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Neither was Sweden without her great generals.
Baner, a skilful leader, though unscrupulous, succeeded in
at last driving the Imperialists out of Pomerania: he
penetrated into Saxony, beat the enemy at Chemnitz
(1639), and left the command, after his death in 1641,
to the no less skilful and more humane Lennart
Torstenson.
We have stated before that a certain violence of
temper was a characteristic trait of many of the Scottish
officers. A curious proof of this occurs in 1628, when,
according to annotations in the Archives of De la Gardie,1
a complaint was raised against them for having demanded
of each recruit a tax of five marks, the so-called
“Drille-skatte ”; for ill-treating and beating to death the young
levy, and lastly for accepting not a little money from
the peasants for exempting their sons from military
service. The discontent went so far that the newly
raised force threatened to desert en bloc unless they
were put under Swedish or German command.
But now it was not only this inborn violence but a
certain irritableness arising from outward causes which
begins to manifest itself among the Scotsmen in the
service of Sweden.
Take Leslie’s later letters to Oxenstierna. He writes
in 1635 on the 3rd of October, that he finds the minds of
the inhabitants of Stralsund despondent and very much
set against him, so that he has to take the utmost pains to
rouse them and to make it clear to them that only with
Sweden’s help can they with certainty expect peace.1 2
According to him the garrison is too weak. Again, in a
1 De la Gar diska Archivet, xi. pp. 119 f.
2“Daher ich umb so viel mehr alien miiglichen Fleiss ankehre sie
wiederumb zu animiren, dass sie nur mit Hiilfe Schwedens auf sichern
Fried rechnen können.,,—Oxenst. Skr. och Brefv.
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