The Battle of Harlaw, 1411: “Red Harlaw”

Background

Donald, Lord of the Isles, claimed the Earldom of Ross in right of his wife; the Regent Albany opposed him. Donald raised a great Highland and Island host, seized Inverness, and marched east on the rich burgh of Aberdeen. To stop him, Alexander Stewart, Earl of Mar, gathered the knights and levies of the north-east.

The battle

Mar’s smaller force was built around armoured knights; Donald’s was far larger but more lightly armed. The fight was a prolonged, grinding, day-long mêlée — repeated charges by Mar’s heavy horse against a resilient Highland line, so bloody it was remembered as “Red Harlaw.” By nightfall neither side had broken the other; Donald withdrew west in the dark, leaving the wounded Mar holding the field.

Outcome & significance

Tactically a draw, strategically decisive: it stopped the Lordship of the Isles from taking Aberdeen and checked Donald’s bid for Ross. It loomed large in later memory as the moment the burgh-and-crown Lowlands “held the line” against the Gaelic west.

The battlefield today

The battlemented Harlaw Monument (1911, for the 500th anniversary) stands near the field north-west of Inverurie, with the ruin of Kinkell Church and its Greenlaw grave-slab nearby. It is on the Inventory of Historic Battlefields.

The clans & people involved

• Clan Donald — Donald, Lord of the Isles, with MacLeod, Cameron and other western clans.
• Clan Stewart — Alexander Stewart, Earl of Mar, commanding the north-east.
• Fraser and Gordon connections among the Aberdeenshire levies.

Sources

• Battle of Harlaw — Undiscovered Scotland; Historic UK; Battlefields Trust.