There was a complicated involvement between Scotland and the Thirty Years' War of 1618–1648. Scotland and the Scots were heavily entangled in both the diplomatic and military events which centred on the Holy Roman Empire. There were a number of reasons for this participation.
Among these, the fate of the Scottish princess Elizabeth of Bohemia (daughter of King James VI & I) proved to be a key concern. Up to 50,000 Scottish troops[1] arrived on the continent having been levied on warrants issued by the Privy Council and countersigned by their king, usually at periods corresponding to the participation of a particular ally in a campaign against the Habsburgs. They mostly served initially in established Scottish brigades in the Dutch Republic and Sweden which had existed before 1618. Later, specially commissioned army groups were also created in Denmark-Norway and France to facilitate further Scottish participation. Some fought for better prospects, some for kin loyalty, others for dynastic and confessional considerations. A few, the minority, were plain mercenaries. Although Scots participated from the start of the war until the end, formal participation by the nation was limited. Scotland formally declared war on Spain (1625–1630) and France (1627–1629), but for the most part, Scots engaged in foreign service with consent from their monarch and under warrants issued by the Privy Council but in armies commanded by their European allies.
Through such service ambitious individual Scots in different European courts had a profound influence on the course of the war both conducting diplomacy and commanding entire army groups in the campaign.[2] These included General Sir James Spens of Wormiston, Lieutenant General Patrick Ruthven, Lieutenant General James King and Field Marshal Alexander Leslie who all served in Sweden. These men were joined in Germany by an auxiliary army with Scots and English under notional Swedish command and led by James, 3rd Marquis Hamilton (1631–1632).
Not all Scots fought for or believed in the cause of either Elizabeth of Bohemia or the Protestant northern alliances. A number fought for the Habsburgs (Austrian and Spanish) for the same complex reasons as their countrymen; there were some committed to the counter-reformation, some compelled by circumstance and some opportunists such as Albrecht von Wallenstein's assassin, Count Walter Leslie.[4]
Charles I – Son of James VI. The Scottish-born prince ruled as King of Scotland, England and Ireland, 1625–1649.
Field marshals and generals
Archibald Douglas, lieutenant general of artillery in the Hamilton Army in Germany
Robert Douglas, Count of Skenninge, eventually elevated to field marshal in the Swedish army (1655), Douglas reached the rank of lieutenant general by the end of the war in 1648. He commanded the left wing of Torstensson's army at Jankowitz
Patrick More, colonel in the Swedish army during the war, later promoted to major general in Swedish service (March 1675) based in Buxtehude near Hamburg
Sir James Spens, Stuart ambassador to Sweden (and Swedish ambassador to Britain), Denmark and the Dutch Republic
Basis for the Covenanter armies
Thousands of Scots returned home from foreign service to join the Covenanters, including experienced leaders like Alexander Leslie and General of Artillery Alexander Hamilton. These veterans played an important role in training the Covenanter recruits. However, more senior officers including Lieutenant General Patrick Ruthven, Lieutenant General James King, Major General John Ruthven also returned to confront their former comrades. Both Covenanters and Royalists returned with cohorts of officers, and both introduced the 'Swedish Discipline' into their respective armies. When the wars spread to England, a situation arose in 1644 where the senior commander of the parliamentary allied army was Alexander Leslie, Earl of Leven while his opposition was led by Patrick Ruthven, now Earl of Forth and Lord General of the Royalist forces in England.[5] Both men survived the war and died peacefully in their beds.
Sources and fiction
Some notable Scottish contemporary published sources
William Forbes, a diary edited by D. Pleiss, 'Das Kriegstagebuch des schwedischen Offiziers William Forbes: Von seiner Landung an der Unterelbe im Sommer 1634 bis zu seiner Rückkehr nach Stade im Winter 1649/50’, Stader Jahrbuch Neue Folge 85, (1995), pp. 135–53.
Thomas Kellie, Pallas Armata or Military Instructions for the Learned, The First Part (Edinburgh, 1627).
Andrew Melvill, edited and published by Torick Ameer-Ali as Memoirs of Sir Andrew Melvill (London, 1918). Only a small part on the Thirty Years' War.
Robert Monro, His Expedition with a worthy Scots Regiment called Mac-Keyes (2 vols., London, 1637).
Contemporary poetry and fiction
Arthur Johnston, a contemporary neo-Latinist poet, wrote poems about the Bohemian part of the conflict in W.D. Geddes (ed.) Musa Latina Aberdonensis vol. 1 (Aberdeen Spalding Club, 1892)
Simplicius Simplicissimus (1668) by Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen, one of the most important German novels of the 17th century, is the comic fictional autobiography of a half-German, half-Scottish peasant turned mercenary who serves under various powers during the war, based on the author's first-hand experience. An opera adaptation by the same name was produced in the 1930s, written by Karl Amadeus Hartmann.
Modern fiction
Dallas, O., A Ragged Renown: A Romance of the Thirty Years’ War (1934)
Dallas, O., The Daughter of the Scots’ Brigade (1938)
Dickason, C., The King’s Daughter (2010)
Henty, G.A., The Lion of the North: The adventures of a Scottish lad during the Thirty Years’ War (2 vol., 1997 reprint). Available under sub-title variants including a comic strip.
Lorimer, J., The Green Brigade (1935)
Friedrich Schiller's Wallenstein trilogy (1799) is a fictional account of the downfall of this general. Not Scottish as such, but contains fictionalised accounts of Wallenstein's assassins, including Count Walter Leslie.
Scott, E., The Best Soldier: The Life of Sir John Hepburn, Marshal of France, Founder and First Colonel of the Royal Scots, 1628–1636 (Hawick, 2011)
^Steve Murdoch and Alexia Grosjean, Alexander Leslie and the Scottish Geneals of the Thirty Years' War, 1618–1648 (Pickering & Chatto, London, 2014).
^Trim, David (2006). ""Calvinist Internationalism and the English Officer Corps, 1562-1642"". History Compass. 4 (6): 1024–1048. doi:10.1111/j.1478-0542.2006.00354.x.
^David Worthington, Scots in Habsburg Service, 1618–1648 (Leiden, 2003)
^Steve Murdoch and Alexia Grosjean, Alexander Leslie and the Scottish Generals, chapters 5 and 6.
Further reading
Dukes, Paul, ed. (1995). Muscovy and Sweden in the Thirty Years' War 1630–1635. Cambridge University Press. ISBN9780521451390.
Dukes, P., 'The Leslie family in the Swedish period, (1630–5) of the Thirty Years' War', European Studies Review, vol. 12 (1982)
Ferguson, James; Scot, John (1899). Papers Illustrating the History of the Scots Brigade in the Service of the United Netherlands, 1572–1782: The war of independence, 1572–1609. The time of the twelve years' truce, 1609–1621. The thirty years' war, 1621–1648. The age of William of Orange and the British revolution, 1649–1697. Printed at the Princeton University Press by T. and A. Constable for the Scottish History Society.
W. Forbes Leith, The Scots Men at Arms and Life Guards in France, 1458–1830 (2 vols., Edinburgh, 1882)
Edward Furgol, 'Scotland turned Sweden: the Scottish Covenanters and the military revolution’ in J. Morrill, ed., The National Covenant in its British Context 1638–51 (Edinburgh, 1990)
Alexia Grosjean,‘General Alexander Leslie, The Scottish Covenanters and the Riksråd debates, 1638–1640’, in Macinnes, A. I., T. Riis and F.G. Pedersen, eds., Ships, Guns and Bibles in the North Sea and the Baltic States c.1350–1700 (East Linton, 2000)
Alexia Grosjean, An Unofficial Alliance: Scotland and Sweden 1569 – 1654 (Leiden, 2003)
Steve Murdoch, ed., Scotland and the Thirty Years’ War (Leiden, 2001)
Steve Murdoch, ‘Scotsmen on the Danish-Norwegian Frontier, 1589–1680’ in S. Murdoch and A. Mackillop (eds.), Military Governors and Imperial Frontiers c.1600–1800 (Leiden, 2003)
Steve Murdoch, Britain, Denmark-Norway and the House of Stuart, 1603–1660 (Eat Linton, 2003)
Steve Murdoch and Alexia Grosjean, Alexander Leslie and the Scottish Generals of the Thirty Years' War, 1618–1648 (Pickering & Chatto, London, 2014)
Steve Murdoch and Karthrin Zickermann, 'Bereft of all Human Help?: Scottish Widows of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) in Northern Studies, vol. 50 (2019)
G. A. Sinclair, ‘Scotsmen Serving the Swede’, The Scottish Historical Review, vol. 9 (1912)
A. F, Steuart, ‘Scottish Officers in Sweden’ in The Scottish Historical Review, vol. 1 (1904)
David Worthington, Scots in Habsburg Service, 1618–1648 (Leiden, 2003)
Monro, Robert (1637). Brockington, William S. (ed.). Monro, His Expedition With the Worthy Scots Regiment Called Mac-Keys. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN9780275962678.
Gunnar Westin, ed., Negotiations about church unity 1628–1634; John Durie, Gustavus Adolphus, Axel Oxenstierna (Uppsala, 1932)
Gunnar Westin, ed., John Durie in Sweden 1636–1638; Documents and Letters (Uppsala, 1936)
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