Chapter X: 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.'