The temptation to describe in detail his extraordinary series of successes and of unexampled marches over snow-clad and pathless mountains must be resisted. The mobility and daring of Montrose's irregular and capricious levies, with his own versatile military genius and the heroic valour of Colkitto, enabled him to defeat a large Covenanting force at Tippermuir, near Perth: here he had but his 2500 men (September 1); to repeat his victory at Aberdeen {182} (September 13), to evade and discourage Argyll, who retired to Inveraray; to winter in and ravage Argyll's country, and to turn on his tracks from a northern retreat and destroy the Campbells at Inverlochy, where Argyll looked on from his galley (February 2, 1645). General Baillie, a trained soldier, took the command of the Covenanting levies and regular troops ("Red coats"), and nearly surprised Montrose in Dundee. By a retreat showing even more genius than his victories, he escaped, appeared on the north-east coast, and scattered a Covenanting force under Hurry, at Auldearn, near Inverness (May 9, 1645). Such victories as Montrose's were more than counterbalanced by Cromwell's defeat of Rupert and Charles at Naseby (June 14, 1645); while presbytery suffered a blow from Cromwell's demand, that the English Parliament should grant "freedom of conscience," not for Anglican or Catholic, of course, but for religions non-Presbyterian. The "bloody sectaries," as the Presbyterians called Cromwell's Independents, were now masters of the field: never would the blue banner of the Covenant be set up south of Tweed.