Moss-trooper
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Moss-troopers were bandits that operated in Scotland during and after the time of the English Commonwealth.
The moss-troopers were often disbanded or deserting soldiers from one of the Scottish armies of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. The moss-troopers were men who kept their weapons and lived a life of banditry, attacking both civilians and Parliamentary soldiers for supplies during the Royalist rising of 1651 to 1654 when Scotland was occupied by the English Parliamentarians under George Monck. The moss-troopers usually operated in small bands either on the fringes of the Highlands or in the border regions. Many of the Highland lairds complained of the moss-troopers' stealing their cattle and bringing military reprisals on the Highlands as a whole. Some of the moss-troopers may have had a political as well as economic motivation - feeling that they were resisting the Cromwellian occupation of Scotland, as their co-occupied fellows in Ireland. Their contemporaries in Ireland were known as tories.
[edit] See also
- rapparees for Irish guerrillas who fought for James II after the Revolution of 1688 and on his defeat degenerated into brigands.
- Reavers
- Reivers
