14- "m b •8 AS QJarnBll Hwioerattjj ffiihratg Jlt^aca, Slew fock BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF HENRY W. SAGE 1891 Cornell University Library D 224.8.M53A5 1918 Memoirs of Sir Andrew Meivii^^ 3 1924 027 990 971 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027990971 MEMOIRS OF SIR ANDREW. MELVILL I'LAN 111' THIC SIEGE OK VI'KliS, n\\!^ MEMOIRS OF SIR ANDREW MELVILL TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH, AND THE WARS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY BY TORICK AMEER-ALI WITH A FOREWORD BY SIR IAN HAMILTON LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD MCMXVIII NEW YORK : JOHN LANE COMPANY. WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, tlHIIID, LONDON AMD BUCCLKS. ENGLAND MEMOIRES DE MONSIEUR LE CHEVALIER D E MELVILL GENERAL MAJOR des Troupes de S. A. S. Monfeigtieur le Due de Ce l l, & Grand Baillif du Comtc de Gifbrn. A AMSTERDAM, Chez JAQ^UES Desbordes, ris-a-vis la giandc Porte dc la Boaife. M. D C C 1 V. FACSIMILE OF ORIGINAL TITLE-PAGE CONTENTS PASS Foreword by Sir Ian Hamilton . ix Introduction 3 PART I The Wars of the Seventeenth Century : Outline 15 PART II Memoirs of Sir Andrew Melvill .... 65 PART III The Wars : Detail and Corroboration . • S17 Appendix 287 Index 293 ; LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS VACIMG FACB Plan of the Siege of Ypres, 1648 . Frontispiece Lens under Siege, 16+8 80 dixmude in the seventeenth century . 8o Plan of the City of Worcester, 3RD September, 1651 121 Ypres Beleaguered, 1648 147 Siege of Arras, 1654 147 Armentieres in the Seventeenth Century . 207 Treves, 1675 207 Map of Hungary 264 The illustrations of Dixmude in the Seventeenth Century ; Lens under Siege, 1648 ; Ypres Beleaguered, 1648 ; the Siege of Arras, 1654 ; Armentieres in the Seventeenth Century Treves, 1675, and the Plan of the Siege of Ypres, 1648, are reproduced from Plans des Sieges et Batailles sous le Regnes de Louis XIV. Par Beaulieu, kindly lent by Mr. Bernard Quaritch. The Plan of Worcester is reproduced from Blount's Boscobel, and the Map of Hungary from Le ThiUtre du Monde, ou Nouvel Atlas. Mis en lumiere par Guillaume et Jean Blaeu, Fol : Amsterdam. FOREWORD BY SIR IAN HAMILTON Here is another book about battles at Ypres, Arras and Lens ; la Bass^e, Armentieres and Dixmude ; battles getting on for 300 years old, but they keep well ; fighting never grows stale ; Melvill the civilian is food for book- worms ; Melvill the soldier is as fresh as Scipio Africanus or Viscount French ; nothing is new in war but its machines. So very much alive indeed is this life of Sir Andrew Melvill that it is hard to under- stand how—once printed—it ever became buried ; hoW—once buried—it has since lain asleep for some 200 years awaiting touch of the translator. For it is no less vital a personage than Dugald Dalgetty (or his double) who has fallen into this Rip van Winkle trance ; read Melvill first, then the Legend of Montrose, and at the end of it the real man and the literary conception will have fused themselves into one. Sir Andrew is as large as life ; Sir Dugald, larger. Each X FOREWORD clanks in upon us "shelled like a partan,* wi' airn on back and breast, haunch and shanks";! each a noble Scottish blade; puffed full of his honour ; shrewd ; brave ; loyal to his military engagements ; indifferent, in the main, to their cause ; finding it more easy to get "a pound of fresh butter out of a black dog's throat," f than to extract munitions out of the Duke of Lorraine or money out of the Duke of Montrose ; suffering the trial of being supposed to command a certain number of muskets, whereas, really, owing to the avarice of their employers they could only face the enemy with a platoon, and that out at elbows and half armed. Did we not know explicitly from Sir Walter Scott's introduction that Dalgetty was " the produc- tion of his own fancy," we might have sus- pected that the Wizard of the North had found his portrait three parts painted ; es- pecially so as an attestation for Sir Andrew's birthbrief had been published by the Banna- tyne Society, of which Sir Walter Scott was President, only a few months before the appearance of Sir Dugald. As it is, these Memoirs serve to show that although genius may perform the miracle of the resurrection, the Preacher still holds the field with his assur- ance that there is no new thing under the sun. * Broad Scots for a crab, t Legend of Mohtrose. ;; FOREWORD xi The teller of the tale was a Scot ; a Turk-fighter ; a linguist and a soldier of Ul-iortune—as he once was happily described by Sophia, Duchess of Hanover. He had been badly knocked about on field service so badly that this same wittj- Duchess speaks of his fiancee as preferring " half a man to no man." Sure enough a bride- groom whose chest was " only supported by an iron contrivance," part- of it having been carried away by a cannon shot, would be a frosty fellow to fondle on a winter's night. But marriage is not all a matter of chests, whether for lungs or money. Melvill had rubbed shoulders with Princes ; he had marched steel-clad across the stormy Belt to attack the islands of Denmark ; he had been " much troubled " by the cannon balls which came skimming over that frozen sea, or darted sidelong from hummock to hum- mock, like Arctic humming birds ; he had struggled in the marshes of the Danube and Raab against the Grand Vizier and his Janissaries ; he had seen there the fascina- " tion of fear : whole regiments of soldiers who allowed their heads to be cut off without stepping out of the ranks, or without making the least effort to defend themselves " surely so travelled a hero would be better value to walk put with than the stay- at-home Burghers who were Mademoiselle xii FOREWORD Lamotte's alternative. The proof, I think, is to be found in the pages of his Memoir, where we are told of leaguers, outfalls and other features of trench warfare, in a straight- forward style, more convincing than the go and glitter of Paul Adam's La Force or the equally lop-sided blood and mud of Henri Barbusse's Le Feu. There is humour also in the major-general's outlook, and although innocent of rehgion or ideals he clung as tight as any martyr to the Protestant dogma and to the highly specialised honour of a mercenary's sword. On one occasion he refused his life ; a second time he refused a fat billet, at the price asked, namely, that he should become a Roman Catholic. As to playing false to his chief, either by word or deed, before he was duly discharged from his service, the emissary who approached him on that errand must be'prepared to draw and defend himself. Although Melvill saw his juniors pass over his head, he was too good a soldier to whittle down the merits of his rivals because they had better fortune than himself. He served some rotten masters, but always tried his best for them so long as the engagement held. Often he had to live upon free quarters wherever his strength happened to pre- vail ; often he had to live upon his wits ; not willingly did he live upon his friends. FOREWORD xiii Possessed of this outfit and experience, plus courage and as many lives as a cat, he might, one would have thought, have died a Field- Marshal. Yet he never succeeded—not really —except once when " a fine tall girl of a lively disposition who sang well," singled him out of a whole troop of wretched prisoners and brought him food and drink as well as other felicities which he is too modest to specify. How seldom, if a man is honest, can he look into his heart and say " I alone " did it—I succeeded." Who is I/' ? How divorce ego from the adventitious aids of family, clothes, reputation ? How disentangle the skill of the General from the valour of his troops ? the profile of the subaltern from the outline of his purse ? Even a woman's heart, how easily is it swayed by the views and values of her set ! But here was a poor, starving crowd of prisoners. Yes, on that occasion) certainly, Melvill made his mark. The true reason why Sir Andrew never achieved wealth or fame was not, as he fondlv imagined, because he had once the hideous bad luck to fire off a pistol to attract a ferry boat, a random shot which, perversely carrying an unheard-of distance, killed a poor little baby on the opposite bank. There is nothing in this—^the reader may take it from me. In 1884 I, too, fired my revolver at what I took to be a branch on the bank xiv FOREWORD of the Nile and chanced to strike a young crocodile, which fell convulsing into the stream. I thought that would bring me luck, but it didn't. No; Melvill himself gives us the clue : "the honestie of his birth" ; the fact that he was "descended of verie old, noble and creditable families" in Scotland made it too difficult for him to push or to cringe. As he remarks on the occasion of a junior obtaining preference, " but the friendship that existed between us induced me to suffer the injustice without complaint.