CHAPTER XXXIV.

I OBTAIN A COMPANY OF MUSKETEERS.

The Imperialists were rapidly penetrating into Holstein, and every where the troops of King Christian were falling back before them; the Lords Nithsdale and Spynie with their Scottish battalions, the Count de Montgomerie with his regiments of French Protestants, were all retiring, and the advance of Wallenstein, who was marching out of Hungary with his powerful army to reinforce Tilly, promised to lay prostrate for ever the pride and power of Denmark. Yet the heart of the gallant Christian IV. never failed him; and in that ferocious and desultory war, his little army of thirty thousand Danes, Scots, and Germans, disputed hand to hand every inch of the ground over which they were compelled to retreat.

When beaten from one castle or town, they garrisoned the next; and thus the Imperialists, whose natural brutality was inflamed by fanaticism and exasperated by resistance, committed the most atrocious cruelties upon the poor inhabitants--carrying fire and sword, death and devastation, wherever their drums beat, or their banners waved.

At Hamburg I met with Major Fritz, of the Sleswig musketeers, with whom I travelled to Glückstadt in his coach, a comfortable vehicle, covered with carving and gilding, and made by Heinrich Andersen of Stralsund, in Pomerania, the same person who obtained a royal patent from James VI. to run a stage coach between Edinburgh and Leith. Andersen was then the most famous coach-manufacturer in Europe.

Glückstadt was almost the last fortress in the German states possessed by Christian IV. There my comrades received me with a true Highland welcome, and the warm-hearted Ian embraced me like a brother--as one recovered from among the dead. Some changes had taken place since we were last in that city.

The large house of the spy in the Platz, was now converted into a barrack for the Laird of Craigie's pikemen, and old dame Krümpel had been turned adrift, to resume her former occupation of fish-fag. The theatre had been turned into a cavalry stable for the Baron Karl's pistoliers, to the great satisfaction of old Dubbelstiern, the burgomaster, who was a strict Calvinist, and professedly hostile to all such amusements.

All the troops were marched to church, to join in solemn prayer for the success of their arms against the foe, who was now almost at Hamburg.

"We pray earnestly to Heaven for success," said the Baron Karl to me in a low voice, as he leant with a lounging air against one of the shafted pillars of the great church; "Tilly, and his Jesuits, are probably saying solemn mass for the success of _their_ arms also."

"How is Heaven to judge between us?" asked Major Fritz, whose mother was one of the principal ladies at the Imperial court.

"Come now, Fritz," said the baron; "do not be staring at that lady in a way so peculiar."

"Excuse me, gentlemen," said Fritz, slipping from among us; "'tis a little beauty I met at Hamburg."

On seeing the major approach, the lady, who was elegantly dressed, but, according to a dangerous custom then fashionable, wore a black velvet mask, retired from the church, and Fritz, who in such affairs was undaunted, followed her. After having been in camp for some time, he had a great desire to make some important conquest among the fair sex. His inamorata, who looked round at him slyly from time to time with two bright eyes, seemed to be the little wife of a citizen, and, to a half worn-out rake like the major, there was something excessively attractive in the pretty white stocking, drawn smoothly over the handsome leg and ankle, which she shewed from time to time, when holding up her silk dress. The major followed, stroking his short mustache, and saying a hundred fine things, to which she responded briefly, and by bursts of laughter--for so he afterwards told us; but she led him a devil of a dance through all Glückstadt, and to the barrier of the Hamburg road.

"I did not think Glückstadt contained a neck and ankles half so pretty," lisped the major; "but upon my soul, little one, I don't think I am very wise in following you so far."

"It is better to be happy than wise," replied the lady, in her soft low voice.

The musketeer was enchanted.

"Ah--if I could only see its pretty face!" said he.

"Come with me to Pinneberg, and you may."

"That is only twelve miles--I will go with you to the end of the earth."

"A long way, Major Fritz," laughed the lady.

"The deuce, my pretty one, you know my name!--we are acquainted, it seems." Again the little mask laughed immoderately, and the major thought her the merriest conquest he had ever made. He handed her into one of Heinrich Andersen's hackney coaches, and, just as the gates were closing, they drove off for Pinneberg.

The major was confounded by all the charming mask told him of his most secret affairs; the amount of his income--his expectations from his uncle the Baron of Uberg, and his cousin the Count of Flensbörg; his love adventures, too, were all known to her--it was very perplexing! Pinneberg was reached--the major proposed they should alight at the door of a celebrated restaurant, but the lady declined peremptorily, and he was compelled to let her please herself. They stopped at the door of a charming little house; the servants were richly liveried, the vestibule lighted and carpeted. She led him up-stairs into a magnificent apartment, where a cold collation--wine, fruit, crystal and plate--lay on a spotless table-cloth, under the perfumed light of wax candles placed in beautiful girandoles.

"I am dying with curiosity," said the major; "do tell me your name, or at least shew me the charming face I have come so far to see!"

The lady took off her mask, and he beheld his own mother--the Baroness Fritz of Vibürg, who he thought was at Vienna.

The old lady laughed heartily at the trick she had played, and repeated all her son's soft speeches over again. At first he was ready to sink with mortification--then he uttered a shout of laughter; but the most serious part was to follow. The old lady--for, notwithstanding her youthful figure and grace, she was very old--told him, that she had come all the way from Vienna to Glückstadt, for the purpose of entrapping him, and bringing him over from the allegiance to the paltry Count of Holstein (Christian IV.), that he might enter the Imperial service, where higher honours and greater rewards awaited him than could ever be obtained by adherence to falling Denmark.

"I am extremely sorry, madam, that it is quite out of my power to gratify you," replied the major, as he walked towards the door. "Ah--treacherous old devil!" he muttered, on finding himself confronted by six or eight of Camargo's stoutest pikemen.

By this trick, and his own folly, he was made a prisoner, and carried away to Vienna; after which, for a long time we heard no more of him.

After a four days' halt, the companies of Major Wilson were commanded to march with all speed to the Upper Elbe, with orders to cross into Silesia, and join Major-general Slammersdorf, who, on that side of the river, was maintaining a desperate and desultory struggle with the Imperialists.

"Dioul!" said Ian, as, with our pipes playing, we marched from Glückstadt on a dark foggy morning about the end of August; "Heaven be praised we are again out of this dull solemn town, with its high bastions and deep ditches, where the slime floats and the frogs squatter in the mud--its dull canals and duller streets--its fat burghers and close-clipped trees. I would give a bonnet full of silver for one glimpse of a dark pine forest or a steep heather mountain; for there is nothing about us but what is flat and stale as Rostock beer."

"M'Farquhar, are the pretty market maidens--those blooming Holsteiners, with their red petticoats and handsome legs, their bright eyes and rosy cheeks--all as nothing?" asked McAlpine.

"Yea, as less than nothing to me," replied Ian, as he fastened his graceful plaid with the brooch of Moina, and began to hum his favourite song, "The bonnie brown-eyed maid," and shook the great eagle's wing which adorned the cone of his helmet; "I should be sorry if they made me the more pleased with Glückstadt. Believe me, cousin Angus, I shall never--if I can avoid it--do aught that will cause me regret!"

"Or remorse--you are right," muttered M'Alpine, as a cloud passed over his face, and he adjusted that broad scarf of crape, which he had made a vow to wear to the last of his days.

We had no idea of how we were to reach Silesia, as Tilly's troops lay partly between us and that country (of which the Emperor is duke, as King of Bohemia); and Wallenstein, against whom we were advancing, had just succeeded in driving into Hungary Count Mansfeldt, that great leader and champion of the Bohemian queen, who was compelled to sell his baggage and artillery, and disband his soldiers, after which he retired to Zara, where he died of a broken heart. Christian, Duke of Brunswick, died about the same time, and the unfortunate King of Denmark was left single-handed to cope with the two greatest generals of the German empire.

On came Wallenstein, and he poured his army, one hundred thousand strong, like an irresistible torrent into Mechlenburg, Brandenburg, and Silesia; General Slammersdorf was there irretrievably beaten and outflanked. The Danes and their auxiliaries, Scots and Germans, now retired from all their outposts along the Havel, the Elbe, and the Weser; and Wallenstein prepared at once to carry the war into the heart of Denmark.

We received these startling tidings from the Baron of Klosterfiord, who overtook us at Horst, with a despatch from the king, ordering Major Wilson to change his route, and with all speed join the remnant of Slammersdorf's defeated army, which was intrenching itself at the Isle of Poel, being almost cut off from the king, who was then retiring out of Holstein into Denmark with his main body, abandoned by his former allies, the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, and the electoral Duke of Brandenburg.

The remainder of our valiant regiment were with Sir Donald Mackay, under Slammersdorf, and our hearts yearned to be with them, that together we might stand or fall in the good cause of Denmark; for, remembering the glorious struggles of our own native country for that freedom which we transmit to our posterity, unfettered as we received it from our Celtic fathers, we had a sincere interest in seeking by our valour to defend the Danes from the mighty masses of the aggressive empire.

If these Danes proved stanch to their fatherland, we had no fears for Denmark or its king. Our own history has shown us how, against greater powers than those of the Imperialists, Scotland has preserved her name, her nationality, and her liberty, amid the wars of long successive ages, since that remote time when her frontier formed the boundaries of the Roman empire on the west, and all who dwelt beyond were free.

One sword drawn for freedom on the slope of the Grampians, has ever been worth a thousand in the ranks of the invader; for God will ever aid a people fighting for their liberties, and the land he has given them.

We were sixty miles distant from the Baltic, and Tilly had actually pushed forward his advanced posts between us and its shore; yet we pressed on, and passed the whole distance in an incredibly short time; for we could usually march thirty miles a day, though our soldiers carried snapsacks or clothes-bags, like the Swedes.

We saw nothing of the Imperialists but the smoke of burning villages, which rose at the verge of the flat horizon, and served frequently to indicate where their ravagers were at work; but they were so far off, that our men never once unstrapped the hammerstalls from their locks and matches.

Two unpleasant affairs happened to me on this march.

During a halt at Segeberg, where, for a few hours, we occupied the old castle which the Emperor Lothaire built to keep the Sclavonians in check, I remember having a serious quarrel with Mr. Amias Paulet, an English cavalier who had come to seek his fortune in these wars. While taking a glass of Würzburger together in a tavern, his name unfortunately led me to ask if he "was any relation to that Sir Amias Paulet, the infamous abettor of Elizabeth in her treachery to Mary, queen of Scots?"

He bluntly told me that he was the younger son of the said Sir Amias, though a man well up in years; and thereafter spoke of our queen's memory in a manner which I, as a Scottish gentleman, considered insulting to myself. I threw my glove in his face, drew my sword, and required him "to retract;" but Gaffer Englishman, being a stout and brave fellow, declared that he "would see me in a warmer climate than Holstein before he would do so!" Upon this, I invited him to the parade before the castle gate, where the Danish guard came forth to see the sport, and enforce fair play. There, at the second pass, I ran him fairly through the lungs, and, with my sword at his throat, compelled him to retract, as a lesson in future to speak mercifully of the dead, and of injured women. I left him in charge of the castellan, without having time to see to his wound, for our piper blew the _gathering_ for the march in ten minutes after the rencontre; but he recovered, to die long afterwards, a prisoner--poor fellow!--in the hands of the Imperialists, at the castle of Dillingen, on the Danube.

My next little affair was nothing less than burning the house of a contumacious boor about his ears.

Marching by a road, each side of which was richly bordered by laden fruit-trees, or fields skirted by wild hops wound over hedges, where the mint and the red barberry grew in the ditches, we passed a farm-house, a picturesque little place, two stories high, painted brown, surrounded by a gallery to which a flight of steps gave access, and having a broad-eaved roof, covered with turf of emerald green.

I commanded the rearguard, which consisted of twenty musketeers, all M'Phersons. Hot and dusty with our march, I halted, and civilly requested a draught of water for each man. This modest request--the host, a sulky boor, who appeared at the door with four servants armed with crossbows and carbines, and dressed in white coats and peaked hats--acceded to most unwillingly; for, like a true German, he looked coldly on the soldiers of Christian, because the tide of war was setting in hard against them.

Perceiving this, I demanded, instead of water, a glass of Rostock beer for every man, and, accompanied by Sergeant Phadrig Mhor, entered the kitchen of the house, where the first objects I observed were two of those many pasquils or caricatures of his majesty James VI., which were then circulated through all Germany, in ridicule of the poor and tardy assistance he sent to his son-in-law, the timid Elector of Bohemia. One represented the king in a Scots bonnet and plaid, with a number of men striving in vain to draw his sword from its scabbard; the other depicted three armies marching into Bohemia--King James VI. of Scotland at the head of a hundred thousand ambassadors, Christian IV. at the head of a hundred thousand herring-barrels, and the States-general leading the same number of butter-firkins.

I endeavoured to deface or tear down these pasquils, upon which the farmer dealt me a blow with the boll of his carbine, that would assuredly have ended all my campaigns but for the interposition of Phadrig's axe; after which, to punish the fellow, we cleared the house, threw the grate with its burning coals into the middle of the floor, heaped the furniture thereon, and leaving the whole place in flames, hurried after our main body. It made little difference to the farmer, as the Croats would undoubtedly have burned his premises next night.

Without snapping a musket we reached the western shore of the Baltic, and, seizing such vessels as we could find (being on the king's service), sailed through the Gulf of Lübeck, and reached the Isle of Poel, where Slammersdorf lay with the wreck of his Silesian army, only ten thousand strong, including horse and artillery, but all resolute and well-appointed men. Our arrival there caused the utmost astonishment, for the major-general considered himself as completely cut off from all communication with Holstein; and, indeed, one day after, even we could not have reached the Baltic by the same route.

At Poel our Highlanders were mustered under baton by Sir Donald, and were found to be about eight hundred, for so had the defence of Bredenburg, Lauenburg, and the Boitze reduced them; no less than seven hundred men had fallen in these paltry affairs since our first landing at Glückstadt.

By this sad slaughter I found myself a captain, and Ian succeeded to poor Dunbar's commission; our old patents or commissions being assigned to other cavaliers, who were on their way from Scotland with six hundred new recruits from the Highlands. On the day after our landing at Poel I carried my half pike as captain, and went through the pleasant ceremony of presentation to the regiment--a custom which we Scots have copied into our army from our ancient allies, the French.

The whole battalion being drawn up in line, and in review order, the colours, pikes, and drums in the centre, musketeers and pipers on the flanks, the officers in front with their half pikes advanced, the colonel, Sir Donald, bearing my new commission in one hand, led me forward with the other, fully accoutred with back, breast, and head pieces, sword, pistol, steel gloves and dagger, and said in Gaëlic--

"Gentlemen and soldiers, by the will of the king, you will receive and acknowledge Philip Rollo of the Craig, to be captain of the company lately commanded by M'Farquhar of that Ilk; and you will obey in that capacity for the good of the Danish service."

Immediately upon this, the regiment presented arms, the drums beat the _Point of War_, the pipes struck up "Mackay's Salute"--the officers crowded round and drew off their gloves to congratulate me; after which we all spent a merry night in my quarters over a few dozen of right Würzburger, while my company regaled themselves on Rostock beer.

M'Alpine also became a captain, and Ensign Lumsdaine, the only survivor of Bredenburg, a gallant cadet of the family of Invergellie in Angus, became my lieutenant.

The most pleasant feature in this promotion was, that my increased exchequer enabled me to repay to the Baron Karl the money he had so generously advanced to me in the days of my first folly at Glückstadt; for I had been sorely afraid I might be shot in action, and leave that debt unpaid.