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  • Scots in Habsburg Service, 1618–1648
  • Edward M. Furgol
Scots in Habsburg Service, 1618–1648. By David Worthington. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2004. ISBN 90-04-13575-8. Maps. Glossary. Appendixes. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xix, 330. $114.00.

Alexis Grosjean has produced a magisterial piece transforming the previous analysis of Scots in military service to Sweden in the 1563-1654 period. Her research, spread throughout archives across northern Europe, indicates that the Scottish involvement in the Swedish armed forces lasted longer, and was more extensive, than historians have thought. Following the Reformation, Scotsmen seeking military employment shifted from France to Dutch and Swedish service. Grosjean tends to treat her subject in group terms, given its scope, while concentrating on important individuals.

The book divides into two sections—the first (chapters one to five) dealing with Scots' assistance to Sweden (1563-1654), and the second (chapters six to eight) looking at Swedish help to the Scots (1638-50). As early as 1586 Sweden had 6,000 Scots in its armies. Already in 1574 a Scottish officer had been ennobled by the Swedes (social advancement being one of the attractions of serving them), and in 1578 the Swedes made the first land grants to Scots. Five years later a Scots officer was selected for the diplomatic service, an activity that remained common until the 1640s. By the 1590s Scots had become trusted sufficiently to command national troops. By the 1610s the Swedes no longer considered the Scots as mercenary troops, but as allies. Their presence during the Thirty Years' War was critical to Swedish success, both due to their numbers (between a quarter and a fifth of the officer corps and a fifth of the common soldiers), and the quality of their service (such as at Stralsund, Lützen, and Wittstock). Scots also performed an important role [End Page 1248] in the development of the Swedish navy. The rise of the Swedish empire would have been extremely difficult without the Scots.

Consequently, when the Scottish Covenanters turned to Sweden for aid in 1638 they encountered a friendly power. The Swedish government released officers from the army to return home and train the Covenanter levies, and supplied them with military equipment and raw materials. The Covenanter triumphs against Charles I in the two Bishops' Wars would have proved difficult, if not impossible, without Sweden's overt and covert aid. Attempts at establishing a formal alliance between the two countries foundered in the complications of British politics during the mid-1640s. However, in 1650 former Scots officers negotiated military support from Sweden for Montrose's futile expedition. The subsequent collapse of Scottish power and growth of English might brought an end to the old relationship when Cromwell and Karl X formally allied in 1656. The new alliance closed an important chapter in northern European and military history.

Like Grosjean, Worthington examined documents relating to the Scottish military diaspora in archives rarely cited by American and British scholars. He divides his book into three parts: an examination of Scots in continental Europe (outside France) before 1618, a study of Scots in Spanish Habsburg lands during 1618-48, then of Scots in Austrian Habsburg lands for the same period. These seventeenth century Scots were largely Roman Catholic, John Gordon standing out as a Calvinist. Unlike the hundreds of colonels and other officers in Swedish service, those in Habsburg forces numbered fewer than fifty. Apparently, some 7,000 Scots served as enlisted men with the Spanish (evidence for recruiting them is sparse); the number of common soldiers in the Austrian armies remains hard to determine. Equally significant was the lack of a merchant community from whom the Scots soldiers received financial backing, and with whom they intermarried as first generation settlers, both of which were common in Sweden. The other Scottish exiles, identified by Worthington, with which the soldiers associated were generally members of religious orders and priests. Consequently, the Scots failed to contribute an essential element of imperial construction and maintenance for the Habsburgs in the way they had done for Sweden.

In the latter two sections Worthington fixes on two men (William Semple and Walter Leslie), not as exemplars or especially prominent...

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