[3] After the Covenanter-controlled Scottish Committee of Estates decided to intervene in the English Civil War on the Parliamentarian side, the Royalist party sought to find ways of tying down Covenanter forces in Scotland to prevent them being employed in England.

He then retreated into the Highlands, pursued by a force under the Marquess of Argyll, the head of Clan Campbell and one of the key figures in the Committee of Estates, while Baillie's main army blocked Montrose's path eastward.

It is believed that he split his army at Glen Etive sending part of it up past Ballachulish while the bulk continued across Rannoch Moor, into Glencoe.

Baillie and Argyll believed that Montrose's force would easily be trapped or dispersed once the difficulty of supplying them in the Highlands in winter took hold.

Indeed, by the end of January, Montrose had halted at Kilchummin in the Great Glen, with supplies exhausted and with his forces reduced to less than 2,000 due to sickness and desertions amongst the Highlanders, who were eager to return home with their plunder.

Command of the government forces was left in the hands of his kinsman Sir Duncan Campbell of Auchinbreck, described by Robert Baillie as "a stout soldier, but a very vicious man".

[2] On the flanks he put the 8 companies of Lowland militia sent by Baillie, under Roughe and Cockburn, while to the rear was a reserve of Campbell clan levies commanded by the lairds of Lochnell and Rarra, along with two light artillery pieces.

[2] Unlike at Tippermuir and Aberdeen, where Montrose had annihilated hastily conscripted and poorly trained militias, many of the troops he faced at Inverlochy were veterans of the wars in England and Ireland.

This was possibly because Montrose wanted to harry Argyll's men to ensure they did not slip away, whilst hiding his own presence and the full size of his army.

[2] Some of the Lowland foot forming Auchinbreck's left attempted to retreat into the castle, but were blocked by the Royalist cavalry under Ogilvie and driven to the shore of the loch.

Iain Lom, the bard of the clan MacDonald of Keppoch, watched the battle from a vantage point on a hillside, and afterwards wrote the poem "Là Inbhir Lochaidh" ("The Day of Inverlochy") about it.

On 11 February the Parliament of Scotland found Montrose and 19 of his main followers, including Mac Colla and Graham of Inchbrackie, guilty of high treason in their absence.

After the battle MacDonalds pursued fleeing Campbells up the Lairig Mhor, which is now part of the West Highland Way, killing those they caught.

[8]The victory also secured the cooperation in Montrose's campaign of the Marquess of Huntly, whose Clan Gordon levies made him one of the most powerful nobles in Scotland.

The battle and the Royalist campaign of 1644–1645 in general feature in the 1937 novel And No Quarter by the Irish writer Maurice Walsh, told from the perspective of two members of O'Cahan's Regiment.