FIGHTING DUKE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 April 1941, Page 10

FIGHTING DUKE

ADVENTURES IN MANY COUNTRIES. He has a place in this portrait gallery because he was for ever fighting somebody—he didn't greatly care who. Somebody once said of, him that he fought everybody except the enemy, and there was some truth in it. Born in Germany in 1615, he joined the army of the Prince of Orange when 17, raised a regiment of infantry, and was present at the siege of Valenciennes in 1656. seeing his own son killed. After that he fought wherever there was a chance of fighting. He used his sword to terrible purpose in Portugal, being well paid for his prowess. He was made a baron by our Charles the Second, fighting for him as readily as for anyone else. He was poisoned, or so it is believed, but he survived, and went off fighting again. In 1665 he was in single combat with the Duke of Parma—narrowly missing death. Ten years later King Louis of France awarded him the much-coveted marshal’s truncheon. Unfortunately there was no one to fight for at that moment so he asked the Portuguese to allow him to fight the Turks “if only for the sake of exercise.’ ’ In 1689 he became a naturalised Englishman with the tital of Duke of Schomberg, and soon afterwards he went to fight in Ireland where he fell at the Battle of the Boyne one summer day. He did well to die fighting —for he had lived fighting.