Clan Leslie - For God and Glory Scotland's Clans

In the 17th century, this beautiful castle was taken over by the Leslie Clan.

Above this gateway is the Leslie coat of arms, clearly proclaiming their status.

But this castle is not in Leslie territory in Aberdeenshire or Fife,

in fact, it's not even in Scotland, it's in Slovenia.

From as early as the Crusades the Leslies made their names as warriors

and many of them left Scotland seeking fame, fortune and glory.

This is the amazing and untold story of how Clan Leslie

played a major role in shaping the future of modern Europe and Scotland.

In this series I'm going on a personal journey

to reveal the extraordinary stories behind the great Clan names of history.

Many Clans would seek glory on the battlefield

but few would become as renowned and influential as the Leslies.

In the 14th century, if you were an ambitious young warrior who wanted to get ahead,

your top career choice was to become a soldier of the Church and leave Scotland.

For a young man of a certain class, going on crusade

was the best way of enhancing both your reputation

and your prospects.

Successful crusaders literally made a fortune.

Going on crusade was an attractive option in the Middle Ages.

Because you're able to demonstrate two things.

one is personal piety, the sense of going on pilgrimage,

but the second was also personal advancement.

Going on crusade is a way of making a name and a reputation for yourself abroad.

To an extent it could also be presented

as a kind of medieval Club 18-30.

It's a place to go and, basically, just create mayhem.

It was from here, in Aberdeenshire, that two brothers in Clan Leslie - Walter and Norman -

left Scotland in the 1350s to take part in the Holy War, to quell and convert the pagan hoards.

As the younger sons of minor Scottish nobility,

who stood to inherit nothing,

the Leslie brothers realised that battling the enemies of Christ was their chance for fame and fortune.

By the 14th century, The Crusades had shifted

from the original focus of the Holy Land, to Eastern Europe.

So when Walter and Norman left Scotland,

they were destined for the Baltic Crusades.

I've come to the heart of Leslie country,

to meet historian Michael Penman to find out more about the Leslies

as 14th-century holy warriors.

Michael, this is absolutely fascinating, we've got a family tree of the Leslies here

showing their origins and then, a few generations later, we've got our guys - we've got Walter and Norman.

What sort of men were they?

I think these two are pioneers.

They're among the first generation of Scots that we know

go on the Baltic Crusade in the 1350s.

But they are clearly hard men, well brought up in the arts of war

and two quite savvy, intimidating characters.

Walter is someone who certainly gains a reputation as a hard man, as a warrior.

The Baltic Crusades took place some 250 years after the first more famous crusades to Jerusalem.

Essentially these wars were Church-sanctioned land grabs,

but Walter and Norman's official mission was to convert

the Baltic and Eastern European heathens to Christianity.

When they arrived in the Baltic region, what's essentially now known as Prussia,

following a code of chivalry, they would be bound to do things

like protect the innocent, protect women and children,

protect churches and crusade against the pagan Lithuanians and the pagan Poles of the day.

So in a sense they are putting their lives on the line, this is not a picnic,

you're going to war, but what were the potential rewards for a life like that?

Spiritually they're enormous. You are entitled to what is called a Plenary Indulgence -

a pardon of all sins, in this worldly life.

In material terms, too, there are huge gains to be made.

You're allowed to take spoils of war, this is not frowned upon by the Church.

So is it true to say that both Norman and Walter,

because of the success that they enjoyed in The Crusades

were able to come home to Scotland and really establish a firm base for the Leslies?

Yes, definitely. Walter, I think, comes back to Scotland in the 1360s,

probably an extremely wealthy man,

and you have to assume that he's able to use some of his wealth to do things like build castles,

develop his estates and certainly the success of generations of Leslies are able to build on that.

So The Crusades are really a win-win situation for a young man.

You save your soul, and you also improve your bank balance.

Yes, provided you survive and you're able to come home and spend it.

'And that was not always the case.'

One of the Leslie brothers didn't come home.

Norman died the ultimate chivalric death, in 1365, fighting on crusade.

The successful return of his brother Walter, however, enabled the Leslies to become wealthier as a family

and establish their credentials as fearsome warriors.

But the Leslies didn't just prosper in Aberdeenshire.

I've come to Fife, to Balgonie Castle, a Leslie estate bought with money made from foreign wars.

Some 250 years after their ancestors first ventured abroad,

the Leslies had once again looked to distant shores to make their mark, and take part in another holy war -

The 30 Years' War - The great religious conflict, which engulfed Europe in the 17th century.

The 30 Years' War is one of the greatest European conflicts.

It's a war for the domination of central Europe.

Much of Northern Europe had become Protestant but most of the South remained Catholic.

The two sides would be locked in a bitter war for generations.

The 30 Years' War is a fight for power,

a fight to resist the re-Catholicisation of Europe.

This titanic struggle that pitted Catholic against Protestant ravaged the continent,

but from the bloody chaos, two members of Clan Leslie would emerge

as hugely significant military leaders on either side of the conflict.

Fighting on the Protestant side of the 30 Years' War was Alexander Leslie,

who chose to serve the progressive and dynamic Swedish army.

On the Catholic side,

Walter chose to serve the vast and powerful Holy Roman Empire.

The two men would never meet,

but both would make their mark in Europe and Scotland in very different ways.

Both of them see opportunities by entering military service.

The classic example of people from the same family fighting against each other.

Alexander Leslie would eventually make his home here, in Balgonie,

but as a young man he realised

that he'd have to look beyond Fife to fulfil his ambition.

Alexander was illegitimate and had no family wealth to inherit.

Becoming a professional soldier seemed his only chance to better himself

and so, in 1605, he left Scotland.

Alexander Leslie has little or no prospects in Scotland.

His best prospects are service overseas and, being a Leslie,

the tradition tends to be that they go into military service, he very much fits that tradition.

When he first joined the Swedish service, Alexander Leslie was just another professional soldier.

But his astonishing ability was quickly recognised and he was rapidly promoted through the ranks.

Alexander fought in a series of brutal campaigns for the Protestant Swedes

against the Holy Roman Empire.

He gained a reputation as a talented commander and master tactician.

As soon as he started fighting in Europe, he is a man on the rise

and he's able to demonstrate that, you know, he is a soldier of the highest calibre

and from there on, it is just a progressive rise up through the ranks.

He is one of the major players in the 30 Years' War.

The Swedish army was innovating technologically and tactically

and he's participating in this.

The experience that Alexander gained, by serving in the most sophisticated army in Europe,

would prove to have important implications for Scotland.

But for Alexander, the decision to fight overseas had transformed his fortunes.

He had become one of the most famous commanders in Europe.

Alexander Leslie rose through the ranks to be a man of great distinction,

and recognised as such by the Swedish authorities.

But the Protestant Swedes were not, however, the only side to benefit

from the military scale of this warrior family.

As Alexander Leslie flourished in the service of the Swedish Crown,

another younger Leslie from a different branch of the family

thrived in the service of its arch enemy, the Holy Roman Empire, centred here, in Vienna.

Just a few years after Alexander Leslie had left Scotland, his kinsman, Walter,

followed him overseas also to fight in the 30 Years' War.

Walter however, had joined the army of the Catholic Holy Roman Empire.

Walter shared the Leslie trait for military prowess and his talents brought him fame and fortune,

but his route to success had followed a very different path.

Whereas Alexander Leslie made his reputation as a great military commander,

Walter Leslie made his reputation as an assassin.

The assassination that made Walter's career

was the murder of one of the leading commanders in Walter's own army, Albrecht von Wallenstein.

The Emperor had discovered that Wallenstein had betrayed him, by negotiating with the enemy.

Wallenstein was declared a traitor.

The Emperor is sitting in Vienna,

decides that he wants Wallenstein caught dead or alive.

Walter knows this,

and he becomes involved in the plot to capture Wallenstein.

In a bid to escape, Wallenstein fled to a secret hideout.

But the Emperor had made it very clear that he wanted this traitor captured, whatever the consequences.

Walter Leslie, leading a troop of Irish and Scots Dragoons, tracked Wallenstein down.

First, Walter and his men quickly overwhelmed and then massacred Wallenstein's officers.

Next, the treacherous commander himself was dragged from his bed and ruthlessly killed.

It is a political assassination.

Walter Leslie makes his career as a political assassin.

For him, aiding your paymaster is the most important thing. There is not an issue of principle here,

he's actually assassinating an enemy of his paymaster.

Walter and his colleagues were not slow to brag about their conquest.

Very quickly, they go off, the few hundred miles to Vienna

and tell the Emperor what's happened, tell them that they were responsible.

We've don't it, what are you going to give us for our heroic act?

Walter Leslie rode into Vienna in triumph, with news that the traitor Wallenstein was dead.

He was rewarded with the Office of Imperial Chamberlain and a seat on the Imperial Council of War,

but yet more honours were to follow.

On June 26th 1637, Walter Leslie was made a Count of the Holy Roman Empire.

It demonstrates opportunities of this 30 Years' War,

that you can go from being a very minor Scottish laird

to becoming a major noble in the Holy Roman Empire.

But Walter was not the only Leslie to secure foreign honours.

His kinsman, Alexander, had been knighted by the Swedish monarch

and appointed a field marshall, the highest possible military rank.

He had now spent nearly 30 years serving in the Swedish army

but Alexander's life was about to take a radical change of direction.

I've come here to Kilchurn Castle in Argyll to find out how a deep-rooted sense of Clan loyalty

led Alexander to give up his successful career abroad.

Alexander had been illegitimate, almost certainly one of the reasons

that had driven him to seek success overseas.

But the allegiance he felt to the family, who had brought him up in place of his real parents,

would play a major role in pulling him home.

As a child Alexander Leslie was fostered to the wealthy Campbells of Glenorchy.

The fosterage in the past was a common practice that secured

powerful Clans like the Campbells the loyalty of lesser families.

But Alexander's Campbell connections would have unexpected consequences

both for his own personal story, and for the destiny of Scotland.

It was the childhood years spent with the Campbells that historian Allan MacInnes believes

influenced Alexander and convinced him to turn his back on a successful and lucrative career in Europe.

It's very appropriate I suppose, Allan, that we've come here to a Campbell castle

because Alexander Leslie was fostered to the Campbells when he was a young man.

How common a practice was fosterage at that time in Scotland?

It's a traditional Scottish practice,

but with particular vitality in the Highlands,

where ties of fosterage were the very cement of Clanship.

It created binding ties of loyalty and, indeed, ties that would even lead to self-sacrifice in battle.

It was like a form of elementary schooling.

You progressed through that and were also trained in the arts of war,

so Alexander Leslie would have cut his martial teeth fighting against the McGregors

before he went off and fought in the 30 Years' War.

It also became vitally important in shaping alliances which were life-lasting.

You would send your sons off to different families to be raised and, not only would they be trained,

but it would allow them to create a network.

So this is something that will continue for the rest of Alexander Leslie's life.

The deep connection, that Alexander felt to his foster family, was about to be tested.

The 1630s saw Scotland engulfed in conflict, as King Charles I clashed with the Church of Scotland

over reforms the Scots feared would bring a return to Roman Catholicism.

When the King introduces a new prayer book for Scotland,

you really are effectively lighting the blue touch paper,

and this becomes almost like the fuse to the powder keg.

It is the last thing that was needed

to really explode the whole political establishment in Scotland in the face of the King.

With Scotland sliding into Civil war, those in opposition to the King

wanted to make sure that they gained the upper hand.

But Covenanters, as they came to be known, wanted the best possible general for their army.

They wanted Alexander Leslie.

Luckily for them, they had the ultimate card to play.

Leading the rebellion against the King were the Campbells -

the family who had fostered Alexander as a young man.

This bond of loyalty, do you think that would have been enough, in itself,

to have brought Alexander Leslie back from a really successful career in Sweden

to take part in the Covenanting War against the King?

At the one level we have to give credit to his own principles -

the belief that the Covenanting cause was just,

but the Campbells were emerging, shall we say, as the radical leaders of the Covenanting movement,

and its ties of fosterage would have been the factor that tilted the balance

in moving Leslie away from Royalists support towards the Covenanters.

Were they kind of demanding payback or was it a moral sense, do you think, that motivated him to say,

yes, I will join you in your fight.

It is the ties of family, ties of blood, ties of commitment.

Unable to resist the pull of Clan loyalty,

Alexander Leslie left behind his successful European career

and returned to Scotland to join the Covenanters.

But as Alexander prepared to go to war in Scotland to defend his Protestant beliefs,

Count Walter Leslie was enjoying the benefits that came

with being an important figure in the Holy Roman Empire.

Walter had been rewarded with honours and titles for his loyalty.

And it wasn't long before he'd acquired estates and lands in Bohemia and here in Slovenia.

Sitting high above the town of Ptuj, in Eastern Slovenia, is remarkable evidence

of Count Walter Leslie's success in this part of Europe.

This magnificent castle was what Walter called home

and is testimony to everything he'd achieved since leaving Scotland.

I think he was a very talented guy, he spoke three or four languages

without any problem and wrote in all of those as well.

And he did very well from very unpromising beginnings.

Walter certainly seems to have brought the weather with him

but there are other reminders of Scotland here at Ptuj.

Above the windows and above the doors and painted on the walls

we find, everywhere, the Leslie coat of arms.

Clearly, Walter was making a statement. By proclaiming his status and nobility he was saying,

the Leslies are here to stay.

But as Walter enjoyed status and success in Europe, his kinsman in Scotland,

Alexander Leslie, was preparing to go to war against his King.

Alexander was now General of the Scottish Covenanting army.

He's almost like a talisman, if you like, here is the Great Commander, this is a man

who has commanded armies on behalf of the King of Sweden,

this is a man who has fought against the Emperor.

People knew who he was, and many would actually want to have this man, fight with this man.

The Covenanters had secured one of the most talented military minds in Europe as their general.

But the army that Alexander took charge of was not of the calibre he was used to commanding.

He knew that, to stand a chance of winning, he would need to make radical changes.

Alexander set about transforming an outdated, ill-equipped

and poorly trained army into a formidable fighting force.

In the process, he would change the course of British military history.

To find out how Alexander went about remodelling the Scottish army,

I'm meeting military historian, John Sadler.

Alexander Leslie, when he came back from Sweden, this is the kind of formation

that he would have inherited in the Scottish army and he transformed it.

-Indeed, exactly.

-What was wrong with that?

Essentially it was inflexible.

He didn't provide commanders with the degree of tactical flexibility,

on the battlefield, that they needed.

It's a dense column formation, so it was slow moving, they would literally just crash through an enemy line.

-Not very sophisticated.

-It was a blunt instrument.

In order for you to demonstrate how Alexander Leslie transformed the Scottish army,

you'll have to break up this formation in the same way

as he would have broken up the formations that he found here.

That's exactly what... He would take these formations and say, "Right, lads, we're gonna do it this way."

'Calling on the wealth of experience that he'd gained fighting in the 30 Years' War,

'Alexander made the Scottish army the most efficient of its day.'

I can see there's been a radical transformation already.

Indeed, the scale of the revolution which was taking place in terms of tactics,

is equal on scale to, say, the introduction of the tank into warfare in the 20th century.

We've moved from these dense columnar formations which you looked at previously, to a much more...

linear formation, where the real emphasis is now moving away from the pikemen towards the musketeers.

Leslie is creating a situation whereby the killing power on the battlefield

is with the Musketeers and they are so deployed to maximise the effectiveness of their fire.

It's quite right, I think, to say that Leslie is the father of modern warfare in Britain.

With his new modern army trained and drilled, Alexander was ready to go to war.

As the Covenanters prepared to resist their King, there could be no doubt that

Alexander Leslie's winning reputation was a vital boost to their morale.

And the fact that he'd led one of the greatest armies in Europe was not lost on his enemies.

That reputation was not some Court dignity, it is a hard-won reputation on the battlefield.

To have somebody like Alexander Leslie as the grand strategist,

it's a phenomenal coup for the Covenanters and really gives them the edge in the war.

The Covenanters' first encounter with the Royal Army

demonstrated the impact of Alexander Leslie's military reputation.

On the night before the battle was to take place,

Alexander invited the Royal Commanders to dinner

and they were so impressed with how well-ordered and prepared his troops were

that they signed a treaty, without a shot being fired.

But Alexander was never a man to let his enemy get to know him too well.

When the two armies next met, the Royalists hoped that, once again,

a truce could be agreed before fighting broke out, but Alexander Leslie had other ideas.

This time, Alexander did not extend an invitation to dinner.

Instead, without warning, he attacked the Royal forces at Newburn and completely overwhelmed them.

It was a resounding victory for the Covenanters.

Alexander's leadership proved to be the decisive factor

in the Covenanters securing success in their fight against the King.

The wars and revolutions take their own course, but clearly Alexander Leslie is a man of British,

not just Scottish, stature and is the most formidable general in the British Isles.

Alexander Leslie's exploits had now made the Leslie name

famous in Europe and Scotland.

His kinsman Walter, however, would also make his mark on his homeland.

Here in Aberdeenshire, a team of archaeologists are excavating Fetternear Palace,

a Leslie family seat,

where there's remarkable evidence that Walter sent some of his fortune back

to lavishly remodel the building.

Penny Dransart is the archaeologist leading the dig.

Now, I suppose in many ways that the building we've got here, behind us,

represents the very physical link between Walter on the Continent

and the Leslies here in Aberdeenshire.

Very much so.

On the right, you see the Tower House

which Walter knew as a young child,

and the facade on the left is what his money was used to build.

You have an enlargement and aggrandisement of the building and it was very much due to the income

that Walter brought into the family.

His Scottishness is important to him - he thinks, "I should be doing something to help my family."

This building programme in Fetternear is built on the profits of overseas service.

Scotland is littered with castles built on the profits of war.

Why would Walter Leslie go to all the trouble and expense of sending money from the Continent

back to the family he'd left behind in Aberdeenshire?

I think it has to do with the importance of the family name.

Belonging to a family was very important in the 17th century.

One's strength was part of one's family connections, so as a group they acted together

and they used the money that Walter sent them to build this structure that you see here.

And to make it really magnificent as an expression of their family continuity.

Walter never saw the grand palace that his money created.

Fetternear is, however, testament to Walter's desire

to ensure his family name would live on in Scotland.

But to get a real sense of just how celebrated the Leslie name had become throughout Europe,

I've come to the Benedictine Abbey in Vienna.

CHORAL SINGING

In 1667, Walter, the great servant of the Holy Roman Empire, died,

and his body was brought here, to this magnificent church to be buried.

Walter Leslie, the soldier of fortune, had come a long way.

Up there, high in the church wall, is his coat of arms,

proclaiming, for all to see, his importance and status as a Count of the Holy Roman Empire.

The boy from Aberdeen had become a noble member of the Imperial establishment, and now, in death,

he's become part of the fabric of this beautiful building.

Alexander Leslie lived his final years in Fife,

and was buried here, in Markinch church in 1661.

Since the 17th century, millions of Scots have ventured overseas to seek their fortune.

The Leslies, with their spirit of adventure, were very much pioneers

and their astonishing success abroad

says much about the character of this extraordinary family.

Alexander and Walter Leslie never met, but it seems to me

that these two remarkable men,

despite their political and religious differences,

shared a deep-rooted loyalty to their homeland and,

above all, to their clan.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

E-mail [email protected]