Marshal Schomberg (1615-1690), ‘The Ablest Soldier of His Age’: International Soldiering and the Formation of State Armies in Seventeent

Frederick Herman von Schomberg was born into a prominent noble family in the Palatinate in 1615. He was a truly international figure: his father negotiated the marriage of Britains Princess Royal (James Is daughter, Elizabeth) to the Elector Palatine of the Rhine. Having an English mother and a German father, he would go on to marry a French Huguenot lady, and fight in the armies of more than six nations. His career spans the mercenary system of the Thirty Years War (1618-48) through to the formation of Europes first true standing national armies during William IIIs wars in the 1690s. He was involved in the international politics and diplomacy of Louis XIVs reign, and that kings relations with Britain and the Netherlands in particular. He was also deeply concerned in the plight and exile of the Huguenots in France, and their later international presence in the armies of William of Orange. As a committed Protestant, he suffered the same prejudices in France as they, and his feeling for them is a vital comment on the strength of religious feeling among many high-ranking military leaders at the time.