page_title: Alasdair Mac Colla
section_title: Civil War in Ireland and Scotland
hierarchical_section_title: Alasdair Mac Colla / Biography / Civil War in Ireland and Scotland
caption_attribution_description: Randal MacDonnell, 1st Marquess of Antrim (1645 creation) (1609-1683)
context_page_description: Alasdair Mac Colla Chiotaich MacDhòmhnaill, also known by the English variant of his name Sir Alexander MacDonald, was a military officer best known for his participation in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, notably the Irish Confederate Wars and Montrose's Royalist campaign in Scotland during 1644-5. A member of the Gaelic gentry of the Clan MacDonald of Dunnyveg, a branch of the Clan Donald active in the Hebrides and Ireland, Mac Colla is particularly notable for the very large number of oral traditions and legends which his life inspired in the Highlands.
  During Montrose's campaign of 1644-5, in which the Royalist army won a series of remarkable victories, Mac Colla was given a knighthood. He died in 1647 in Ireland at the Battle of Knocknanuss.
context_section_description: Mac Colla's military career was prompted by the onset of the long and interlinked series of conflicts known as the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, in which several heads of the Scottish and Irish branches of Clan Donald gave support to the Royalists and to Confederate Ireland. Their main rival for regional power, the Campbell chief Argyll, was a key supporter of the Scottish government, then controlled by the Presbyterian party known as the Covenanters.
  At the outbreak of the Irish Rebellion of 1641, Mac Colla was in Ulster, where his kinsman the Marquess of Antrim held large estates in the Glens. Antrim had taken an interest in the growing crisis in Scottish politics, sensing a potential opportunity to recover his family's traditional lands in Scotland. He initially took a neutral position in the Irish rebellion; he raised a mixed Protestant and Catholic force to protect settlers against the rebels, engaging his relative Mac Colla to serve as an officer. 
  As religious tensions grew, a group of Antrim's Catholic officers, including Mac Colla claimed there was a Protestant plot to massacre them; early in 1642 they defected to the rebels. Mac Colla joined the forces of  Felim O'Neill of Kinard and became involved in fighting Sir Robert Stewart's Laggan Army in east Ulster. Present at several actions including the Siege of Coleraine, Mac Colla was wounded at Glenmaquin in June 1642. Later that year he left the rebels and sought terms with the Scottish general Alexander Leslie, 1st Earl of Leven. 
  Although he subsequently rejoined the Irish Confederates, Mac Colla appears not to have been given another military command until late 1643, when he returned to the Hebrides as part of an expeditionary force against the Scottish government, by this point in alliance with the English Parliament. It was reported that Mac Colla had landed with 300 men, and that his brother Ranald was following with reinforcements. Argyll eventually dispatched a force of 600 under James Campbell of Ardkinglas to dislodge them, and Mac Colla's rebels were driven back to Ireland; a small garrison remaining on Rathlin Island was defeated in June 1644.
caption: Randal Macdonnell, 1st Marquess of Antrim. Antrim was a kinsman of the Macdonalds of Dunnyveg, and much of Mac Colla's career would be in the service of his interests in Scotland and Ireland.
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