John Hepburn

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Sir John Hepburn (* around 1598 in Athelstaneford , Scotland ; † July 8, 1636 near Zabern ) was a Scottish military leader in the Thirty Years War and Marshal of France .

Life

John Hepburn was the third son of George Hepburn of Athelstaneford († 1601) and his wife Helen Hepburn, daughter of Adam Hepburn of Smeaton.

From 1620 he fought for the Winter King in Bohemia , on the Lower Rhine and in the Netherlands and entered the service of Gustav Adolf of Sweden in 1623 , who two years later appointed him colonel of a Scottish regiment in his army. With his regiment, Hepburn took part in Gustav Adolf's war against Poland and in 1631, a few months before the Battle of Breitenfeld , took command of the Scottish or "green" brigade of the Swedish army. At Breitenfeld, Hepburn's brigade led the decisive blow against Tilly's armies.

After the victory, Hepburn stayed with the king, who held great pride in his courage and skill. He followed Gustav Adolf through all of Germany, via Leipzig , which he captured on September 11, 1631, Halle, Thuringia and Würzburg to the Rhine to Mainz, where he stayed until March 1632 and on via Donauwörth and Augsburg to Munich , where he became governor on Was May 7, 1632. After the battle of the Alte Veste near Nuremberg in October 1632, Hepburn switched to French services and recruited a regiment of 2,000 men for the French army in Scotland, which in France also included the traditional Scottish archers of the Gardes eccosais . He had handed over his command of the brigade, which was completely wiped out near Nördlingen in 1634, to Major Monro in Neustadt an der Aisch . Returned to France, he was by Louis XIII. promoted to maréchal de camp .

With these men and the remnants of the Green Brigade, Hepburn founded the famous “Royal Regiment of Foot” or in French “Régiment d'Hebron” (Hebron as the French form of Hepburn), which continues to this day as “The Royal Scots” (The Royal Regiment) ”and because of its intermingling with the Scottish contingent from the Hundred Years War (the above-mentioned archers) it is considered the oldest line infantry regiment in England. Since this regiment was created with the consent of Charles I of England, it was considered a British regiment that was sent to France and could have been ordered back to England at any time. 1661 it was temporarily recalled to England to close the gap between the dissolution of the New Model Army and the formation of the new British Army ( British Army to fill). Here it served as a model for all other regiments.

Hepburn's claim to the oldest regiment's place of honor on the right of the line was resented by the older French regiments. The French Regiment de Picardie , which also claimed this place for itself, as it was older (set up as early as 1479), called the Scots "Pontius Pilate's Bodyguard", which was meant scornfully, but was worn by Hepburn's soldiers as an honorary title and is still used today .

With this regiment Hepburn took part in the campaigns in Alsace and Lorraine (1634-36). When Bernhard von Sachsen-Weimar also entered French service in 1635, he brought Hepburn's former Swedish regiment with him, which was merged with the French Regiment d'Hebron . Hepburn was now in command of 8,000 men and was appointed Marshal of France in 1636.

However, the time of his great success was over. In the Battle of Saverne (Zabern), Hepburn fell at the age of 38 on July 8, 1636. He was buried in the Cathedral of Toul .

Along with his friend Robert Monro , Hepburn was the leading Scottish general in the Thirty Years' War. He was a strict Catholic. It is reported that he left Gustaf Adolf because of a joke about his religion and that he entered French services to reconcile his faith with his pursuit of military glory that had drawn him into the Swedish army and his allegiance to the Scottish nobility who had led him into military service in the first place to fight for the Stuart Princess: Elisabeth of Böhmen .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Max Döllner : History of the development of the city of Neustadt an der Aisch up to 1933. Ph. C. W. Schmidt, Neustadt a. d. Aisch 1950, OCLC 42823280 ; New edition to mark the 150th anniversary of the Ph. C. W. Schmidt publishing house, Neustadt an der Aisch 1828–1978. Ibid 1978, ISBN 3-87707-013-2 , p. 242, note 39.
personal data
SURNAME Hepburn, John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Scottish military leader in the Thirty Years War and Marshal of France
DATE OF BIRTH around 1598
PLACE OF BIRTH Athelstaneford, Scotland
DATE OF DEATH July 8, 1636
Place of death at Zabern