"Though I need say nothing to you by this honest bearer, Captain Mewes, who can tell you all I would have said, yet I am willing to give it to you under my own hand, that I am very much pleased to hear how constant you are in your affection to me, and in your endeavours to advance my service. We have all a hard work to do; yet I doubt not God will carry us through it: and you can never fear that I will forget the good part you have acted, which, trust me, shall be rewarded, whenever it shall be in the power of your affectionate friend, "Charles R."[31] "Colen, 30th Dec. 1654." This attempt of Dalyell's had been made in unison with the Earl of Glencairn's rash but gallant expedition to the Highlands, when Glengarry, Lochiel, Struan, and other chiefs, whose swords were never in the scabbard when Scotland or her king required them, met in the wilds of Lochearn, and made an arrangement to rise in arms and attempt a restoration; but all hope of success soon proved desperate, and they dispersed. Dalyell abandoned the castle he had taken, and retired once more to the Continent, where he obtained from the exiled king a letter or certificate, in which his bravery, loyalty, and faith, were warmly extolled and recommended. Furnished with this, and having nothing else in the world now but his sword and his stout heart, the penniless cavalier resolved to seek his fortune in foreign wars. Proceeding to Russia, which has ever formed so ample a field for Scottish enterprise and valour, he visited the barbarous court of the czar, and applied for military service. The sovereign then reigning was Alexis Michailowitch, grandson of the patriarch Fedor Romanoff, who in his fifteenth year had succeeded in 1645 to the title of czar; and is chiefly remarkable as being the father of Peter the Great, who raised the Muscovites from the depths of barbarism to a state of comparative civilization. The letter of Charles II. at once procured for Dalyell the rank of lieutenant-general in the service of Muscovy; but great obscurity involves his career in that country, for even the wars in which he was engaged were little noted by the rest of Europe. He was now in his fifty-fifth year. Alexis invited several other Scots to join his army being anxious to introduce a more regular system of discipline into his ranks; but the most eminent of these were General Drummond, Governor of Smolensko, and the two Gordons,[32] who, under Peter the Great, brought to perfection the standing forces of Russia, which however were so few, that in 1687 they amounted to no more than ten thousand men. An old topographical work, published at the Savoy in London, in 1711, mentions that "the Russians endeavoured to bring their soldiers under better discipline; for which end they made use of a great many Scots and German officers, who instruct them in all the warlike exercises that are practised by other European nations."