Introduction
Hello and a very warm welcome to the La Garde Ecossaise podcast. This is the official podcast of the La Garde Ecossaise novels hosted by me, Dr Kirsteen M MacKenzie.
I am so glad that you have taken the time to join me as I discuss the novels in greater depth and the historical events which inspired them.
This podcast is for those of you who are enjoying the novels and want to learn a little bit more about the history behind the novels.
This podcast is also for students studying early modern history courses at college or university. Indeed, the novels purposefully cover many of the key events of the seventeenth century, events that are covered in many survey courses on the seventeenth century. I like to think of the book as a textbook for an early modern history course, masquerading as a historical fiction novel.
Although the characters are fictional, many of the events are not and I have tried to cover as much ground as I can in each novel whilst keeping the book informative and entertaining.
The series La Garde Ecossaise is a seven-book series. Each book will explore the life of one of six elite soldiers that served Louis XIV between 1643 and 1715. In exploring their whole life story, it allows us to explore their lives and development before they enter French service, their fortunes during their service to the Sun King and ultimately their retirement. It is through these six very different lives and individual journeys that the interesting and vast expanse of seventeenth century history will be explored.
The book is available to buy from Amazon, KOBO, Apple Books, Google Books, Waterstones in the UK and Barnes and Noble in the US. It is also available from many different retailers in Europe. See the website www.lagardeecossaise.net for further details.
The podcasts will closely mirror the contents of each chapter and will explore the real people and events mentioned within them. The podcast is also available as a videocast on YouTube with interesting and helpful visuals. There are also subtitles on YouTube for those who are hard of hearing. You will find transcripts of these podcasts on the La Garde Ecossaise blogs. Please visit the website at www.lagardeecossaise.net to take a look.
The first book of La Garde Ecossaise will explore the various major topics and events in early modern history including:
Scottish church history, Episcopacy and Presbyterianism.
early modern London, early modern France, intelligence and spies, weapons, and skills,
early modern Ireland, the Plantation of Ulster, and the 1641 rebellion,
Wars of the Three Kingdoms, Scottish Highlands, Gaelic culture and lifecycles, Covenanters, Irish and Scottish Royalism,
Thirty Years War,
French Wars of Religion,
Early Modern Spain, The Catalonian revolt
Ottoman Empire
The Fronde
Early Modern printing press and pamphlets.
Salons and ‘good conversation’ in early modern France
Franco-Dutch war (1672-1678).
There is a dedicated website for the novel series with the official podcast recordings and transcripts on the site’s blog plus further resources. The website is specifically designed to support students of history at college, and university. You will find all this information at:
You can also follow me on social media on:
Twitter @kirsteenmm
Instagram @earlymodernkirsteenmm
Facebook Dr Kirsteen M MacKenzie Historian | Facebook
Pinterest @drkirsteenmmackenzie
Now I should like to take the time to introduce myself properly. My name is Dr Kirsteen MacKenzie and I have an MA (hons) history degree and a history PhD from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. I am an academic historian and published my first academic book with Routledge in 2017 on Oliver Cromwell and the Covenants. During lockdown as the archives and libraries were closed so I decided to embark on writing historical fiction.
Inspiration for the novel came from various directions and has all come together in the one place. I spent my school holidays in Yvelines with my godparents who took me to Versailles on several occasions which ignited my fascination for Louis XIV.
I subsequently found out whilst doing my family history, that an ancestor served in the bodyguard of Louis XVIII and most recently during the final stages of the book that I also discovered that my direct ancestor George Gordon, 2nd Marquess of Huntly, raised a gendarmes regiment during the reign of Louis XIII.
Lastly, but certainly not least, the novel is a homage to Franco-British military cooperation through the centuries.
That is enough about me and the novel… let’s get started !