Scottish Soldiers in France in the Reign of the Sun King: Nursery for Men of Honour (review)

Glozier has produced an exemplary work based on meticulous research covering the intersections of military, diplomatic, and political history in Western Europe between 1660 and 1691. Taking one colonel, George Douglas (later 1st earl of Dumbarton), and his regiment as the focus, the author tells a story that resonates through the political crises of the period.

The book divides into three parts. The first (chapters one to five) provides background to the main story that appears in sections two and three. Glozier traces the role of Scottish mercenaries with a variety of foreign employers, but chiefly with the French crown. The author also explains why Scots sought military service overseas (chiefly for economic reasons). He argues that employment options were limited for younger sons of gentle birth, making a career as an officer their only option. (The reviewer finds that argument one-dimensional. For instance, one of the leading Lovat Fraser cadets chose to be a nonconforming minister during this period. Many other younger sons entered the legal or commercial fields. Indeed, one could argue that from the 1580s Scotland developed a noblesse de la robe from younger sons of the well-born.) The author discusses the officers' interest in cultivating a military culture through an interest in heraldry. Section two (chapters six to eight) relates directly to the book's title, since this portion covers the regiment under Louis XIV's reign. Its situation became entwined with Franco-British affairs, because Douglas maintained loyalties to both his employer and monarch. Eventually, the regiment was transformed from a unit contracted by Douglas to Louis, to one loaned by Charles II to the French king. That alteration led to its transference to the British military establishment after the Treaty of Nijmegen. The arrival of a Roman Catholic-commanded regiment in Britain as the Exclusion Crisis began initiates the third section (chapters nine to eleven). Charles, to defuse domestic concern, purged the Roman Catholics and sent them to Tangier; Dumbarton lost his de jure colonelcy due to the Test Act while holding de facto control. The bulk of the regiment served in Ireland. Dumbarton remained in Britain advancing his interests, and became a member of the Duke of York's (later James II and VII) Scottish court party. The regiment survived the tumults of 1688 and later served in William II and III's Flemish campaigns.

The book rarely strays from discussions of Dumbarton as a French officer, loyal subject of Charles, or devoted adherent of James. The subtitle seems sustained by the officer's addiction to dueling and Jacobitism. The officers dueled, not only in France, but they also reputedly imported the practice into Ireland during their garrison duty there. The demonstrations of loyalty to James appear in several guises. In 1689 at Ipswich a captain led a mutiny while the regiment awaited embarkation to Flanders. Later in 1690 Jacobite recruiting officers in Lille enlisted at least eight officers and nearly forty men, who had deserted the regiment when it formed part of William's army.

A reader looking for an in-depth treatment of late-seventeenth-century military history may forego this book. The text lacks any treatment of the regiment's uniforms—a matter of interest since their provision in the later 1600s is an indicator of the growing national government's control of regiments and the accompanying increase of military bureaucracy. The period covered by the book also saw the dwindling away of pikes and their replacement by plug bayonets, and the changeover from matchlock to flintlock muskets—neither of which is mentioned. The sources evidently contain no accounts of the unit other than Dumbarton's, leaving one wondering about how the officers and enlisted men perceived the unit. While references occur throughout to numbers of men in the regiment, and to the influx of recruits...