CHAPTER XXXVIII.

WAR.

"We have sharp service before us here, Ian," said I, as in the cold grey light of an autumn morning we paraded on deck next day for disembarkation.

"Yes, Philip, and that omens of coming events may not be wanting, harken to the news brought from the city by Major Fritz!"

"News," said that cavalier, as he assisted his friend Karl to clasp on his cuirass; "by my soul 'tis enough to make one's hair stand on end, and to frighten a troop-horse!"

"Quite a prodigy, is it Fritz?" asked Karl.

"Gentlemen," continued the major with all seriousness, "the wife of Colonel Dübbelsteirn has just been delivered of a fine little boy--"

"Bah--and what is there in that?" asked M'Alpine, and several of our officers.

"What is there in it?" retorted the Danish major, indignantly; "there is something very remarkable, when we consider the way it came into the world!"

"Has it a tail?" asked Kildon.

"Or horns?" added Culcraigie.

"It is quite unlike any of you," retorted Fritz; "'tis a plump little boy, as fat as Bacchus, or the colonel himself (and we all know that he fully realizes the old Friesland proverb, _Grette arsen behove wyde brœken._) The baby has been born in buff-coat and jack-boots, like a little trooper, and the whole city is ringing with the tidings of so marvellous a birth."

"Buff-coat and jacks--by Heaven, he is laughing at us!" said our Celts, twisting their mustaches.

"I assure you, gentlemen, that it is quite as the major says," said Karl; "but he has omitted to add that this miraculous bantling has the buttons of the Sleswig musketeers on its doublet----"

"A major's scarf," suggested Ian.

"And short brown mustaches," added Karl.

"Laugh as you please, gentlemen--but visit the Fraü Dübbelsteirn, and satisfy yourselves. Ha! the drums are beating,--there sound your pipes, gentlemen Schottlanders, and now for the shore!"*

* A similar prodigy is said to have happened in the city, stormed soon after by Pappenheim; a child was born in _steel cap and cuirass!_ see the "Brief but authentic relation in High Dutch."

There was a solemn prayer given by our regimental preacher on deck, where all our soldiers paraded under arms, in full marching order; and he also gave us a brief discourse on that verse of Samuel, which records how Saul "gathered a host, smote the Amalekites, and delivered Israel out of the hands that spoiled them," applying it to the rescue of Stralsund from the fangs of the Empire.

We then disembarked in the Danish boats, and landed on the mole while the morning sun was yet low, and a dense bank of fog was rolling slowly upward from the strip of water that lay between us and the Isle of Rügen.

Well muffled up in Russian sables, with two female servants nestling beside her, Ernestine was rowed ashore in the barge of Sir Nikelas Valdemar, and the king's own Live Knecht and Baron Karl, the quartermaster-general, were desired to obtain for her a handsome and suitable mansion, among the many whose wealthy owners had abandoned them, and fled into Pomerania at the approach of Wallenstein. A residence was soon selected.

The rich hangings, the magnificently carved and gilded furniture, the chairs of white satin, brocaded with gold, the tables inlaid with ivory and ebony; jars of Dresden china, Japan canisters, Persian carpets, flowers in vases of Delft, and statues of Parisian alabaster--all that taste could invent and wealth procure, were remaining in this delightful billet, just as the rich corn-trader to whom the house belonged had left them. The rooms were all tapestried or panelled, and each panel was a picture representing Flemish ships and German farms, Dutchmen skating, and sea-pieces. The key which put us in possession of all these fine things, was the simple application of a musket-shot to the keyhole; and then, the door flew open.

The house was pleasantly situated, having in front a view of the Sound, with the Saxon and Pomeranian shores, while behind, it was completely screened from the fire of the Imperial batteries, by the masses of intervening streets. Thick clumps of Dutch poplars, with bright green foliage, half hid the front of the house, which stood a few yards back from the main street. A long flight of steps ascended to its gaudily painted door, and on each step stood two porcelain vases, with flowers in full bloom.

Ernestine was charmed by the appearance of the place; but said that, with all its splendour, she would have preferred a corner of her father's tent.

Other ladies, the wives of fugitive German nobles, were placed in the same house. Thus, in the hope that they would form a pleasant little community, whose safety depended upon our valour, we marched, with drums beating and colours flying, to the Frankendör, the post assigned us; and the scene--as the event proved--of the most hazardous and desperate service in that beleaguered city.

It was the weakest point, too; otherwise the old Scottish Invincibles had not got it to defend.

The aspect of the citizens--men who until this time had given their whole souls to peaceful occupations, and to the quiet acquisition of wealth--men whose ledgers had long since superseded their Bibles--whose God was a mere golden idol; whose whole thoughts were of pounds, dollars, and stivers--hides, tallow, corn and cheese, ships and storehouses; whose passion was wealth, and whose arid hearts had been ossified to mere ink-horns, was pitiable in the extreme. In neglected attire, with wan and dejected countenances, they moved stealthily about, their eyes at times aghast with terror, and always expressive of anxiety and alarm; while surveying ruefully their deserted mole, their places of business thronged by soldiers and encumbered by the munition of war; their best houses and public buildings turned into barracks, or battered, dinted, and defaced by cannon-shot; their trees cut down to form abbatis; their pavements torn up, and thoroughfares trenched, to make parapets, breastworks, and traverses; their market-places ringing incessantly to the tramp of armed troopers, the clank of artillery-wheels, the rattle of drums, and the wild yell of the Scottish war-pipe, as the various duties of defending their beautiful city--now transformed into one vast garrison--were vigorously executed under the orders of Sir Alexander Leslie.

With all the recklessness of foreign soldiers defending a town, about the actual protection of which they cared not the value of a rush, our Danes and Germans destroyed and defaced whatever they could not defile. The churches were turned into hospitals, where the wounded and dying lay side by side upon beds or pallets of straw, presenting a hideous combination of suffering and misery. Chapels were converted into cooking places, where the messmen lighted fires on the pavement; and where the soldiers laughed and sang, as their camp-kettles simmered upon fires that were composed of carved oak-work, altar-screens, pews, pulpits, and whatever came first to hand and bill-hook; and where the flames, thus recklessly lit, blazed above the ashes of the dead, encircling the gothic pillars, licking their foliaged capitals, filling the vaulted roofs with smoke, and blackening the fretted stone-work, which they failed to ignite.

In other churches, the Baron Karl's pistoliers and the cavalry were cantoned; and there the long legends and brasses on the pavement, expressive of piety and faith, of human vanity or earthly mortality, as they enumerated the life, the death, and rank of those who slept below, were defaced by horses hoofs, or hidden by the litter and mire that defiled those stately temples, which had been founded and consecrated in the earlier ages of Christianity by some of those northern missionaries, the relation of whose labours were the theme and the glory of our old friend, Father Ignatius d'Eydel.

We marched to the Frankendör, a ravelin that lay immediately without the walls, and was an indifferent breastwork, before which lay a dry ditch, having in its front the lake of Franken; on the opposite bank, the brigade of Count Carlstein (old Rupert-with-the-Red-plume) was securely ensconced, though within less than the distance of a cannon-shot, by trenches and embankments, basketed up for their culverins. These, for the present, were silent; but we could perceive that the Imperialists were busy erecting two camarade batteries of ten guns each, to which we could only oppose a species of _tambour_ work, which we foresaw would afford us very little shelter unless strengthened.

Wallenstein's line of circumvallation reached the count's left flank; Arnheim's line reached his right: thus the unhappy city had been completely enclosed on the landward side, and cut off from all the supplies it usually received from Mechlenburg, Saxony, and Pomerania.

Major-general Johan Gorge Arnheim, a gentleman of Brandenburg, and director to the elector of Saxony, had the third command in the army of Wallenstein, and was one of the bravest, and most accomplished soldiers in the Imperial army; but to military talents of the highest class, he unfortunately united all the craft and dissimulation of a statesman. Hence his treachery to the Poles and to the Swedes on many occasions; till even Wallenstein suspected him of sinister designs against himself, and despatched him from Stralsund, with 10,000 men, to the assistance of Sigismund, King of Poland, who was then at war with Gustavus, dismissing him with this brief and vain-glorious order:--

"Arnheim--March! drive Gustavus out of Poland; and, in case you fail, send to tell him that I--Wallenstein--will come and effect it."