Swords for Hire E-Book

James Miller

• Herausgeber: Birlinn
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 593

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

In 1612, George Sinclair, an illegitimate son of a Caithness laird, became a Norwegian national hero. Along with almost 300 of his followers, Sinclair was killed in an ambush in Norway while marching to join the king of Sweden's army. Sinclair has legendary status in Norway but has been almost totally forgotten at home, just as the memory of thousands of other Scots who served as mercenaries in the armies of Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries has faded into obscurity. In this book, James Miller tells how a considerable proportion of the able-bodied male population of Scotland at one time sought service on behalf of almost every dynasty and monarch on the continent. Some were fleeing from justice, others went to seek fame and fortune - and found it.

Leseprobe

Swords for Hire

This eBook edition published in 2012 by Birlinn Limited West Newington House Newington Road Edinburgh EH9 1QSwww.birlinn.co.uk

Copyright © James Miller 2007

First published in 2007 by Birlinn Limited

The moral right of James Miller to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978-1-84158-446-1 eBook ISBN: 978-0-85790-548-2

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Contents

List of illustrations

Preface

Acknowledgements

Note on text

Maps

Family tree showing Leslies who sought armed service in Europe

1 ‘God knoweth it greeved me much’

Norway, 1612

2 ‘bandis of men of weare’

Scotland, 1550–1650

3 ‘these proude Scottes’

Prussia, France

4 ‘mony zoung and valzeand men’

Sweden, Estonia, 1573

5 ‘university of war’

The Low Countries, 1572–1618

6 ‘a Company of pedeling knaves’

The Baltic, Russia, 1570–1618

7 ‘Your Majesty will need soldiers’

Poland, Sweden, 1582–1625

8 ‘sure men hardy and resolute’

Bohemia, the Rhineland, the Low Countries, 1618–1625

9 ‘a rude and ignorant Souldier’

Denmark, the Baltic, 1626 1628

10 ‘new conditions from a new Master’

The Baltic, the Oder, 1628–1631

11 ‘betwixt the Devill and the deepe Sea’

Brandenburg, Saxony, Bavaria, the Rhineland, 1631

12 ‘nothing els but fire and smoke’

Bavaria, 1632

13 ‘that bloodie monster of warre’

Bavaria, Bohemia, northern Germany, 1633–1640

14 ‘vertews and valorous atchievements abrod’

France, Germany, 1633–1648

15 ‘keen and fiery genius’

Russia, Poland, 1630–1699

16 ‘where I might again begin my fortune’

Russia, the Netherlands, Prussia, 1700–1758

17 ‘We bore down upon them with all the sail we could croud’

The Mediterranenan and the Baltic

18 ‘Oh woe unto these cruell wars in low Germanie’

Notes and references

Bibliography

Index

List of illustrations

1. A close-up of George Sinclair’s gravestone near Kvam in Gudbrandsdalen, Norway

2. Scottish ensigns in Danzig in 1578, in the contingent of men under the command of Colonel William Stewart

3. Sir Patrick Ruthven, one of the murals painted in Skokloster Castle near Stockholm

4. Forces with Archduke Matthias, appointed as governor general of the Spanish Netherlands in January 1578

5. Antwerp under attack in 1584

6. Sir Alexander Leslie

7. Frederick, the Elector of the Rhineland Palatinate and King of Bohemia.

8. Count Ernest Mansfeld, mercenary commander

9. Sir James Ramsay

10. Mansfeld’s army engaging Spanish forces beside the village of Fleurus

11. A plan of Stralsund, showing the old city surrounded by bodies of water

12. The Marquis of Hamilton

13. Count Walter Leslie

14. Sir James Turner

15. Field Marshal Robert Douglas

16. A page from a muster roll for Mackay’s Regiment, showing the names of Robert Monro and others

17. The camp of the Swedish army at Werben on the Elbe

18. Images of tartan-clad soldiers in Stettin in 1631

19. Diagram of the Swedish attack on the Alte Feste, the hilltop stronghold of the Imperial army near Nuremberg

20. A stylised image of the first battle of Breitenfeld, fought on 17 September 1631 between the Swedish forces of Gustavus Adolphus and the Imperial army under Count Tilly

21. A contemporary series of pictures depicting the assassination of Wallenstein and his companions at Eger

22. Detail from a representation of the battle of Nördlingen

23. Diagram of the battle at Wittstock

24. A diagrammatic map of Hanau in 1636 at the time its defence was led by Sir James Ramsay

25. Sir Samuel Grieg

26. Map showing the sea battle of Cesme between the Russian and Turkish fleets

The endpaper map and Figs 7, 8, 10, 11, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23 and 24 are taken from the multi-volume Theatrum Europaeum, a history of European affairs, by Johann Philip Abelin and others, published first in Frankfurt-am-Main in 1638 and on various dates thereafter. The artwork in the early volumes is by Matthaeus Merian (1593–1650).

Preface

I was in my teens when I first read in James Calder’s history of Caithness about a party of Scots mercenaries who were massacred in the Norwegian mountains in 1612 while on their way to fight for the king of Sweden. The story had the dimensions of a legend and intrigued me, but it was not until a few years ago that I had the opportunity to put some flesh on the bones of Calder’s account. I found that the massacre had really happened, although the assiduous Victorian historian had some of the details wrong. However, what was more surprising, it had been only one incident in a much longer, more complex story. My curiosity drove me on and the resulting search has been akin to exploring a weirdly designed mansion in which each door pushed open leads to other doors or sometimes to a dead end. In short, I came upon a phenomenon that was a common fact of Scottish life in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Thousands of Scots went to Europe as soldiers and, looking at the records for the two centuries, it seems that at one time or another some served in the forces of almost every continental power and marched under every banner. Yet there was little in the popular arena about this, certainly nothing to compare with the library that has been written on the exploits of Scots in the British Empire. In histories of Scotland the mercenary soldier seldom rates a mention, let alone a footnote. Before new worlds lured us further afield, Europe was the ground on which we sought to fulfil our aspirations, and this we have largely forgotten.

It was not always so. The eccentric and prolix laird from Cromarty, Sir Thomas Urquhart, who died in 1660, wrote in inimitable style about the exploits of his fellow countrymen in Europe in a long panegyric called The Jewel. A few writers in the Victorian and Edwardian years brought out books for a wider public. One of the first was the prolific novelist and historian James Grant, who wrote Memoirs and Adventures of Sir John Hepburn (1851) and The Scottish Soldiers of Fortune: Their Adventures and Achievements in the Armies of Europe (1890). John Hill Burton’s The Scot Abroad was published in 1864, and A. Francis Steuart’s Scottish Influences in Russian History in 1913. The most important of this small group who surveyed Scottish activities in Europe was Th. A. Fischer, who produced three books of tremendous scope: The Scots in Germany (1902), The Scots in Eastern and Western Prussia (1903) and The Scots in Sweden (1907). All of these men wrote with pride of the Scots’ achievements. James Grant typically allowed his enthusiasm to carry him away. ‘In every army in Europe,’ he states in his 1851 book, ‘they have risen to eminence, and by their intrepid courage, persevering spirit, and inflexible integrity, though invidiously designated by some as adventurers, have attained the highest honours that can accrue to subjects.’ It wasn’t quite like that for most of them, but Grant lived in an age that was both imperial and incurably patriotic. Academic historians have always been aware of the Scots’ involvement in Europe but the results of their research have usually remained within the covers of theses, journals and books aimed at a professional readership. The published work of several contemporary historians has been invaluable in the writing of this book, especially the volumes written or edited by Steve Murdoch, Alexia Grosjean, and David Worthington. Murdoch and Grosjean also edit a website dedicated to Scots who were active in northern Europe: www.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/ssne. Details of all the sources to which I have turned can be found in the notes and bibliography.

Within limits set by resources and time I have made an attempt to provide for the general reader a survey of the exploits and experiences of Scots who sought to earn a living as soldiers in Europe up until the late eighteenth century – that is, until roughly the time they found service under a British flag in an expanding empire. The focus of the story is on Scottish involvement in the Thirty Years War (1618–48) but I have also attempted to provide some indication of the Scottish presence in Europe before and after that monumental conflict. Much more detail on certain individuals and incidents can be found in the sources listed but I hope the text here is sufficient to show the extent of our interactions with our immediate neighbours across the North Sea in centuries gone by. It has been necessary to provide historical background and context, and in the book the reader will come across passages trying to explain the complicated political troubles and manoeuvres of Europe’s ruling dynasties. For reasons of space I have had to simplify these accounts and, although professional historians may baulk at some of the liberties I have taken, I have tried to hold true to the main thrust of the historical record. In summary, I found that Scots have a habit of popping up as protagonists in the most unlikely corners of Europe, many as miserable foot soldiers far from home, but others as major players with the fates of nations in their hands. Information about them probably exists in almost every archive and museum where the documents on the history of the continent lie. There has not been time to follow every lead but I hope I have uncovered enough to show how closely involved with past politics and conflicts in Europe we have been. This book concentrates on military activity. It should not be forgotten that there were thousands of Scots directly involved in more peaceful pursuits – as merchants, traders, teachers and clerics – and their story also begs to be re-explored. Tucked away in archives from the Atlantic coast to the Urals are the details of the many parts we have played in the history of Europe, with their implication that we have yet much more to offer.

Acknowledgements

Many people have helped me during the research for this book. Here I can do no more than list their names and record my gratitude for their assistance, always cheerfully and generously given. In Belgium: the staff of the Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique in Brussels. In Britain: Inverness Public Library; Aberdeen University Library; Special Collections, Glasgow University Library; Elgin Public Library; the British Library; the National Library of Scotland; Alastair Macleod of the Inverness Public Library genealogy service; Catharine Niven and her colleagues in Inverness Museum and Art Gallery and Alastair Campbell of Airds, Unicorn Pursuivant of Arms. In Germany: Wolfgang and Gerda Rutsche in Augsburg; Dr Wilfried Sponsel of the Nördlingen Stadtarchiv; Dr Kramer-Fürtig and Alisa Neumann in the Augsburg Stadtarchiv; Frau Edith Findel in Rain Stadtarchiv; Frau Monika Rademacher in Hanau Stadtarchiv; the staff of the Kaiserburg Museum in Nürnberg, the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nürnberg, and the Stralsund Stadtarchiv. In Norway: Vidar and Dorothy Olsen, Oslo, and Jon Selfors of Vertshuset Sinclair in Kvam, Gudbrandsdalen. In Poland: Richard and Marie Jasinski, and Mariola Szeszycka in Szczecin; Anna Stasiewicz-Jakubik in Gdansk. In Sweden: Per Clason and his colleagues in Krigsarkivet, Stockholm. Particular thanks for help with illustrations go to Dr Joseph Marshall, National Library of Scotland; Sabine Jaucot, Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique; Bertil Olofsson, Krigsarkivet, Stockholm; Monica Lindström, Skoklosters Slott, Sweden; Shona Corner, National Galleries of Scotland; and Helen Trompeteler, National Portrait Gallery, London.

I am also deeply grateful to HI-Arts, Inverness, for their generous contribution towards the costs of travel and research; to Dr Steve Murdoch and his colleagues for help in accessing the Scotland, Scandinavian and Northern Europe, 1580–1707 (SSNE) website; and to Trevor Royle for reading the text and offering some valuable suggestions for its improvement. Aline Hill deployed her conscientious editing to clarify the text, and Jim Lewis his skill at creating proper maps from my crude tracings; I am grateful to both of them. Once again, I owe much to my agent, Duncan McAra, and to the staff of Birlinn for their never-ending courtesy and patience. And also I would like to thank all my friends who over the last two years or more have had to submit themselves to my enthusiasm for the Scotland–Europe connection. The errors in the book are my responsibility.

Note on text

Generally, dates have been adjusted to accord with the modern calendar. Spelling of Scots has been left unchanged except for some substitution of letters to clarify meaning.

Currencies

It is not easy to equate the various currencies in which mercenaries were paid, but the following information may offer some rough guidance.

Germany : the silver taler, thaler or reichsthaler, the source of the word ‘dollar’, became a standard throughout the Holy Roman Empire in the sixteenth century and something of an international currency.

During the Thirty Years War there was much counterfeiting, clipping and debasement of coinage. Coins such as gold riders and Rhenish gulden were also struck for the payment of troops.

Britain : the reichsthaler was roughly equivalent to the English crown (5 shillings sterling). In 1603 the Scottish crown was worth one twelfth of the English one. The Scots merk was equivalent to 13 shillings and 4 pence (two-thirds of the Scots pound).

Denmark : the rigsdaler became the basis of the Danish coinage from 1544.

Sweden : the silver riksdaler became the basis of the coinage from the early 1500s.

Holland : the basic coin of the States General was the rijksdaalder. It was divided into 40 stuivers (from 1583), 45 stuivers (from 1586), and 47 stuivers (from 1606). The gulden or guilder, initially equivalent to 28 stuivers, was struck from 1601. The patar or patard was a silver coin struck in some parts of the Low Countries from late fifteenth century.

France : The French livre, franc or pound was roughly equivalent in value to the Scots pound in the late 1600s. Further details on this and other currencies of the period can be found on the website http://pierre-marteau.com/currency.

Distance measures

Robert Monro makes consistent use of the Dutch mile in his memoirs of the war in Germany. The Dutch or German mile was equal to 7 kilometres or roughly 4.25 English miles.

Maps

Boundaries of states and provinces are indicated only approximately. More detail can be found in historical atlases and, for example, at www.euratlas.com.

Map 1. Norway: the route followed by the 1612 expedition from Romsdalfjord to Kringen

Map 2. Scandinavia and the Baltic

Map 3. The Low Countries, or the Spanish Netherlands

Map 4. Central Europe in the 17th century

Map 5. The Rhineland

Map 6. The Baltic states and western Russia

Map 7. Bohemia

Family tree showing Leslies who sought armed service in Europe. Based on information in Historical Records of the Family of Leslie, Edinburgh, 1869.

ONE

‘God knoweth it greeved me much’

Norway, 1612

SIR ROBERT ANSTRUTHER had a problem on his hands in the summer of 1612. As ambassador from James Stuart, now the king of Britain, to Christian IV of Denmark, he was having to defend the honour and interests of his own monarch against the reprehensible actions of his fellow countrymen. Christian was James’s brother-in-law, a factor working in Sir Robert’s favour, but no king could be depended on to put personal relations above the good of his realm for long. ‘Moreover Sir,’ wrote Sir Robert in a despatch to London from Copenhagen on 18 June, ‘they heire are much greeved against Scottis men’.1 He went on to describe how the Danes were complaining not only because pirates from Orkney were attacking shipping on the coast of Norway, then part of the Danish kingdom, but because Scottish soldiers were fighting for Denmark’s enemy, Gustavus Adolphus, the ambitious young ruler of Sweden.

The Swedish king was continuing to pursue the aggressive policy of his late father, Karl IX, aimed at making Sweden master of the trade routes from Russia across northern Scandinavia, a policy that had alarmed Denmark. In the spring of 1611 the long-brewing hostility between the northern kingdoms spilled into war and the Danes captured the fortress of Kalmar. Then Karl IX died. Gustavus Adolphus was only sixteen years old but, already experienced in warfare after leading attacks against the Danes, he took over the reins of power from the interim regency when he reached his seventeenth birthday. To bolster his weakened army, Gustavus Adolphus wrote from the castle of Nyköping in November 1611 to Sir James Spens, a Fife merchant and the British ambassador to the Swedish court. In courtly Latin, the young king addressed his ‘truly and dearly beloved Sir James Spens’ to remind the Scot of a promise made to Karl IX to supply Sweden with 3,000 soldiers ‘of proved faithfulness and bravery’. For this service, Sir James would have at his disposal in the city of Hamburg the sum of 20,000 imperials (reichsthaler) through the agents of Gustavus Adolphus’s mother.

There was already a long history of Scots serving in the Swedish army but at this particular time it was a sensitive matter in the relations between Britain and the Scandinavian kingdoms. In the winter of 1611–12 a junior officer in the Swedish forces, an ensign called Pryngle, a Scot, was captured by the Danes. ‘The King upone my most humble suit, and by meanes of the Chancellor, sett him at libertie, in regard that he was your Majestie’s subject, as he hath done sindrie others,’ wrote Sir Robert to London. Pryngle was required to swear an oath that he would never again take up arms against Denmark. Before long, however, Pryngle was captured a second time, on this occasion on a ship bound for Sweden. ‘I am almost ashamed to speek any more in his behalfe,’ wrote the exasperated Sir Robert, before he acknowledged ruefully: ‘with such things I ame oft met heere.’

A more important figure than an ensign also fell into Danish hands. On 29 December 1611, three officials of Christian’s government interrogated Andrew Ramsay and Robert Douglas, who had been captured some time earlier, before the death of Karl IX, while crossing from Sweden to Lübeck, and brought to Copenhagen. Ramsay and Douglas said they were cousins who had met by chance at a country house near Stockholm after the latter had returned from five years’ service under an officer called Learmonth in Sweden’s campaign against Russia in Livonia. They revealed that several foreign commanders and officers were still in Sweden, among them General Rutherford, his afore-mentioned lieutenant Learmonth, a Captain Wauchope, and a man called Greig, the commander of the artillery. Non-Scots included Johannes Mönnichhofen, a Flemish mercenary leader. Greig had been severely wounded at the siege of Kalmar when a cannonball had smashed his shin, and Ramsay seemed unsure whether or not he was still alive; indeed the only officer who had emerged unscathed from the siege had been Mönnichhofen because ‘he surpassed the others in prudence and knew how to fight from a distance’. In his interview, Douglas said the Swedes were in trouble, panic-stricken, abandoned by their soldiers, hating their king, willing to sue for peace, and starving. He was exaggerating Swedish weakness, telling the Danes what he thought they might like to hear. His interrogators were clearly convinced that Douglas and Ramsay had been carrying letters dealing with recruitment of mercenaries; the Scots denied they had such documents, naturally omitting to mention that they had dumped them in the Baltic when their capture had been imminent.

The Danes were right, of course, to suspect Gustavus Adolphus’s intention to strengthen his armed forces. At the same time as he had written to Sir James Spens, the Swedish king had asked Johannes Mönnichhofen to recruit a thousand men in Holland. The plan was that Sir James Spens’s recruits would rendezvous with Mönnichhofen to combine forces at Älvsborg, the Swedish fortress at the mouth of the Göta River, the country’s only access to the sea on the west coast.

Andrew Ramsay must have reached Scotland early in 1612 with Sir James Spens’s instruction to recruit men to serve Gustavus Adolphus. In this task he enlisted the aid of his brother Alexander and three others: Robert Kerr, George Hay and George Sinclair. Hay, whose origins are obscure, and Sinclair, an illegitimate son of the laird of Stirkoke in Caithness, had already seen service against the Russians for Sweden in Samuel Cockburn’s regiment for two years. Kerr was probably some kin to Sir Robert Kerr of Ancrum, who that year committed some men from his court to overseas service. Between them the four men probably recruited along most of the east of the country in defiance of the authorities.

The Privy Council in Edinburgh, governing Scotland for the Stuart king now resident in London, noted in August 1612 that men had been ‘violentlie pressit and tane . . . aganis thair will’, despite the king’s refusal to allow recruitment for Sweden.2 Ordinary people had grown so afraid of being seized by the recruiters that they did not dare go far from home on their lawful business without protection. Alexander Ramsay was ordered to present himself before the Privy Council, and other known military captains were asked to bind themselves not to leave the country or recruit for Sweden without a licence. Some were called on to deposit a substantial bail of 5,000 merks each to ensure they did not feel tempted to go back on their word. Three ships lying at Burntisland were searched by the authorities and the soldiers aboard them interviewed; those who said they had been pressed were released, and the ships were charged not to take soldiers to Sweden. A week later, the Privy Council issued a fresh instruction to discharge all the men levied for Sweden.

On 19 August 1612, James’s secretary replied to Sir Robert Anstruther to say that the king had found out ‘yesternight by meere accident’ that the recruiting of mercenaries for service in Sweden had been taking place. He had forbidden it to continue and had ordered the discharge of men already embarked, and he wished his brother-in-law in Denmark to know through his ambassador that he had done so. James had brushed aside proffered excuses that the Scots were setting off to fight for Gustavus Adolphus against the Russians and therefore would not trouble Christian. The captains in Scotland, however, had no intention of complying with the royal command. Ramsay kept well away from the Privy Council and by the time he was denounced as a rebel in September he had managed to raise some men. The plan to rendezvous with Mönnichhofen had to be abandoned when, after the winter, Danish forces renewed their assault, captured Älvsborg, and threatened to sweep across country to descend on Stockholm itself. Mönnichhofen finally set sail from Amsterdam with four ships in July 1612 but, with the Kattegat under Danish control, he continued north along the Norwegian coast to land near Trondheim, an eventuality that would in time prove to have fateful consequences for the men now being recruited on the other side of the North Sea.

The Privy Council’s attempts to prevent the mercenaries sailing had only partial success. Ramsay, Hay and Sinclair managed to get away with some of their recruits in two ships – one from Dundee and one from Caithness – that met off Shetland towards the end of August and turned their bows eastward. On the 30th they anchored in an inner arm of Romsdal Fjord a little to the west of the village of Isfjorden and began to disembark. There were only 300 men, far from the 3,000 Gustavus had called for. Neither were they the experienced fighters the Swedish king needed. Ramsay, Hay and Sinclair had scraped together by persuasion or coercion a party from different parts of the country that lacked cohesion, training and equipment. We don’t know who they were but we can assume that their number included fugitives from Lothian jails and ploughboys and tenants from the Sinclair lands in Caithness, all tough enough in their way but not with the ‘proved faithfulness and bravery’ Gustavus had required. Only a handful of them would live more than a few days, let alone see their native shore again.

What Ramsay and his colleagues did not know when they landed was that Mönnichhofen had already aroused the anger of the Norwegians. The Dutch mercenary force had reached Stordalen in July and had seized two ships and plundered one district before compelling a local pilot to guide them to Trondheim. The Norwegians had failed to repel the landing – the mercenaries had successfully made their way east to Swedish territory – but they were now alert to the possibility of another incursion and probably determined to acquit themselves better.

On the day after they were safely ashore on the northern side of the fjord, Ramsay and his men set off for Sweden. Their march took them around the head of the fjord and up the valley of the Romsdal River. No one recorded what the Scots thought of the rugged, beautiful country with mountain peaks rising to over 1,800 metres through which they were now trudging, but the contrast with the rolling spaces they had come from may have pressed on their minds. With two guides from Romsdal, they climbed over the pass and descended into Gudbrandsdalen and the valley of the Lågen River. Their progress was now being closely watched. Lauritz Hage, the lensman (administrative official) in the parish of Vaage, called out the bonder (the farmers) in his area and in the neighbouring parish of Lassoe and kept ahead of the Scots, hoping for an opportunity to stop their incursion. Hage roused the bonder and peasantry in two more parishes, Froen and Ringebu, and, with over four hundred men now at his back, felt confident enough to consider action. Keeping two days’ march in front of the Scots, he found his opportunity at Kringen, where the road squeezed between high rocks and the swiftly flowing Lågen.

Ramsay seems to have remained unaware of the trap into which he was leading his men. On the evening of 4 September, they halted at some farms and took stock of their progress. High above them to the east soared the mountains of the Rondane; the wooded hills on the west side of the river were lower but still a daunting climb. It seemed best to push on down the valley and, after a few more days, turn east in easier country towards the Swedish frontier. They set off again through a fine, clear dawn.

Hage’s men were now lying in wait for the Scots. In his official report to the Danish chancellor on the incident, written at Akershus (in present-day Oslo) on 27 September, the stadtholder (governor) Envold Kruse summarised what happened next: ‘Hage, having made his arrangements and perceived his advantage, attacked, together with another lensman, Peder Rankleff of Ringebu, and with all their men together they fired upon the foreign troops and shot them to death during an hour and a half.’ Some of Ramsay’s followers stumbled into the river in search of escape from the hail of bullets and were drowned; those few who splashed across the water were cut down by the Norwegians waiting on the far bank. There is a tradition that George Sinclair was the first to fall in the initial volley of shots, but there are many traditions around the incident (see Chapter 18) and Kruse’s report makes no mention of the Caithness man. When the ambush was over, 134 mercenaries were taken prisoner. The Norwegians, it is said, lost six dead and a dozen wounded.

No doubt traumatised by their experience, the surviving Scots were shepherded down the valley for 15 kilometres to Klomstad near Kvam. Here they were locked into a barn. Hage and the other leaders wanted to send them all on to Akershus but the bonder and the peasants had other ideas. Fired up by their stunning victory and perhaps thirsting for revenge for a massacre of Norwegians perpetrated by mercenaries in Swedish pay in a church at Lødsøe, they resolved to disobey Hage. In the morning, as the prisoners were brought out one by one from the barn, they were shot or hacked to death until the peasants’ blood lust was satisfied. Only eighteen were left. These included four officers: Ramsay himself, with Henry Bruce, James Moneypenny and James Scott. Moneypenny, with previous service in Denmark and Sweden, acted as interpreter and he was sent with Ramsay, Scott and Bruce to Akershus. A few of the others accepted offers to become servants locally, and some agreed to join the Danish army and were sent to a regiment stationed at Älvsborg. After interrogation by Kruse, Ramsay and his colleagues were sent on to Copenhagen.

Early in November, after being present at the examination of the captives, Sir Robert Anstruther wrote two letters about the incident: an official one to King James and a briefer, more succinct account to a friend in England, Sir Thomas Lach, one of James’s secretaries. In the first Sir Robert emphasised that not one of them ‘had any kynd off commission or warrant to shew, nather from the late King Charles [Karl of Sweden], nather from Gustavus, neither from Coronell Ramsay’. Christian IV was mightily displeased and Sir Robert seems to have been hard put to it to have the prisoners judged as simple, ignorant men deserving of clemency. This must have been especially difficult in the case of Moneypenny and of Bruce, who admitted he had already seen service under arms in Holland, Spain and Hungary. In his second letter to his friend, Sir Robert wrote: ‘I dout not but you have hard the infortunat newis of these 300 Scottis men that went to Norroway; the bours of the country haue killed and murthered them all, except some few.’ He explained how he had persuaded the Danes not to try Ramsay and the other three before a court martial but to send them home instead.

Back in Scotland, Ramsay was interrogated by the Duke of Lennox and Lord Viscount Fenton. Clearly, relations with Denmark were uppermost in the minds of the questioners, and Ramsay is recorded as having confirmed he had recruited his followers without informing anyone in the Scottish government of his actions and had never received any help from them. The hapless Ramsay was banished for life from British territory but relations with Denmark were secured. In January 1613, Sir Robert took up his pen to his friend Sir Thomas again: ‘Concerning the proceedings with Mr Ramsay, his Majestie resteth weell contented: but I hope seeing the warres are ended, and a ferme peace maide that his Majestie will forget those particular querrels . . . Concerning them that were killed, and taken prisonners, God knoweth it greeved me much, both for the loss of the men, as also for the King Denmarkes cause.’

TWO

‘bandis of men of weare’

Scotland, 1550–1650

SOME REPORTS OF the incident in Gudbrandsdalen may have filtered through to the ears of relatives or friends of the men who had gone to their deaths with George Sinclair and his colleagues, although it is equally possible that others went to their graves without ever finding out what had happened to a kinsman who had gone overseas in the illegal levy. Apart from the mention in James Calder’s history of Caithness published in 1861, where incidentally the number of mercenaries is exaggerated to 900, and the fuller account in Michell’s book in 1886, the story of the massacre has been largely forgotten in Scotland – though not in Norway, where it has acquired the trappings of an epic event in the national history, an aspect of the affair to which we shall return in Chapter 18.

The Scots were familiar enough with military service abroad, and the banished Alexander Ramsay probably found other employment in arms without much trouble. He may be the same Alexander Ramsay who turns up in the records of the Swedish army as a colonel in 1631. As a mercenary, his kind was, to our modern eyes, astonishingly common in seventeenth-century Europe. Except for keeping troops to maintain public order and to guard their persons, rulers avoided the expense of maintaining a large standing army and the political consequences of conscription in favour of recruiting fighters only when they were required. At the time of the Battle of Lützen in 1632, one of the turning points of the Thirty Years War, four fifths of the Swedish army were non-Swedish nationals;1 and the opposing army of the Holy Roman Empire was equally cosmopolitan. The practice persisted into the eighteenth century: around 1750 the French army had over 50,000 foreigners, the Spanish army had 28 battalions of foreign troops, the Netherlands still had its Scots Brigade, and in the Prussian army only around one third of the troops were actually Prussian.2 Men went to Europe as soldiers from all parts of the British Isles, though only the Irish were given the evocative name of the ‘wild geese’, a term first used for the thousands who left Ireland to join the French army in the 1690s. The Swiss were common as mercenaries and it has been calculated that in times of war one in every eight Swiss of military age was in arms somewhere in Europe. In the seventeenth century the Scots at times challenged and may have surpassed this figure.

Professional soldiers moved across borders like contract workers or economic migrants, and the Scot in military service could easily find himself fighting shoulder to shoulder with a man from almost any ethnic group in Europe, and against his own countrymen. Robert Monro noted how a Scot in the ranks of the Habsburg army attacking a detachment of Monro’s Regiment in Holstein in July 1627 shouted ‘Have with you Gentlemen, thinke not now you are on the streets of Edinburgh bravading’ before he was impaled by a Scottish pike.3 Monro and his colleagues were perfectly aware of their own identity as Scots but this did not prevent them fighting for a cause far from home, as long as their temporary loyalty did not bring them into conflict with that homeland. In April 1629 Monro noted that when the King of Denmark no longer had need of them ‘we were ready to imbrace new conditions from a new Master’. In the writings of the time, the word ‘nation’ is used to mean ethnic or cultural identity rather than a political one; indeed, it has been argued that the emergence of the sovereign nation-state was an outcome of the Thirty Years War and, until then, Europeans most often saw themselves as belonging to a more local polity – a domain, a village or a city.

The Scots acquired a reputation for being courageous fighters and for maintaining a loyalty to the flag under which they were fighting, habits that naturally mattered a great deal to their commanders and paymasters. From time to time, Scots contingents mutinied in protest against lack of pay and miserable conditions but, from our perspective, they were willing to stick it out and showed at times astonishing endurance in the face of adversity. Their reputation as fighting men went before them. For example, in March 1632, the Swedish commander Axel Oxenstierna ordered his German mercenaries to beat the ‘Scots March’ as they went into attack against a Spanish stronghold on the Rhine, on the premise that the sound of the drum tattoo would ‘affright the enemy’. On this occasion, the ruse failed as the Spanish held and the Germans ‘made a base retreate till they were holden up againe by the valour of the Scots that were there’,4 but the message is clear: the Spanish were expected to recognise the drums and react accordingly. In 1573 the Habsburg emperor, Charles V, noted that the Scots, who at that time were flocking to the Low Countries to fight in the cause of the Dutch, were a poor but valiant lot who did not have much to lose, and that, therefore, it was better to treat them with care.5 The dynamic Shah Abbas I of Persia, busily engaged on remodelling his army on European lines and seeking an alliance with Christian powers against the Ottomans, asked James VI for men in 1601.6 As far as is known, none were sent.

No one knows exactly how many Scots sought service as mercenaries in Europe but the highest estimates place the total close to 50,000 over the duration of the Thirty Years War, between 1618 and 1648. Numbers before and after this period were lower but still significant. No figure exists for the population of Scotland before 1755 but it has been estimated to have lain between 1.1 and 1.2 million in the first half of the seventeenth century, its rise and fall reflecting the occurrence of famine and disease. If the figure of 50,000 is accurate for the number of mercenaries, and all the evidence points to it being not far off the mark, it means around one fifth of the adult male population of Scotland experienced military service in Europe, where they became especially prominent in the Swedish armies. It is worth making a comparison with the First World War when, it has been calculated, 688,416 Scots, or around 25 per cent of the adult male population, were in military service.7

Although the ordinary people in the villages and towns of Europe often came to fear and loathe mercenaries for very good reason, there seems to have been little general moral opprobrium attached to the practice of hiring oneself as a soldier. Most went with the blessing if not the active encouragement of their rulers, often as an instrument of foreign policy. The modern view of mercenaries as ‘dogs of war’, as men who fight purely for pay irrespective of the justice of the cause, no doubt applied to many in the seventeenth century but a majority would have protested they had more honourable motives. The terms ‘mercenarian’ and ‘mercenary soldier’ appear in English during Shakespeare’s time, only becoming shortened to ‘mercenary’ later. In Scotland the government saw those subjects of the monarch who became, in a phrase current at the time, ‘wageit men of weare’8 as a problem only when their presence or their activities threatened national security or relations with other countries; the same government seldom hesitated to permit recruitment for service under a foreign flag if such should serve the interests of the dynasty. In June 1573 the Privy Council in Edinburgh noted that ‘a gude nowmer . . . of this realme’ were prepared to go abroad ‘under pretens to serve in the wearis in foreyn countreis’ without licence from the king, or, as James VI had still to celebrate his seventh birthday, without the leave of his regent, the Earl of Morton. There were fears that the mercenaries might rouse animosity towards the Stuart dynasty but there was also a real anxiety that recruiting for overseas service might be a cover for a plot to seize James himself. Only officers with licences were allowed to recruit; others risked capital punishment, a sanction also directed at skippers and shipowners if they were rash enough to convey men overseas without official permission. A considerable number of licences were issued in the 1570s for the recruitment of soldiers for service in the Low Countries, and the standard formula for these forbade the recruiting officer from poaching men already in the king’s service and from assembling his men on the south side of the Forth or anywhere within 16 miles of Stirling Castle, where the boy king was being carefully educated by Protestant clerics. In September 1587, the Privy Council ordered that a proclamation be read at mercat crosses throughout the land forbidding anyone ‘to rais ony bandis of men of weare, or to putt themselffis in armes, ather ressave wageis as men of weare, or inroll themselffis undir capitanes and commandaris, or to departe furth of the cuntrey . . . without his Hienes licence’.9 Other laws were enacted to minimise the export of arms, prevent the recruits causing trouble before they left, and prohibit them from fighting other Scots or serving for a Catholic ruler against Protestants. As will become plain, these rules were often ignored.

Even when they happened to be fighting for you, mercenaries were liable to be trouble. In August 1605 the Privy Council learned that the roads leading from Scotland to the south of England were ‘greatly filled’ with men seeking to ‘inbarque in these southren portes for the services of foreyne Princes’ and making a nuisance of themselves. Two months later, on learning that ‘grite nowmeris of personis of this kingdom . . . [passing] to seik thair fortounes in the service of the wearis’ were committing robberies and generally bullying ordinary folk in England, the Council ordered all recruiters to embark their levies north of the border. When two companies of Irish mercenaries bound for Sweden were driven ashore in Peterhead by bad weather at the end of 1609 and trekked south to Fife and Edinburgh in search of food, the Privy Council, wanting rid of them quickly, issued 1,000 merks to supply them with victual, and enjoined them under pain of death to obey their captains and be ready to sail for Sweden as soon as possible; some of the Irish, pressed men, took the chance to desert and the Council warned west-coast seafarers not to give them passage home.

What led so many young Scots to risk soldiering abroad? Every man who took ship for Europe no doubt had his own reasons for doing so. Only a few of them have left us any indication of their thinking but some generalities can be safely ventured. For the sons of lairds and noblemen, being a soldier was in keeping with their social standing, ‘the laudable profession of arms’ as Robert Monro put it in 1637. Such men usually served as officers. There was a culture of armed service already present: as part of the system for national defence, able-bodied men took part in wappenschaws, decreed to be held four times yearly by a 1491 Act of Parliament and calling on all men to keep armour and weapons befitting their status. In January 1626 the court book of the Barony of Leys on Deeside recorded the names of men fined 10 shillings each for not attending a wappenschaw.

It was no coincidence that many mercenaries were either younger or illegitimate sons who stood little chance of inheriting any wealth if they stayed at home. For such men service abroad held out the promise of fame and fortune. A few fled to escape shame or justice. One of these may have been Sir James King, ennobled in 1642 as Lord Eythin, about whom an allegation was made in March 1619 that he had killed Alexander Seaton of Meldrum in a family feud before he had left to seek a new career in Europe.10 The effects of peer pressure and friendship on the behaviour of lairds’ sons, what Sir David Stewart of Garth in 1822 called ‘the impulse of emulation’, especially in a country as small as Scotland, should also not be discounted. Robert Monro happily served in Gustavus Adolphus’s army in Germany under the command of Sir John Hepburn, a friend with whom he had shared adventures in their youth: ‘we were oft Camerades of danger together; so being long acquainted, we were Camerades in love: first at Colledge, next in our travells in France, at Paris and Poitiers Anno 1615 till we met againe in Spruce [Prussia] at Elben in August 1630’.11 Poverty drove many to seek service and also no doubt there was a basic thirst for adventure, and anywhere would do. Writing of his own experiences in the Thirty Years War, James Turner from Dalkeith said, in words that could probably stand for a widespread view, ‘I had swallowed without chewing, in Germanie, a very dangerous maxime, which militarie men there too much follow; which was, that so we serve our master honnestlie, it is no matter what master we serve.’12

The example of a forebear or a sibling could also lead a man to look overseas, and in some extended kindreds there emerged what amounted almost to a tradition of service in Europe. This is especially noticeable among the Gordons and the Leslies, but was also true of other families, and it is perhaps significant that such a practice was common in the North-East, facing as it does across the North Sea. At least nine Leslies served in arms, and several more made careers for themselves in Europe as clerics or in other civilian professions. This achievement was surpassed by the Gordons; a historian of this family lists over two hundred men of this name in arms in Europe over the span of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.13 There are many examples of brothers or cousins serving together: for example, Alexander Lord Spynie wrote to Alexander Innes of Cotts in Morayshire in the 1620s – the letter is not precisely dated – to say ‘Plese yow understand your soon George has offered his service to me . . . And seing the gentilmanis mynd was affectionat and bent to follow me, being my near cusing, I preferred him to ane coloris quhilk place will yeald him fourtie doloris a month upone conditione he sold list me threttie men upon my awin charges.’14

When we look at the rank and file, the ordinary recruits who made up the bulk of the numbers going overseas, we find that some were given little choice. In the case of the Innes family above, no doubt the thirty men young George had to recruit came from among his father’s tenants. For others, the situation was more stark – it was either go, or stay and be hanged. On 22 February 1621, two brothers, Henrie and Andro Allirdessis, were plucked from the Edinburgh Tolbooth by Ensign James Vetche for service with Captain Edmond in the Low Countries. The brothers, who had been sentenced for the ‘hoiching and goring’ of horses and oxen, agreed they would never return to Scotland without the king’s licence.15 A month later the Privy Council accepted the request of another prisoner, William Cuming, in jail for stealing cloth, to be allowed to enlist for service abroad. Two penniless debtors in Edinburgh prison in December 1642 volunteered to join Alexander Lord Saltoun for service in France, rightly seeing it better to take their chances abroad than starve behind bars at home.16 In March 1628 John Gowdie and his two sons were found guilty of the murder of a man in Smailholm and were handed over for service in Sweden; this case came to the notice of the Privy Council when the trio deserted and returned home.17 Two Stirling men, John and Gilbert Water, ‘convict of the stealing of seven sheep’, were banished in January 1643 and delivered to Captain James McMath ‘to be carried by him to the French wars’.18 The courts in the Borders handed down sentences of banishment to some of the miscreants and reivers who came before them, and possibly at least some of these enlisted; others may have fled overseas before the law caught up with them. James VI noted to his Privy Council in 1612 that Sir Robert Kerr of Ancrum in the Borders had executed some malefactors but had sent others to Sweden; the king confessed himself at a loss to understand its being done without a licence.19 We have seen how these men probably ended up being murdered by the Norwegian farmers in Gudbrandsdalen. In general, it is tempting to think that some of these unfortunates may have found in foreign fields the chance to make something of their lives, but the historical record is usually silent on their fates.

A few joined the colours to escape an awkward family problem or relationship. For such a reason Robert Monro, the Black Baron of Foulis in Easter Ross, went as a volunteer, although he seems to have found the campaigns in Germany to his liking and returned there later when he could possibly have stayed at home. A more common situation may have been the one described in the minutes of the Aberdeen Kirk Session in March 1621: ‘Efter incalling of God, James Nauchtie . . . declarit he wald not marie Mariorie Hendersone, nochtwithstanding of thair contract and proclamatioun of thair bandis, because he hes conducit him selff to gang to Bohemia to play the sogeor’.20 What Nauchtie probably experienced in Bohemia is explored in Chapter 8.

Other would-be soldiers sniffed an opportunity to chance their arm. Such a man might have been the Alexander Stewart, a former servant of the Duke of Lennox and Richmond, who wrote to his late master’s widow in February 1626 to beg her to provide him with money to allow him to proceed with raising men for the Earl of Nithsdale: ‘I have taken the boldnes humbly to entreat your Grace to put this last mark of your favor upone me in helping me with some money . . . without your Graces help I schall absolutly loose this occastione of my fortones’. It is not clear that the dowager duchess sent anything to Stewart but she admitted to her cousin that she had already done much for him, paying his debts and getting him out of prison, and although he clearly had not mended his rascally ways the duchess had a soft spot for him: ‘I shall wish hee may prosper . . . indeede I thinke it is happie for him to bee gone out of England’.21

The economic predicament of the younger son or of one born outside of wedlock, with little or no chance of inheriting either money or social status, probably operated among the poor as among the better off. Stories of how a man ‘from meane condition’ could find honour and wealth could well have encouraged enlistment. The seeking of honour was no idle pursuit in the seventeenth century and affected every rank. Robert Monro admired the courage of a humble porter called Mac-Weattiche who had come with Mackay’s Regiment from Foulis and who proved himself to be as adept with the sword as with the plough, ‘fearing nothing but discredit, and the down-looke or frowne of his Officers’.22 A good name won on the battlefield undoubtedly helped one pull oneself up a few notches on the many-runged ladder of status that characterised European society at the time and a few Scots were notably successful at acquiring one. During the siege of Stralsund in 1628, Monro said ‘we had no thought of gathering of money, but of gaining credit’. Men were always careful to establish their social position from the outset and some carried a document called a birth-brieve with them, a testimonial to parentage and ancestry, so that there could be no confusion or doubt when one introduced oneself abroad as a ‘gentleman’. One such birth-brieve in the register of the burgh of Aberdeen, dated 25 October 1639, assures the world that Captain George Gairdyne ‘now residen in Germanie’ is the lawful and legitimate son of a Banchory man of respectable pedigree. Another, in the same source, testifies that ‘Johne Sibbald . . . and David Sibbald, who (as is reporte) wes killed in the German warres . . . being serving . . . under the croun of Sweden, ar borne gentillmen and brother german lawfull sones to unquhill John Sibbald of Keir, and Janet Strachan his spous.’23

Many would have insisted they were drawing their swords for honourable reasons arising from political and religious allegiances, these two being so inextricably intertwined in the seventeenth century that they at times amounted to the same thing. How foreign troops were referred to in Europe reflected this. The Scots were usually regarded as allies by Protestant regimes: the Danes thought of British soldiers in the 1620s as hjaelptropper, or helping troops, reserving the term lejetropper, hired troops, for Germans; and the Swedish authorities called them värvade, enlisted troops. The Dutch referred to the British mercenaries as huursoldaten or hired soldiers. The conflicts that raged across Europe from the mid seventeenth century had roots in the struggle between the Catholic Church and the Reforming denominations and, as a nation that had officially adopted the Reformed Church in 1560, many Scots were zealous in defending the rights of their continental co-religionists. But Scotland had her Catholics as well, and in 1622 Archibald Campbell, the seventh Earl of Argyll, busied himself recruiting men to fight on the Spanish side in the Low Countries, a bold and rash activity as popular feeling in the country was firmly pro-Dutch. A Spanish galleon was attacked when it anchored in Leith roads; this was also the time when the future Charles I was wooing a Spanish Habsburg princess, and there was joy in Edinburgh when that courtship failed. The North-East, Huntly’s territory, also had a significant number of Catholic sympathisers with Spain and the Holy Roman Empire.

Dynastic politics, so often bound up with religion, were also crucial in shaping motivation. Robert Monro thought it honourable to fight for the ‘liberty of our Kings daughter, the Queene of Bohemia and her distressed Royall Issue, under the magnanimous King of Denmarke our Master, who for her Majesties libertie did hazard not onely his life but his crowne’, the Queen of Bohemia here being James VI’s daughter. Many of the Scots officers were, therefore, fighting for an entirely familiar cause, that of the Stuart dynasty. The presence of the Stuarts among the various dynastic houses vying for power on the European stage presented some Scots with a serious test of loyalty, irrespective of their personal faith. Sir Henry Bruce, in the service of the Holy Roman Empire in 1620 as governor of the town of Nikolsburg (now Mikulov in the Czech Republic), felt compelled to resign from this post to raise a regiment in support of Elizabeth Stuart against his former employer. He may also have had purely material reasons but it was clearly acceptable to put forward loyalty to a dynasty as a motive for action.

A few mercenaries may have gone just for the money or to escape crippling poverty and famine. In the Highlands, away from the more fertile districts along the east coast, life was always hard. A Gaelic proverb, probably dating from the time Lord Reay, the chief of the Mackays, was recruiting heavily for service in the Swedish army, summed up this situation: Na h-uile fear a theid a dhollaidh gheibh a dolar bho Mhac Aoidh – any man who is down on his luck can get a dollar from Mackay. Plundering was part and parcel of soldiering at the time but, even if one found little in the way of loot, there was every likelihood that in a regiment a man would at least be fed and clad. The reality often turned out to be more harsh but any appreciation of the fact that a soldier in the ranks was more likely to die from starvation or plague than from wounds was shoved to the back of the mind.

Usually the Privy Council concerned itself with recruitment matters at the behest of the monarch, levying men to serve overseas as instruments of Stuart foreign policy. This was especially true during the Thirty Years War. In April 1627 the Council strove to assist the recruitment efforts of the Earl of Nithsdale, Alexander Lord Spynie and James Sinclair of Murkle for Danish service by permitting the arrest as potential recruits of ‘all Egyptians [gypsies], strong and sturdie beggars and vagabonds, ydle and maisterless men wanting trades and competent meanes to live upon, and who in that respect ar unprofitable burthenis to the countrie’. Murkle was given leave to seek men in England but, even with the cooperation of the local authorities, he had trouble filling the ranks in Newcastle and Northumberland. The Privy Council had to step in again when rivalry developed between recruiting officers. Captain Blair of Spynie’s regiment and Captain Ogilvie of Nithsdale’s both sought men in their home territory of Angus until the Council at Nithsdale’s request allocated areas in August 1627 for them to operate in. Broadly, Murkle was assigned the north beyond the Cairngorms, Spynie a broad belt running from Argyll to Buchan, and Nithsdale the rest of the country.

Some of the groups targeted by recruiters, which were believed to contain deserters and fugitives who had changed their minds after previous recruitment, formed themselves into ‘societies and companies, armed with hacquebutts and pistolets and uther armour’ to resist.24 Sheriffs and bailies were called upon to throw all likely suspects into jail until their status could be ascertained, and at the same time skippers were warned not to give passage to fugitives to Ireland. The Privy Council also alerted the authorities to be aware of recruited men pretending to be servants or apprentices bound to masters, and thereby being set free. The Council declared that in effect any man who had taken the recruiter’s shilling was duty bound to go and, should a master come forward to claim a servant, that master should be obliged to give him up or agree to send him for military service after the expiry of the civilian contract. On the other hand, noting that recruiters ‘hes tane diverse lawfull subjects out of thair bedds, hes taine uthers from the pleugh, and some in thair travelling athort the cuntrie’, the Council issued in May 1627 a proclamation against forced enlistment. This was not effective in deterring all recruiters desperate to fill their quotas as, a month later, Patrick Adamsoun, a burgess of St Andrews, protested that his son had been taken by ‘some of the sojouris lifted for the Germane or Swaden wearis . . . and violentlie hurlit aboard of ane of their shippis’. Adamsoun knew that there was an ever-present danger of young men being seized in this way, ‘as ordinarlie hes beene done be people of that qualitie within this kingdome’. In the event, Adamsoun’s son escaped when a mutiny took place aboard the ship; the Privy Council confirmed his right to be free. Occasionally a protest against forceful recruitment could be successful, as in June 1643 when a group of eleven men complained to the Privy Council that they had been ‘tane by force and incarcerat within [Blackness Castle, a bleak stronghold by the Forth] wherein they ar yitt lying almost starving for want of maintenance, and their wyves and children ar begging through the countrie’. The Council sent men to investigate this case, with the result that five of the eleven were set free, the other six being judged to have freely volunteered.25 A landowner might also appeal on behalf of a recruit: in September 1642 the Countess of Home obtained the freedom of a ‘simple’ collier and two saltpan workers from her Dunglas estates who had been, apparently easily, persuaded to join the colours. The levying of men for European service was beset with almost every aspect of recruitment that was to become more familiar in relation to the activities of press gangs for naval service at a later time. It is also clear that finding men to fill the ranks of mercenary regiments was not always an easy task, and that recruitment fell unequally upon the poor. In July 1627 the Privy Council was alarmed to receive complaints from the upper classes in Edinburgh society that the recruiting captains had been seducing boys from the college to join the ranks without parental consent: ‘by thair alluring speeches [they] hes corrupted the boyes’, read the minutes of the Council, ‘whilk has bred suche a scandall upon the said Colledge and suche ane generall feare throughout the kingdome’ that families were sending their sons to St Andrews, Glasgow or Aberdeen to continue their education.26 A decade later, in 1637, as the Thirty Years War dragged on and as news filtered back of the often appalling conditions endured in it, the Privy Council was still issuing permission for the arrest of deserters from levies for Swedish service.