THE SCOTS IN FRANCE.
I was now fairly one of the hundred cuirassiers of that Scottish
Guard, whose name is inseparably connected with the ancient royalty
and military history of France, and who formed the right hand of her
kings in many a day of battle.
My horse, Dagobert, the gift of the Countess d'Amboise, was a fine
Spanish barb, worth at least seven hundred crowns of the sun. My
arms and armour, supplied from the royal arsenal, were similar to
those worn by my comrades, and consisted of a pale buff coat so
thickly laced with silver as to be almost sword-proof; a
triple-barred helmet, with back and breast-plates, gorget and gloves
of the finest and purest steel, inlaid with gold; an arquebuse, two
feet and a half long, attached to a belt by a swivel. The pair of
pistols, the dagger, and long bowl-hilted Toledo rapier were my own.
Our plumes were white and blue, (the Scottish colours), our scarfs
and hocquetons, worn when attending the king at mass or near his
throne, were also white, trimmed with blue and silver, in token of
the pure fidelity which for centuries had characterised the gentlemen
of the Garde du Corps Ecossais.
My apartments in the Louvre were neatly but plainly furnished by the
valet de chambre de tapissier, or king's upholsterer, Jean Baptiste
Poquelin, in whose shop was his son, a sharp little lad of fourteen
years, who carried parcels and messages. Who could then have
foreseen that _this little lad_, who bore one's love letters and
bouquets for a denier, or called a fiacre from the stand at the
street corner, would become in after years the great Molière, the
author of '_L'Etourdi_' and '_Le Dépit Amoureux_'?
And now will the reader pardon the honest vanity--the esprit du
corps--of a soldier, when writing of his colours--of his regiment, if
I devote a few lines to the previous history of the Scottish Guard?
The French annals inform us, that in virtue of the ancient league
between Achaius, King of Scotland and Charlemagne, the latter first
had a Scottish guard, and in return for the compliment, Achaius first
fenced the Scottish Lion with the Fleur-de-lis, which we may still
perceive in the royal standard.
Be the story or origin of this league what it may, there can be no
doubt that Charles of France, in the year 882, had an armed guard of
twenty-four Scotsmen, whom he preferred to his own people, and whose
ponderous battle-axes did him good service in the wars he made to
fence the See of Rome against the Grecian Emperors; and old
historians say, that he first conceived the idea of having this guard
by the advice of his old preceptor, a wandering Kuldee, whom some
name Alcuin the Scot, and others Joannes Mailosius--or John of
Melrose.
At Damietta, in the holy war, the life of St. Louis IX was twice
saved by a Scottish band, led by the knights Stewart, Cumming, and
Gordon; and in 1254, on his return from Palestine, the king increased
the number of this guard to a hundred gentlemen-at-arms, and Charles
V. afterwards placed them on the regular establishment.*
* See _L'Escosse Française_, par A. Houston, &c.
In 1415, when brave Harry of England won the field of Agincourt, and
was acknowledged heir of France by the ignoble Charles VI., the
Scottish Guard, led by Robert Patulloch, a native of Dundee,
abandoned him, and marching from Paris towards Gascony, joined the
gallant Dauphin, to whose assistance came several thousand veteran
Scottish infantry, led by John, Earl of Buchan, who gained the battle
of Bauge, on the 22nd March, 1421, cutting the English to pieces and
slaying the Duke of Clarence, whose coronet was torn from his helmet
by the Laird of Dalswinton. It was a desperate battle and a bloody
one, as we might well expect when Englishmen and Scot met hand to
hand on a foreign shore; and on that day the Dauphin, thenceforward
Charles VII., ordered the Guard to consist of a hundred Scots
men-at-arms and a hundred archers, to be commanded by the Earl of
Buchan, whom he made Great Constable of France.
Signalising themselves on a thousand occasions, this chosen band of
Scottish gentlemen were foremost at the storming of Avranches, in
Normandy, in 1422, and at the great battle of Crevari in the
following year. After being joined by five thousand comrades from
Scotland, they led the furious charge at Verneuille in 1424; and
destroyed the English convoy under the famous Sir John Fastolfe, in
1429. The Earls of Wigton, Buchan, and Douglas all fell in battle in
one day, at the head of the Guard, and were interred in the church of
St. Gracian, where their tombs are still to be seen.
Charmed by their unexampled valour and fidelity, Charles VII.
ordained that '_le Garde du Corps Ecossoises_' should forever take
precedence of all other troops in France.'
In 1495 they were with the French army in Italy, and covered
themselves with honour at the conquest of Naples, when Stuart of
Aubigne was created Duke of Calabria.
They served under Louis XII. against the Venetians at the battle of
Rivolta in 1509; and at the battle of Pavia, when Francis I. fell
into the hands of the foe, one hundred and ninety-seven of the
Scottish Guard lay killed and wounded round him. The King was taken,
with _three_ of his Scottish cavaliers, and gave up his sword,
exclaiming--
'Gentlemen, we have lost all but our honour!'
In 1570, the Guard was ordained to consist of a hundred men-at-arms,
a hundred archers, and twenty-four guards of the sleeve, or keepers
of the King's body; and, eight years afterwards, at the battles of
Gemblours and Mechlin, as Father Strada tells us, they flung off
their armour, and in their doublets routed the Spaniards.
In the year I joined the Guard, there were three corps of Scottish
infantry in the French service: viz., the regiments of Hepburn,
Ramsay, and Lesly. Like other French corps, they consisted of
several battalions. Hepburn's had seven, each a thousand strong.
More than twenty regiments of the French line were led by Scottish
colonels, and there were two Scottish lieutenant-generals, James
Campbell, Earl of Irvine, and Andrew, Lord Rutherford of Hunthill;
while De la Ferte Imbault, a brave veteran, was colonel-general of
all the Scottish troops in France.
It would be vain, in a narrative like mine, to enumerate the
privileges of the Scottish Guard and people in France.
The league, in which the Garde du Corps originated, declared that
between the kingdoms of Scotland and France there should be an
inviolable confederacy and friendship for ever; that injuries offered
by the English to either, should be punished by the troops of both;
that all Scottish auxiliaries in France should be maintained by the
king of that country; and that, if any subjects of one nation gave
assistance to England, 'by arms, counsel, or victual,' against the
other, they should be judged guilty of treason.
To these clauses, Alexander II. of Scotland, and Louis VIII. of
France, added a fifth:
That neither monarch should receive within his dominions the foreign
enemies or domestic rebels of the other.
King Robert II. of Scotland, and Charles V. of France, added others,
to this effect:
That neither of them should make peace with England without the
express consent of the other; and that the Pope alone could absolve
the two monarchs and their successors from the oath and alliance,
which were never violated, while the British crowns remained separate.
James IV., in 1491, Henry IV. of France and Navarre, and Marie of
Guise and Lorraine, Regent of Scotland in 1558, all renewed and
strengthened this league, which always proved so troublesome to our
neighbours the English; and hence their old rhyming proverb, which is
mentioned by Shakspeare in the first act of 'Henry V.'
'HE THAT WOULD FRANCE WIN,
MUST WITH SCOTLAND FIRST BEGIN.'