He formed an alliance with another cousin, Thorfinn,
the earl of Orkney, and together the two men defeated
Duncan’s forces near Elgin in Moray province on 14
August 1040. (In Shakepeare’s play Macbeth, Duncan is
killed in his own bed.)
Solidifying his hold on the Scottish throne, in
1045 Macbeth defeated an army apparently led (sources
differ on the leader) by Crinan, the abbot of Dunkeld
and father of the murdered Duncan, by Dunkeld near
Tayside. A history of Scotland written in the early 19th
century reports, “In that battle was slain Crinan, Abbot
of Dunkeld, and many with him; namely nine times
twenty heroes.” A year later, Siward, the earl of Nor-
thumbria, invaded Scotland from England to bring Mal-
colm, a son of the murdered Duncan, to the throne, but
he was repulsed by Macbeth at Lothian, where Siward
had concentrated his forces. By 1049, Macbeth felt that
his kingdom was secure, so much so that he was able to
make a pilgrimage to Rome.
In 1054, rebels who opposed Macbeth tried again
to overthrow him. This time, Siward was joined by reb-
els from Denmark, who invaded Scotland and laid siege
to Macbeth’s army at Dunsinane (27 July 1054). There
the king lost a critical battle, and Malcolm, who was at
the head of Siward’s army, took control of southern Scot-
land. Macbeth retreated into Moray province, launching
a series of raids against the rebels. This led to a crushing
defeat by Siward and Malcolm on 15 August 1057 near
Lumphanan in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, and Macbeth
was killed in battle. The Scottish crown passed from him
to his stepson Lulach, nicknamed “the Stupid,” who held
the throne for less than a year until he was killed on 17
March 1058, when Malcolm again invaded Scotland and
took control of the monarchy. Macbeth’s body was taken
to the island of Iona in the Inner Hebrides, where all Scot-
tish kings had been buried and where he was laid to rest,
becoming the last Scottish king to be interred there.
Historian Michael Lynch writes of Macbeth: “Con-
trary to the image presented by Renaissance writers,
there is little evidence that Macbeth was any more ty-
rannical than the run of early medieval kings and his
claim to the kingship was probably as good as that of his
predecessor, the young, rather than aged, Duncan. He
may even have begun some of the transformation of the
kingdom usually credited to Malcolm III.”
References: Ellis, Peter Berresford, MacBeth, High King
of Scotland, 1040–57 a.d. (London: F. Muller, 1980);
Turner, John, Macbeth (Buckingham, U.K.: Open Uni-
versity Press, 1992); Aitchison, Nick, and Tony Robinson,
Macbeth, Man and Myth (Stroud, U.K.: Sutton, 2000);
Stewart, R. J., Macbeth: Scotland’s Warrior King (Poole,
Dorset, U.K.: Firebird Books, 1988); “Macbeth,” in Col-
lins Encyclopedia of Scotland, edited by John Keay and Julia
Keay (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), 644; “Macbeth,”
in The Oxford Companion to Scottish History, edited by
Michael Lynch (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press,
2001), 402.MacMahon, Marie-Edmé-Patrice-Maurice
de, duc de Magenta (1808–1893) French general
Marie-Edmé-Patrice-Maurice de MacMahon was born
in the village of Sully, in the area of Sâone-et-Loire,
France, on 13 July 1808; his family had come from Ire-
land around 1690 to avoid persecution. After attending
the military academy of St. Cyr, MacMahon entered the
French army in 1827. He served under French marshal
Louis-Auguste Bourmont, comte de Ghaisnes de Bour-
mont, in the French invasion of Algeria in 1830, seeing
action in several battles and serving as the aide-de-camp
under a General Achard. In 1832, he was recalled to
France and served in the French invasion of Antwerp. He
then returned to northern Africa and eventually spent a
period of 20 years in Algeria (1834–54), during which
he fought a series of engagements with the Bedouin
tribes and their leader, Abd-el-Kader, the emir of Mas-
care. MacMahon earned great praise for his role in the
French victory at Constantine (1837), and by 1843 he
had risen to the rank of colonel of infantry and appoint-
ment as commander of the French Foreign Legion.
In 1854, the Crimean War broke out between En-
gland, France, and Russia, and MacMahon was sent to
the Crimean peninsula as the commander of an infan-
try division under General François Canrobert. One of
the first major engagements was the French siege of the
city of Sebastopol. Several French attacks on the Russian
defenses failed, and Canrobert was replaced by General
Aimable Pélissier. When the siege stretched into 1855,
new strategies were considered for breaking the Rus-
sian hold on Sebastopol. MacMahon was ordered to as-
sault the Malakoff works, one of the two strongholds
in the city’s defense; the other was the Redan works, to
be attacked by British forces. MacMahon and his forces
launched the so-called battle of Malakoff on 8 Septem-
ber 1855, overwhelming Sebastopol’s Russian defenders.0 mAcmAhon, mARie-eDmé-pAtRice-mAuRice De, Duc De mAgentA