Alexander Leslie and the Scottish Generals of the Thirty Years' War, 1618–1648

Alexia Grosjean, Steve Murdoch

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781848934672
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317318156
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

Field Marshal Alexander Leslie was the highest ranking commander from the British Isles to serve in the Thirty Years' War. Though Leslie's life provides the thread that runs through this work, the authors use his story to explore the impacts of the Thirty Years' War, the British Civil Wars and the age of Military Revolution.

1 SCOTLAND’S INDIGENOUS MILITARY CULTURES

With Leslie war, and war only, was his métier¹

The principal Scottish generals discussed in this book – Alexander Leslie, Patrick Ruthven and James King – were born in the early reign of James VI and had direct or closely associated contact with violence at a familial or national level in their youth. It is arguable that the violence inherent in Scottish society in the later sixteenth century in some way fuelled their decision to enter military service. As discussed in Chapter 2, this choice eventually required them to move abroad in an effort to escape the violence or regain prestige for their family or even simply to earn a living. The Scottish proclivity for warlike behaviour has long dominated accounts of the nation’s history. It is particularly evident in the stereotypical image of the early modern Scottish soldier – an image itself often drawn from, and conflating, a prejudicial view of Scottish ‘incivility’ and seasonal mercenary service in Ireland undertaken by men levied in the Highlands. Modern scholarship has done much to challenge and address our perceptions of the Scots, and Scottish Gael in particular, in this context.² Scottish mercenaries certainly could be found in the period but, as discussed below, these did not represent the full extent of Scottish military power at home, nor did they even represent the main vehicle for Scottish military intervention abroad. Regardless of studies detailing this more nuanced understanding of Scottish military activity (and the Scots’ apparent abundant willingness towards warlike pursuits), some scholars still persist in portraying Scotland as a nation in martial decline in the early modern period. In these scholars’ view the kingdom’s military weakness was allegedly signalled by successive defeats of the Scottish armies in the first half of the sixteenth century, demonstrating the retarded nature of her martial development.³ Further, these scholars emphasize that where Scotland did enjoy military successes on a national scale, whether on land or at sea, these usually came with the support of foreign allies, either French (1530s, 1540s, early 1550s) or English (late 1550s) depending on the politics of the period.⁴ Despite these reiterations of her apparent military limitations, Scotland nevertheless produced men immersed in a degree of paramilitary training from an early age, reared up in what can only be described as an overtly militarized landscape.

The Scottish Military Landscape

Whether in the Highlands or the Lowlands, Scottish nobles, chiefs and lairds were under an obligation to fortify their houses, leading to the development of an indigenous vernacular fortification design commonly called the tower-house. These were not intended for use in national defence, but rather to serve as a means to curbing attacks on local magnates by broken men, thieves and political opponents. The main national defensive structures remained Scotland’s medieval fortifications built up at Stirling and Edinburgh. Some modifications to these central bastions had resulted from the introduction of artillery to the country, which made a meaningful impression in Scotland from the middle of the fifteenth century onwards. Scotland demonstrably had a sufficient supply of artillery, which was employed in both land-based and maritime operations throughout the sixteenth century.⁵ By the reign of Mary Queen of Scots, the post of ‘Comptroller of Ordnance’ was retained in the person of John Chisholm, a man who went on to serve James VI in the same capacity well into the 1590s.⁶ We have little information on the provenance of the artillery for which Chisholm was responsible. Importation from abroad undoubtedly accounted for most artillery pieces, particularly the forged iron guns, though indigenous iron gun founders and imported experts did operate within the realm.⁷ Attempts had also been made in Scotland, by the period under consideration, to establish an indigenous tradition in manufacturing bronze cannon overseen by the ‘Master Melter of the Realm’.⁸ Nevertheless, significant manufacture of artillery had actually ceased in Scotland by the 1560s, and the country once again relied largely on imports thereafter, sometimes finding itself in shortfall.⁹ For example, in 1618 the English Privy Council ordered 200 pieces of cast-iron ordnance to be sent to Scotland to ensure that her merchant ships could be better armed for ‘the welfare and safety of his Majesty’s subjects of that nation (as is fitting)’.¹⁰ This does not, however, mean that the Scots were in any way ignorant of the evolving techniques of either producing such weapons or accommodating them within the most up-to-date fortified structures to maximize their effectiveness in the defence of the realm.

Evidence for the effective deployment of artillery on land is clearly visible in the modifications made to the main strongholds of national significance from around 1460 and their continued alterations thereafter.¹¹ Collectively, Scottish artillery developments reflected several national idiosyncrasies, not least the topographical advantage as boasted by both Stirling and Edinburgh castles. As the English military architect Richard Lee pointed out to Henry VIII in 1544, assaulting Edinburgh Castle would have constituted a waste of ammunition ‘considering the strength of the said castle with the situation thereof’.¹² When the occupants of the castle surrendered after a brief siege in 1573, this did not constitute the dearth of military capacity north of the border, as sometimes claimed, but merely poor provisioning and planning.¹³ After all, Patrick Ruthven held the same castle for nine months in the early 1640s for the Royalists against a much stronger besieging force than the Castilians had faced in the 1570s. The strength of this particular fortress was frequently reiterated in the early modern period. The French traveller Henri Duc de Rohan, writing in 1600, observed that the castle was ‘so inaccessible on every side, that its natural position renders it more impregnable than if strengthened by all the arts of modern engineers, from which (be it said) it has profited nothing’.¹⁴ Upon seeing the castle in 1618, John Taylor concurred, observing that ‘I have seen many straights and fortresses in Germany, the Netherlands, Spaine and England, but they must all give place to this unconquered castle’.¹⁵ Of Stirling, Taylor noted that ‘the castle is built upon a rocke very lofty, and much beyond Edenborough castle in state and magnificence, and not much inferior to it in strength’.¹⁶ It was not just the Scottish royal fortifications that benefited from such advantageous situations. The medieval fortifications at Dunnottar Castle resisted a siege by Cromwell’s New Model Army for nine months from 1650 to 1651, with a garrison varying between only thirty and seventeen men, simply due to its position atop a coastal stack.¹⁷

The above notwithstanding, it would be wrong to believe that significant developments in artillery fortress construction did not occur in Scotland. From the late 1540s the English occupying forces built an estimated six new bastion fortresses in the south of the country, with Eyemouth being hailed as the first to be built specifically according to the trace italienne style, albeit imperfectly executed by Richard Lee.¹⁸ However, following the departure of the English army, the Scottish authorities appear to have believed that to invest in the construction of new trace italienne fortresses rather than rely on their already imposing edifices would simply have been a folly. The exception was that limited trace italienne elements, such as angle-pointed bastions, were worked onto the entrances of Stirling and Edinburgh by skilled engineers, among them Migliorino Ubaldini, who was responsible for fortifications constructed in 1548 to defend the premier port of Leith.¹⁹ Both English and French fortifications were destroyed rather than maintained after the Treaty of Edinburgh in July 1560, indicating the Scottish authorities’ view that they were redundant.²⁰ Moreover, by the late 1640s even the remnant trace italienne additions to Edinburgh Castle that had been tacked on in the 1580s were demolished, being in poor repair and deemed unnecessary. Indeed, instead of upgrading fortifications, many Scottish castles and tower-houses were actually in the process of undergoing demilitarizing modifications throughout this period. The ‘withering away of specifically defensive features’ coincided with the increase in ‘display and embellishment’.²¹ This was not just a response to the governmentally enforced pacification of the country as much as a recognition that these buildings’ thin walls were next to useless against anything other than a small raiding party anyway.²² Rather, Scotland’s topography itself frequently provided the country’s best defence: a place where armies could muster, retreat to and regroup and simply wait out the enemy in a time-honoured tradition that frustrated invaders the likes of the Earl of Hertford, who had to content himself with acts of vandalism and looting in 1544 in the face of royal fortifications he simply could not take.²³

Rural Kindred and Highland Hosts

The strength of the royal fortresses aside, the country was peppered with fortified tower-houses for a reason. They served as reminders that Scotland remained an armed and violent place in the later sixteenth century. As a result of the prevailing temperament of society, personal weapons formed an integral part of everyday dress, even for the civilian population, serving both fashionable and functional purposes.²⁴ After all, this was a period in which clan warfare and cattle-raiding were still endemic in parts of the Gàidhealtachd, while in the Lowlands the recourse to violence to settle land disputes and blood feuds between various noble houses increased in the sixteenth century.²⁵ Heads of households would conduct this private warfare not least due to the ease with which they could levy ‘soldiers’ among their tenants. Traditional family units bound by strict social hierarchies could deploy ‘instant regiments’ that were anything between a couple of hundred to several thousand men strong.²⁶ Some scholars have described the militarized culture of the Highlands as one expressed through an older form of warfare ‘with the medieval weapons of sword, bow, and axe’²⁷ rather than the developing tactics of modern weapons, siege warfare and its related accoutrements discussed above. Keith Brown has commented on the ‘particularly strong martial ethos’ of the Gaels of both Scotland and Ireland, as well as the tendency of lords from those parts towards ‘retaining of professional soldiers, the gallowglass or buannachan’.²⁸ Indeed, by the seventeenth century the image of individual Scots’ martial prowess was reinforced in contemporary sources by those who sought to link and promote virtuous military endeavour and kinship.²⁹ The significance of this type of society, where authority and unquestioning loyalty revolved around the clan chief or local magnate, cannot be underestimated. The important function of clan membership as a motivation for gaining military promotion must be remembered, but so too must the formal contracts of manrent which bound a man to his lord and obligated him to military service when called upon by his superior.³⁰

Military action by such kin groups was often decided by the immediate considerations of self-preservation in an uncertain world. This manifested itself in a number of ways, including the clash of military techniques deployed during the plantation of Lewis in the 1590s. Here James Spens and his fellow ‘Fife Adventurers’ sought to ‘civilize’ the Western Isles through the establishment of a Lowland-style burgh with access to the lucrative fishing grounds around the island. However, they found themselves outmanoeuvred by the incumbent clan chief, Neill Macleod, who unleashed his Gaelic kindred against the Lowlanders with devastating effect. Cowed, Spens and most of the surviving Fifers left the island, some of whom sought their fortunes abroad. However, James VI knew how to fight fire with fire, and within only a few years Neill Macleod of Lewis and his kindred were effectively destroyed by the Mackenzies of Kintail, showing the continued need for indigenous Highland fighting forces to enforce government policy.³¹ Even the lower orders had to consider their position and motivations through the implicit contractual arrangement with their overlords. After all, if a common soldier failed in his duty to his unit, word would quickly spread to his family, and the individual (if he survived) could find himself a social outcast. These individuals’ reward for service came not through the spoils of war but from the continued protection of their family by the social superiors whom they served. This reciprocal arrangement could produce formidable forces and facilitate a degree of cohesion within a fighting unit hard to match among coerced or randomly recruited soldiery.

It may seem, give...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Stylistic Conventions
• Introduction
• 1 Scotland’s Indigenous Military Cultures
• 2 The Scottish Military Diaspora
• 3 The Thirty Years’ War Campaigns: Stralsund To Prague, 1628–35
• 4 Alexander Leslie And The Army Of The Weser, 1635–9
• 5 The Home Front: Leslie, Ruthven And The Bishops’ Wars, 1638–41
• 6 The Scottish ‘Veteran Generals’ In England, 1642–7
• 7 Going Full Circle: The New Scottish Command In Europe, 1639–48
• Conclusion
• Appendix
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index