These Pandours were Sclavonians from the banks of the Drave, a river of Germany which rises in the Tyrol and empties itself into the Danube near Effeck in Hungary. This regiment, which was raised chiefly in the village of Pandour or Szent Istevan, wore long coats girt by a waist-belt, in which each man carried a sabre, four or five pistols, and a poniard. On service they always acted as irregular cavalry. This corps had originally been infantry, and were styled the Regiment of Ruitza. Their chief occupation had been to clear the roads of brigands and freebooters; and though the biographer of Baron Trenck endeavours to conceal the fact, history proves that in their new organization the Pandours were a mere military banditti, whose pay was plunder, and whose duty was devastation.
Little as he must have liked the service, Captain Loudon commenced a campaign in their ranks, in the war which ensued on Louis XV. and the King of Prussia leaguing together for the partition of the Austrian Empire. A French army under the Marshal Dukes de Belleisle and de Broglie, entered Germany, where the Bavarian Elector formed a junction with them; reduced Lintz, the capital of Upper Austria, and threatened Vienna. Kevenhüller recovered Lintz; the battle of Czaslau, in which the Pandours and Croats charged with such effect and fury was fought; Prague was besieged, and all northern Europe found itself engaged in a general strife.
At the head of his Pandours Baron Trenck acted the part of a bold partisan. He stormed the Isle of Rheinmarck, put its garrison to the sword, and with his own sabre slew the commandant, the Comte de Creveceur. Mentzel with four thousand Croats and Pandours broke into Lorraine and Luxembourg, where they committed terrible devastations.
In 1744, when Prince Charles of Lorraine forced his famous passage over the Rhine, Gideon Loudon led his company in the _foremost_ boat, and was the _first_ who landed on French ground; but in a skirmish with the advanced picquets of the French near Zabern, a city built on the summit of a rock, and defended by a strong castle of the Bishops of Strasburg, he was struck by a musket-ball when fighting bravely at the head of his men. It entered his right breast and came out behind near the shoulder-blade, and thus incapacitated him for farther service for some time. He fell--was taken prisoner, and conveyed to a neighbouring cottage. A few days afterwards the Austrian army advanced; the Pandours drove the enemy; Loudon was restored to liberty, and had the satisfaction of saving from pillage the dwelling of the peasant with whom he had found shelter and by whom he had been benevolently treated.