The Scots Brigade by James Grant

General John Kinloch, Colonel-Commandant of the Scots Brigade in the service of the Dutch States-General, is a confirmed and bitter misogynist who discovers that his nephew and heir, Lieutenant Lewie Baronald, has fallen in love with Dolores, daughter of the newly arrived Countess van Renslaer at the Hague. Determined to save the young man from what he sees as the ruinous folly of matrimony, and quietly nursing an old, unhealed wound of his own, Kinloch refuses his consent and secretly arranges to have Lewie's name sent forward for foreign service in the Dutch West Indies, hoping separation will kill the attachment. Alone that evening, he reveals to the reader (through a hidden miniature kept in a secret drawer) that his hostility to women stems from his own youthful betrayal by a girl named Mercedes, whom he loved and lost while on garrison duty at Fort Nassau on the Berbice river twenty years before. Lewie, unaware of the full extent of his uncle's scheming, calls on Dolores and the Countess, only to be provoked into a dangerous mock sword-play by Dolores's cousin, Maurice Morganstjern, a dissolute and penniless fortune-hunter who covets both Dolores and her expected inheritance. Morganstjern, egged on by his disreputable crony the Heer van Schrekhorn, deliberately turns the "jest" murderous, but Lewie disarms him before real harm is done. Rebuffed by Dolores and stung by jealousy of the popular Scots Brigade officer, Morganstjern and Schrekhorn resolve on a desperate scheme: they will abduct Dolores as she returns from a fashionable ridotto, carry her aboard a ship waiting in the Maese, and force a compromising situation that will leave marriage to Morganstjern her only recourse. Meanwhile Kinloch formally informs Lewie that his transfer papers are in motion, provoking anguish and a bitter quarrel between uncle and nephew; the General, unmoved, recounts at length the story of his own faithless love in Berbice, never naming her beyond the name "Mercedes," which he has vowed never to utter again. That same evening, at the ridotto, Dolores is stunned to learn from the Earl of Drumlanrig that Lewie has apparently sought foreign service himself — Kinloch's maneuver having been concealed from her — and she leaves early in distress, only to have her sedan-chair waylaid on the lonely road home by the masked Morganstjern and Schrekhorn. Providentially, General Kinloch, walking that same road, intervenes, routs both assailants at swordpoint, and escorts the shaken but tight-lipped Dolores home, she declining to name her cousin as one of her attackers. Finding a dropped bracelet, he calls at the villa to return it and is brought face to face with the Countess van Renslaer — who is revealed to be Mercedes herself, his long-lost early love, now a widow. Old feeling reasserts itself with startling speed: within one interview the hardened woman-hater is reconciled to her, and courtship between the middle-aged pair proceeds as swiftly and warmly as that of Lewie and Dolores, to the nephew's astonished amusement at his uncle's sudden reversal of every professed principle. Morganstjern and Schrekhorn, their plot exposed and thwarted, quit the Hague in haste to escape both scandal and Lewie's vengeance. Kinloch, his objections dissolved, moves at once to cancel Lewie's posting abroad. Shortly afterward, official word arrives that the States-General have dispensed with the Scots Brigade entirely, transferring it to British service; the whole corps is ordered to embark for Scotland. Interwoven with this military turning point — presented through a historical digression on the Brigade's two centuries of Continental service, from its formation under Maurice of Nassau through Bergen-op-Zoom and its eventual incorporation as the 94th Regiment — is the resolution of both love stories: before the Brigade's final embarkation at Rotterdam, amid the sorrow of the Dutch townsfolk at losing their long-serving allies, Lewie Baronald weds Dolores and General Kinloch weds the Countess Mercedes van Renslaer in the same ceremony at the Scots Kirk of the Hague, the two couples departing with the victorious, undefeated Brigade to begin new lives in Scotland.

By James Grant · First published 1890 · Genre: Historical Fiction, Romance, Military Fiction · 12 chapters · 24,025 words

First lines

'And you will not accompany me to call on these ladies, uncle? ' said the young man persuasively.

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What this Textopian page supports

The Scots Brigade is listed on Textopian as a novella by James Grant, dated 1890 CE.

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• Work type: Novella
• Author: James Grant
• Date: 1890 CE
• Language: English
• Genres: Historical Fiction, Romance, Military Fiction, Melodrama, Adventure
• Length: 24,025 words
• Structure: 12 chapters, 597 paragraphs
• Reading fit: Standard (8th-9th Grade)

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• Work identity for The Scots Brigade by James Grant
• Canonical title URL and first readable passage URL
• Genre and topic classification from the Textopian catalog
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Genres

• Historical Fiction — The narrative is deeply embedded in 1780s Holland during the American Revolutionary War period, featuring the real Scots Brigade in Dutch service, with references to historical figures (Earl of Drumlanrig, General Dundas), historical events (American Squadron's capture of British ships, Treaty of Ryswick, the Culloden aftermath), and a meticulously detailed account of the Brigade's two-hundred-year history and eventual departure to British service.
• Romance — Two parallel love stories form the emotional core: Lewie Baronald's passionate romance with Dolores van Renslaer, threatened by separation, and General Kinloch's rediscovery of his lost first love Mercedes, the Countess van Renslaer, after twenty years of separation and bitterness. The reunion and resolution of the latter romance resolves the primary conflict.
• Military Fiction — The Scots Brigade serves as the central institutional framework, with detailed attention to military hierarchy, officers' ranks, regimental duties, service obligations, sword-play and martial prowess, and the geopolitical pressures affecting the Brigade's future allegiance between Holland and Britain.
• Melodrama — The text features heightened emotional intensity, passionate declarations of love, villainous scheming, desperate young lovers threatened with permanent separation, a midnight abduction attempt with masked assailants, and extreme reactions to romantic betrayal and reunion, all rendered in elaborate, emotionally charged prose.

Tags

historical fiction · Scottish history · military fiction · 17th century · warfare · adventure · mercenaries · European history · soldiers · action · historical drama · heroism

Contents

• The Lover
• The Colonel-Commandant
• Sword-Play
• Dolores
• 'the Bulwark of Holland.'
• At the Golden Sun
• The General's Secret
• The Ridotto
• The Abductors
• The Fair Widow
• Omnia Vincit Amor
• Conclusion

More by James Grant

• The Story of the Cid Rodrigo of Bivar (1890)
• The Boy-General (1890)
• The Bugle-Boy of Badajoz (1890)
• The Voyage of the 'Bon Accord. ' (1890)
• A Tale of the Retreat from Cabul (1890)
• Dick Staples of the 'Queen's own. ' (1890)
• The Story of Lieutenant James Moody of Barton's Regiment (1890)
• 'Old Minorca; ' or, General Murray of the Scots Fusiliers (1890)
• All works by James Grant