He had lost only the remnant of his Scoto-Irish; but the Gordons, when Montrose was presently menacing Glasgow, were held back by Huntly, and Colkitto pursued his private adventures.

Montrose had been deserted by the clans, and lured to ruin by the perfidious promises of the Border lords and lairds.

The aim of his strategy had been to relieve the Royalists of England by a diversion that would deprive the Parliamentarians of their paid Scottish allies, and what man might do Montrose had done.
After his first victory Montrose, an excommunicated man, fought under an offer of 1500 pounds for his murder, and the Covenanters welcomed the assassin of his friend, Lord Kilpont.
The result of Montrose's victories was hostility between the Covenanting army in England and the English, who regarded them as expensive and inefficient.

Indeed, they seldom, save for the command of David Leslie, displayed military qualities, and later, were invariably defeated when they encountered the English under Cromwell and Lambert.
Montrose never slew a prisoner, but the Convention at St Andrews, in November 1645, sentenced to death their Cavalier prisoners (Lord Ogilvy escaped disguised in his sister's dress), and they ordered the hanging of captives and of the women who had accompanied the Irish.

"It was certain of the clergy who pressed for the extremest measures." {186a} They had revived the barbarous belief, retained in the law of ancient Greece, that the land had been polluted by, and must be cleansed by, blood, under penalty of divine wrath.