Original subtitles

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.