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James Francis Edward Keith

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


James Keith
Born(1696-06-11)11 June 1696
Inverugie, Kingdom of Scotland
Died14 October 1758(1758-10-14) (aged 62)
Hochkirch, Electorate of Saxony
Allegiance
BranchRoyal Prussian Army
RankGeneralfeldmarschall
Wars
Awards
Alma materUniversity of Edinburgh
University of Aberdeen
Relations

James Francis Edward Keith (in later years Jakob von Keith; 11 June 1696 – 14 October 1758) was a Scottish soldier and Generalfeldmarschall of the Royal Prussian Army. As a Jacobite he took part in a failed attempt to restore the Stuart Monarchy to Britain. When this failed, he fled to Europe, living in France, and then Spain. He joined the Spanish and eventually the Russian armies and fought in the Anglo-Spanish War and the Russo-Swedish War. In the latter he participated in the conquest of Finland and became its viceroy. Subsequently, he participated in the coup d'état that put Elizabeth of Russia on the throne.

He subsequently served in the Prussian army under Frederick the Great, where he distinguished himself in several campaigns. He died during the Seven Years' War at the Battle of Hochkirch. He received the Black Eagle Order and is memorialised on the Equestrian statue of Frederick the Great.

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Transcription

The above excellent title is not of my own invention. It was suggested to me by the Editor of this paper (T.P.'s Weekly), and I consented to fill up the bill, partly because of the pleasure I have always had from the paper itself, and partly because it gives me an opportunity of telling an egotistical story, a story which may enlighten the public about the general origin of such titles. I have always heard of the brutality of publishers and how they crush and obscure the author; but my complaint has always been that they push him forward far too much. I will not say that, so far from making too little of the author, they make too much of him; that this phrase is capable of a dark financial interpretation which I do not intend. But I do say that the prominent personalities of the literary world are very largely the creations of their publishers, in so far as they are not solely the creations of their wives. Here is a small incident out of my own existence. I designed to write a sort of essay, divided into sections, on one particular point of political error. This fallacy, though small and scholastic at first sight, seemed to me to be the real mistake in most modern sociological works. It was, briefly, the idea that things that have been tried have been found wanting. It was my purpose to point out that in the entanglements of practice this is untrue; that an old expedient may be the best thing for a new situation; that its principle may be useful though its practice was abandoned; and so on. Therefore, I claimed, we should look for the best method, the ideal, whether it is in the future or the past. I imagined this book as a drab-coloured, decorous little philosophical treatise, with no chapters, but the page occasionally broken by section-headings at the side. I proposed to call my analysis of a radical error 'What is wrong', meaning where the mistake is in our logical calculation. But I had highly capable and sympathetic publishers, whose only weakness was that they thought my unhappy monologue much more important than I did. By some confusion of ecstasy (which entirely through my own fault I failed to check) the title was changed into the apocalyptic trumpet-blast 'What's Wrong With the World'. It was divided up into three short, fierce chapters, like proclamations in a French riot. Outside there was an enormous portrait of myself looking like a depressed hairdresser, and the whole publication had somehow got the violence and instancy of a bombshell. Let it be understood that I do not blame the publishers in the least for this. I could have stopped it if I had minded my own affairs, and came out of their beautiful and ardent souls. I merely mention it as an instance of the error about publishers. They are always represented as cold and scornful merchants, seeking to keep your writers in the background. Alas (as Wordsworth so finely says), alas! the enthusiasm of publishers has oftener left me mourning. Upon the whole, I am rather inclined to approve of this method of the publisher or editor making up the title, while the author makes up the remarks about it. Any man with a large mind ought to be able to write about anything. Any really free man ought to be able to write to order. Some of the greatest books in the world -- Pickwick, for instance -- were written to fulfil a scheme partly sketched out by a publisher. But I only brought together these two cases of title that came to me from outside because they do illustrate the necessity of some restatement in such a case. For these two titles are, when it comes to the fulfilment, at once too complex and too simple. I would never have dreamed of announcing, like some discovery of my own, what is wrong with the world. What is wrong with the world is the devil, and what is right with it is God; the human race will travel for a few more million years in all sorts of muddle and reform, and when it perishes of the last cold or heat it will still be within the limits of that very simple definition. But in age that has confused itself with such phrases as 'optimist' and 'pessimist', it is necessary to distinguish along more delicate lines. One of the strangest things about the use of the word 'optimist' is that it is now so constantly used about the future. The house of man is criticised not as a house, but as a kind of caravan; not by what it is, but by where it is going. None are more vitally and recklessly otherworldly than those modern progressives who do not believe in another world. Now, for the matter of that, I do not think the world is getting much better in very many vital respects. In some of them, I think, the fact could hardly be disputed. The one perfectly satisfactory element at the present crisis is that all the prophecies have failed. At least the people who have been clearly proved to be wrong are the people who were quite sure they were right. That is always a gratifying circumstance. Now why is it that all these prophecies of the wise have been confounded and why has the destiny of men taken so decisive and different a course? It is because of the very simple fact that the human race consists of many millions of two-legged and tolerably cheerful, reasonably unhappy beings who never read any books at all and certainly never hear of any scientific predictions. If they act in opposition to the scheme which science has foreseen for them, they must be excused. They sin in ignorance. They have no notion that they are avoiding what was really unavoidable. But, indeed, the phrases loosely used of that obscure mass of mankind are a little misleading. To say of the bulk of human beings that they are uneducated is like saying of a Red Indian hunter that he has not yet taken his degree. He has taken many other things. And so, sincerely speaking, there are no uneducated men. They may escape the trivial examinations, but not the tremendous examinations of existence. The dependence of infancy, the enjoyment of animals, the love of woman and the fear of death -- these are more frightful and more fixed than all conceivable forms of the cultivation of the mind. It is idle to complain of schools and colleges being trivial. In no case will a college ever teach the important things. He has learnt them right or wrong, and he has learnt them all alone. We therefore come back to the primary truth, that what is right with the world has nothing to do with future changes, but is rooted in original realities. If groups or peoples show an unexpected independence or creative power; if they do things no one had dreamed of their doing; if they prove more ferocious or more self-sacrificing than the wisdom of the world had ever given them credit for, then such inexplicable outbursts can always be referred back to some elementary and absolute doctrine about the nature of men. No traditions in this world are so ancient as the traditions that lead to modern upheaval and innovation. Nothing nowadays is so conservative as a revolution. The men who call themselves Republicans are men walking the streets of deserted and tiny city-states, and digging up the great bones of pagans. And when we ask on what republicanism really rests, we come back to that great indemonstrable dogma of the native dignity of man. And when we come back to the lord of creation, we come back of necessity to creation; and we ask ourselves that ultimate question which St Thomas Aquinas (an extreme optimist) answered in the affirmative: Are these things ultimately of value at all? What is right with the world is the world. In fact, nearly everything else is wrong with it. This is that great truth in the tremendous tale of Creation, a truth that our people must remember or perish. It is at the beginning that things are good, and not (as the more pallid progressives say) only at the end. The primordial things -- existence, energy, fruition -- are good so far as they go. You cannot have evil life, though you can have notorious evil livers. Manhood and womanhood are good things, though men and women are often perfectly pestilent. You can use poppies to drug people, or birch trees to beat them, stone to make an idol, or corn to make a corner; but it remains true that, in the abstract, before you have done anything, each of these four things is in strict truth a glory, a beneficent speciality and variety. We do praise the Lord that there are birch trees growing amongst the rocks and poppies amongst the corn; we do praise the Lord, even if we do not believe in Him. We do admire and applaud the project of a world, just as if we had been called to council in the primal darkness and seen the first starry plan of the skies. We are, as a matter of fact, far more certain that this life of ours is a magnificent and amazing enterprise than we are that it will succeed. These evolutionary optimists who called themselves Meliorists (a patient and poor-spirited lot they are) always talk as if we were certain of the end, though not of the beginning. In other words, they don't know what life is aiming at, but they are quire sure it will get there. Why anybody who has avowedly forgotten where he came from should be quite so certain of where he is going to I have never been able to make out; but Meliorists are like that. They are ready to talk of existence itself as the product of purely evil forces. They never mention animals except as perpetually tearing each other to pieces; but a month in the country would cure that. They have a real giddy horror of stars and seas, as a man has on the edge of a hopelessly high precipice. They sometimes instinctively shrink from clay, fungoids, and the fresh young of animals with a quivering gesture that reveals the fundamental pessimist. Life itself, crude, uncultivated life, is horrible to them. They belong very largely to the same social class and creed as the lady who objected that the milk came to her from a dirty cow, and not from a nice clean shop. But they are sure how everything will end. I am in precisely the opposite position. I am much more sure that everything is good at the beginning than I am that everything will be good at the end. That all this frame of things, this flesh, these stones, are good things, of that I am more brutally certain than I can say. But as for what will happen to them, that is to take a step into dogma and prophecy. I speak here, of course, solely of my personal feelings, not even of my reasoned creed. But on my instincts alone I should have no notion what would ultimately happen to this material world I think so magnificent. For all I know it may be literally and not figuratively true that the tares are tied into bundles for burning, and that as the tree falleth so shall it lie. I am an agnostic, like most people with a positive theology. But I do affirm, with the full weight of sincerity, that trees and flowers are good at the beginning, whatever happens to them at the end; that human lives were good at the beginning, whatever happens to them in the end. The ordinary modern progressive position is that this is a bad universe, but will certainly get better. I say it is certainly a good universe, even if it gets worse. I say that these trees and flowers, stars and sexes, are primarily, not merely ultimately, good. In the Beginning the power beyond words created heaven and earth. In the Beginning He looked on them and saw that they were good. All this unavoidable theory (for theory is always unavoidable) may be popularly pulled together thus. We are to regard existence as a raid or great adventure; it is to be judged, therefore, not by what calamities it encounters, but by what flag it follows and what high town it assaults. The most dangerous thing in the world is to be alive; one is always in danger of one's life. But anyone who shrinks from this is a traitor to the great scheme and experiment of being. The pessimist of the ordinary type, the pessimist who thinks he would be better dead, is blasted with the crime of Iscariot. Spiritually speaking, we should be justified in punishing him with death. Only, out of polite deference to his own philosophy, we punish him with life. But this faith (that existence was fundamentally and purposely good) is not attacked only by the black, consistent pessimist. The man who says that he would sooner die is best answered by a sudden blow with the poker, for the reply is rightly logical, as well as physically very effective. But there has crept through the culture of modern Europe another notion that is equally in its own way an attack on the essential rightness of the world. It is not avowedly pessimistic, though the source from which it comes (which is Buddhism) is pessimistic for those who really understand it. It can offer itself -- as it does among some of the high-minded and distinguished Theosophists -- with an air of something highly optimistic. But this disguised pessimism is what is really wrong with the world -- at least, especially with the modern world. It is essential to arrest and to examine it. There has crept into our thoughts, through a thousand small openings, a curious and unnatural idea. I mean the idea that unity is itself a good thing; that there is something high and spiritual about things being blended and absorbed into each other. That all rivers should run into one river, that all vegetables should go into one pot -- that is spoken of as the last and best fulfilment of being. Boys are to be 'at one' with girls; all sects are to be 'at one' in the New Theology; beasts fade into men and men fade into God; union in itself is a noble thing. Now union in itself is not a noble thing. Love is a noble thing; but love is not union. Nay, it is rather a vivid sense of separation and identity. Maudlin, inferior love poetry does, indeed, talk of lovers being 'one soul', just as maudlin, inferior religious poetry talks of being lost in God; but the best poetry does not. When Dante meets Beatrice, he feels his distance from her, not his proximity; and all the greatest saints have felt their lowness, not their highness, in the moment of ecstasy. And what is true of these grave and heroic matters (I do not say, of course, that saints and lovers have never used the language of union too, true enough in its own place and proper limitation of meaning) -- what is true of these is equally true of all the lighter and less essential forms of appreciation of surprise. Division and variety are essential to praise; division and variety are what is right with the world. There is nothing specially right about mere contact and coalescence. In short, this vast, vague idea of unity is the one 'reactionary' thing in the world. It is perhaps the only connection in which that foolish word 'reactionary' can be used with significance and truth. For this blending of men and women, nations and nations, is truly a return to the chaos and unconsciousness that were before the world was made. There is of course, another kind of unity of which I do not speak here; unity in the possession of truth and the perception of the need for these varieties. But the varieties themselves; the reflection of man and woman in each other, as in two distinct mirrors; the wonder of man at nature as a strange thing at once above and below him; the quaint and solitary kingdom of childhood; the local affections and the colour of certain landscapes -- these actually are the things that are the grace and honour of the earth; these are the things that make life worth living and the whole framework of things well worthy to be sustained. And the best thing remains; that this view, whether conscious or not, always has been and still is the view of the living and labouring millions. While a few prigs on platforms are talking about 'oneness' and absorption in 'The All', the folk that dwell in all the valleys of this ancient earth are renewing the varieties for ever. With them a woman is loved for being unmanly, and a man loved for being un-womanly. With them the church and the home are both beautiful, because they are both different; with them fields are personal and flags are sacred; they are the virtue of existence, for they are not mankind but men. The rooted hope of the modern world is that all these dim democracies do still believe in that romance of life, that variation of man, woman and child upon which all poetry has hitherto been built. The danger of the modern world is that these dim democracies are so very dim, and that they are especially dim where they are right. The danger is that the world may fall under a new oligarchy -- the oligarchy of prigs. And if anyone should promptly ask (in the manner of the debating clubs) for the definition of a prig, I can only reply that a prig is an oligarch who does not even know he is an oligarch. A circle of small pedants sit on an upper platform, and pass unanimously (in a meeting of none) that there is no difference between the social duties of men and of women, the social instruction of men or of children. Below them boils that multitudinous sea of millions that think differently, that have always thought differently, that will always think differently. In spite of the overwhelming majority that maintains the old theory of life, I am in some real doubt about which will win. Owing to the decay of theology and all the other clear systems of thought, men have been thrown back very much upon their instincts, as with animals. As with animals, their instincts are right; but, as with animals, they can be cowed. Between the agile scholars and the stagnant mob, I am really doubtful about which will be triumphant. I have no doubt at all about which ought to be. Europe at present exhibits a concentration upon politics which is partly the unfortunate result of our loss of religion, partly the just and needful result of our loss of our social inequality and iniquity. These causes, however, will not remain in operation for ever. Religion is returning from her exile; it is more likely that the future will be crazily and corruptly superstitious than that it will be merely rationalist. On the other hand, our attempts to right the extreme ill-balance of wealth must soon have some issue; something will be done to lessen the perpetual torture of incompetent compassion; some scheme will be substituted for our malevolent anarchy, if it be only one of benevolent servitude. And as these two special unrests about the universe and the State settle down into more silent and enduring system, there will emerge more and more those primary and archaic truths which the dust of these two conflicts has veiled. The secondary questions relatively solved, we shall find ourselves all the more in the presence of the primary questions of Man. For at present we all tend to one mistake; we tend to make politics too important. We tend to forget how huge a part of a man's life is the same under a Sultan and a Senate, under Nero or St Louis. Daybreak is a never-ending glory, getting out of bed is a never-ending nuisance; food and friends will be welcomed; work and strangers must be accepted and endured; birds will go bedwards and children won't, to the end of the last evening. And the worst peril is that in our just modern revolt against intolerable accidents we may have unsettled those things that alone make daily life tolerable. It will be an ironic tragedy if, when we have toiled to find rest, we find we are incurably restless. It will be sad if, when we have worked for our holiday, we find we have unlearnt everything but work. The typical modern man is the insane millionaire who has drudged to get money, and then finds he cannot enjoy even money. There is danger that the social reformer may silently and occultly develop some of the madness of the millionaire whom he denounces. He may find that he has learnt how to build playgrounds but forgotten how to play. He may agitate for peace and quiet, but only propagate his own mental agitation. In his long fight to get a slave a half-holiday he may angrily deny those ancient and natural things, the zest of being, the divinity of man, the sacredness of simple things, the health and humour of the earth, which alone make a half-holiday even half a holiday or a slave even half a man. There is danger in that modern phrase 'divine discontent'. There is truth in it also, of course; but it is only truth of a special and secondary kind. Much of the quarrel between Christianity and the world has been due to this fact; that there are generally two truths, as it were, at any given moment of revolt or reaction, and the ancient underlying truism which is nevertheless true all the time. It is sometimes worth while to point out that black is not so black as it is painted; but black is still black, and not white. So with the merits of content and discontent. It is true that in certain acute and painful crises of oppression or disgrace, discontent is a duty and shame could call us like a trumpet. But it is not true that man should look at life with an eye of discontent, however high-minded. It is not true that in his primary, naked relation to the world, in his relation to sex, to pain, to comradeship, to the grave or to the weather, man ought to make discontent his ideal; it is black lunacy. Half his poor little hopes of happiness hang on his thinking a small house pretty, a plain wife charming, a lame foot not unbearable, and bad cards not so bad. The voice of the special rebels and prophets, recommending discontent, should, as I have said, sound now and then suddenly, like a trumpet. But the voices of the saints and sages, recommending, contentment, should sound unceasingly, like the sea. --Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Early life

Dunnottar Castle, seat of the chiefs of the Clan Keith

Keith was born on 11 June 1696 at Inverugie Castle near Peterhead, the second son of Mary Drummond and William Keith. His father, was the 9th Earl Marischal of Scotland, was a Knight of the Order of the Thistle, and a member of the Privy Council of James Francis Edward Stuart. His mother, Mary Drummond, was daughter of James Drummond, 4th Earl of Perth (1648–1716), and his first wife, Lady Jane Douglas, the fourth daughter of William Douglas, 1st Marquess of Douglas.[1]

His parents, committed Jacobites, named him after the Great Pretender.[1][2] He and his brother George (1692/93–1778) were educated by a kinsman, the historian and bishop Robert Keith. After briefly attending the University of Aberdeen, James traveled to study at the University of Edinburgh in preparation for the legal profession.[3][4][5] Keith was a keen freemason.[6]

Jacobitism

The battle of Sheriffmuir

In his autobiography, Keith makes it clear that his dissatisfaction in Great Britain began with the failure of Queen Anne to settle the Scottish succession on her brother James. The placement of a foreign, German family on the throne of the land led to widespread discontent in Scotland.[7] On either 3 or 20 September 1715, he and his brother had stood side by side to proclaim James Stuart, son of the deposed King James VII and pretender to the Scottish throne, as King of Scotland.[8]

Keith was present later that year at the Battle of Sheriffmuir on 9 November. Subsequently, when the Earl of Mar failed to join up with the English Jacobites and the Catholics in the south, Keith realised that the end of this effort was near. The Jacobite effort was briefly resuscitated that year by the arrival of James himself, who landed at Peterhead at the end of December 1715, but when the Jacobites realised that James had travelled on a fishing trawler with two servants, not with an armada bringing the army the Jacobites hoped for, their morale sank even further.[9] Eventually, after Government forces pursued the Jacobites almost to the Isle of Skye, a French Navy warship picked up 100 officers, including Keith, and took them to St. Pol de Leon in Brittany.[10] His activities in this Jacobite rising of 1715 compelled him to remain on the Continent.[11]

James arrives in Peterhead

Eventually, Keith went to Paris, where he had relatives. He spent the better part of a year living hand to mouth by selling the personal items he had brought with him, mostly horse furnishings. Although he could have asked any of his relatives for assistance, but, as he explained in his unfinished memoirs, "... I was then either so bashful or vain, that I wou'd [sic] not own the want I was in."[12] Eventually he received a gift of 1000 livres from Mary of Modena, mother of the Pretender and this, plus some support from home and an allowance from James enabled him to spend the rest of the year at the university. In 1717, he received a commission as colonel of cavalry and was ordered to prepare to go to Scotland again, but the plan, contingent upon support from the Charles XII of Sweden, was discovered and thwarted, and he continued at the university.[12] Later that year, in June, he met Peter I of Russia, and offered the Tsar his sword, being, as Keith considered it "high time ... to quitte [sic] the Academy and endeavor to establish myself somewhere ..." The Tsar apparently saw no need for the sword of a youth.[13]

1719 Uprising

James Keith, aged 24

When Keith was finally convinced to leave Paris (he had fallen in love),[14] he journeyed to Spain with his brother. They had to deceive the customs agents at the borders about their destination, purpose and origins, Spain being actively engaged in trying to secure the French throne for Philip V in the War of the Quadruple Alliance. Keith and his brother journeyed to Madrid, raising funds for an army for James, arranging for its transport to Scotland, and communicating the king's designs to the various Scottish chieftains throughout Europe. At one point in his adventures in Spain, he carried a small note from the James Butler, 2nd Duke of Ormonde and 18,000 crowns to purchase frigates destined to carry an army to Scotland; he returned to France quietly, leaving his brother in Spain to sail with troops to the coast of Scotland. Trying to return to Paris, while in Bordeaux, he masqueraded as a friend's servant so he could acquire some horses to get back to Paris.[15]

In the course of communicating with Jacobite sympathizers in Spain and France, Keith realised that there was a considerable division of factions among James's supporters. The sides all wanted Keith to communicate one thing, or another, often contradictory, to the king, all of which Keith considered favoured their private ends, not the needs of the king or the goals of the campaign. Eventually, the Jacobites embarked for the Isle of Lewis on 19 March in a small ship, from the mouth of the Seine, and set course to round the Orkney Islands The wind forced them off course until, after 24 March, they had altered course and managed to slip past a squadron of Royal Navy men-of-war which were transporting troops from Ireland to England: news of a conspiracy had reached London by then, and the Government had prepared for the uprising.[16]

The Jacobite efforts were further complicated by bickering among the chiefs as to who should take command. Initially, this was awarded to the Marischall, Keith's brother, but the following day, after a long speech by William Murray, Marquess of Tullibardine "which", Keith later wrote, "no body understood but himself,"[16] Murray presented his own commission as lieutenant general, outranking the Marischall's, whose commission of command was only as major general. There was, apparently, considerable subsequent disagreement about how the rebellion should proceed, some wishing to wait for the Duke of Ormonde's 500 Spanish marines on the way from Spain. Knowing that the Government forces had discovered their landing place, Keith's brother convinced Murray to disembark all the troops they had and send the Spanish ships home; the Government forces would inevitably blockade the ships in the harbor and losing the ships would endanger their relationship with Spain.[17]

Unfortunately for the rebellion, Ormonde's fleet had been disbanded by a storm near Galicia, and the soonest the Spanish would raise another one would be the following spring. Time to mount any rebellion was running short. The Jacobites were poorly armed and even more poorly provisioned and the Government force was three days march away. The nearby clans made an effort to raise additional troops, but gathered only about 1,000. The Government forces approached with four regiments of foot and a detachment of a fifth regiment, plus 150 dragoons. The Jacobite position was secure enough, but on 10 June, the Government force came out of the mountains and attacked; in short order, the Royal Navy captured Eilean Donan Castle and, at the Battle of Glen Shiel, the Government forces defeated the small Jacobite army. The Jacobites decided that they should disperse and the Spaniards surrender.[18]

Keith spent several months lurking in the mountains and, in early September, embarked for Holland from Peterhead. Upon trying to cross France to reach Spain, the brothers were arrested at Sedan, and ordered to prison. Keith had in his pocket a pair of commissions from the King of Spain, items which would cause them great trouble, but his jailers did not search him, nor ask for his name. For safety, "pretending a certain necessity, [he] threw them in to a place needless to be named."[18]

Spanish service

After leaving France, Keith eventually obtained a colonelcy in the Spanish army as part of the Irish Brigade, then commanded by the Duke of Ormonde. He then fought in the failed Siege of Gibraltar.[4]

Finding his Protestantism a barrier to promotion in Catholic Spain, he obtained a recommendation from the King of Spain to Peter II of Russia.[19]

Imperial Russian service

In Imperial Russian service, Keith was initially assigned to command two regiments of foot belonging to Vasily Vladimirovich Dolgorukov's brigade, he asked for a delay of three months in which he could learn the language and practices of the Russian service. He took the time not only to learn the language, but also to learn the Court and its intricate politics. His first mentor there, James Fitz-James Stuart, 2nd Duke of Berwick and Duke of Liria, fell into a quarrel with both Dolgorukov and Count Matueof.

His commander there, Peter Lacy, had fled Ireland after the Williamite War. He was also one of the first Freemasons active in Russia, as a master of a lodge in Saint Petersburg in 1732–34.[20] He also participated in Elizabeth of Russia's seizure of power in Petersburg.[21] He received the Imperial Order of St Andrew.[22]

During the Russo-Swedish War of 1741–1743, Keith was briefly de facto Vice-Roy of Finland and responsible for the occupying Russian forces, James Keith convened the estates of southwestern Finland on 8 (or 18) September. He proved adept as a capable and liberal civil administrator. In late 1742, Keith was succeeded in the leadership of civil administration of Finland (now based at Turku) by the new Governor-General, Johannes Balthasar von Campenhausen.

Prussian service

Seven Years' War

During the Seven Years' War, Keith held high command in the Prussian army. In 1756, he commanded the troops covering the investment of Pirna, and distinguished himself at Lobositz.[23] The battle at Lobositz was a particularly difficult situation. Frederick, in what was his typical manner, dismissed Austrian capability; he sent his columns directly into a valley surrounded by Croatian sharpshooters.

The failure of his troops to make any headway against Lacy's troops, and indeed their apparent collapse, caused Frederick to feel the battle lost, and to leave the field. Upon his departure, command devolved to Keith. Initially Keith made no headway against the Austrian front, but when Lacy was wounded, his subordinates did not have the same command vision, and Keith was able to make some progress against the Austrian front, actually rolling up the Austrian lines to the north and south of Lobositz. The overall Austrian commander, George Browne, had never intended to make this a major battle, and so withdrew the entire force to Budin, approximately eight kilometers (5 mi) away.[24]

In 1757, he commanded at the siege of Prague and later, in this same campaign, he defended Leipzig against a greatly superior force. He was also present at Rossbach, and, while the king was fighting at Leuthen,[23] joined with Prince Henry's force in Saxony.[4]

Hochkirch

In 1758, Keith took a prominent part in the Moravian campaign, after which he withdrew from the army to restore his broken health. He returned in time for the autumn campaign in the Lausitz region, and was killed on 14 October 1758 at the battle of Hochkirch.[23] He had been shot several times; the final shot knocked him off his horse into his groom's arms. The groom was dragged away, leaving Keith's body behind.[citation needed]

Although stripped bare by the time the Austrians found him on the battlefield the following day, he was recognised by Lacy, the son of Peter Lacy, his old commander in Russia. The Austrians gave him a decent burial on the field; his groom, who had crept back to the battlefield, observed this and marked the location. Keith was transferred shortly afterwards by Frederick to the garrison church of Berlin.[4]

Relationship with Frederick

Frederick commemorated Keith on the Rheinsberg Obelisk

While at the University of Edinburgh, James Keith acquired a taste for literature and learning that secured him the esteem of the most distinguished savants of Europe.[23] His experiences in the Jacobite uprisings, and his observations of the contentious competition between and among the clan chieftains, offered him the opportunity early to learn the pitfalls of command, the arts of negotiation, and the importance of listening and diplomacy. This skill was further sharped during the intrigues of the Russian court, where he served for 17 years.[25] He displayed in numerous campaigns the calm, intelligent and watchful valour which was his chief characteristic.[23]

In his personal relationships, he demonstrated calmness and loyalty. In this he was the opposite of his father, who had been described as "very wild, inconstant and passionate."[26] In Finland, he met Eva Merthen.[27] Although they never married, they had several children.[4]

Keith became one of Frederick's chief allies and friends. Keith developed a game of chess for Frederick, life-sized, that the two would play; Frederick also travelled incognito with Keith throughout Germany and Hungary.

At his final battle, he had remonstrated with the king about establishing the camp at Hochkirch, with the Austrians looming in the heights around them, pointing out that staying in the village was suicide. "If the Austrians leave us unmolested in this camp", Keith told the king, "they deserve to be hanged." Frederick reportedly replied, "it is to be hoped they are more afraid of us than of the gallows."[4][28] Frederick was devastated by Keith's death at Hochkirch.

Memorials

Statue to Keith in Peterhead, Scotland

Many memorials were erected to him by the king, Prince Henry, and others.[23] He was immortalised in song as Feldmarschall von Keith in the ballad "Fridericus Rex" by Willibald Alexis, which was set to music by Carl Lowe in 1837 and became the basis in the 1860s for Ferdinand Radek's Fridericus Rex Grenadier March[29] in which his surname is mispronounced as "Kite." He is memorialised on the Equestrian statue of Frederick the Great (1851). In 1889, the 22nd Infantry Regiment (1st Upper Silesian) was named after him. Hochkirch erected a stone tablet inscribed to Keith outside its church, to stand with others dedicated to the victims of Prussia's defeat by Austria on 14 October 1758. There is also a statue to Keith in Peterhead, Aberdeenshire, which was given to the town by William I, King of Prussia, in 1868.[30]

References

  1. ^ a b Matthew, H. C. G.; Harrison, B., eds. (23 September 2004). "Mary Drummond". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/62762. Retrieved 11 June 2023. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. ^ G. E. Cokayne, The complete peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom, 8 vols. (1887–98); new ed, ed. V. Gibbs and others, 14 vols. in 15 (1910–98); microprint repr. (1982) and (1987), 8.484
  3. ^ Andrew Henderson, Memoirs of the Life and Actions of James Keith: Field-Marshal, in the Prussian Armies. Containing His Conduct in the Muscovite Wars Against the Turks ... Prussia Against the French and Austrians., Scotland, [1].
  4. ^ a b c d e f Peter Buchan, Annals of Peterhead, from its foundation, Scotland, 1819, James Keith, p. 131–132.
  5. ^ Keith, p. 12
  6. ^ Steve Murdoch (2010). "Conspiratorial Networks in the North? A Review of Jacobite and Hanoverian Freemasons in Scandinavia and Russia, 1688-1746". Politica Hermetica, 24 Sorbonne. Retrieved 1 December 2019.
  7. ^ James Francis Edward Keith, A fragment of a Memoir of Field Marshal James Keith. Spalding Club, 1843, p. 1.
  8. ^ Sources vary as to the date. Keith himself suggests the 3rd. P. Monod, et al.. maintain it was the 20th. Loyalty and Identity: Jacobites at Home and Abroad. Springer, 2009, p.82.
  9. ^ Keith, p. 20.–24
  10. ^ Keith, p. 32.
  11. ^ Sam Coull, Nothing but my sword: the life of Field Marshal James Francis Edward Keith. Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2000, p. 53.
  12. ^ a b Keith, p. 33.
  13. ^ Keith, p. 34.
  14. ^ Keith, p. 39.
  15. ^ Keith, pp. 40–42.
  16. ^ a b Keith, p. 47.
  17. ^ Keith, p. 51.
  18. ^ a b Keith, 53.
  19. ^ Keith, p. 77.
  20. ^ Andrew MacKillop, Steve Murdoch. Military Governors and Imperial Frontiers C. 1600–1800: A Study of Scotland and Empires. Brill Academic Publishers, 2003. Page 103.
  21. ^ John Cornelius O'Callaghan, History of the Irish Brigades in the Service of France: From the Revolution, Cameron and Ferguson, 1870 p. 305
  22. ^ Way, George and Squire, Romily. (1994). Collins Scottish Clan & Family Encyclopedia. (Foreword by The Rt Hon. The Earl of Elgin KT, Convenor, The Standing Council of Scottish Chiefs). pp. 180– 181.
  23. ^ a b c d e f  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domainChisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Keith, Francis Edward James". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 15 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 716.
  24. ^ Franz A.J. Szabo, The Seven Years' War in Europe: 1756–1763, Routledge, 5 Nov 2013, p. 43.
  25. ^ Keith, pp. 51–74.
  26. ^ See G. E. Cokayne. The full quote is this: does everything by starts; hath abundance of flashy wit, and by reason of his quality, hath good interest in the country; all Courts endeavour [sic] to have him at their side for he gives himself liberty of talking when he is not pleased with the Government. He is a thorough Libertine, yet sets up mightily for Episcopy; a hard drinker; a thin body; a middle stature; ambitious of popularity."
  27. ^ Matti Klinge. "Merthen, Eva (1723–1811)". National Biography of Finland. Finnish Literary Society. Retrieved 27 September 2010.
  28. ^ Frederick William Longman, Frederick the Great and the Seven Years' War, Longmans, Green, and Company, 1881, pp. 145–147.
  29. ^ [2] "Fridericus Rex Grenadiermarsch"
  30. ^ "Rallying call to restore statue of Field Marshal James Keith" - Buchan Observer, 29 April 2014

Further reading

  • Sam Coull: Nothing but my sword: the life of Field Marshal James Francis Edward Keith. Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2000 ISBN 1-84158-024-4
  • KA Varnhagen von Ense: Leben des Feldmarschalls Jakob Keith. Berlin, 1844
  • James Keith: A Fragment of a Memoir of Field-Marshal James Keith, written by Himself, 1714–1734; edited by Thomas Constable for the Spalding Club. Edinburgh, 1843
  • -- von Paczyński-Tenczyn: Lebensbeschreibung des General-Feldmarschalls Keith. Berlin, 1889 (with a second ed. (Berlin, 1896) on the occasion of the bicentenary of Keith's birth)
  • Peter Buchan, An historical and authentic account of the ancient and noble family of Keith, Earls Marischal of Scotland, from their origin in Germany down to 1778, including a narrative of the military achievements of James Francis Edward Keith, Field-Marshal in Prussia .... Peterhead, 1820
  • Peterheadian (i.e., Norman N. Maclean): Memoir of Marshal Keith, with a sketch of the Keith family. Peterhead, 1869
  • C. F. Pauli: Leben grosser Helden des gegenwärtigen Krieges. Thl. 4. Halle, 17–
  • J.-H. Formey: A discourse on the death of Marshal Keith, read before the Royal Academy of Sciences at Berlin, translated from the French original. Edinburgh, 1764
  • Anon: An Elegy on the universally lamented death of his excellency James-Francis-Edward Keith, Field Marshal in the armies of the King of Prussia, &c. &c. &c. n.p., ca. 1758
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