Battle of Auldearn
It resulted in a victory for the royalists, led by the Marquess of Montrose and Alasdair MacColla, over Sir John Urry and an army raised by the Covenanter-dominated Scottish government.[2] In mid-1644, after the Scottish Committee of Estates decided to intervene in the First English Civil War on the Parliamentarian side, Montrose had been given a commission by King Charles I to command his forces in Scotland.Montrose marched north to Skene, where he was rejoined on 30 April by Alasdair MacColla, who had been recruiting fresh forces in the western Highlands, and several contingents of Gordons.They were deployed in some enclosures in front of Auldearn, and the Royal Standard was prominently displayed among them to convince Urry that the entire Royalist force was in this position.Urry's four regular regiments of infantry advanced against the obvious position defended by Alasdair MacColla, while a small body of 50 cavalry attempted to outflank what they believed to be the Royalist left.Offered no quarter by the Gordon cavalry, Ruairidh Mac Gille Fhinnein, chief of his name, and his clansmen, together with some MacRaes and Mathesons, were all cut down.The battle and the Royalist campaign of 1644–1645 in general feature in the 1937 novel And No Quarter by Irish writer Maurice Walsh, told from the perspective of two members of O'Cahan's Regiment.