Charles I had been dead barely two weeks when the riders came down from the hills. On 22 February 1649, Colonel Hugh Fraser led a column of Munros, Mackenzies and Urquharts through the gates of Inverness, expelled the garrison of its castle, and then did something that medieval armies almost never did to a captured stronghold - they pulled down the walls themselves. There would be nothing left to defend, and nothing left for the Covenanting government in Edinburgh to use against them. The execution of the king at Whitehall had cracked the Highlands wide open, and the clans loyal to his exiled son were going to write their own terms while the cracks were still warm.
The proclamation reached northern Scotland in early February: Charles II was king, even if his father's head had just rolled in London. For the Highland Royalists - John Munro of Lemlair, Thomas Mackenzie of Pluscarden, Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromarty - this was not merely news. It was permission. The Marquess of Montrose, that brilliant and reckless campaigner, was abroad plotting a return. The clans decided not to wait for him. Within weeks of the regicide, a rising had taken shape in Ross-shire and Inverness-shire, ostensibly to restore the Stuart line but practically to wrest control of the north from a Covenanting Parliament that they regarded as a band of religious fanatics. The clansmen who rode into Inverness on 22 February were lighting a fuse that nobody, least of all they, knew how to put out.
What they did next was startling. They expelled the castle garrison - that part was routine. Then they demolished the fortifications. A captured town in the seventeenth century was an asset; you garrisoned it, you taxed it, you held it against the inevitable counter-blow. Instead, the Highland Royalists levelled the defences and walked away from the question of holding the place. Four days later, on 26 February, they convened a council of war and made an even more audacious move: they declared that they were taking the customs and excise of the six northern counties of Scotland into their own hands. It was, in effect, a tax revolt as much as a military one. The men who tore down the walls of Inverness were not really besieging a town. They were seceding from a regime.
Edinburgh's response came in the person of General David Leslie, Lord Newark - a hard, professional soldier who had fought Montrose at Philiphaugh and crushed him there. Leslie marched into the Highlands with cold purpose. The clans melted back from Inverness into Ross-shire, choosing not to face him in the open field. He garrisoned Chanonry Castle on the Black Isle and began the patient business of negotiating surrenders, clan by clan. Most submitted. Lord Reay handed over his men. The Munros and Urquharts came to terms. Only the Mackenzies refused, and the moment Leslie turned south for the lowlands, they fell on Chanonry Castle and took it back. The rising sputtered on into the following summer, when Mackenzie of Pluscarden's forces would be smashed at the Battle of Balvenie - but that was another story.
After the swords were sheathed came the dossiers. The Presbytery, sitting as a court for breaches of the National Covenant, called in the gentlemen who had ridden with the rising. Alexander and John Bane of Knockbain. Alexander Bane of Tulloch. Captain Bane of Brahan. Alexander Bane of Tarradale. They confessed that they had followed Lord Reay and Thomas Mackenzie of Pluscarden when Inverness was taken and its walls demolished. The court accepted their plea: they had been coerced or misled, swept up by chiefs they had no power to refuse. The men were dismissed on swearing not to take up arms again against Parliament. It was a familiar Scottish reckoning - mercy extended downward, judgement reserved for the great. The walls of Inverness, meanwhile, stayed down.
The site of the old fortifications lies on the rise above the River Ness at 57.476°N, 4.225°W, in the heart of modern Inverness. Inverness Airport (EGPE) sits about 8 miles east-northeast at Dalcross; approach over the Moray Firth offers a clear view of the Ness winding down from Loch Ness to the firth, with the Black Isle rising to the north. Recommended viewing altitude 3,000-5,000 ft AGL. The terrain is gentle along the firth but rises sharply south into the Monadhliath. In poor weather expect low cloud spilling off the hills and reduced visibility along the canal corridor.