William Forbes (soldier)

William Forbes (born February 2, 1614 in Fiddes , Scotland, † July 14, 1654 at the Schanze Burg ) was a Scottish soldier in the Swedish service.

Life

He came from the Scottish clan Forbes and was a younger son of Arthur Forbes, 9th Lord Forbes († 1641) and his wife Jean, a daughter of Alexander Elphinstone, 4th Lord Elphinstone .

At the age of 20, Forbes left Scotland in July 1634 for Osnabrück , where a relative of his, Matthew Forbes , was the Swedish governor. In the following year Forbes joined the Leslie regiment in Bremen and was involved in the conquest of Lüneburg and the battle of Wittstock on September 25, 1636 under the command of Johan Banér . Under the command of Lennart Torstensson , Forbes fought against the Danes in 1642 near Leipzig and in 1643/1644.

In 1645, at the battle of Jankau , he was imprisoned by the emperor for one day. In 1647, a few months before the end of the war, he was promoted to colonel and thus received command of his own regiment.

From his correspondence it can be seen that Forbes tried from March to June 1649 to cure a hip injury in Leinburg near Nuremberg . According to the current state of research, Forbes was either recommended by Georg Philipp Harsdörffer for the Fruitful Society or through the mediation of the participants of the Nuremberg Execution Day of the Peace of Westphalia. Prince Ludwig I of Anhalt-Köthen accepted Forbes into the society in 1649 and gave him the company name of the special and the motto against winds and rivers . Forbes' emblem was the bear's nickle or bear's ear with brown flowers <Cortusa matthioli L.>. His entry can be found in the Koethen Society Register under no. 527. The rhyme law is also recorded there, with which he thanks for the admission:

The Beersanickel are often found with brown flowers

Who resists the wind as well as rivers:

I am called the odd one, because of his kindness,

And how by his strength the river and wind dissolve,

So one must be particularly careful

To which, like a river, and wind immediately inflates

To be resisted: O! take care of humility

So will be destroyed who makes rivers and winds.

At the age of 40, William Forbes died defending the Burg Schanze in the Duchy of Bremen against the troops of the Bremen estates.

literature

• Joans Berg: Scots in Sweden. The Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh 1962.
• Thomas A. Fischer: The Scots in Sweden. Schulze, Edinburgh 1907.
• Alistair Tayler: The House of Forbes. Third Spalding Club, Aberdeen 1937.