Alasdair Mac Colla
Alasdair Mac Colla Chiotaich MacDhòmhnaill, also known by the English variant of his name Sir Alexander MacDonald, was a military officer best known for his participation in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, notably the Irish Confederate Wars and Montrose's Royalist campaign in Scotland during 1644–45. A member of the Gaelic gentry of the Clan MacDonald of Dunnyveg, a branch of the Clan Donald active in the Hebrides and Ireland, Mac Colla is particularly notable for the very large number of oral traditions and legends which his life inspired in the Highlands.
During Montrose's campaign of 1644–45, in which the Royalist army won a series of remarkable victories, Mac Colla was given a knighthood. He died in 1647 in Ireland at the Battle of Knocknanuss.
Name
His full name can be translated from Scottish Gaelic as 'Alexander the son of Coll the Left-Handed MacDonald'. Gaelic-speakers, preferring the patronymic system, generally referred to him as Alasdair MacColla; English-speakers generally used the form Alexander MacDonald or MacColl. Mac Colla himself would have used both English and Gaelic forms: the three surviving examples of his signature, all in English language documents, use "Allexander Macdonell".English-speaking writers of the past, not understanding the Gaelic patronymic and sloinneadh systems, often referred to him as "Collkitto", an anglicised spelling of Coll Ciotach, a nickname properly belonging to his father, Coll Macdonald. Ciotach, "left-handed", can also mean "devious" in Gaelic.
Biography
Early life
Mac Colla was born on the Inner Hebridean Isle of Colonsay in the early seventeenth century. His early life encompassed both Gaelic Ireland and the Gaelic western Highlands of Scotland.His father Coll, the Laird of Colonsay, was a descendant of the 5th chief of Clan Donald South, or MacDonald of Dunnyveg. This branch of the Clan Donald had historically claimed ownership of land both in the western Scottish islands and, following the 1399 marriage of Irish heiress Margery Byset into the family, in County Antrim, north-eastern Ireland. According to some traditions Alasdair's mother Mary was a daughter of Campbell of Auchinbreck, but has also been suggested to be one of the O'Cahans of Dunseverick, a daughter of Macdonald of Sanda, a daughter of Macneil of Barra, or a daughter of Ranald MacDonald of Smerby, the latter being the tradition favoured on Colonsay itself.
Mac Colla was born into a period in which the Clan Donald's regional power and influence had waned. This was due partly to the incorporation of the Lordship of the Isles by the Scottish crown and the growing regional influence of the chiefs of the rival Clan Campbell.
Mac Colla's career would, despite the larger context of the Scottish and Irish wars, become defined by an effort to counter Campbell expansionism, and particularly to recover Islay and other lost MacDonald possessions.
At a time when much of Scotland was Calvinist and Presbyterian, many of the MacDonalds remained Roman Catholic, particularly due to the efforts of missionaries from the Order of Friars Minor. Mac Colla's father is sometimes described as an enthusiastic Catholic convert from Protestantism, though he appears to have embraced the faith long before the first missionaries arrived in 1623.
Civil War in Ireland and Scotland
Mac Colla's military career was prompted by the onset of the long and interlinked series of conflicts known as the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, in which several heads of the Scottish and Irish branches of Clan Donald gave support to the Royalists and to Confederate Ireland. Their main rival for regional power, the Campbell chief Archibald Campbell, 1st Marquess of Argyll, was a key supporter of the Scottish government, then controlled by the Presbyterian party known as the Covenanters.At the outbreak of the Irish Rebellion of 1641, Mac Colla was in Ulster, where his kinsman the 1st Marquess of Antrim held large estates in the Glens. Antrim had taken an interest in the growing crisis in Scottish politics, sensing a potential opportunity to recover his family's traditional lands in Scotland. He initially took a neutral position in the Irish rebellion; he raised a mixed Protestant and Catholic force to protect settlers against the rebels, engaging his relative Mac Colla to serve as an officer.
As religious tensions grew, a group of Antrim's Catholic officers, including Mac Colla claimed there was a Protestant plot to massacre them. In January 1642 they defected to Felim O'Neill's rebel forces after killing 60-90 Protestant colleagues while they slept in what became known as the "Portna Massacre". Present at several actions in eastern Ulster including the Siege of Coleraine, Mac Colla was wounded at Glenmaquin in June 1642: later that year he left the rebels and sought terms with the Scottish general Alexander Leslie, 1st Earl of Leven.
Although he subsequently rejoined the Irish Confederates, Mac Colla appears not to have been given another military command until late 1643, when he returned to the Hebrides as part of an expeditionary force against the Scottish government, by this point in alliance with the English Parliament. It was reported that Mac Colla had landed with 300 men, and that his brother Ranald was following with reinforcements. Argyll eventually dispatched a force of 600 under James Campbell of Ardkinglas to dislodge them, and Mac Colla's rebels were driven back to Ireland; a small garrison remaining on Rathlin Island was defeated in June 1644.
The campaign in Scotland, 1644–45
In 1644, Antrim recommended Mac Colla to the Supreme Council of Confederate Ireland to lead an expedition to the mainland of Scotland to aid the Royalist forces there. He was given three regiments, comprising around 1600 largely Irish soldiers. Some appear to have been Ulstermen recruited from the Marquess of Antrim's estates, though many of the Irish were "expert soldiers" who were recruited from Spanish service in West Flanders, and one company appears to have been a unit of English-descended Palesmen. Alongside the Irish, three companies of Hebridean Scots were constituted as Mac Colla's personal lifeguard. Spalding noted that Mac Colla's men wore a coat and trews and wore a twist of oats pinned to their bonnets and caps as a badge.File:1st Marquess of Montrose.jpg|200px|thumb|left|The Marquess of Montrose, alongside whom Mac Colla fought in 1644–45 against the forces of the Parliament of Scotland.
Mac Colla's force landed in the Ardnamurchan peninsula in July 1644, attacking Mingarry Castle. It initially fought its way through Argyll, raiding Campbell properties: by August, Mac Colla was finally able to link up with the King's Lieutenant, James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose. The support of Montrose raised the standing of Mac Colla amongst the Highlanders, who looked down on him both as an island outsider and as a landless member of the gentry, rather than the ancient nobility they were accustomed to follow. Mac Colla had been able to raise a further 1500 soldiers from among his Clan Donald kinsmen, such as Clan MacDonald of Keppoch, Glengarry and Sleat: the Royal commission enabled him to raise additional recruits including a group of men under Donald Robertson, the Tutor of Struan.
In the following campaign, Mac Colla and Montrose won a series of dramatic victories, often against larger, but frequently inexperienced Covenanter reserves in Scotland. Most of the experienced Covenanter troops, many of them having fought as professional soldiers for the 'Lion of the North', Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden in the Thirty Years' War or in the Dutch Republic's famous Scots Brigade, were with the main Covenanter force fighting alongside English Parliamentarians and contributing to many Royalist defeats in England. By contrast, the Covenanter troops left behind in Scotland were mainly militia. Nevertheless, MacColla, Montrose and co.'s list of victories remains impressive. They won at Tippermuir, Aberdeen, Inverlochy, Auldearn, Alford and Kilsyth. While traditional historiography tended to emphasise Montrose's tactical genius, some more recent studies, notably the work of Prof. D. Stevenson, give Mac Colla a substantial share of credit for some of the victories.
Oral history and Gaelic-language poetry also gave Mac Colla a central role in events, and preserved stories such as his supposed beheading of the opposing commander
Sir Duncan Campbell of Auchinbreck at Inverlochy. After Kilsyth, Montrose, acting on the orders of King Charles, conferred knighthood on Mac Colla and raised him to the rank of Major-General.
For much of the campaign Mac Colla's men supported themselves by pillaging Campbell lands, burning of houses and barns and carrying off livestock. Their actions during the winter of 1644–45 earned Mac Colla the byname fear thollaidh nan tighean, the "destroyer of houses" amongst the Argyll peasantry. An account of the campaign sent to Dublin, possibly written by Mac Colla himself or by one of his colonels James Macdonnell, stated that "throughout all Argyle, we left neither house nor hold unburned, nor corn nor cattle that belonged to the whole name of Campbell".
For a time much of Scotland was in fear of his progress, with one contemporary observer writing: "There is nothing heard now up and down the kingdom but alarms and rumores, randevouses of clans Montross and MacKoll in every manes mouth, nay the very children frightened". Whilst the military contribution of the Irish troops and Highlanders to the Royalist campaign was undeniable, it is arguable that the aftermath of several of their actions, particularly the three-day plunder of Aberdeen by the victorious troops, seriously harmed the Royalist cause, and it is likely that at least some accounts of Mac Colla's depredations were Parliamentarian propaganda.