1656] DIARY OF PATRICK GORDON. 23 while, be neglected no opportunity of gaining experience in his profession,

Passages from the diary of General Patrick Gordon of Auchleuchries : A.D. 1635-A.D. 1699"

1656] DIARY OF PATRICK GORDON. 23

while, be neglected no opportunity of gaining experience in his profession, never failing to re-
pair to the camp on the eve of any feat of arms, in order that he might take part in it. Some
of his own more private proceedings show considerable likeness to what was known in his own
country as the levying of black-mail. Some peasants had taken refuge with their goods and
chattels on an island in the Vistula, and, in return for a weekly pension of sixteen guldens and
four florins, Gordon undertook to guarantee their safety so long as the siege lasted. He con-
fesses another practice still more closely resembling the artifices of the Highland freebooter.
Comrades in the camp, with whom he was in concert, would drive ofi" the cattle of the nobles in
the neighbourhood of Gordon's station. His aid in recovering the missing herds would then be
sought by the owners, and his successful exertions duly rewarded by them. Thus passed his
days, neither unpleasantly nor unprofitably, during the siege of Warsaw. By the time that the
city surrendered to the Poles, it was obvious that the Podstaroste's daughter had lost her heart
to the Scottish trooper. Nor did the mother conceal her willingness to accept him as a son-in-
law. But Gordon had no mind for the match.

In less than a month after the Swedes had been driven from Warsaw, it was once more in
their hands, as the fruit of the sanguinary defeat which they inflicted upon the Poles in the great
battle of three days, fought within sight of the Polish capital. Soon after this conflict, Gordon
was taken prisoner by some Brandenburgh troopers. They carried him before his countryman
and former commander General Douglas, a soldier who had so highly distinguished himself on
every occasion, that the King of Sweden had created him Lieutenant Field-marshal. Gordon's July 18-20.
explanation that he had been forced into the Polish ranks, was readily received, on one hand •
and he, on the other, as willingly agreed to serve again with the Swedes in a picked corps of
Scots which Douglas was about to organise as a training school for officers.

Gordon's second service with the Swedes extended to three years. His first act was to go to
Warsaw to seek recruits among his countrymen for the Douglas company, ' Here,' say the
German editors, ' some three pages of the original Diary are taken up with interviews which
he had with the daughter of his former host, the Podstarost, and her parents, in which'— so they
are pleased to say— 'the reader can feel no interest.' Gordon returned from Warsaw with
twenty-four men. The Swedish standard, indeed, was in such favour with the adventurers from
Scotland, that, as we are told, a month or two previously, 'Lord Cranstoun arrived at Pillau with
2,500 Scotch for the Swedish service.' *

The rittmeister of the company in which Gordon served was John Meldriuu, and its success

* Under the date of March, 1656, a Scottish ' yet, to me its evident, tL.^t the ruine of the

annalist records that 'at this tyme lykewyse King of Sueden is the hazard of all the Pro-

the King of France and the King of Swadin testants round about ... We will stand on

sent over than- commissioneris to Scotland for our watch-tower, and look on with ane earnest

[levying] o sodgeris. The King of Swadin, desyre of any thing may come out of all tS

by the Lord Cranstoun his commissioner, re- dangerous commotions,"^ which may look to!

sayit multitudes; the uther, for France, was wards the performance of the Lord's great

not so weill ansuerit. (Nicoll's Diary of promises. Antichrist's ruine, the bringing in

Transactions in Scotland, p. 175.) of the Jews, the breaking or Christianing thS

'Whatever be the originals of the warre,' Turks and other Pagans."- (Letters and Jour-

wntes Principal Bailhe, in September, 1656, nals, vol. iii., p. 321.)