CHAPTER I.

LES GARDES ECOSSAIS.

Thus shall your country's annals boast your corps, And, glorious thought! in times and ages hence, Some valiant chief to stimulate the more, And urge his troops, the battle in suspense, Shall hold your bright example to their view. RUDDIMAUN'S MAG.

Louis, surnamed the Saint, King of France, having taken the cross, sailed with a splendid retinue of knights, nobles, and soldiers bent on the delivery of Jerusalem from the profanation of the Moslem; and, landing in the East, laid siege to Damietta (in Lower Egypt), which he triumphantly won by storm. But, after enduring innumerable hardships and disasters by the sword, and by pestilence from the fœtid waters of the marshy Nile and the Lake of Menzaleh, he was overthrown in battle at Mansoura, and made captive by the Soldan.

This was about the year 1254, when Alexander III. was King of Scotland.

In these Eastern wars, St. Louis was twice saved from death by the valour of a small band of auxilliary Scots crusaders, commanded by the Earls of March and Dunbar, Walter Stewart Lord of Dundonald, and Sir David Lindsay of Glenesk. Those brave adventurers had the good fortune to rescue the French monarch, first from the scimitars of the followers of the King of the Arsacides, a Mahommedan despot, and afterwards from the emissaries of the Comtesse de la Marche. Our good King Alexander, sent ambassadors to congratulate St. Louis on his deliverance from these double perils; and on his return from this first crusade, the two monarchs agreed that, in remembrance of these deeds of fidelity and valour, there should remain in France, in all time coming, "a standing company or guard of Scotsmen recommended by their own sovereign," and who should in future form the garde-du-corps of the most Christian King.

Such was the origin of the bravest body-guard that Europe ever saw, though our ancient historians are fond of dating its formation from the days of Charlemagne and Gregory the Great of Scotland.

The Guard thus established by St. Louis marched with him to his second crusade, in the year 1270. It was then led by the Earls of Carrick and Athole, Sir John Stuart, Sir William Gordon, and other brave knights, most of whom perished with Louis of a deadly pestilence before the walls of Tunis, and under the towers of Abu Zaccheria.

This noble band of Scottish Archers remained constantly in France, and were the only military corps in that country, until King Charles VII. added a few French companies to increase his Guards, still giving the Scots their old pre-eminence and post of honour next the royal person. Their leader was styled _Premier Capitaine_ of the Guards, and as such took precedence of all military officers in France. When the French sovereign was anointed, he stood beside him; and when the ceremony was over, obtained the royal robes, with all their embroidery and jewels, as his perquisite. When a city was to be stormed, the Scottish Archers led the way; when it surrendered, the keys were received by their captain from the hands of the king.

Twenty-five of them, "in testimony of their unspotted fidelity," wore over their magnificent armour white hoquetons of a peculiar fashion, richly laced and embossed with silver. Six of them in rotation were ever beside the royal person--by night as well as by day--at the reception of foreign ambassadors--in the secret debates of the cabinet--in the rejoicings of the tournament--the revels of the banquet--the solemnities of the church--and the glories of the battle-field. These Scottish hearts formed a zone around the monarchs of France; and at the close of the scene, the chosen twenty-five had the privilege of bearing the royal remains to the regal sepulchre of St. Denis.

It would require volumes, instead of a chapter, to recount all the honours paid to the Scottish Guard, and the glory acquired by them in the wars of five centuries.

Led by Alexander Earl of Buchan, Great Constable of France, they performed good service in that great battle at Banje-en-Anjou, where the English were completely routed; and at Verneuil, where Buchan died sword in hand, like a brave knight, and covered with renown,--at the same moment that Swinton, the gallant Laird of Dalswinton, slew the boasting Clarence with one thrust of his border-spear.

In 1570 the Guard consisted of a hundred curassiers, or hommes-des-armes, a hundred archers of the corps, and twenty-five "keepers of the King's body,"--all Scottish gentlemen of noble descent and coat-armour. They saved the life of the tyrant Louis XI. at Liege, and at Pavia fought around the gallant Francis in a circle until _four_ only were left alive; and then, but not till _then_, the King fell into the hands of the foe. In gratitude for their long-tried faith and unmatched valour, they were vested with "all the honour and confidence the King of France could bestow on his nearest and dearest friends;" and thus, in a little band of Scottish Archers originated the fashion of standing armies, and the nucleus of the great permanent forces of France.

"By this means," says an old Jacobite author, "our gentry were at once taught the rules of civility and art of war; and we were possessed of an inexhaustible stock of brave officers fit to discipline and to command our armies at home, and ever sure to keep up that respect, which was deservedly paid to the Scots' name and nation abroad."

As Sir James Hepburn's regiment of Pikemen they returned to Scotland in 1633, being sent over by Louis XIII. to attend the coronation of Charles I. at Edinburgh. On the commencement of the great and disastrous civil war eight years after, they loyally adhered to the King, and were then by the Cavalier army first styled the _Royal Scots_. On the reverse of Charles's fortune and subversion of all order, they went back to France; and under Louis of Bourbon, Duc d'Enghien, shared in all the dangers and glories of that campaign on the frontiers of Flanders, so famous for ending in the utter destruction of the Spanish host, the death of the brave Condé de Fuentes, the fall of Thionville, Philipsburg, Mentz, Worms, and Oppenheim, till the waters of the Rhine reflected the flash of their armour; and there fell the veteran Hepburn with his helmet on his brow, and the flag of St. Andrew over him.

Returning in 1678, they re-entered the Scottish army as the Earl of Dunbarton's foot; and eight years after served against the ill-fated Monmouth, and suffered severely, being attacked at Sedgemoor by his cavalry in the night, their position being discerned through the darkness by the glow of their lighted matches.

At the Union in 1707, on the incorporation of the forces as the British establishment--and when Scottish blood and Scottish treasure were more than ever required to further the grasping aims and useless wars of that age--the Royals, in consequence of their high-standing in arms and venerable antiquity, were numbered as the _First_, or Royal Scots Regiment of Foot,--a title they have since maintained with honour, and on a hundred fields have upborne victoriously, the same silver cross which the brave Archers of Athole and the spearmen of Buchan unfurled so gloriously on the plains of Anjou, and at Verneuil, on the banks of the Aure.

Proud of themselves and of the honours their predecessors had sustained untarnished in so many foreign battles, Dunbarton's musqueteers felt an esprit du corps, to which at that time few other military bands were entitled; and it was with a bosom glowing with the highest sentiments of this description, that Walter Fenton for the first time clasped on the silver gorget and plumed headpiece of his junior rank, and found himself really a standard-bearer of a regiment deemed the first in Europe, and whose boasted antiquity had become a jocular proverb, obtaining for it the name of Pontius Pilate's Guard.

When next he paid his devoirs at the residence of the Napiers, Lilian fairly blushed with pleasure to see him looking so gallant and handsome; for, to a young girl's eye, a nodding plume, a golden scarf, and jewelled rapier, were considerable additions to an exterior otherwise extremely prepossessing.

The paleness resulting from his confinement had quite passed away; his olive cheek was suffused with the rich warm glow of health; while buoyant spirits, new hopes, and high aspirations, lent a lustre to his eye and a grace to his actions, which was not visible before, when he felt himself to be the mere object of patronage and dependence--the poor private gentleman with a brass-hilted whinger and corslet of black iron.

Again and again he visited the old turretted house on the Burghmuir, and drank deeper draughts of that intoxicating passion which, from its hopelessness, he dared hardly acknowledge to himself. Every day he became more and more in love, and felt that it would be impossible (with all his awe of Lady Grisel's fardingale and cane) to keep it long a secret from the being who inspired it.