3. An Unfortunate Officer
Englishman Sir Arthur Aston (1590 – 1649) was a scion of a prominent Catholic family from Cheshire, and descended from a long line of professional soldiers. During his lifetime, he gained a reputation as a solid military professional. Unfortunately, he is best remembered for the manner of his demise: he got beat to death by his own wooden leg.
Aston’s father had served in Russia in 1610, then in Poland, for whose king he raised thousands of British mercenaries for a war against the Ottomans in 1621. Aston joined his father in Poland with 300 mercenaries, who went on to form the Polish king’s bodyguard. He fought for the Poles in the Polish-Swedish War of 1626 – 1629, and was captured in 1627. After the war’s end, Aston joined the Swedes, whose king, Gustavus Adolphus, commissioned him in 1631 to recruit an English regiment to fight for Sweden in the Thirty Years War. He did, and Aston and his Englishmen fought in Germany in the 1630s.