ABSTRACT
England gained the Flemish fort of Mardyck in 1657 through a treaty with France upon entering the Anglo-Spanish War. The existence of this broadsheet from the later decades of the seventeenth century shows that the song was circulated long after the campaign to which it refers. It is interesting that there are no more examples of this ballad in the Bodleian’s large collection, which may suggest that its popularity did not last into the eighteenth century. “The Soldiers Fortune” valorises the bachelor soldier. By saying that the soldier’s “sister” was “Minerva”, the goddess of war and strategy, it hints at an ideal of enlistment where old family ties are cut so that the combatant can focus exclusively on the campaign. “Well got Fame” was the only suitable “wife” for a soldier. Similarly, the warning that “petticoat-parley/Cotting and corting, & laughing and quaffing Canary”—in other words, socialising, drinking, and cohabitating with women—would lead a “good soldier” to “miscarry” and lose the war also conveys the message that the most effective fighting force was one in which soldiers’ only loyalty was to the military. Like the “The Low-Country Soldier Turn’d Burgomaster”, it speaks of a military life as a path to social mobility, reminding listeners of the decisive victory of the New Model Army at Naseby, and the way in which common soldiers triumphed over cavaliers.
