The Memoir of General Wolfe appeared in that periodical, and was prepared from various sources; among others, the records of the War Office, and of the 12th, 20th, and 67th Regiments. Since then a volume has been dedicated to his achievements by another hand. The Memoir of Sir Andrew Wood of Largo was a contribution to Tait's Magazine in 1852. In the instances of Wolfe, André, Keith, and on many other occasions, I have to acknowledge the courtesy and kindness of the authorities at the Horse Guards and War Office, in affording me such information as I could obtain nowhere else. The achievements of the Scots Fusilier Guards formed to me a tempting subject. The record here is necessarily brief, but it is as yet the only existing historical account of a regiment that has contributed its full share of valour to sustain the glory of the British arms on many a famous field from the battles of the Covenant even to those of the Crimea. 26, DANUBE STREET, EDINBURGH, April, 1866. CONTENTS. ... 11 ... ... THE CONSTABLE OF FRANCE. A CHAPTER I. BIRTH AND PARENTAGE OF JOHN OF COUL. T the head of Strathcromar, in Aberdeenshire, in a place surrounded by heath-clad hills, but of no great height, and not far from a vast morass, which in rainy seasons is converted into a lake, that is frequently covered by aquatic fowls, stands the ruin of the ancient castle of Coul, once an edifice of vast dimensions. In the latter part of the last century, when the accumulated soil and verdure (that nearly covered these remains, and made them seem like large green mounds) were removed, there were found, as the old statistical account records, four gates and the basements of five round towers. Each of the latter was about eighteen or twenty feet in diameter, and the walls throughout are still fifteen feet thick, and built of solid stone and lime. One of the gates was then entire, and topped by a Gothic arch of freestone. The castle was B found to have been square in form, with a frontage of fifty yards each way, and among its ruins were found a number of silver coins, bearing the inscription "Alexander Rex Scotorum." { It crowns a rocky eminence near the old parish church, and was originally the stronghold and patrimony of one whose name is still remembered traditionally in the district as "the brave John o'Coul," whose career we propose to relate in the following historiette, for he was a stout and gallant soldier of royal lineage and heroic courage, who served his country and her ally, France, nobly and well, and shed his blood in one of the most important of their battles in the days of the Maid of Orleans-an old, old story now; but, as Thackeray says, "bravery never goes out of fashion." John Stewart of Coul, afterwards Earl of Buchan and Constable of France, was the youngest son of Robert, Duke of Albany, and of his second wife, the Lady Murielle, daughter of Sir William Keith, Great Marischal of Scotland (a knight of high reputation for honour and fidelity in the times of David II. and Robert II.), and he was born about the year 1380, or sixty-six years after the battle of Bannockburn, and while what we may well term the struggle of the Hundred Years' war, varied by an occasional truce as breathingtime, was still waged between the Scots and English. |