard,
the royalist army was 100 miles
away to the east.
Amen.
But then news comes.
News that Archie can hardly believe.
Turns out Mac colla and Jamie
do fancy their chances.
They've swept across the country,
they're swarming through argyll,
and they've caught mighty
clan Campbell
with their plaids
around their ankles.
Issue powder and shot now!
Margaret, you must take
to the cellars.
Keep the doors bolted throughout.
I'll take what men I have here
and hold the gates.
Archie, you must not.
You will fall.
And if you fall,
clan Campbell falls with you.
You must run now.
And so Archie Campbell
takes to his heels...
Leaving Mac colla, the avenger,
to sweep through argyll
and burn everything in his path.
To drive off cattle
and put any who resist to the sword.
To the Campbells, alasdair Mac colla
would be known evermore
as "the destroyer".
His name, one to terrify
children with.
It may be that alasdair had hoped
to press on through argyll
to clan Donald's old heartland
of kintyre and lay claim to it.
But for now, that's an
audacious step too far.
Archie Campbell is marshalling
3,000 of his clansmen against them.
Just as Jamie predicted,
there's a terrifying danger that his
army won't get out of argyll alive.
Mac colla and the macdonalds
have had a taste
of what they came for,
but now it's their turn to flee.
With captured boats,
they cross loch after loch,
move out of argyll
and into the great Glen.
But this great canyon cutting
Scotland in half is another trap
and the royalists have stirred
a hornet's nest.
Hot on their heels
and hellbent on revenge,
Archie positions his army
at inverlochy castle,
blocking the great Glen's
southern end.
Not only that, he's called out
his clan allies in the north,
the frasers and the mackenzies.
Their orders? March on the royalists
with all haste,
drive them down the great Glen
towards me.
Archie has got every reason
to think this is checkmate.
He's got his enemy trapped,
hasn't he?
Jamie and Mac colla's forces
have made it to the middle
of the great Glen, so they're on
the southern tip of Loch Ness,
and they find out that
Archie Campbell is on the move
and he's out for revenge.
So he's got a force
of about 3,000 men
at the southern end
of the great Glen,
but then, obviously, marching down
from the north is his allies,
so the frasers and the mackenzies,
and Jamie and Mac colla
are right there in the middle
with nowhere to go.
It looks as if
they're going to be ground
between these two armies,
pulverised into dust.
That's where the masterstroke
comes in.
Jamie Graham had seen
what highland armies could do.
They were able to move quickly
over mountains,
which would be impossible
for regular armies of the time.
So Mac colla suggests
a daring strategy.
He tells Graham that his highlanders
can show them the way
through the mountain passes
just to the east of the great Glen.
So they conduct this insane march
over the mountains.
They travel in 36 hours 50km through
difficult terrain in the winter...
And come out just near inverlochy.
It is possibly the greatest military
manoeuvre in Scottish history.
24 hours earlier,
at inverlochy castle,
Archie Campbell was told
by his scouts
that Graham and Mac colla had
vanished somewhere near Loch Ness.
Now his enemy has suddenly appeared
as if from nowhere
right on his doorstep.
Before Campbell troops
can be properly positioned,
the royalist clansmen are already
priming muskets and lining up,
preparing to launch their now
infamous highland charge.
Fire!
Gunfire
charge!
Clansmen bellow
the battle of inverlochy has begun
but maybe somebody should have told
clan Campbell.
Once again,
they've been caught napping.
In their proud 400-year history,
this will be their biggest
and bloodiest defeat.
And the scene of slaughter is
immortalised in a Gaelic poem.
For the second time,
Archie Campbell flees.
This time, it'll be all the way
to Edinburgh.
The crushing of the Campbells
at the battle of inverlochy
is a sweet victory for Mac colla
and his macdonalds.
But for Jamie Graham,
it's come at a dreadful cost.
His teenage son John
has fallen fatally ill.
The 200-mile trek from aberdeen
to argyll,
the frantic escape
out of Campbell country,
the forced march through
the mountains from Loch Ness
to inverlochy, it's all taken
a terrible physical toll on the boy.
John won't see tomorrow.
When Jamie's wife, magdalene,
learns of her son John's death,
she will become increasingly
estranged from her absent husband.
Soon, she will apply to the Scots
parliament for sole custody
of the couple's remaining children
and they'll Grant it.
With the death of his son,
a fatalism consumes Jamie Graham.
If his sacrifices
are to have any meaning,
he must win for his king
at all costs.
Soon, all Europe will talk
of Jamie Graham
and his army of invincible celts...
As they continue to sweep aside
all and any that dare face them.
After inverlochy, Graham and
Mac colla decide to strike north
and they go to nairnshire
and aberdeenshire,
where they win two more battles
in quick succession.
We've got the battle of auldern
and the battle of alford.
So they head south, and the last
force ready to oppose them
starts to gather at kilsyth
near falkirk.
Mac colla seizes the opportunity,
orders a highland charge,
and this is followed up in force
by Graham's whole army
and it leads to a complete rout,
and, again, thousands are killed
at kilsyth.
This, of all the battles
in the year of victories,
is perhaps the greatest victory
of all.
It's certainly the most decisive.
After kilsyth, the royalist army
is in full command of the field.
There are no other government forces
available to oppose them in Scotland
and this leaves James Graham
in control of the kingdom
for the first time.
But now, a year into his campaign,
Jamie Graham's cause
begins to falter.
Once again, the conflicting agendas
of his bigger picture mission
to restore king Charles, and that
of his clan army, come to the fore.
The kingdom of Scotland
belongs to Jamie.
These last 12 months will be forever
remembered as the year of victories.
But there's a problem.
Now Jamie wants to march
into england and save the king,
but his great ally,
alasdair Mac colla, isn't so keen.
He's out to get what he came for -
his ancestral lands in kintyre.
Alasdair's timing couldn't be worse.
Things are going badly
for king Charles
and the royalist cause down south.
If Jamie could only unleash his
invincible clan army in england,
then he might turn the tide of war.
But it's not to be.
The army splits in half.
Alasdair takes off for kintyre...
Jamie, the Scots English border.
Even now, the king's champion
thinks himself unstoppable.
This will prove
his greatest mistake.
That, and underestimating
the determination
of Archibald Campbell.
Jamie has forgotten that Archie
still has an army
in his back pocket.
The battle-hardened Scots troops
that he sent across the border
to fight with the English parliament
against king Charles.
Well, Archie has called them
home to Scotland
with orders to get a move on.
Archie knows that there's still a
chance to turn things around here.
Although he's not really got
the strength in Scotland
to support him, as he does that,
he knows there is an army
in england that he can call back
to support him here
and that's exactly what he does,
he puts the call out,
and they march back up to Scotland
with frightening speed, really,
and Jamie just has no idea
that they're coming.
Graham seems to lose quite a lot
of his military acumen here.
He fails to scout this vast
approaching parliamentary army
so he's not fully prepared
when the actual battle ensues
and he's really lucky
to escape with his life.
The same cannot be said
for the vast majority of his army.
They are massacred, almost to a man.
Jamie has snatched defeat
from the jaws of victory,
but there's worse news to come.
King Charles Stuart has surrendered
to the parliamentarians
and commanded Jamie to stand down,
to give up the fight.
It's over.
Archie Campbell offers Jamie
an ultimatum.
Exile or death.
There is no choice.
The king's champion must flee
the country.
Across the north sea,
Sweden offers him sanctuary.
After all the humiliating defeats,
all the running away
to save his skin,
Archie Campbell is triumphant.
He has Charles Stuart's
capitulation,
Jamie Graham out of the way.
King Campbell is back.
But there's one thing left
on Archie's to-do list.
Just one wee thing.
He wants alasdair Mac colla's head
on a plate.
After he left Jamie Graham, alasdair
did indeed march into kintyre.
Finally, the MacDonald warrior
was back
in his clan's ancient heartland.
The moment was sweet.
The prophecy of alasdair Mac colla
had come true.
The great hero of clan Donald
restoring his people to greatness.
But for how long?
News arrives that his former ally
Jamie is defeated,
king Campbell is on the march
towards kintyre
with the Scots army at his back.
Now it's alasdair Mac colla's turn
to flee,
all the way back to Ireland.
On arrival in kintyre,
king Campbell's army
find that alasdair has vanished
like the demon he is.
Or, rather, was.
Rumours soon reach Archie Campbell
that alasdair Mac colla is no more.
He's been slain.
After leaving kintyre in may 1647,
alasdair flees eventually to Ireland
and he ends up at the very other
extremity of the Gaelic world,
in the south of Ireland, in munster,
where he's fighting for the Irish
against government troops.
How he actually died,
I don't think we'll ever know.
There's various interpretations.
Some suggest that it's
a highland charge gone wrong -
he gets too far ahead of his forces
and he's cut down in battle.
Others suggest that he surrendered
and then was subsequently
murdered by his captors.
Whatever way he died,
all of them seem to suggest
something of the legend
of alasdair Mac colla -
that how he died is exactly how
he would have killed someone else.
He wouldn't have hesitated
about killing somebody
who had surrendered,
he wouldn't have hesitated
about cutting somebody down.
He died as he lived, essentially.
And we don't even know really
where he was buried.
It's a mystery.
The details?
No-one knows the details.
But there's no question,
the man is dead.
The great warrior hope
of clan Donald's revival is gone
and the Stuart king that he
and Jamie had fought for,
he's met his end too,
executed by order
of the English parliament.
When Jamie Graham received
the news in exile
that king Charles I had been tried
and then beheaded
by the English parliament,
he returned to Scotland.
Vowing revenge, he set out
to raise the clans once again
and visit another year of miracles
on the disloyal.
But he was betrayed, captured,
taken to Edinburgh and put on trial.
Jamie is counting down the moments
to his dreadful fate.
He'll be hanged
and then he'll be cut apart,
his limbs sent to be displayed
in Scotland's towns,
his torso buried in a pit.
Payback for all the hell he
and Mac colla unleashed on Scotland
and the hell they unleashed
on clan Campbell.
Archie has the power to stop it,
but he says nothing.
Instead, king Campbell
is going to watch.
Jamie, chief of the grahams,
is going out in style, though.
He's going to get strung up
in his best suit of clothes
and make sure his hair looks good.
His captors query
why a man about to die
would take so much care
over his looks.
Today, mine head is mine own,
tomorrow, it will be yours.
Do what you please with it.
As Jamie Graham nears his end,
Archie Campbell's heavily pregnant
wife goes into labour.
Margaret moans
As he's led out to the gallows
on Edinburgh's high street,
security is tight.
Concerns that someone might attempt
to rescue Jamie reach his ears.
When a criminal comes to suffer...
He may not forget the crime.
Margaret moans
Jamie Graham doesn't flinch as
the noose is placed around his neck.
He's not permitted a final speech.
At a prearranged signal, the hangman
pushes him off the ladder.
As Jamie dies, Margaret gives birth
to a new Campbell heir.
Baby cries
one life ends in suffering.
Another begins with it.
Can we measure who suffers the most?
That symbolism,
that's not lost on Archie.
They look for such symbolism,
it's important to them,
and Archie will have really
taken that on board,
that Jamie's life has come to an end
as his succession is being
continued,
and, to him, that speaks of Campbell
dominance that will continue.
The tarred head of the king's
champion is stuck on a spike
above Edinburgh's main gate,
a warning to any and all
who would ever think to challenge.
King Campbell again.
It's been a colourful
and tragic tale.
Jamie Graham failed to save
the Stuart king.
Alasdair Mac colla
failed in his quest
to restore clan Donald to greatness.
But where they succeeded
was in giving Scotland's clans
a sense of their own power -
that they could sweep aside
their enemies and defy
the will of parliament,
and I'll bet you any money,
the clans will rise again.
The year of victories, which was
also a year of bloody atrocities
as well, we have to remember,
proves to the outside authorities
how significant
highland clan armies could be.
They were fast, they were Hardy,
they had this astonishing new
tactic, the highland charge,
which could cause devastation
in opposing armies.
It creates a myth
of the highland clans,
both outside the highlands
and also within the highlands.
It alerted the establishment
at large
to the threat posed
by the highlanders.
If they ever got organised again,
perhaps under a rebellion
and a cause that they
truly believed in,
they could potentially pose
real danger to the state.
40 years on from the death
of Jamie Graham,
the clans are still proving
to be a problem.
They still represent a military
threat to the will of parliament.
And one clan is made an example of.
Rumours began reaching Edinburgh
a few days ago
the macdonalds of glencoe have
been massacred by government troops.
Word is the soldiers accepted food
and shelter from the macdonalds
before killing them, men, women
and children, in cold blood.
An unforgivable act,
breaching the ancient code
of highland hospitality.
And who led this massacre?
A Campbell, that's who.
Robert Campbell of glenlyon,
commander of the red-coated troops
responsible for the killing spree
in glencoe,
now tours the taverns of Edinburgh,
drunkenly trying to tell
his side of the story.
He was just carrying out
government orders.
The soldiers were indeed
obeying orders,
but no government official will ever
be found guilty of issuing them.
Events in glencoe will, over time,
be conveniently blamed
on the old feud between
Campbells and macdonalds,
and if the massacre was supposed
to suppress the rebellious spirit
of the clans, then it failed.
A generation from now, the bitter
memory of the glencoe atrocity
will be exploited
to rally the clans again.
It will be an uprising
that will shake the foundations
of a newly united britain.
At its heart, a man whose name
will become legend.
From the Gaelic raibeart ruadh,
meaning red Rob,
comes the English Rob Roy.
He's just a boy now,
but in a few years, he'll be
known as Rob Roy macgregor,
the highland rogue,
so we'll be keeping an eye on him.
Next time,
the story of the most infamous
of highlanders.
A cattle thief,
a conman...
Damn macgregor's verminous hide.
A rebel...
Gunshot
a rogue...
I'm not quite sure
how I got into this...
But I'll get out of it somehow.
Who became a legend
in his own lifetime.
I am Rob Roy macgregor.