CHAPTER XVIII.

HOW OUR OLD SCOTTISH BLADES POMMELED THE IMPERIALISTS.

As we had secured, sunk, or destroyed, all the boats and other craft on the Elbe, the Imperialists had no other means of crossing but passing, at push of pike, the long stone bridge which spanned the river by its strong and stately arches; and as the whole line of it, and the approaches thereto, were liable to be raked by the cannon and musketry of the sconce, they made immediate preparations to gain the latter by assault.

There were not less than ten thousand men approaching to force this passage, which our five hundred Highlanders were left to defend. They were led by the great Count of Carlstein, whose name was only less familiar to us than that of Count Tilly. He was said to be a distinguished soldier of fortune, on whom the ambitious but generous Emperor had freely bestowed (that which did not belong to him) a Bohemian coronet, together with a free gift of that magnificent Castle of Carlstein, built by Charles IV., eight miles from Prague, and where the regalia of the conquered palatinate were kept.

At length, then, we saw them, and were invested and surrounded by those haughty, proud, and ferocious soldiers of the Empire, to whom battle was a pastime, and human blood as water; the terror of the Protestants and scourge of Bohemia; those sons of rapine and outrage, steeped to the lips in the darkest crimes, yet flushed by the memory of a hundred victories. Numerous though they were, our little band of kilted clansmen stood to their arms undauntedly, feeling an honest confidence in their own valour, with a hatred of their enemies; for in the name of religion, with the cross of God on their standards and on their breasts, those Imperialists, wherever they had been victorious, at Fleura, at Bergen-op-Zoom, and after every field from Prague to that of Lütter, had committed such atrocities as would have made even the heart of a Nero recoil.

Full orbed, and round as the shield of Fingal, the unclouded moon rose brightly above the Elbe; its glassy waters rolled in light, and the woods and thickets which fringed the southern bank, together with the old fantastic houses of Boitzenbnrg on the north, were all bathed in that silver sheen, which in brightness contrasted so strongly with the deep black shadows.

Under the central arch of the bridge three red lights were reflected in the current of the river. These were the lanterns of our miners, who, under the direction of the Laird of Balcomie, were sinking a chamber in one of the piers, and charging it with powder. So bright was the lustre of the July moon that we could discern every movement of the enemy as clearly as if it were noonday.

A regiment of musketeers, clad in white buff coats and steel caps, and having two large banners with the Austrian Eagle and Burgundian Cross, poured along the road, and, under a discharge of their cannon (which took possession of an eminence about five hundred yards distant), advanced to storm and destroy the palisades which protected the outer side of our wet-graff; two other regiments endeavoured to outflank the redoubt, and force, by the river side, a passage to the _tête-du-pont_, but a heavy fire met them at every angle; their cannon-shot began to knock splinters of stone and clouds of earth about us, or crashed into our parapets, and now began in earnest the whole uproar of war, which now I heard for the first time.

Our company of M'Farquhars had to defend that face of the sconce which swept the roadway; and over our earthen parapets we poured a close and deadly fire, to which the Imperialists replied with equal rapidity, but not with equal effect; for while our men levelled over a rampart, which protected them breast high, the assailants were wholly exposed, and levelled their long matchlock-muskets over iron forks; but the front rank came on with arms slung, and using only hatchets attacked the palisades, hewing them down frantically in their efforts to force a passage to the ditch.

"Shoulder to shoulder, my men! fire close, and fire low!" cried Ian, whose eyes flashed brighter as the conflict increased; and though it was his first, he was as cool as old Dunbar, who had served with the Scottish bands under Hepburn in Bohemia. His example strung my heart, and recalled my somewhat scattered energies, which had become a little confused; for every instant a heavy cannon-shot boomed over our heads, to crash among the roofs of the town, or with a dull heavy sound, sank deep into the turf breastwork of the sconce; while the hiss of the musket-balls, which flew past us like a leaden storm, was ceaseless as the splash of rain upon the casement. The whole fort was enveloped in smoke, for as our mousquetade mingled with theirs, we could no longer see the enemy; but we heard the crash of the axes among the falling palisades, the cries of the wounded, and the yells of the fierce and eager; their incessant war-cry of "Sancta Maria! Sancta Maria!" and the din of their drums beating the charge; but into the dark and opaque cloud, from the bosom of which all these dire sounds proceeded, our brave clansmen shot fast and sure, at the practised level; and Balcomie's lieutenant, a brave old soldier, David Martin of that Ilk, inspired his pikemen to handle our brass culverins in such wise, that every bullet must have made a frightful lane through the dense column of attack.

A triumphant shout--the true wild _scraigh_ of the Scottish Highlandmen--mingled with the shrill notes of the pibroch ringing from the four angles of our fort, announced that, baffled in their efforts to reach the bridge, the Imperialists had fallen back, and we redoubled our efforts.

Many of our finest men lay dead or bleeding profusely around us. Ian and I took the muskets of two, turned over their bodies, and emptying their cases of bandoliers, fell into the front rank, and fired like private men; but in silence, for our gallant Highlanders required neither voice nor action to urge them to the performance of their duty as soldiers; for they were all stanch men and true, of that old race which, as our bards say, sprang from the soil, and which in other years had tamed "the eagles of the kings of the world."

The assailants were now so close to us that the musket-balls pierced breastplates and buff coats like silken vests; and as many of our poor fellows who were unable to crawl away, bled to death just where they fell, the planks of the platforms soon became plastered with a horrid and slippery mire of blood and earth, for every moment the cannon-balls of the Austrians tore the latter from the faces of the embrasures, and cast it in showers about us. There were some frightful wounds received by our comrades that night.

Ronald Gorm, a sergeant of pikes (in other times a rich gentleman-drover from the braes of Lochaber), had his face shot away by a ball from a basilisk; another had his lower-jaw torn off by the ball of a falconet; and a piper, Red Fergus of the Clan Vurich, was shot through the nose and eyes, but lived for three days in blindness, and such agony that it would have been a mercy under God to have pistoled him outright.

This was my first bout with an enemy, and that these horrors impressed me I am not ashamed to own. More than once my heart shrank within me on seeing a strong and stately fellow doubled up like a tartan plaid, and hurled out of the ranks, with a cannon-ball fairly through his body. The cries of the wounded were piteous, but there was no time to heed them; though every instant we had to drag away the fallen men, whose bodies encumbered the wheels of the cannon and parapets, through the embrasures of which we suffered severely from the fire of the assailants.

At last, seeing probably the futility of attempting to storm a work so resolutely defended, until he had prepared means to effect the passage of the ditch which encircled it, and which was both deep and broad, the baffled Count of Carlstein, about midnight, and just when the moon was waning, made his trumpets sound a retreat. The fire of the artillery ceased on the eminence; the infantry retired under cover of some rising grounds beyond it, where they bivouacked, lighted their fires, and set about cooking, acting true to the soldier's proverb--"The dead to their graves, and the quick to their suppers;" the smoke cleared away, and we saw the shattered stockades; the Reinsdorf road heaped with bodies piled over each other, swords, pikes, drums, helmets and muskets; and by the light of the sinking moon, we could see the miserable maimed, crawling on their hands and knees towards the Elbe, seeking water to quench that fiery thirst, which the exhaustion of the assault and the agony of their wounds made more poignant.

I was gazing dreamily at this sudden change in the prospect from the redoubt, and still seeming to hear the united roar of the attack in my ears, when the loud clear voice of Dunbar aroused me.

"Piper--blow the gathering! M'Farquhar, Kildon, brave gentlemen, muster your companies, call the roll, and number the dead!"