The Battle of Auldearn belonged to the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, the tangled web of civil conflicts that engulfed Scotland, England, and Ireland in the 1640s. Montrose held a commission from King Charles I to command Royalist forces in Scotland. His army was an improbable coalition: Highland clansmen, professional Irish troops sent by Confederate Ireland, and Gordon cavalry from the northeast. Most of the Covenanter army -- the forces of Scotland's Presbyterian government -- had marched south to fight in England, leaving Montrose to challenge what remained. After a devastating victory over Clan Campbell at the Battle of Inverlochy in February 1645, he fell back to the northeast hoping to recruit more forces, particularly the Gordon cavalry he desperately needed.

Urry advanced on Auldearn with four regiments of foot, Mackenzie clansmen under the Earl of Seaforth, the levies of the Earl of Sutherland, 800 local levies, and 400 cavalry -- a force substantially larger than Montrose's. Alerted by the accidental musket fire, Montrose deployed Alasdair MacColla with about 500 men in enclosures before the village, prominently displaying the Royal Standard to convince Urry that the entire Royalist force was in this position. Meanwhile, Montrose concealed his main body -- 800 musketeers and clansmen plus 200 Gordon horsemen -- in a hollow on MacColla's left flank. It was an enormous gamble. If Urry's forces overwhelmed MacColla before Montrose could strike, the deception would become a death trap.

Urry's infantry pushed forward against MacColla, who characteristically could not resist counter-charging. He was driven back, and the situation grew desperate. Montrose needed his Gordon cavalry to attack, but the horsemen, hidden in their hollow, could hear the battle without seeing it. So Montrose rode to Lord Aboyne and his brother Lord Lewis Gordon with a lie calculated to strike at the deepest nerve of Highland honour: the Macdonalds were driving all before them and would claim all the glory. The Gordons, unable to tolerate the thought of their rivals outshining them, charged from the hollow with furious energy. They scattered a small Covenanter cavalry force trapped in a bog, and Montrose's infantry followed, smashing into the right flank of Urry's four infantry regiments. Attacked from multiple sides, the Covenanter line broke.

As the Covenanter army disintegrated, one group refused to flee. Clan MacLennan, the hereditary standard bearers of the Mackenzies, stood their ground around the Cabar Feidh, the Mackenzie standard. Offered no quarter by the Gordon cavalry, Ruairidh Mac Gille Fhinnein, chief of the MacLennans, and his clansmen -- along with some MacRaes and Mathesons -- were cut down to a man. Their refusal to surrender the banner became one of the most storied acts of loyalty in Highland history. The rest of the pursuit was merciless, continuing for fourteen miles. A pub in Auldearn, now called the "1645," stands on part of the old battlefield. The pibroch Blar Allt Earrann still commemorates the day when a handful of accidental musket shots changed the course of a battle.