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  • Scottish Soldiers in France in the Reign of the Sun King: Nursery for Men of Honour
  • Graham Tulloch
Glozier, Matthew, Scottish Soldiers in France in the Reign of the Sun King: Nursery for Men of Honour (History of Warfare, 24), Leiden/Boston, Brill, 2004; cloth; pp. xx, 290; 2 b/w illustrations, 1 table; RRP € 116.00 / US$ 157.00; ISBN 090413865X.

The history of Scotland providing soldiers for the kings of France is a long one, beginning in the Middle Ages with the archers of the king's bodyguard – as anyone who has read Scott's novel Quentin Durward will know. Quentin, proud of his birth despite being the younger son of an impoverished family, travels to join his uncle in the archers where he believes he can act as a soldier and yet maintain his rank as a man of gentle birth 'by fifteen descents'. His young man's hopes are justified; in the end he wins the hand of a young countess but along the road he has to learn much of the ways of the world and to recognise that serving a king like Louis XI will require toughness and resilience and some testing of his loyalty. The motives which Scott has celebrated in fictional form continued to activate young Scottish men for several centuries more. As Matthew Glozier notes, the number of Scots who claimed to belong to the country's noblesse was very large. [End Page 189] According to one authority up to one in forty-three Scots either owned land which entitled them to a territorial designation or was a member of a family which had such a distinction (p. 17). Younger sons considered themselves as equally noble and sought for an occupation that in their own eyes befitted their status. The belief that service in the king's guard or regiments owing some kind of direct allegiance to the king as an ordinary soldier was compatible with nobility was shared by another group who were notorious for their pride in their birth, the Gascons, as Dumas so memorably shown us in d'Artagnan.

Like Dumas's later books about d'Artagnan, this book deals with the reign of Louis XIV (1643-1715). After general chapters covering Scottish soldiers abroad, particularly in France, including much interesting detail about the conditions and pay, Glozier focuses on his central period from just before the Restoration in England to shortly after James II's departure from Britain. This he approaches through an examination of Lord George Douglas, commander of the so-called regiment de Douglas in France. Douglas, the brother of two earlier commanders, James and Archibald, had been sent to France in 1647 to act as page to Louis XIV with the idea that he would eventually come to command the regiment, as indeed happened in 1656. With the Restoration he was in a difficult position. Theoretically the regiment belonged 'both legally and morally' (p. 105) to the English king and was on loan to the French king. In practice Douglas owed a kind of allegiance to both kings and, while he never failed to follow the dictates of his native monarch, he wanted to retain the favour of the French king who was responsible for paying him. The difficulties of his position became very obvious in 1666 when Charles recalled the regiment to England only to send it back in 1668, partly so that Louis could resume financial responsibility. However Louis then decided to send the regiment to fight against the Turks, upsetting both Douglas who feared his regiment would suffer severely in a dangerous campaign and Charles who wanted to retain good trading relations with the Ottoman Empire. It was only through the good offices of Charles's sister, married to the French king's brother, that Louis was persuaded to overturn his decision. Recalled yet again to England in 1669 the regiment returned in 1670 only to make a final exit from France in 1679. Douglas, by now earl of Dumbarton, was still in command but once in England could no longer legally be the commander as he was a Catholic. On his return he identified himself strongly with James...

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