OLD-TIME RECRUITING.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 4, Issue 99, 22 October 1915, Page 3 (Supplement)

OLD-TIME RECRUITING.

History, it is said, is mainly a matter of repetition, but it is harly likely that the military authorties, in their desire for men, will resort to the methods that were sometimes employed in Scotland to obtain recruits during the seventeenth century. These metnoas were unscrupulous, as the records ot the Privy Council show. That oody had several cases before it for docision during Mie year 1691. Early in January of that year, a Captain Burnet of Barns came to Edinburgh recruiting for the Army in Flanders. So long as he got the men the worthy captain was not particular about the manner of getting them, as

the following instance shows:—A boy of fourteen, named George Millar, was taken to Burnet's room, and there, by fair means or foul, was induced to accept a piece of money of the value of fourteen shillings (Scots.) This, it seems, made him a soldier in the captain's regiment. The boy seems to have immediately expressed a decided unwillingness to be a soldier, but his expostulations were useless, and by Burnet's orders he was confined to the Canongate Tolbooth until such time as he could be shipped across to Flanders. In the meantime some friend of his petitioned the Privy Council on his behalf, explaining that he had been trepanned and had no inclination to be a soldier, but "to follow his learning, and, thereafter, other virtuous employments for his subsistence." It was even hinted at that the boy's fatherRobert Millar, an apothecary in Edinburgh—had been "a great sufferer in the late times." All was in vain. Two witnesses gave evidence that the boy had been taken in willingly with Captain Burnet, and the Council irdained him to be handed over to the captain "that he may go along with him to Holland to the said service." SEIZED IN THE STREET.

A few days later a John Brangen, servant to a Haddington merchant, was forcibly seized while on a message for his master in Edinburgh by Sergeant Douglas of Kilhead's company, and hurried like a criminal on board a ship in Leith Roads bound for Flanders. His master appealed to the Council for his release. At the same t:me Christina. Wauchope appealed for wo release of her husband, William Murdoch, who had been "innocently seized" and carried off eight days before by Captain Douglas's men, "whereby the petit ; oner and her poor children wi'l be utterly starved." Even the person of a town piper was not sacred, as in the case of James Waugh, the town piper of Musselburgh, who was seized while playing at the head of the troop and "thinking no harm." "If it be true," said Irs masters the magistrates, that he had taken money from the officers, it must have been through the ignorance and inadverten-

i SEVENTEENTH CENTURY METHODS. flijiiMfrtli.fr

c^f^hepoortirati7thinking it was given him for playing as a piper." Conscious, perhaps, that this defence was not strong enough, they added that he had been "injuriously used in tiie affair by sinister designs and contra ir to that liberty and freedom whnh all peaceable subjects ought to enjoy under the protection of autlnntf.' The appeal did not fall on deaf ear;, and Waugh, with the other two, Brangen and Murdoch, were ordered to be 6et at liberty.

IN REVENGE. Some months afterwards occurred a private case in which this unscrupulous system of recruiting was used as a means of revenge. The principal person concerned was one Robert Wilson, sou of Andrew Wilson, Kelso, and was a servant with a widow, named Mrs. Clarkson, at Damhead. near Edinburgh. Finding that his mistress was about to marry again, he spread scandalous stories about her, whereupon the lady appealed to Master David Williamson, minister of St. Cuthbert's, for redress. Two elders came to make inquiries, but Wilson fled, and could not be found. The lady next procured from a J.P. a warrant to apprehend Wilson, who was in hiding. Four male friends of Mrs. Clarkson, with one of the town's officers of Edinburgh, went in search of Wilson, whom they found sleeping in a blacksmith's house in Merchiston. Dragging him in no gentle manner from the bed, they took him to the house of the town's officer, where ho was kept for several hours. On his asking to be allowed to tile door for a minute, swords were drawn ana he was threatened with instant death if he offered to stir. At first, it secmn, they intended to take him before tno Justices, but another means of punishing him occurred to them. A Captain Hepburn was ready to sail to Ho 11 ml with his corps, and with him W'lsoi was compelled to enlist, accepting a dollar as earnest. Before his captors left hi.n they made him sign a paper, in whioh he acknowledged himself guilty of raising scandal aca'nst his former mistress. His father complained to the Privy Council of the outrage committed un his son as an open and manifest riot and oppression, for which a severe punishment ought to beinflicted. On the other hand, th* persons complained of, justified their acts as local and warrantable. The Lords of the Council. however, decided that Wilson had "been unjustly kept under restraint and violence done to him." but the only reparation they made to the agcn'iev. Ed fathet wsut a monetary one to the amount of a hundred merks.

Thifi appears to have been the la=t case of the kind, as no further npponls were made to the Privy Council. Today more gentle method* prevail, antf are more successful. —W.G.

- 1 :.COSSACK INRiNTB?.; ~ Brit the Cossacks are not ali horse men. Bes ; des the 155 cavalry regiments, they furnish the Army with 20 battalions of infantry, and 39 batteries of horse artillery. Cossack cavalry, too, can fight equally well «n foot as mounted, and when pressed by superior numbers they frequently make their horses lip down and act as ramparts while they rely on their rifles. Among the of the Cossacks may be found the most humane soldiers in the world, and some who have the reputation of being less humane. But their better qualities outnumber their bad ones, a.s their honourable behaviour in this war seems tn show. At the time of the great Turkish debacle, some t me ago, a Cossack horseman rescued an abandoned child from a burning Turkish cottage, and the officers of the regiment decided to adopt it and educate it at their own expense. Russia's resources in horsemen and horses are greater than that of any other European country. Resides her famous Cossacks she possesses a number of irregular troops hail'rig from the province of the Caucasus. Until a few weeks ago these tribes, the chief of which are the Tcherkcsses. were engajztl in a perpetual {rnerilla warfare. and in their flowing red cloaks and liaslyks it ; s probable that they are giving a good account of themselves on tbT. battlefields of the Caucasus to-day.