Maitland Club > Works of Sir Thomas Urquhart

EK2KYBAAAYP0N. 245
State against the Turks, may very well admit him to be ranked amongst the colonels ;
he was vice-admiral to the Venetian Fleet, and the onely renowned bane and terror of
Mahometan navigators ; whether they had galleys, galeoons, galiegrosses, or huge
war ships, it was all one to him ; he set upon all alike, saying still, The more they
were, the manyer he would kill ; and the stronger that the encounter should happen
to be, the greater would be his honour, and his prise the richer. He oftentimes so
cleared the Archipelago of the Mussulmans, that the Ottoman family at the very gates
of Constantinople would quake at the report of his victories ; and did so ferret them
out of all the creeks of the Adriatick gulph, and so shrewdly put them to it, that
sometimes they did not know in what part of the Mediterranean they might best shel-
ter themselves from the fury of his blows. Many of their mariners turned land-
souldiers for fear of him ; and of their maritime officers, several took charge of cara-
vans to escape his hand, which for many yeers together lay so heavy upon them, that
he was cryed up for another Don Jean d' Austria, or Duke d' Orea, by the enemies
of that Scythian generation ; in spight of which, and the rancour of all their unchris-
tian hearts, he dyed but some eighteen moneths ago in his bed, of a feaver, in the
Isle of Candia.
Now, as besides those Colonels above recited, many other Scotish Colonels, since
the jubilee of 1G00 till the yeer 1640, have faithfully served the Venetian State
against both the Christian and Turkish emperours ; so, in the intervals of that time,
have these following Scotish Colonels been in the service of the King of Pole,
against both the Muscoviter, Turk, and Swed ; to wit, Colonel Lermond, Colonel
Wilson, Colonel Hunter, Colonel Robert Scot, Colonel Gordon, Colonel Wood,
Colonel Spang, Colonel Gun, Colonel Robertson, Colonel Rower, and several others.
And seeing we are come so far on in the deduction of the Scotish Colonels, who for
the space of thirty or fourty yeers, without reckoning the last ten, have been so famous
for their valour in the continent of Europe, from whence the Isle of Britain excludes
it self, that neither thick nor thin, hunger nor plenty, nor heat nor cold, was said to
have been able to restraine them from giving proof thereof; and that from the hot
climates of Spaine, Italy, and France, we have, in prosecuting the threed of this dis-
course, travelled through those of a mediocer temper, of the Low Countries, Denmark,
and Hungary, even to the cold regions of Germanie, Swedland, and Pole ; I hold it
expedient before I shut up this enumeration of Scotish Colonels into a period, that the
very Scyths and Sarmats, even to the almost subarctick incolaries, be introduced to
bear record of the magnanimity of the Scotish nation ; which, nevertheless, because I
would not trespass upon the reader's patience in making the nomenclature too prolixe,
I make account to do, by setting down only the names of those Scotish Colonels that
served under the great Duke of Muscovy against the Tartar and Polonian, viz. Colo-
nel Alexander Crawford, Colonel Alexander Gordon, Colonel William Keith, Colonel
George Mathuson, Colonel Patrick Kinindmond, and Colonel Thomas Game, who.