By
FRANS BENGTSSON
SOME time in the 1630's the Scottish
mercenary Colonel, Robert Monro, sat down to compose
a narrative -- "to the use of all worthie
Cavaliers favouring the laudable profession of Armes"
-- of the services in Germany of himself and his regiment, "the honourable
Scotch regiment, call'd McKeyes"
-- "first under the magnanimous King of Denmark, during his warres against the Emperour;
afterward, under the Invincible King of Sweden, during his Majesties life time;
and since, under the Directour Generall,
the Rex-chancellor Oxensterne and his Generalls." Monro had
returned to his fatherland in 1633, with Oxenstierna's commission to levy
troops in order to bring his depleted regiment up to full strength. It was
presumably the disaster at Nordlingen that intervened
to prevent his return: Swedish shares, we may suppose, no longer stood very
high on the mercenary market in the months that followed, and in that fatal
battle his regiment had been as good as wiped out. For lack of any better
occupation this unemployed Colonel now took to the pen, and proceeded, in a
narrative whose particularity does not make it the less moving, to reduce to
words the epic experiences of seven years, adding by way of adornment such
quotations, applications of military lore, pious reflections and tangled
pedantries of style as might reasonably be expected of a right-thinking
cavalier with some pretensions to education, some hazy recollection of his
youthful studies in the Latin tongue, and a clear eye for the inherent majesty
of his subject. His book appeared in London in 1637; its title, long as a
preface, is well-known to readers of A
Legend of Montrose, where Scott inserts it into his Introduction. It is
usually referred to simply as Monro his Expedition.
Colonel Monro
himself is not wholly unknown to those who remember their Scott; for it was he
who provided a good deal of the material for the immortal Dugald
Dalgetty -- "Rittmaster
Dugald Dalgetty of Drumthwacket", the valorous soldier of fortune and
military theorist, who returned to Scotland just in time to take part in
Montrose's campaigns, and to edify his brothers-in-arms with endless
reminiscences of the time when he followed "the invincible Gustavus Adolphus, the Lion of the North, and the Bulwark
of the Protestant Faith". Dalgetty is of course
by no means a mere copy of our Colonel: Scott has in great measure stylised
him. As a rhetorician he has been made better than his model, and can at any
moment produce well-turned periods of preposterous phraseology, to the frequent
imperilment of the gravity of his audience; while Monro
keeps to a more modest level and achieves the sublimely comic only by way of
exception. On the other hand Scott's hero, for artistic reasons, has been made
of coarser moral fibre than his original. Dalgetty is
a pure mercenary without ideals of any sort, pushing, valiant, and jealous of
his honour; proud of his profession, and imbued with the most minute interest
for its etiquette and technique, but completely devoid of any idea that the
trade of war may have a more ideal side. He fights as cheerfully for Papists, Arminians and Anabaptists as for Protestants -- provided
only that his wages be honestly paid, or at least that he be given now and then
a decent chance of plunder; for a moment he has even contemplated entering the
Turkish service; the religious element in him is limited to the Biblical
phraseology of his descriptions of Gustavus Adolphus.
Monro, on the other hand, takes a personal interest
in the success of the Protestant Cause, and is in general very ready to speak
of religion; he could never have reconciled himself to serving with Tilly or
Wallenstein; he notes with satisfaction that English and Scottish soldiers of
fortune prefer to follow the Swedish standard. On the battlefield of Breitenfeld, where Monro had
intervened effectively in the hand-to-hand struggle which brought Tilly's great
infantry attack to a standstill, he applied to the King after the victory was
won for permission to reinforce his depleted regiment by incorporating all
prisoners of British nationality. He obtained leave to do so, and applied to Banér, who had charge of the sorting-out of the prisoners.
And when, among all the thousands of prisoners available, the two of them
succeeded in dredging up only three Irishmen -- then Monro
was indeed somewhat downcast at a recruitment so poor from the point of view of
the service, but derived none the less a certain moral satisfaction from
telling the King of his ill-success, as being proof that the British Isles
produced in the main men who fought for the cause of righteousness.
The sword and the half-pike were
instruments whose use Monro understood down to the
smallest particular; with the pen he felt himself less at ease, and his
manoeuvres to get to grips with what he wishes to say can often become somewhat
tedious. His subject is akin to Xenophon's, his enthusiasm for Gustavus Adolphus is reminiscent of Joinville's for St
Louis; but while the lucidity of the Athenian and the easy conversational style
of the Seneschal of Champagne have put their military memoirs among the fixed
stars in the literary firmament, Monro has not
succeeded in making his narrative of the campaigns in which he took part much
more than a forgotten curiosity of literature. No subject is great enough and
interesting enough in itself to make a book readable. It may be treated as
seriously and conscientiously as you please; but a certain literary instinct --
often almost impossible to detect, but still decisive for the reader -- must
have been operative at the moment when events were clothed in words, if any
such narrative is to escape the fate of becoming no more than a source for the
historian. Few men have been less affected with literary arrièrre-pensée than a man such
as Joinville when he dictated his book on King Louis; in so far as he troubled
himself about the arrangement of his material at all, he usually succeeded in
putting the cart before the horse, and in his narrative he chattered away, just
as things occurred to him, with supreme disregard of other considerations.
Nevertheless his book emerged as great literature, partly perhaps because he
had in comparison with a writer such as Monro one
great advantage: as became a gentilhomme in his day, he could neither read nor write. He
spoke to his secretary in the tone of a man of the world, easily and with a
charming lightness, entirely fascinated by his subject, and the result was
readable from start to finish. But Monro, full of
Latin quotations, and with Frontinus and Quintus Curtius at his finger-ends, saw (thanks to his studies) the
portals of the land of pedantry open wide before him; and with much painful
care he has succeeded in rendering his book largely unreadable, unless the
reader bring considerable patience to the task. Parallel to every narrative
chapter in his book runs a chapter of Observations,
highly repetitious and packed with didactic verbiage; but containing
nevertheless matter which makes it impossible simply to skip them in the
reading. Thus Monro spreads over the events he
describes a veil of heaviest baroque ornamentation, obscuring them from the eye
of the reader; and it is only rarely that he permits a more or less clear image
to slip through.
Nevertheless Monro
is a writer worthy of all respect -- a barbarized Xenophon from an age when
literary products blossomed only with extreme rarity in the tented field. In
bibliographies of the Thirty Years' War his book occupies an almost unique
place: memoir-writing by active participants -- whether in war or politics -- seems
to have been almost exclusively confined to France. He stands therefore as a
virtually unique spokesman for a great confraternity: many inarticulate
spirits, many simple-minded men of the sword in him find a voice, and the
uncomplicated philosophy and ethics of the honourable craft of arms is given
clear expression in his reflections and commentaries.
The regiment whose fortunes Monro relates (he commanded one half of it throughout the
period of its Swedish service) was levied by Lord Reay, and was originally
intended to be used as reinforcement for Count Mansfeld,
at that time Protestantism's one remaining champion in Germany. But by the time
it was brought up to full strength and embarked at Cromarty -- in the autumn of
1626 -- Mansfeld's restless life had already closed,
and instead they steered their course to Christian IV of Denmark, then busily
engaged in raising men for his German war. Monro
began his career as Lieutenant under "the worthie
and well-born Captaine, Thomas McKenzie of Kildon"; but his own merits -- assisted by sword and
pestilence -- brought him quick promotion, and after little more than a year he
became Lieutenant-Colonel, and commanded the regiment in Lord Reay's absence.
Lord Rcay tended to be mainly absent. Men of rank
such as himself raised regiments and lent them the lustre of their name, and
arranged the details of high finance with any Kings who might be interested;
but for routine service on the battlefield or at the head of the
storming-columns they rarely had the time to spare: such things fell to the lot
of simpler folk such as Monro. The clan of Monro was numerously represented in the regiment: the
subalterns, N.C.O.'s and privates of that name, whom the conscientious Colonel
notes down in the course of his narrative as dead, are as the sands of the sea
in number. The regiment included no less than three members of the family who
afterwards became Colonels under Gustavus Adolphus:
Robert Monro the Lord of Fowles,
head of the house, called "the Black Baron", who had been compelled
by financial difficulties to mortgage his estate and enlist as a soldier, and
who died of wounds at Ulm; John Monro of Obstell, who fell at Wetterau on
the Rhine; and the author himself, longer-lived than most of the others -- though
he was rarely out of the way when an important action was to be fought.
During the Danish period of the war
the regiment's experiences in the field were certainly extremely arduous, but
on the whole they were satisfactory to Monro, who
looked at them wholly from the regiment's point of view. The campaign itself
was as unfortunate as possible; but the regiment covered itself with glory at
the storm of sundry places and in a number of rearguard
actions. The Scots soon won the reputation of a picked regiment; and the Danish
command relied largely upon them in moments of difficulty, gave them the posts
of danger, and allowed them to bear the brunt of the fighting without
reinforcement for much longer periods than in the case of other troops. All of
which is no doubt very honourable for a regiment, and redounds to the glory of
Scotland too; but even Scots have limits to their endurance and their taste for
fighting, and once or twice in Oldenburg Monro seems
to have felt that here was too much of a good thing. When Tilly advanced into
Holstein the regiment sustained a serious disaster. Three of its companies were
defending Bredenberg, a fortified castle in those
parts; after a summons to capitulate had been rejected, the Imperialists
stormed the castle and put to death every man, woman and child inside it; only
one ensign escaped to carry a report to the regiment. What particularly
irritated the Scots about this was that their regimental chaplain had been
slain with the rest, although he had been found on his knees, praying for his
life with uplifted hands. Shortly after this Monro in
his turn stormed a place in Holstein garrisoned by the Imperialists (disguised
in his narrative under the name of Aickilfourd); the
Scots now, by way of quid pro quo, refused to give quarter; the Imperialists at
last barricaded themselves in a church; and Monro,
after a short struggle with his conscience, caused the door to be broken open
with battering-rams: no place, he felt, could be sufficiently sacred to afford
sanctuary to people who killed regimental chaplains. These two episodes
provided a sort of prelude in miniature to the similar incidents at Neu-Brandenburg and Frankfurt on the Oder in which the
regiment was to play a part a few years later.
With the King of Denmark Monro was well-pleased; he was not, perhaps, much of a
commander, but wages were punctually paid, and he took pains to arrange for
good quartering. His standing epithet with Monro is
"the Magnanimous"; his appearance was truly regal; his wisdom,
carefulness and tenacity win Monro's commendation. He
was, besides, in his dealings with honourable cavaliers an amiable and
loquacious gentleman; Monro ate at his table, and
even on one occasion, when they were quartered on Laaland,
had the honour of a visit from the King which lasted until 3 o'clock in the
morning; upon which Monro's only comment is that the
King departed without saying farewell -- a piece of absent-mindedness which is
not perhaps entirely incapable of explanation, in view of the hour and His
Danish Majesty's prowess with the bottle. Monro, it
is clear, never had better quarters than those he enjoyed in Denmark -- at
least until the march through the Rhineland in the autumn of 1631. Minor
clashes with their Danish hosts and with other regiments did indeed occur from
time to time, but they appeared almost as an agreeable break in an existence
which might otherwise have declined into torpid luxuriousness. Upon his return
from Holstein, Monro (he had just got his majority)
was sent with a portion of the regiment to Assens, on
the island of Fyn, where he found another Major with some squadrons of the Rhinegrave's cavalry. The question as to which of them had
the right to command the garrison soon produced a coolness between the two
Majors, a coolness which communicated itself to their devoted troops; so that
the ensuing street-fights soon showed a daily casualty-return of from four to
five killed per regiment. Major-General Slammersdorff
was forced to quit his headquarters at Odense, to hold a court-martial, and to
pronounce a verdict in Monro's favour, before this
civil war could be brought to a conclusion. When next these two regiments
encountered one another -- both were by that time in Swedish service -- these
little irritations seem to have been forgotten; or perhaps Gustavus
Adolphus and his order-loving Field-Marshal Horn had effective prophylactics
against private diversions of this sort.
When from time to time Danish
burghers and peasants grew exasperated at the Scots billetted
upon them, they had at first recourse to the obvious remedy of thrashing such
of them as they encountered alone; but when this proved in the long run not to
be a very paying proposition, they hit upon a better method, and brought
accusations of rape. In one case Monro lost three men
at a stroke, on account of a single peasant girl; the court-martial in
Copenhagen, which had called in Monro as assessor,
allowed itself to be persuaded to defer sentence on grounds of insufficient
evidence. However, when this had been agreed on, and Monro
had left Copenhagen, the court nevertheless caused the accused to be summarily
hanged. Monro shook his head at this way of doing
business, partly because he considered the accusations to be false, but mainly
because he felt that the court-martial had acted in an ungentlemanly fashion
towards him by arranging for the hanging privily and
in his absence.
Monro in
this connection is concerned to point out that the machinery for the
administration of justice was by no means lacking in such a regiment as his;
and his account of how it was organized is of its kind a good picture of his
age:
To conclude this observation, there
are lawes and justice observed as well among souldiers, as in other governments, and the strictest
justice that is, with least partiality: our lawes are
the Kings Articles, we are sworne to obey our
President or Judge, he amongst us present having the command, to whom his
Majesty joynes, as assessor to the Iudge, an Auditor for doing of justice, our Assisers or Iury we have not to seeke (viz.) a competent number or thirteene
of our owne Regiment, Officers, Captaines,
Lievetenants, Antients,
Sergeants and Corporalls, till our number be full:
our Proforce or Gavilliger
brings in the complaints, and desires justice, in his Majesties name, to the
party offended, and to his Master the Kings Majesty or Generall,
that fuers or leads the warre;
and every Regiment is bound to have an executioner of their owne,
which if the Regiment wants, the Colonell is obliged
to hire another to doe the execution for paiment, and sometimes as the crime and the person is
respected, that is to suffer, he is honoured to be shot by his camerades, or beheaded, not suffering an executioner to
come neare him. Other slight punishments we enjoyne for slight faults, put in execution by their Camerades; as the Loupegarthe,
when a Souldier is stripped naked above the waste,
and is made to runne a furlong betwixt two hundred Souldiers, ranged alike opposite to others, leaving a space
in the midst for the Souldier to runne
through, where his Camerades whip him with small
rods, ordained and cut for the purpose by the Gavilliger,
and all to keepe good order and discipline; for other
lesser faults, there is ordained slighter punishments, as Irons, standing at a poast, his hands bound up above his head; likewise sitting
on a Treen or woodden Mare,
in some publicke place, to make him ashamed of his
fault: As also sometimes to stand six or seaven houres longer than ordinary at the centric posture; as I
was once made to stand in my younger yeares at the
Louver gate in Paris, being then in the Kings Regiment of the Guards, passing
my prenticeship, for sleeping in the morning, when I
ought to have Beene at my excercise,
for punishment I was made stand from eleven before none, to eight of the Clocke in the night Centry, Armed
with Corslet, Head-piece, Bracelets, being Iron to
the teeth, in a hot summers day, till I was weary of my life, which ever after
made me the more strict in punishing those under my Command.
In May 1628 the regiment received
orders to march with all speed to Elsinore, whence it was shipped to serve as garrison
in Stralsund, which at that time was menaced by the attacks of Wallenstein, and
had been taken under the protection of Christian IV. Here Monro
and his men were to experience their severest trials in the Danish service.
Wallenstein, who had sworn to take the town "were it grappled to Heaven
with iron chains", pushed the siege with great fury. Three attempts at
storm were made upon the positions held by Monro;
outworks were taken and retaken in desperate nocturnal encounters with pike,
club and partisan; the regiment in a few weeks lost more than half its
strength. But Scottish blood did not flow in vain: the town was held, despite
Wallenstein's efforts, and the Imperialists, as Monro
points out with satisfaction, lost in their attacks at least thrice as many men
as he. When the crisis was at its worst, he was cheered by the arrival of a
famous fellow-countryman, Alexander Leslie, Major-General in the Swedish
service, who had been sent with sufficient aid by Gustavus
Adolphus; and Monro in reporting this unexpected
deliverance compares Stralsund with Sara the wife of Abraham, who was made
fruitful when she least expected it. The Danish troops were now withdrawn; and
with such of his men as survived -- and, for his own part, with a musket-ball
in one knee -- Monro returned to Copenhagen. Here
Lord Reay now appeared with a large number of new levies which he had raised on
a recruiting tour in Scotland, and the regiment was again brought up to its
full strength of twelve companies. In the winter of 1628-1629 Monro lay in quarters in "Malline
[Malmo] in Skonland", with a couple of companies
in "Alzenburg" [Helsingborg] and one in
"London" [Lund] in the same kingdom. Malmo makes a favourable
impression on the observant Lieutenant-Colonel: the food in burgher homes he
finds excellent without being extravagant; silver articles were plentiful and
servants numerous; while the better class of people made laudable efforts to
imitate the King, as far as possible, in dress, manners and appearance.
In June 1629, when peace with the
Emperor was imminent, the regiment was paid off from the Danish Service; since
the Colonel was as usual absent on a visit to England Monro
on his own initiative sent an envoy to enquire into the possibilities of
employment with the King of Sweden. Gustavus Adolphus
sent by return an affirmative answer, journey-money, and orders; and thereupon
half the regiment sailed to East Prussia and was installed as garrison in Braunsberg, while the other half was sent to Stockholm,
whither Monro followed it soon after in company with
his Colonel, who had by this time returned. Here His Majesty showed off his
infantry, and demonstrated for their benefit
his new order of Discipline of Briggades, then first brought in use, at which time his
Majesty having showen unto my Colonell
and his Officers, the Order of his Majesties discipline, in which Order, his
Majesty commanded to put my Colonels Regiment, which was presently obeyed,
insomuch, that his Majesty was so well pleased with the capacity of my Colonels
Souldiers going so orderly and readily to their
Duties, that his Majestic did wish in open presence of the Army, that all his
Foot were so well disciplined as my Colonels Regiment: for which, his Majesty
would bee content to be indebted of a huge great summe of money, and having caused the Regiment march by
towards their Quarters his Maiesty did mightily and
much praise the Regiment for their good Order; saying, hee
hoped one day, to get good service of those men for his monies . . .
The King went over to Germany soon
after; Lord Reay accompanied him with the available half of the regiment; Monro was sent to East Prussia to take over the independent
command of his six companies there, with orders to rejoin
the King with them as soon as possible. He presented himself to the
"Rex-Chancellor", who was installed as Governor of that province, and
a few months after the opening of the campaign was ready to embark his men at Pillau, whence they steered for Wolgast
in Pomerania.
He reached the Pomeranian coast in a
heavy storm, which caused the ship to spring a leak, and finally piled it up on
a sandbank, whence Monro with great difficulty made
his way ashore; his arms and men were indeed retrieved, but all his baggage and
ammunition was lost, and in this condition he found himself isolated on the
coast, twenty German miles east of Stettin (where the King was) and with
enemies ensconced everywhere in the surrounding country. He succeeded,
nevertheless, in extricating himself adroitly from his precarious position, and
made contact with the main army; and despite the crossness of fate he essays on
this occasion a short lyrical flight:
Having thus by the providence of God
happily landed againe on the faire, fertill, and spacious Continent of Dutchland,
with a hand-full of old experimented Soldiers, able to endure all misery,
toile, or travell, being valourous
to undertake any perill or danger, they were to be
commanded upon, being led by such a Generall as
GUSTAVUS the Invincible, their new Master was: (under whose command and conduct,
as their supreame Leader, and me, as his Majesties
and my Colonels inferiour Officer, they marched from
the Coast of Pomerne, out of Rougenvalde,
through Dutchland, unto the foot of the Alpes in Schwabland).
Alas!, he
sighs upon a later occasion, had but our master not been taken from us,
"the King of Captaines and the Captain of
Kings", we should have crossed the Alps at that time, and paid Rome a
visit.
From the moment when Monro enters upon his long march through Germany in company
with the King's army -- to which he and his regiment continued to be attached
almost until the battle of Lutzen -- his tone is
pitched higher than before, and his attitude to the trade of war undergoes a
certain transformation. During the Danish campaigns it is his regiment, its
weal or woe, its battle honours, which is all in all to him: the army as a
whole scarcely exists for him, so little does he feel himself to be a part of
it; and in enterprises common to them all he takes but little interest. When he
writes "we", he invariably means simply "the regiment". But
under Gustavus Adolphus he at once sees the
operations as a whole, feels a strong esprit de corps: when now he writes
"we", he means the whole army. Naturally he continues to use every
suitable opportunity to vent his purely Scottish sentiments; but they do not
now stand in the way of his corporate loyalty: the King may certainly be proud
to possess such a regiment as Monro's, but on the
other hand Monro takes unbounded pride in serving
such a King -- of never dying memory . . . Illustrissimus
among Generals . . . the Phoenix of his time. The exploits of the Scots of
course claim the greater part of his space, for he narrates only what he
personally has witnessed; but he freely admits that others than the Scots can
distinguish themselves: the German foot, particularly those of the blue and
yellow brigade, are not the men to be daunted by bagatelles; the Swedes too
bear themselves worthily in the open field and in attacks on fortified
positions; and the Finns, whom he calls Haggapells,
are useful men on horseback, valuable in dangerous enterprises, and well able
to meet the cuirassiers of Holck and Montecucculi on level terms.
Within his own branch of the
military art Monro has very definite views on the
differing value of musketeers and pike-men, which together composed, in almost
equal proportions, the infantry of that age. Musketeers, he considers, are no
doubt serviceable in many ways, especially to send forward ahead of the army as
skirmishers; the new Swedish system of interspersing the cavalry with musketeer
platoons is also highly to be recommended. But when there is really serious
work to be done, the musketeers reveal their limitations: in large-scale
frontal attacks on fortified towns, in particular, they show a lack of sense of
duty and a certain insecurity in morale, which sometimes it is impossible
wholly to counteract; they have an ingrained tendency to scatter in search of
plunder as soon as they have got inside the ramparts, leaving standards and
officers to take care of themselves; while pikemen
have better self-control. And in general Monro holds
the view that the pike is a far nobler weapon than the musket:
Pike-men being resolute men, shall
be ever my choyce in going on execution, as also in
retiring honourably with disadvantage from an enemy, especially against
horsemen: and we see offtimes, . . . that when musketiers doe disbandon, of greedinesse to make
booty, the worthy pike-men remaine standing firme with their Officers, guarding them and their Colours,
as being worthy the glorious name of brave Souldiers,
preferring vertue before the love of gold, that vanisheth while vertue remaineth . . . The Pike [is] the most honourable of all
weapons, and my chaise in day of battell, and leaping
a storme or entering a breach with a light brest-plate and a good head-piece, being seconded with good
fellows, I would choose a good halfe-Pike to enter
with.
In mid-winter the King broke up from
Stettin with a portion of his army, and moved forward in snow-storms and severe
cold to Neu-Brandenburg, which was easily taken.
According to Monro, the officers and men who composed
its garrison were, in a military point of view, the most wretched collection he
had ever set eyes on; but (he adds) that was no more than was to be expected,
since they consisted exclusively of poor simple Italians, who could hardly be
expected to have much idea of warfare. Nevertheless the garrison duties of this
battered troop had left ample leisure for plundering the surrounding country;
and hence the leading elements of the King's troops came upon considerable
quantities of money and gold chains. Despite the feeble resistance Monro had been profoundly impressed by the whole operation,
and here breaks into a long dithyramb on the King's unique endowments as a
commander. "Such a Master would I gladlie serve;
but such a Master," he adds sadly, "I shall hardly see againe." Knyphausen was now
put in command of the place; he was in Monro's view a
man well experienced in the science of war, and in his company a cavalier with
his wits about him could pick up many a useful lesson, for all that he did not
love Scots. It was Knyphausen who formulated the
dictum that in war an ounce of luck is worth a pound of calculation; but he was
himself invariably unlucky, and not least at Neu-Brandenburg.
That half of Lord Reay's regiment which had come over from Sweden was installed
as garrison, after which the King turned his attention elsewhere. Shortly
afterwards Tilly appeared before the town and took steps to make himself master
of it; Knyphausen delayed too long in treating, and
in the final storm almost the entire garrison was put to the sword: only the
commandant himself and a number of officers were spared. This was a hard blow
for Monro, who here lost many old comrades-in-arms;
but he had not long to wait before taking his share in the great revenge at
Frankfurt.
The storming of Frankfurt on the
Oder, on 3 April 1631, is the most successful piece of narrative in the whole
book: it was an event in which Monro personally
played an important part. His regiment, or half-regiment, formed -- now that
the King had finally settled the composition of his tactical unit -- together
with three other regiments, "the Scotch Brigade", under the command
of John Hepburn, a chivalrous and valiant gentleman, and a boyhood friend of Monro. Besides the Scotch Brigade, there were present in
this action the Blue and Yellow Brigades; and with the cavalry the King had
10,000 men outside the walls; while inside them Field-Marshal Tiefenbach with 9,000 men awaited the onslaught with the
utmost composure. Monro here inserts a long
strategical discussion on the extreme daring of the enterprise, with Tilly
encamped at no great distance, strong in numbers and no less so in the terror
inspired by his success at Neu-Brandenburg; and
expatiates on the extraordinary nicety of the King's calculations and general
dispositions. Since there was no time for a regular siege, either Tiefenbach must be lured into the open, or the town must be
stormed without delay; but neither of these possibilities appeared immediately
practicable. After the advancing Swedish army had approached within one German
mile of the town, it was drawn up in battle-order by the King in person, and
then in all its splendour -- the memory of which seems to have been
particularly vivid when Monro wrote his book -- advanced
to offer battle with martial pomp and ceremony. But Tiefenbach
was not to be drawn, and the infantry was therefore sent forward to take up
suitable positions for a storm. The Scotch Brigade was to attack one of the
main gates of the town. It was required to cross a moat, climb an earth rampart
furnished with palisades, traverse the space between this and the town wall,
and then, if all went well, force its way into the town itself on the heels of
the retreating foe. The operation was under the command of Banér.
When after a day or two all preparations were complete, the artillery gave the
signal for the assault by firing a general salvo, and the Brigades, veiled in
smoke, began to advance upon their objectives. The Blue and Yellow Brigade,
"being esteemed of all the Army both resolute and couragious
in all their exploits", came up against Walter Butler's Irish, and were
twice beaten back with great fury and severe losses; it was not until the
greater part of Butler's men had been hewn down and he himself taken prisoner,
with a pike wound through the body, that they succeeded in mastering the
resistance of these energetic sons of Erin; "and truely,"
declares Monro, "had all the rest stood so well
to it, as the Irish did, we had returned with great losse,
and without victory." On his own section of the front they made shorter
work of a less heroic resistance, and the Scots quickly found themselves
immediately before the gates; but here the enemy resolutely barred the way,
supported by a couple of small cannon placed there, and by "a flake of
small shot, that shot a dozen of shot at once" -- clearly some sort of
contemporary machine-gun or multiple-barrelled weapon. Monro
was the first to enter this somewhat uninviting thoroughfare:
. . . the valorous Hepburne, leading on the battaile
of pikes, of his owne Briggad,
being advanced within halfe a pikes length to the doore, at the entry he was shot above the knee, that he was
lame of before, which dazling his senses with great
Paine forced him to retire, who said to me, bully Monro,
I am shot, whereat I was wondrous sorry, his Major then, a resolute Cavalier,
advancing to enter was shot dead before the doore,
whereupon the Pikes falling backe and standing still,
Generall Banier being by,
and exhorting all Cavaliers to enter, Colonell Lumsdell and I, being both alike on the head of our owne Colours, he having a Partizan
in his hand, and I a halfe Pike, with a head-piece,
that covered my head, commanding our Pikes to advance we lead on shoulder to
shoulder, Colonell Lumsdell
and I fortunately without hurt, enter the Port, where at our entry some I know
received their rest, and the enemy forced to retire in confusion, being
astonished at our entry, they had neither wit nor
courage, as to let downe the Portecullis
of the great Port behinde them, so that we entering
the streets at their heeles, we made a stand till the
body of our Pikes were drawne up orderly, and flancked with Musketiers, and
then wee advanced our Pikes charged, and our Musketiers
giving fire on the flancks, till the enemy was put in
disorder. After us entered Generall Banier, with a fresh body of Musketiers,
he followed the enemy in one street, and Lumsdell and
I in another, having rancountred the enemy againe, they being well beaten, our Officers tooke nine colours of theirs, which were to be presented to
his Majestie, and the most part of the Souldiers were cut off, in revenge of their crueltie used at New Brandenburg, but some of their
Officers got quarters, such as they had given to ours.
However, even this glorious day
proved no unmixed pleasure for Monro; for the streets
were choked, not only with corpses, but with the baggage of the Imperialists --
lines of carts and supply-waggons, where a man might pick up "silver
services, jewels, gold, money and clothing". It was too much for the
soldiery to resist, especially as they had had the King's own word for it that
a good time was coming. The ranks around Monro
quickly thinned, as men slipped off upon their own private concerns; officers
were no longer obeyed; by way of increasing the festive spirit, or in order to
obtain more light for ransacking the darker recesses, the excited troops set
the town alight in various places; some of their own standards were lost in the
confusion, and could not be found until next morning, and in some regiments not
a man remained with the colours -- all of which is gravely deplored by Monro, who frankly admits that on that evening his men were
utterly out of hand.
When towards evening the King rode
into the town with the Rhinegrave's cavalry, he
appears to have felt no more than modified rapture at what he saw there; he
issued a number of stringent orders, but since there were relatively few men
within earshot, it took some time before they produced any perceptible effect.
A few days later, after the taking of Landsberg,
which had proceeded in a more orderly fashion, he had recovered his good
humour, and
on the Sabbath day in the afternoone suffered the principall
Officers of his Armie (such as Generall
Banier, and Lievetenant Generall Bawtis, and divers
others) to make merry, though his Majestie did drinke none himselfe; for his custome was never to drinke much,
but very seldome, and upon very rare considerations,
where he had some other plot to effectuate, that concerned his advancement, and
the weale of his State.
It is of course no accident that Banér and Baudissin are mentioned
in connection with this carouse: they were both mighty men with the bottle. The
Scots too had famous performers in this way: Major-General Patrick Ruthwen, called Pater Rotwein,
who in spite of the sternest competition quickly secured for himself an
acknowledged pre-eminence as a tippler: he had a head of iron, and could take
incredible quantities. He and Baudissin (who was
pretty near on the same level) often drank together; but after the King's death
Baudissin took his discharge and entered the Saxon
service, presumably attracted by the reputation of the electoral cellars. The
two boon-companions were to meet once again: during one of Baner's
earlier campaigns, when each was in command of an independent corps, (though
now on opposite sides), they met early one morning in a very odd battle near Domitz; and here Ruthwen, being a
shade the soberer of the two, seized the opportunity to add one last brilliant
victory -- though this time of a rather different sort-- to his earlier
triumphs over Baudissin. Monro,
for his part, lingers with pleasure over the companionable carouses he enjoyed
when he lay quartered next to Axel Lillie, at Treptow
in the Mark of Brandenburg:
a Towne . . . renowned of old, for
brewing of good beere, which during our residence
there with the Swedes, we did merrily try, till that we had both quarrelling
and swaggering amongst our selves, who before our
departure again were made good friends, reserving our enmity, till we saw our
common enemy.
Axel Lillie's friendship with Monro seems to have stood the test; for six months later,
before Mainz, he was sitting in Monro's redoubt -- he
had dropped in for a pipe and a chat -- when a cannon-ball came and took off
his leg.
Immediately after the capture of
Frankfurt Monro was given a taste of the King's hot
temper, when he was detailed to put in order a redoubt outside Landsberg, and despite unremitting labour throughout the
night did not succeed in having it ready for the King's early morning
inspection. The King took him severely to task, and would hear of no
explanations or excuses; but when later on he understood all the circumstances,
he was sorry for his hard words. Monro shows no
resentment; on the contrary, he thinks all the better of the King for his
impatience, which, he says, always caused him to press on the work on
field-fortifications to the utmost of his power. And at the same time he
concedes that in the matter of digging the German soldiers are handier than the
Scots: this is the only instance in which he concedes a superiority to any
other nation. And indeed it is one of the King's most notable qualities as a
commander, that he can induce his men -- even the mercenaries -- to wield the
spade without wages:
Likewise his Majestie
was to be commended for his diligence by night and by day, in setting forwards
his workes; for he was ever out of patience, till once
they were done, that he might see his Souldiers
secured and guarded from their enemies; for when he was weakest, he digged most in the ground; for in one yeare
what at Swede, Francford, Landsberg,
Brandenburg, Verbum, Tanner-monde, Wittenberg, and Wirtzburg,
he caused his Souldiers to workc
more for nothing, than the States of Holland could get wrought in three yeares, though they should bestow every yeare
a Tunne of gold: and this he did not onely to secure his Souldiers
from the enemy, but also to keepe them from idlenesse.
After sundry less colourful episodes
from the campaign in Brandenburg and the march to Berlin, Monro's
simple epic winds deviously on to the camp at Werben
-- a camp of a type which was invented by Gustavus
Adolphus, and was considered by contemporaries as a miracle of
field-fortification. Werben not only confirmed Monro in his enthusiasm for the King's military genius, but
afforded him a proof of his singular good fortune in everything he undertook,
so that he might indeed fitly be called Mars his Minion and Fortunes Favourite.
For in Brandenburg the plague had raged so hot, that Monro
lost thirty men of his regiment in a single week; while in Werben,
only six days' march away, every trace of it vanished at once from the whole
army, which could not be considered otherwise than as a miracle from God. Tilly
showed himself before the camp, with a view to trying an assault; but he was
much harassed by anxiety for his food-supply, since the King's cavalry had
swept the country clear beforehand, and after considering the matter for a day
or two he sullenly retired. The Swedes soon broke camp to follow him; and
passing the Elbe at Wittenberg, there made their junction with the army of the
Elector of Saxony. The Saxon army, when they first met it drawn up in
parade-order, looked brand-new, and glittered amazingly, while the King's men
looked worn and tattered; "nevertheless," says Monro,
"we thought not the worse of ourselves." And now at last they were
ready, as he puts it, to advance "conjunctis viribus" against the champion of the House of Austria
and the Catholic League; and the united armies set themselves in motion towards
Breitenfeld.
"As the Larke
begunne to peepe, the
seventh of September 1631" the drums of the Swedish army beat to arms; and
after the men had fortified their bodies with victuals, and their souls with
meditation and the confession of their sins, they covered -- not without some
difficulty -- the last piece of the way to Tilly's positions. By noon the
armies were ranged front to front, and the exchange of cannonading could begin;
this was sufficiently trying for the foot, who during a wait of some hours had
nothing to do but to stand still and fill the gaps in their ranks; "the
sound of such musick being scarce worth the hearing,
though martiall I confesse,
yet, if you can have so much patience, with farre lesse danger, to reade this dutie to an end, you shall finde
the musicke well paide; but
with such Coyne, that the players would not stay for a world to receive the
last of it, being over-joyed in their flying."
The Scotch Brigade was placed in the
second line, but after the armies came to grips had the good luck to get a
better chance to distinguish itself than the Brigades further forward, which
were never engaged at all. For when Tilly, after crushing the Saxons, sent the
mass of his infantry crashing into Horn's wing, it was the Scots, among others,
whom the King himself sent forward to check them. And Monro
has succeeded in capturing a sort of smoke-swept impression of the obscurity
and confusion of a seventeenth-century battlefield, in his description of the
moment when his men came to grips with Tilly's tercios:
The enemies Battaile
standing firme, looking on us at a neere distance, and seeing the other Briggads
and ours wheeleing about, making front unto them,
they were prepared with a firme resolution to receive
us with a salve of Cannon and Muskets; but our small Ordinance being twice
discharged amongst them, and before we stirred, we charged them with a salve of
muskets, which was repaied, and incontinent our Briggad advancing unto them with push of pike, putting one
of their battailes in disorder, fell on the
execution, so that they were put to the route.
I having commanded the right wing of
our musketiers, being my Lord of Rhees
and Lumsdells, we advanced on the other body of the
enemies, which defended their Cannon, and beating them from their Cannon, we
were masters of their Cannon, and consequently of the field, but the smoake being great, the dust being raised, we were as in a darke cloude, not seeing the halfe of our actions, much lesse
discerning, either the way of our enemies, or yet the rest of our Brig-gads:
whereupon, having a drummer by me, I caused him beate
the Scots march, till it cleered up, which recollected
our friends unto us, and dispersed our enemies being overcome; so that the Briggad coming together, such as were alive missed their
dead and hurt Camerades.
According to Monro
the King attributed the victory (under God) to the Swedish and Finnish cavalry;
but among the foot it was the Scotch Brigade which earned most thanks and
commendation. In his general discussion of the battle Monro
enumerates a long list of reasons for the victory, mixing impartially the
religious with the military and technical; but the principal cause in his view
is still the King himself, who in his own person was worth more than twenty
thousand men:
O would to GOD I had once such a
Leader againe to fight such an other day in this old quarrel! And though I died
standing, I should be perswaded, I died well; . . .
he that would labour an Army as Gustavus did, he will
finde fruite, yea even the
best that groweth under the Empire, good Rhenish and
Necker wine, not onely for himselfe,
but for the meanest Souldier, and that unto excesse, which hath made me sometimes complaine
more of the plenty our Souldiers had after this
victory, through the abuse of it, then ever I did before for any penury.
The long triumphal progress after
the victory, through Thuringia, the Rhineland and Bavaria, brought Monro many experiences, often worth pursuing through his
clotted text, but hardly on the same plane as Frankfurt and Breitenfeld.
He commanded the palace-guard in Munich, when the King held his court there in
company with the Winter King of Bohemia; and he was still with the royal army
at Nuremberg. But he was not present at Lutzen: it
was the first major action in which the King had not had Scots to rely upon, as
Monro points out in his explanation of why the battle
turned out as it did. He was at that time in South Germany, serving under Horn,
and among other places was plaguing the diocese of Dunklespiel
on the Upper Rhine -- the same diocese in which Ritt-master
Dugald Dalgetty had so
enjoyed himself with the episcopal property. After the King's death a shadow
began to creep across an existence which hitherto had been uniformly sunny; and
after Nordlingen the survivors of Monro's
regiment numbered less than a company -- a twelfth of the strength with which
it had entered the Swedish service. If the King had lived, he must have
conceded that the hope he had expressed when he mustered them in Stockholm had
been abundantly fulfilled: from this regiment he had gotten good service for
his money.
Translated by Michael Roberts
From A Walk to an Ant
Hill and Other Essay, 1950
