#scots guard

[herprivateswe]

Image: IWM (Q 57432) Captain G.H. Loder of the 2nd Battalion Scots Guards, on the main road between Sailly-sur-la-Lys and Rue Petillon, November 1914. The captain died in German hands after an attack on Fromelles in December. He was wounded mortally when his battalion attacked the German line and died after the German counter-attack.

[bantarleton]

Scots Guardsman.

[formerlyroyal]

He's Back

Just in case the picture doesn't come through here he is, photo #4

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-10969771/Queen-96-joins-Prince-Charles-watch-military-parade-Holyroodhouse.html

Oh my, yes he is back😋😋😋 thank you

[scotianostra]

On June 26th 1574, Gabriel de Lorges was beheaded in Paris for treason.

A wee tenuous one this but it has a couple of links to Scotland so it's enough to make a post about him. 

Known by the time of his death as the Comte de Montgomery , he had been a Captain of The Garde Écossaise, The Scots Guards  an elite Scottish military unit who were bodyguards to the French Monarchy.   

Gabriel was born in Ducey, France, the son of Jacques, Duke of Montgomery, a Scottish nobleman with a sound career supporting the kings of France

To rewind a wee bit to to 1559, during a jousting contest was pitted against the Sporty French King, Henry II,  his shattered lance somehow found a chink in the king’s visor and managed to catch the royal jouster just beside the eye. After a week and a half in agony, Henri succumbed to the injury and left this mortal coil. While Henry absolved Montgomery of any blame while on his deathbed finding himself disgraced, Montgomery retreated to his estates in Normandy and hurled himself into study that soon converted him to the Protestant faith.

At the time France was in a struggle  Huguenots, a Protestant faction who followed in the Calvinist traditions of the Reformation that was sweeping through Europe at the time. Montgomery through himself into the struggle and was appointed a commander quickly distinguishing himself as perhaps the ablest of the soldiers fighting the cause.

Gabriel was in Paris in 1572 during an ostensible truce for interparty dynastic nuptials when the Catholic faction sprang the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre upon The Huguenots.  Though Montgomery was a specific target for assassination that day, he somehow managed to escape. He gave the Catholics fits for the two years left him, enough that the crown tried to buy him off. (Like most Protestants, he was distrustfully defiant after the horrors of St. Bartholomew’s Day.) He fled to England for a time and the Medici’s asked for his extradition in 1573 but Elizabeth I refused, the following year he was captured after trying to start a revolt in Normandy, taken to Paris and sentenced to be beheaded.  Gabriel refused to confess his sins or receive a catholic priest’s last rights.

In front of a partisan Catholic crowd baying for blood he was led out to meet his end in Paris, a royal edict was read to him; his land was to be confiscated and his children would not inherit his titles. Still unbowed Gabriel shouted

 “tell my children, if they are not able to reclaim their position, I curse them from the grave!” 

The blade of the guillotine dropped and his head was off, seemingly spraying his son with blood as he stood below the platform.

The story is told in the  Alexandre Dumas book, The Two Diana’s. You can find a more in-depth account of the story here

https://www.normandythenandnow.com/the-heroic-end-of-gabriel-comte-de-montgomery-in-domfront/

[royalpain16]

Jon Bon Jovi talks about meeting Harry and how it all went. The Band of the Scots Guard at Buckingham Palace plays "Living on a Prayer"!!

[fotoflingscotland]

Scots Guard Runner at Luss Highland Games

[yewelshtabby]

Some simple recent concept work

[herprivateswe]

Scots Guards being issued with shovels before going into the line. Elverdinghe, 1917.