For a time much of Scotland was in fear of his progress, with one contemporary observer writing: "There is nothing heard now up and down the kingdom but alarms and rumores, randevouses of clans [...] Montross and MacKoll in every manes mouth, nay the very children frightened".Stevenson, Alasdair MacColla and the Highland problem in the seventeenth century, 1980, p.166 Whilst the military contribution of the Irish troops and Highlanders to the Royalist campaign was undeniable, it is arguable that the aftermath of several of their actions, particularly the three-day plunder of Aberdeen by the victorious troops, seriously harmed the Royalist cause, and it is likely that at least some accounts of Mac Colla's depredations were Parliamentarian propaganda.
