Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill SIR JOHN HEPBURN AND COLONEL ROBERT / MUNRO Among the Scottish officers who came to the front in the Thirty Years' War, few attained to greater distinction than Sir John Hepburn, who was long in command of the Brigade, and his staunch friend, Colonel Robert Munro. They were brothers-in-arms, invariably counting on mutual support with absolute confidence. Sir John never gave his reminiscences to the world, but he is among the most conspicuous figures in all the histories of the war—Schiller excepted, who says little of the foreign auxiliaries—and notably in the prolix and metaphysical memoirs of his old comrade Munro. So in following the fortunes of the one, we incidentally sketch the career of the other. Both were characteristic representatives of the best of their countrymen, although of very different temperaments and actuated by different motives. Hepburn, like Bayard, was the soul of chivalry ; his aspirations for military glory induced him to volunteer for each desperate piece of service. He was sensitive to touchiness on the point of honour, and on a fancied affront from the leader he had idolised and faithfully followed, he rejected the King's condescending advances, resigned his commission, and sheathing the sword which had served Gustavus so well, declared he wouldnever draw it again for Sweden. When we remember that Gustavus with starving troops was then playing his last stake against the leaguer of Wallenstein, we may conceive how hotly Hepburn's anger must have burned. Hepburn was a Catholic: it was said that the quarrel began or was envenomed by some slights cast by the Protestant champion on the Catholic creed. Munro was a Presbyterian, and rather a dour Presbyterian at that; he dwells on the privileges that Gustavus forced on his troops by commissioning...