It would be vain, in a narrative like mine, to enumerate the privileges of the Scottish Guard and people in France.
The league, in which the Garde du Corps originated, declared that between the kingdoms of Scotland and France there should be an inviolable confederacy and friendship for ever; that injuries offered by the English to either, should be punished by the troops of both; that all Scottish auxiliaries in France should be maintained by the king of that country; and that, if any subjects of one nation gave assistance to England, 'by arms, counsel, or victual,' against the other, they should be judged guilty of treason.
To these clauses, Alexander II. of Scotland, and Louis VIII. of France, added a fifth:
That neither monarch should receive within his dominions the foreign enemies or domestic rebels of the other.
King Robert II. of Scotland, and Charles V. of France, added others, to this effect:
That neither of them should make peace with England without the express consent of the other; and that the Pope alone could absolve the two monarchs and their successors from the oath and alliance, which were never violated, while the British crowns remained separate.
James IV., in 1491, Henry IV. of France and Navarre, and Marie of Guise and Lorraine, Regent of Scotland in 1558, all renewed and strengthened this league, which always proved so troublesome to our neighbours the English; and hence their old rhyming proverb, which is mentioned by Shakspeare in the first act of 'Henry V.'
'HE THAT WOULD FRANCE WIN,
MUST WITH SCOTLAND FIRST BEGIN.'