The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume VII. Cavalier and Puritan.
§ 26. Robert Munro
Colonel Robert Munro’s—Robertus robore Munro—narrative of his Expedition with the worthy Scots Regiment called M’Keyes Regiment levied in August, 1626, was published four years after his death, in 1637, with a dedication to Charles Lewis elector Palatine, “as it was through the line of his mother that Munro’s comrades went out to war.” The regiment served under Christian IV of Denmark in the Lower Saxon war, and then under Gustavus Adolphus, and, after his death, under Oxenstjerna and his generals. After the unfortunate battle of Nördlingen the regiment, as the title-page proceeds to say, was reduced to a single company. Colonel Munro, like the great king whom he served, was as pious as he was brave; and the appendixes to his celebrated book comprise together with an “Abridgment of Exercises, and divers practical observations, for the younger Officer his Consideration,’ “the Souldiers meditations going on service.” The narrative itself is characteristically divided into sections called “Duties discharged (for instance, ‘The twenty-fourth Duty discharged of our March to Mentz, etc.’) and Observations thereon”—the soldier’s life being thus treated as a sort of pilgrim’s progress.