The Covenanters did not merely burn his proclamation, they despatched a force of four thousand men against him. Colonel Strachan came almost upon him in Corbiesdale, in Ross-shire, and calling his men around him under the shelter of the high moorland broom, he informed them that God had given "the rebel and apostate Montrose, and the viperous brood of Satan, the accursed of God and the Kirk," into their hands. He gave out a psalm, which they sang, and then he dispersed them in successive companies, the whole not amounting to four hundred men, the main army being with David Leslie at Brechin. As soon as Strachan's handful of men came in sight of Montrose's levies, they were attacked by his cavalry, but scarcely were they engaged, when a second, and then a third detachment appeared. On perceiving this, Montrose believed the whole army of Leslie was marching up, and he ordered his infantry to fall back and screen themselves amongst the brushwood. But first his horse and then the whole of his men were thrown into confusion. His standard-bearer and several of his officers were slain. The foreign mercenaries demanded quarter and received it, the rest made their escape as well as they could. Montrose had his horse killed under him, and though he got another horse, and swam across a rapid river, he was compelled to fly in such haste, that he left behind him the Star and Garter with which he had been so newly invested, his sword, and his cloak. He again made for the mountains of Sutherland with Kinnoul, both disguised as peasants. Kinnoul soon sank with fatigue, and was left behind and perished. Montrose at length reached the house of Macleod of Assynt, who had formerly served under him; but this base man sold him to the Covenanters for four hundred bolls of meal. This treason was soon avenged by the neighbouring Highlanders, who ravaged the lands of Assynt; but the Scottish Parliament recompensed the traitor with twenty thousand pounds Scots, to be raised on the Royalists of Caithness and Orkney. The Orkneys, as well as the Isles of Man, Scilly, Jersey, the colony of Virginia, and the islands of the Caribbean Sea, long held out for the royal cause.