Sir John Hepburn, in consequence of a quarrel with the Swedish king, now took leave of him and entered the service of France; and the Scots Brigade, weakened to a mere shadow, was left behind at Dunkerswald to await reinforcements, while Gustavus marched away to his last battlefield at Lützen. We need follow the fortunes of the Brigade little further. The famous regiments, together with the other Scots and English in the Swedish service, now some thirteen thousand men, did abundance of hard and gallant work before the close of the war. The ranks of Mackay's regiment were again swelled to twelve companies and fifteen hundred men, but at Nördlingen it was almost annihilated, and emerged with the strength of a single company only. Times had changed, and discipline had decayed since the death of Gustavus; and in 1635, on alliance of France with Sweden, and the outbreak of war between France and Spain, the fragments of all the Scotch regiments were merged together, and passed into the service of France under the command of the veteran Sir John Hepburn as the Regiment d'Hebron.
1636.
There for a short period let us leave it, wrangling with Regiment Picardie for precedence, claiming, on the ground that some officers of the Scottish Guard had joined it, to be the oldest regiment in the world,[153] and earning the nickname of Pontius Pilate's guards. Hepburn commanded it for but one year, for he fell at its head at the siege of Saverne, but it fought through many actions and many sieges, the battle of Rocroi not the least of them, before it returned to the British Isles. We shall meet with it again before that day under a new name, and under yet a third name shall grow to know it well.
Authorities.—Munro's Expedition is far the most valuable; it has been abridged and supplemented by Mr. John Mackay in his Old Scots Brigade. Harte's Life of Gustavus wrestles manfully with the military details, which are very clearly summed up in Mr. Fletcher's Gustavus in the Heroes of the Nations Series. Some few details will be found also in Fieffé's Histoire des troupes Etrangères.
[CHAPTER VII]
Once more we return to England and take up the thread of the army's history within the kingdom. Of the reign of James the First there is little to be recorded except that at its very outset the Statute of Philip and Mary for the regulation of the Militia was repealed, and the military organisation of the country based once more on the Statute of Winchester. James was not fond of soldiers, and military progress was not to be expected of such a man. Enough has already been seen of his methods through his dealings with the Low Countries, and there is no occasion to dwell longer on the first British king of the House of Stuart.
1625.