- Pronouns
- he/him
Discuss the latest article by @Alex Richards here
Lovely images as usual.
I should note that Arundel's negotiations were such a damp squih he spent most of the trip touring the bits of the Rhineland that weren't in ruins.
So two towns and one hamlet, then?
You talk of some British regiments at the beginning, were they mostly Scottish, or were the English also beginning to get some experience which would be relevant a half-dozen years later?
Of course, the possibility can't be discounted that what have been historically registered as 'Scottish' regiments actually included a significant-but-not-major-enough-to-be-noted-at-the-time number of people from northern England.
Weren't there accounts of many battles where they kind of just stood around facing each other letting the stupid highlanders/english slaughter each other and then when the unpleasantness was done just looted the corpses together and went home?Absolutely. I'm vaguely familiar with Borderer tradition through marriage (twice, in fact), that the first loyalty of a Borderer was to the family, and any other loyalty was measured in coins.
They regarded themselves as neither English nor Scottish (or Welsh), but Borderers. Oh, they'd claim to be English when it was convenient to be English, or Scottish when it was convenient to be Scottish. During one battle (and I forget which) the English commander made sure his troops wore a cloth stitched to their tunic to show which side they were on. He complained that the Borderers used stitching that was weak and the cloth could be blown away or removed in an instant. Big surprise there.
The Scottish Borderer had far more in common with the English Borderer than with other Scots (and ditto on the other side of the coin). You rarely encounter references to hatred of other riding families, whichever side of the border they came from, but there are frequent references to hatred of the English/Scots from outside the Borders.
Then there's the story of a relative (by marriage) who was a Scottish borderer who fought for the Hanoverians at Culloden. Fought, apparently, is a strong term to use. Depending on source, looting the corpses, occasionally turning the wounded into corpses to make looting easier.
Do you mind if I publicise this one tomorrow @Alex Richards to avoid the clash with VE Day? I can't imagine it'll get much traffic today.