Lewie Baronald, his uncle the General, and all others belonging to the Scots Brigade, had a good right to be proud of doing so, as it had a glorious inheritance of military history, second only to that of the 1st Royal Scots; and though its memory should have been immortal, its records now lie rotting in a garret of the Town House of Amsterdam; and even in Scotland little is remembered of it, save its march: 'The Lowlands o' Holland Hae parted my love and me.' Yet the drums of that Brigade have stirred the echoes of every city and fortress between the mouths of the Ems in the stormy North Sea, and the oak forests of Luxembourg and the Ardennes; and between the ramparts of Ostend and the banks of the Maese and Rhine. In 1570 the fame of Maurice, Prince of Nassau, drew to his standard many of those Scots whose swords were rendered idle by peace with England, and it was by their aid chiefly, that he drove out his Spanish invaders. Among those who took with them the bravest men of the Borders, were that Sir Walter Scott of Buccleugh who exasperated Queen Elizabeth by storming the Castle of Carlisle; his son Walter, the first Earl of Buccleugh; Sir Henry Balfour of Burleigh; Preston of Gourton; Halkett of Pitfiran, and other commanders, named by Grose, Stewart, Hay, Douglas, Graham, and Hamilton. These formed the original Scots Brigade in the army of Holland, and some of the battalions must have been kilted, as Famiano Strada, the Jesuit, states that at the battle of Mechlin they fought 'naked'--_nudi pugnant Scoti multi_. In 1594, on the return of the States ambassadors, whither they had gone to congratulate James VI. on the birth of his son, they took back with them 1,500 recruits for the Brigade, which five years after fought valiantly in repelling the Spaniards at the siege of Bommel. The year 1600 saw its soldiers cover themselves with glory at the great battle of the Downs, near Nieuport, and in the following year at the siege of Ostend, which lasted three years, and in which 100,000 men are said to have perished on both sides, and where so many of Spinola's bullets 'stuck in the sandhill bulwark that it became like a wall of iron, and dashed fresh bullets to pieces when they hit it;' and so great was the valour of the Brigade at the siege of Bois-le-Duc, that Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, styled it 'The Bulwark of the Republic.' It consisted then of three battalions--those of Buccleugh, Scott, and Halkett. The bestowal of some commissions on Dutch officers caused much discontent during the time of the Prince of Orange, afterwards William III., with whom (after being demanded by James VII. without effect in 1688) the Brigade came over to Britain for a time, and served at the siege of Edinburgh Castle and the battle of Killiecrankie.