CHAPTER XLVII.

LAST ASSAULT OF STRALSUND.

I found that a salvo had completely breached the curtain of the bastion at the Frankendör; that the _debris_ of fallen masonry, wooden platforms, cannon and their carriages, had half filled up the ditch before the gap; and that a strong column of Imperialists were advancing to a general assault, led by several officers on horseback, one of whom wore that large red plume for which the Count of Carlstein was so remarkable. Another, who was generally by his side, rode a magnificent white horse, and wore a cuirass and helmet which glittered like silver in the sun, being of the most beautiful workmanship; while his scarf, gloves, holsters, and housings, were fringed with the richest bullion.

This cavalier was the great Duke of Friedland himself, and the place where he rode, at the head of that advancing column, was the mark of nearly a thousand muskets; for the Lord Spynie's regiment of Lowland Scots was now brigaded with ours, but both were greatly reduced in number; and a line of hollow-eyed and pale-visaged men they were; yet as desperate as the most resolute valour, goaded by starvation and disease, could make them.

Three strong regiments advanced to the attack;--one was the battalion of Camargo; another was the Spanish _Arcabuziers_ of Coloredo; and in front was the regiment of Merodé, led by six soldiers, bearing on their shoulders a black coffin!

Within that coffin was Merodé, whom De Vart had slain by a mortal wound; but whose dying injunctions were, that, dead or living, he should head the assault of Stralsund. Ruffians though they were, his soldiers had a wild species of love for him; and now sword in hand, and shoulder-high, six of them bore his coffin towards the breach, the fire from whence, by frequently killing the bearers, threw the dead man heavily on the earth.

"Gentlemen and comrades," said Sir Donald; "pikemen and musketeers--to your duty, and do it according to your wont! Remember how many generations of our ancestors, all brave men, who loved the battle as a pastime, are this day looking down upon you from the place of the good man's reward in heaven."

"Dirk and claymore! dirk and claymore!" cried our men, and the shout was heard above the roar of the musketry.

"Yes!" said Ian emphatically, as he shook his lofty plumes; "in Heaven's name let it be dirk and claymore! I would rather meet those fellows hand to hand, in the good old Highland fashion, than by bandying bullets from behind a stone-dyke. Let us this day save Stralsund, or perish with her!"

"Better it is to die by musket-shot, than by starvation or the plague," grumbled Phadrig Mhor.

"Ian," said I, "you have still something to live for. Remember Moina!"

"True," said he; "Moina is here--in my eyes and in my heart. My life is hers."

"Then why throw it heedlessly away? Do you live for her? 'Tis enough for the wretched to perish."

He wrung my hand, and we passed to our places.

On this day of carnage and desperation the world was looking as bright as ever. The walls of the old city were smiling in the sunshine, and its ruddiest glow fell on the ancient church, within the walls of which there was the greatest amount of suffering. Though the season was advanced, the noon was somewhat sultry, and swarms of new-born gnats were wheeling in the sunny air. The young green grass was sprouting above the trenches where the dead were buried; the Sound was like a blue mirror, and clouds of fleecy whiteness flecked the wide azure dome of the sky. All nature looked beautiful, and the glad earth seemed to smile back on the bright sun; but man, in his Wickedness, was doing all he could to render that beautiful Earth--_a Hell_!

I had just come from the lifeless Ernestine, and hence, perhaps, this moralizing for a moment; but I was dogged and desperate; selfishly caring not who fell, or who survived--who might be victorious, or who vanquished. The world and I had no longer any thing in common; and now the uproar and strife that deepened round me as the foe drew near, were a congenial relief to my tortured spirit; for it rose, as it was drawn away from bitter thoughts, and my heart leaped at the rattling musketry, the shrieks, cries, and moans of the wounded, the tumultuous shouts of the combatants as they closed up shoulder to shoulder in the breach, where our Highlanders shot, with rapid and deadly precision, right over the heads of a stand of Spynie's Lowland pikes, whose gallant breasts had replaced the fallen bastion.

On came that triple column of the foe, and now one high discordant yell announced that they were within pistol-shot; but so thick was the smoke before us that we could scarcely see them. The wild Merodeurs made incredible efforts to bring on the coffin of their colonel, and seemed to enjoy the strange bravado of being led by a corpse to the assault; but every relay of soldiers who lifted it from the earth were shot down in succession, until at last the coffin, with its bearers and hundreds of others, tumbled pell-mell into the ditch, before the breach, the way to which became literally choked by the bodies of the killed and wounded; and over these the rear companies of the Merodeurs, and Camargo's Spanish pikemen, rushed mingling to the assault, like a flood of valour and fury.

But the flood was stemmed, and that fury curbed by the hedge of Scottish pikes that met them in the breach, and the Spaniards and Germans were rolled back on each other, until the front ranks were literally hurled headlong on the rear. In vain, by clubbed muskets, by hewing with swords, and by grasping with the bare hand, they strove to beat, to cut, or tear a passage through the soldiers of Lord Spynie. The finest chivalry of England, of Normandy, and Acquitaine, had failed, on fields of more than European renown, to force a passage through a rampart of Scottish pikes; and now, assuredly, that honour was not reserved for the Imperialists of the Duke of Friedland. Some, however, were torn out of Spynie's ranks, and slain or taken prisoner; among the former was the son of the Laird of Leys, first private gentleman of a company; and, among the latter, Sir John Hume of Aytoune, in the Merse. He was dragged by the throat and waist-belt into the midst of the enemy, by whom he was barbarously slashed and wounded.

Over the heads of Spynie's men, and closing up into their ranks, our Highland musketeers poured their bullets point-blank into the faces of the stormers; while our brass cannon, from an angle of the bastion, raked their column in flank. Here they slew many of our best men; and Lumsden, my lieutenant, Captain M'Donald, of the house of Keppoch, and nearly three hundred gallant clansmen, fell to rise no more. We shot down all the mounted officers, save those two who had been so conspicuous, one by his red plume, the other by his snow-white horse; and, during the lulls of the smoke and uproar, they were to be seen and heard encouraging their soldiers, by precept and example, to push on, and to die rather than flinch.

"That is Rupert-with-the-Red-plume!" I heard Sir Donald say; "and he on the white horse is the Duke of Friedland; for who but he would have the black buffalo's head of Mechlenburg on his saddle-cloth? Fifty Scottish pounds to the man who knocks them both on the head!"

But they seemed to bear charmed lives, and though innumerable shots were fired at them through openings in the smoke, they were never hit; and now, fortunately for us, at the very moment our ammunition was beginning to fail, the enemy began to waver; and at such a time, and on such a duty, to waver is but a prelude to flight. They gave way on all hands, and retired with precipitation round the right flank of the Frankenlake, leaving behind them a terrible scene of carnage and destruction.

The killed lay in hundreds, and the wounded screaming for water, groaning, rolling, and throwing up their hands and feet, lay in hundreds more, among scattered arms, drums, standards; and then the horrors of the fosse, where a seething mass of living and dead lay piled over each other, head and heels, endwise and crosswise, trod upon, and pierced in a thousand places by the storm of shot that had augmented their number every moment, piling up a hecatomb of slain above the abandoned coffin of the once terrible and reckless Merodé! Among their fallen riders, even in the ditch, as well as on the approach thereto, lay many noble horses, maddened by pain, kicking, plunging, snorting, and shrieking (for a horse, at times, can utter a frightful cry), as they rolled over the helpless wounded, with their iron hoofs breaking legs and ribs, or beating out the brains of those whom the musket-shot had already maimed elsewhere. Use and wont made us regardless of this scene; and now we were sufficiently attracted by another.

While the fugitives were retiring round the angle of the Frankenlake, the two mounted officers already mentioned, were frequently seen endeavouring to rally them, and placing their horses before the flying bands; but they might as well have striven to stay the waves of ocean. At last they appeared to quarrel with each other; we saw their swords gleam as blows were given and thrusts exchanged; their horses reared up, and then plunged past each other; a blade flashed in the sun, and the cavalier on the white horse was struck from his saddle; his charger galloped away, and while he had to limp after his soldiers on foot, the officer with the red plume came galloping madly back towards the breach, waving a white handkerchief to us in sign of truce or peace. Several shots were fired after him by the Merodeurs, but, escaping them, he cleared the corpse-encumbered ditch by one terrific bound, and forcing his noble horse up the rough avalanche of masonry, dismounted in the midst of us, breathless, panting, pale with excitement, anger, and exertion.

"The Count of Carlstein! Rupert-with-the-Red-plume!" cried a hundred voices, in every varying accent of astonishment.

"Ay, gentlemen, your countryman! no longer, I fear, Rupert Count of Carlstein, but simply old Philip Rollo, the soldier of fortune that fate saw him thirty years ago. By one blow of my sword--the same which, not a minute ago, unhorsed that mighty, ambitious, and intolerable tyrant, the Duke of Friedland--I have demolished one of the fairest fortunes that ever a stanch soldier secured by the toil and dangers of a life that can never be lived again. Receive me, I pray you, as your countryman, as a poor and penniless soldier, who comes to seek service under the Swede and Dane."

The count spoke with bitterness, and breathed hard as he leaned on his sword, and our regiment closed round him with surprise and inquiry. Unwilling to tell what I knew would be as poniards in his heart (the fate of Ernestine), I stood a little in the background; while Marshal Leslie, Sir Donald Mackay, and Lord Spynie, all together inquired the cause of quarrel with his general. After taking a sip or two of brandy from the flask of Ian Dhu, and retiring a little apart from the vicinity of the breach--

"You are well aware, gentlemen," said he, "how signal has been the success attending the arms of the emperor and princes of the Catholic League. Driven from Juteland, Christian IV. has been glad to seek shelter by sea, and by wandering among the Danish isles, and the career of conquest has only been stopped by the waters of the Baltic----"

"And the Scottish infantry," interposed old Leslie.

"Yes, marshal, but that I considered as understood. I have long foreseen that this ambition will destroy itself. The combination of the northern kings is what Wallenstein most dreads and hates, as it prevents him obtaining a solid hold upon the Baltic, and from penetrating into Sweden for his own ends, though in the emperor's name. At a great council of war held lately in Vienna, I threw out some hints of Wallenstein's hopes of founding a separate power in northern Europe--a power of which himself would be the head. I represented to the emperor the necessity of making peace with Christian IV. before he invaded Sweden, urging that he could never withstand a union of the northern princes with the hostile Protestants of the empire. The emperor was pleased to hearken to me, and, desirous of peace, despatched me to Stralsund here, with written powers to treat with Christian; these powers he afterwards dared to repudiate, and Wallenstein, who--far from wishing a peace, which would reduce him to a mere civilian again--hopes in the general confusion to achieve such ends as no man hath conceived since the days of Alexander of Macedon, dared to destroy my credentials before my face--yea, but yesterday in council! Hence our high words to-day, under the very muzzles of your cannon. When, enraged by the useless slaughter of which he was the cause, I accused him of daring and criminal ambition, blows were exchanged, and by one I hurled him to the earth, and cut myself off from the empire for ever."

How truly the count had judged of the character of the great Duke of Friedland (or the Archduke of Mechlenburg, as he was generally styled for a time), after events have shown; for they brought to pass that dark scene in the Bohemian Castle of Eagar, where the Scottish colonels, Leslie and Gordon, were compelled to hew off his head in the banqueting hall.

"Ah! here is my friend and namesake, Captain Rollo," said the count, approaching me; "and so, comrade, you have still preserved the gold chain I gave you on that moonlight night by the marshy Elbe. But what is the matter? you look pale as Banquo's ghost. I see starvation in every eye here. Now lead me to my poor girl--the last that fate has left me; for if I have her in my arms, the county of Carlstein, the castles of Giezar and Kœningratz, with all my orders of knighthood and nobility, and my colonel-generalship of the Imperial Cavalry, may go to the devil for aught that I care. Ha--what is this?"

He paused, for there was, I knew, a terrible expression in my face; and, unable longer to conceal my emotion, I flung away my sword, muffled my face in my plaid, and burst into tears.