Believing that Bandolo had perished at the moment he disappeared over the Stubbenkamer, we descended the Kœningstuhl, and took the direct road along the granite isthmus towards Bergen, which we reached about mid-day, and where we were hospitably entertained by the burgomaster, who was very friendly to us, as foes of the Imperialists; for Bogislaus IV., Duke of Pomerania and Rügen, was in alliance with the northern kings. As the duke's vassal, he considered it his duty to show us every attention, and procured us a waggon, drawn by two stout horses, by which we travelled towards the Sound. I took care that the night should be set in before we reached Oldevehr, for the narrow strait was full of Austrian gunboats.
In the creek, we found our little shallop still safe in its concealment, and, embarking, put forth before the moon rose, and reached the mole of Stralsund in safety; but to find that we had now to encounter another and more terrible foe than starvation or the Imperialists.
A pestilence, like unto that terrible Black Plague which desolated Denmark in the thirteenth century, and carried off two-thirds of the inhabitants, committing irreparable injury on its agriculture and commerce, a pestilence now conduced by starvation and misery, by excitement, grief, and poverty, and by the terrible malaria arising from the slime of the wet ditches, the sluices of which had been destroyed by the Austrian artillery, and increased by the fetid atmosphere of the shallow trenches, where Wallenstein had buried vast numbers of his slain to windward of the city—for so I may call it, from the long prevalence of the wind in one direction—a pestilence that assailed the old and the young, the active and the listless, the bravo soldiers who manned the ramparts, and the timid citizens who lurked in their cellars to avoid the bursting bombs and passing cannon-shot, had now broken out in Stralsund, to increase the troubles, the anxieties, and the already manifold dangers of the siege.
In one day this terrible epidemic had seized on more than fifty persons. Next day there were a hundred victims. No pen can convey an adequate idea of the terror of the Stralsunders. The upper classes, however, comforted themselves that the pest confined itself as yet to the lower—those poor, haggard, and wretched beings, whom lack of raiment, work, and food, made their shattered frames, like those of the drunken and the dissipated, most liable to infection.
In three days it spread so fast that three hundred perished. Many rushed to schnaps and corn-brandy to drown their cares and apprehensions; and those unhappy wretches, in a state of madness and intoxication, were frequently seen rushing, half nude, from the lower purlieus of the city, pale, wan, and ghastly, or livid and yellow as oranges, uttering shrieks of blasphemy and lewdness; and making us shudder at the thought of the terrible scenes enacted in the dens from whence they had come. Into these places our men were reluctant to penetrate to bury the dead, many of whom we knew to be lying uncoffined and unshrouded. But the orders of the marshal were not to be resisted. Men were required to volunteer for the burial service as for a forlorn hope, and liberal supplies of corn-brandy were given to those who did so. Colonel Dübbelsteirn's Dutchmen, immovable and phlegmatic fellows, had this duty luckily assigned to them. Deep trenches were dug outside the Frankendör, and into these the dead (many of whom were worn to mere skeletons by famine and sickness) were flung over each other, pell-mell, old men and little children, side by side, and there we covered them up, shovelling great piles of earth, stones, and rubbish over them.
This malignant pest soon spread into our own ranks, and terrible havoc it made among our brave Highlanders. This was soon perceptible by the diminution of our numbers; for every company, as it came to its post at the Frankendör, lacked an officer, a sergeant, and ten, fifteen, or twenty of its files. The churches were turned into hospitals, where, with no other bedding than straw and their plaids, our soldiers lay side by side, and dying fast from lack of sufficient medical attendance; and being rendered—by their previous scanty food, the low and foggy atmosphere, the putrid effluvia of the German trenches, the malaria of our own stagnant ditches—peculiarly liable to attack, and less able to resist it.
The chief of our medical staff, Dr. Pennicuik of that Ilk, was of more service than twenty of the Danish doctors; while it was pleasing to see the Rev. Gideon Geddes and Father Ignatius emulating each other, and working side by side like good Samaritans among the sick and dying; yet not so oblivious of their former polemics, as to resist the opportunity of firing an occasional shot at each other, over the very corpse of some poor fellow, whose spirit had eluded both their kind efforts to detain him here. Stralsund became a mere charnel-house; now it was that I trembled for Ernestine, and wished her in the Imperial camp—any where but within those walls, which engirt so much suffering, and so many new miseries, in addition to those caused by scarcity of food, and the cannonading by land batteries and gun-boats on the Sound. I was reluctant, and terrified to enter her presence, lest I should convey that pestilence for which I had no fear personally, and the cautions I gave were countless. When not on duty, Phadrig Mhor and Gillian M'Bane were installed as agarde du corps, and occupied the lower story of the house, with orders to bar ingress to all under pain of death; but now none came hither; for Father Ignatius had the good sense to remain away, and Ian Dhu never came nearer the door than the garden plot, where he was wont to converse for a few minutes, and then retire, for no entreaty of Ernestine could make him enter.
One forenoon, when the frowsy November fog was rising like a veil from the face of the beleaguered city, I had come off guard at the Frankendör. Culcraigie's company had relieved mine, which I dismissed to their comfortless billets in the market-place, and then hurried, as was my wont, to inquire for Ernestine. I observed that the gate of the garden stood wide open; that the house door was ajar, and that all the blinds in front were still drawn closely down, although the noon was approaching. A pang of terror shot through me, for usually the gate and door were kept shut, and at such an hour the blinds were always drawn up, and the smiling face of Ernestine was the first object that greeted me. But on this morning the blinds remained motionless, and no face was smiling there.
I rushed into the vestibule, and found M'Bane fast asleep on a bench. The poor fellow was exhausted.
"Gillian, thou glaiket gilly," said I; "how and where is the young lady?"
"Where?"
"Yes—where? Must I prick you with my skene-dhu? Where is she?"
"Gone to the hospital."
"Hospital!" I gasped as if a ball had passed through my heart; "to the great church opposite the Bourse?"
"Yes, captain—a poor gilly like me could never gainsay that——"
I rushed through the streets, on my way passing two carts laden with the dead who had died over-night—pale, frightful, and emaciated remains; but decently covered by a pall of white linen cloth. These were on their way to the trenches, and were surrounded by a half-intoxicated party of Dübbelsteirn's musketeers, armed only with shovels and mattocks. On one of those carts lay the body of Major Fritz, which, as a mark of respect, had been rolled up in one of the blankets of his bed, and was tied in three places with rough cord. Poor Fritz! even his widow's doubloons, her dinners and her wine (when others had none), could not save him from the pest. Reaching the church, I entered for the first time the abode of more mental and bodily suffering than I (devoutly) hope it may ever be my lot to see again. It presented a complication of all that was terrible and revolting.
Our soldiers lay in rows: a few on pallets, a few on trusses of straw, but many more on the cold pavement, which bore the long German epitaphs and polished brasses of the men of other times. There were patients in all stages of this putrid and malignant fever—from him who was merely affected by premonitory pains in the head, and the throbbing of the temporal artery, to him whose bloodshot eyes were red as living coals, who had the hissing of serpents in his ears, whose breath was but a succession of laborious sighs, whose swollen tongue was white as coral or black as ebony, and whose skin was spotted like a leper's; for this pest was the worst species of that which is known in Europe as the Putrid Fever, and was accompanied by such excruciating pains in the stomach and loins that the patients speedily became collapsed and exhausted.
Many of our strongest, our best, and bravest soldiers were lying there cold and stiff, with glazed eyes, with relaxed jaws, and forms wasted to the mere shadows of what they were. Others were in all the agonies of death, with foam on their lips, their eyes red as blood, their tongues hard and white. Others were trembling as if in ague fits; many were delirious, and sang Highland coronachs, low, sad, and wailing; and some, who imagined themselves at home, were caressing and talking to those relations and lovers their fancy had conjured up. Many more believed themselves engaged, and encouraged each other by slogans and outcries.
"Cairne na' cuimhne!" I heard a M'Farquhar shout with the voice of a stentor; "club your muskets—come on, loiterers! Dirk and claymore is the order!"
"Go, go!" replied another delirious man with scorn; "teach your mother how to make brose! Dost think 'tis the first time I have smelt powder or heard the clash of swords! Go—I am one of the clan Donnoquhy!"
Full of gloom and despondency, the Germans were swearing, while the Frenchmen chatted and sang. What a medley it was! But in some places there were sounds of prayer and lamentation; these were principally among our own soldiers. In a corner, Torquil Gorm, our pipe-major, was praying in touching terms that the blessedIosa Criosd,Mhic Daibhi,Mhic Abrahaim, would have mercy upon his sufferings. In another place, Donald M'Vurich was lamenting over his dead comrade, a M'Intosh, and repeatedly exclaiming—
"Who among the Clanchattan was like thee, O Ronald Glas? Would to Heaven that I—poor Donald—might have satisfied death by dying in your place!"
These men had only been shepherds at home; yet Donald's grief was worthy of Athens or Sparta. It is not always under the garments of purple and fine linen that we find the noblest hearts.
The genius who presided over this harrowing scene was Doctor Pennicuik, our chirurgeon-general, a kind, good man, and able leech. He was disrobed to his shirt and breeches, with his sleeves rolled up and his hands dyed in blood, for he was bleeding the patients as fast as they were borne in, and the blood was carried away by his assistants in large tin basins. There, too, were the reverend Gideon Geddes and Father Ignatius, both ministering to the bodily and spiritual wants of such as would receive attention at their hands; but they sometimes made mistakes, for our chaplain might approach some red-hot Romanist, while the poor Jesuit applied himself to some sour Presbyterian, by whom he was repulsed with very little ceremony. At last they both fastened upon one old Gaël, who appeared to be nothing in particular, and on being asked what he was, replied in a faint voice—
"One of the Clan Donald."
"But of what persuasion?"
"A musketeer of Culcraigie's company."
This man was elderly, and his hair was white as snow. He was dying, and his son, Eachin M'Donuil, who had recently accompanied me to Rügen, held up his head that he might hear the solemn prayers and exhortations of the two pastors, who required him to forgive all his enemies, that he might die at peace with all mankind. This he avowed himself quite willing to declare, excepting so far as concerned the M'Leods of M'Leod, the destroyers of his race in Eigg; and, at the thought of them, the old man's dying orbs flashed fire.
Then he was told that he must forgive all without exception, or all their exhortations and his repentance were in vain.
"Well," said he, with an effort, as he grasped his son's hand and a vindictive gleam passed over his stern grey eyes; "if it must be so, I forgive the M'Leods, butremember them,you, my son, Eachin—remember!" With these words he expired; and Eachin kissed first the cold brow of his father, and then the blade of his dirk.
I thanked Heaven on perceiving Ernestine, not, as in my first terror I had expected, stretched among the females in that portion of the church, which had been screened off for them, but on her knees between the pallets of two soldiers, to whom she was administering something prepared for them by the surgeon. Inspired by a fit of piety, or benevolence, or mercy (which you will), or by that pure and beautiful zeal, which leads the sisters of mercy to visit the abodes of suffering, poverty, and misery, she had stolen to this frightful hospital to minister to the sick. But she, so highly born, so cultivated in mind, and refined in nature, so gentle, so sensitive, and full of emotions of pity, had over-calculated her own strength of purpose, and now trembled at the unexpected and revolting horrors combined in that dismantled and crowded church.
"Ah! Ernestine," said I, "what frenzy brought you here—and on such an errand? You were never meant fur drudgery such as this, and now you have rendered all my care and anxiety vain, perhaps most fatally vain, by running into the jaws of disease and death."
"Pardon me," said she, raising her pale face and saddened eyes to mine. "It was a sudden thought—a happy gleam, that a few good deeds done in the name of Gabrielle (for this was her birthday) might please her spirit—dear Philip, that was all—a few good deeds done in the name of our poor Gabrielle, for the good of the suffering and the glory of Heaven."
"At the risk of your own life, Ernestine!"
"Chide her not, captain," said the harsh voice of Gideon Geddes; "for in one hour she hath dune mair than ten surgeons. The merciful are blessed, for they shall obtain mercy. But," he added in a friendly whisper, "take her awa—for this is nae place for dames of high degree."
"My good child," said Father Ignatius, with a kind smile on his long and lantern-jawed face, "I love most to see deeds of mercy when they come from a woman's hand, and brother Geddes hath quoted rightly."
"Brither Geddes meaneth, that the blessedness of the merciful consisteth in what they receive—not what theygive," retorted our testy preacher; "for I do not believe that we can be saved by works alone; and, mairower, do not the Gospels say—" he continued, erecting his short punchy figure, and preparing even there to plunge into a controversy, which the doctor at once interrupted by despatching them on separate errands.
"Philip," said Ernestine, in a low voice; "take me away, for the atmosphere of this place is stifling."
I gladly led her out into the purer air of the street, where the noonday sun was shining, and where, overcome by all she had seen and heard, she burst into a flood of tears.
"Ay, Ernestine," said I, as a shot from the enemies' batteries whistled over our heads; "here is much to shock a girl like you: war, pestilence, and famine, are no trifling foes to encounter."
Another shot, a thirty-six pounder, struck a pinnacle of the church and hurled it into the street; for now, taking advantage of our lessened numbers, the Imperialists had pushed their batteries, trenches, and parallels, far round the flank of the Frankendör, and were almost within pistol-shot. In some places we could hear the voices of Carlstein's pioneers, as they laughed and sang at their work behind the ramparts of earth.
By a circuitous route, and through streets the ends of which Leslie had protected by barricades and traverses of earth, and timber, turf, and stone, I conveyed Ernestine back to her pretty mansion-house; and though I gave Phadrig and Gillian stricter orders than before concerning the admission of visitors, I feared much that the effect of her entering such a den of disease as the great church would prove fatal, and my forebodings were but too sadly realised.
Next day I received a slight wound in the left shoulder from the ball of a carbine; for the Imperialists were now close upon the Frankendör, the whole defence of which was still committed to our shattered regiment by Sir Alexander Leslie, who put implicit trust in us. I had it dressed by a passing surgeon, as I had no wish to risk myself near the frightful hospitals; and, on the firing ceasing, I went to visit Ernestine.
I found her in the little boudoir, and there was something about it and her too, that alarmed me; but then, perhaps, I was weak and nervous; provisions were so scarce that, though she knew it not, I had tasted nothing for two days. She was reclining in a large gilded fauteuil of yellow damask, stuffed with down, and her tiny feet rested on a tabourette of the same.
The room was darkened by the blinds being closely drawn; but the windows were open, and through them there swept a warm breeze, that played with the heavy hangings of velvet, and wafted the perfume of flowers from a large stand of green-painted wood bearing three rows of Dresden china vases, each containing the few flowers of the season.
She was dressed in white satin, brocaded with red flowers; it was a dress I had given her; and to please me, doubtless, she had put it on, together with a pair of beautiful pearl bracelets, for which I had given to one of Karl's pistoliers six dollars, without asking him any questions.
"Dear Ernestine, you are unwell!" said I, on perceiving that she made but a languid motion of her hand as I approached her.
"No, no!" she replied; "but the memory of all I saw yesterday affects me still—and these decayed flowers, perhaps—there, thank you," she added, as I flung the flowers referred to into the street.
She looked very pale, and I thought the tone of her voice was altered.
Next day she was even paler, and her languid air was unmistakeable. The room was shaded as before, and she sat near the half-opened window, to enjoy the cool breeze that swept over the Sound of Rügen. I hoped it was merely the deprivation of many little luxuries with which I had contrived to furnish her, long after every one else in Stralsund had ceased to think of them. Prudentia and her spouse had kindly sent me some of these things; but a few days before I had visited the shop at the corner of the Bourse, and found it closed, with a red cross chalked on the door. The plague had been there, and the drivers of the death carts were to call for the dead on their way to the trenches.
Instead of being curled according to the fashion, in little ringlets all round her charming face, Ernestine had her black hair smoothly and plainly braided over her temples; her dress was still the white brocade with the pearl bracelets; but to-day, although her face was paler still, she assured me with a smile, that she was "quite well."
She remained with her left cheek resting upon her hand, and when caressingly I attempted to kiss it, I felt as if an arrow had pierced my heart, on perceiving that which she had been striving to conceal from me—a round hectic mark, about the size of a dollar.
It was the plague spot!
Some frivolous remark, the natural impulse of a toying lover, died away on my lips as I saw this horrible mark, and with agony became convinced that the finger of death had printed it there. I glanced at her face.
It seemed so much paler since yesterday! It was cold, frozen, and sad looking, even when she strove to smile. Its beauty had become severe, and she seemed taller than usual in her long white stomacher. In that darkened room she looked like a white spirit, or a statue of snowy marble. Her eyes had lost their beautiful language. Sadness, intense sadness, alone remained.
"Ah! do not touch me," said she, withdrawing her hand; "leave me, Philip—leave me now!"
"Ernestine!" I exclaimed, and passionately clasping her to my breast, burst into tears.
She endeavoured to elude me, and begged, entreated, and implored me to leave her, lest I, too, might perish by her fatal touch; but I wished for nothing more. Yet I hoped she might be saved, and starting from her side, I summoned Gillian M'Bane, and despatched him for Doctor Pennicuik; I then summoned Ernestine's female attendants, who had her placed in bed.
In two hours I saw her again.
She was delirious, and imagined herself with Gabrielle and her father. Her once beautiful eyes had become bloodshot and red as coral; there was a little line of foam round her lips, and spots of purple were on her cheeks and brow.
Oh, the agony of a sight like that! Honest Pennicuik, hurried me roughly but kindly out of her apartment, and, thrusting me into a fauteuil, made me drink a glass or two of his medicated hospital wine.
Let me hurry over the relation and the memory of those sad hours of hopeless sorrow and futile anxiety.
On the second day, the fever and the delirium passed away, and I was permitted to see her; for Father Ignatius, with more than usual gravity on his long and solemn face, came to tell me that she was dying.
Dying!The good man gave me his arm, for I was very weak, and a partial blindness had come over me. I hoped it was the plague, that I might go with Ernestine; but, alas! it was only the result of sheer hunger, grief, and excitement.
I stood by her bedside in that darkened chamber, the features of which are still before me; its atmosphere was close and sickly; there were vials and bottles, cups and cordials, and between the festooned curtains a pale and sickly face, with inflamed eyes and purple spots upon a snowy skin, that contrasted powerfully with two massive braids of sable hair. And this was Ernestine!
Kneeling down by the side of the bed, I stooped my brow upon her thin wan hand, and wept as if my heart would burst. Ernestine also wept, but in silence; tear after tear rolled over her hollowed cheek, for she was too feeble to raise her head, and we muttered only incoherent sentences of sorrow and endearment—which it were useless to commit to paper; for to some they might seem exaggerated—to others perhaps too cold and passionless; as I can neither impart to them nor to the reader, the agony that thrilled our hearts, though the memory of that keen agony yet lingers in my soul, like an old and painful dream.
In expression her eyes were sad and fixed; there was a smile of ineffable sweetness playing about her thin white lips; but the dew of death was on her brow and about her braided hair. Believing that she was about to rejoin her sister, the poor girl said to me—
"I have been praying for you, and for myself—thus, like St. Monica, sending my most pious thoughts as harbingers to heaven. I am going to Gabrielle—ah, how she loved me!"
I could only murmur her name; then she put forth her dear lip affectionately for one more kiss. I became bewildered, and an emotion of wild satisfaction stole into my heart.
"'Tis the plague—it has seized me, too!" I muttered joyfully. "Dear Ernestine, I will soon follow you!"
The film was again spreading over my eyes, and there was a hissing in my ears; yet I felt the cold hand of Ernestine clasped in mine, and knew that its grasp was relaxing.
Then I heard the voice of honest Father Ignatius saying in my ear, and with a voice rendered husky by emotion—
"She is dead—God receive her sinless soul! close her eyes, and kiss her, Philip—all is over now."
At that moment I heard the wheels of the dead cart rattling over the street, and the jangle of its hateful bell.
Of that mournful day, I remember no more!
* * * *
Next day I recovered, as one who awakes from a deep sleep, and all the events of yesterday rushed like a torrent of grief and pain upon my mind. Father Ignatius, who had relapsed into his immobility of aspect and demeanour, knelt at the fauteuil, reading his daily office out of a little brass-bound breviary, which he closed the moment I moved. I was lying on the floor, with a cloak spread over me.
"Would you like to see her?" he asked, in a voice of kindness.
"Lead me there, if you please."
"Then, I pray you, follow me."
I stood in the chamber of death, and there was in it an awful stillness that deeply impressed me.
She was dead—this being, whom I had loved with my whole heart, and with my whole soul,was dead!yet I had neither a prayer nor a tear. I could neither form one, nor yield the other. I was frozen—stunned! She was dead! and these three words seemed written before me every where; there was a horrid stillness in my heart, and in every thing around me. The whole world seemed to be standing still; and what was now my Ernestine?
I looked upon her, but could not realize her death. The dark hair, which she was wont to dress so gracefully, was smoothed in modest braids over her pale and stonelike brow. They were very still—those glossy braids; and not a breath of air disturbed them, though the breeze lifted the leaves of her now neglected flowers. Her birds were chirping near, for their seed-boxes were empty now; the Jesuit observed this, and, notwithstanding all his sternness, even at that dreadful time he filled them, for the old man's heart was a very kind one.
Her eyes—those deep, dark, glorious eyes—were sightless now; turned back within their snow-white lids, from which the long lashes fell upon her marble cheek. Her nose seemed to have become too aquiline, too pointed and thin, for that of Ernestine; and then the lips—those cold, thin, purple lines—were compressed and rigid; but yet some beauty still was lingering there.
On the second day my Ernestine changed; her features became contracted and livid. Oh, my God! It was a mere yellow masque! I shuddered as I spread a veil over her, and could trust myself to gaze no longer.
I remembered that Gabrielle looked like a sleeping angel; but my Ernestine, more beautiful in life, was becoming ghastly and terrible in death.
"Oh, can this indeed be her who loved me so well!" was frequently my mental exclamation.
Oh, for one more glance—one respiration more! But the horrible stillness was unbroken; decay would come, but never again a glance or a smile.
I remembered now the charming delicacy, the fondness and reverence, with which she had arranged poor Gabrielle's remains for the grave, and would permit no other hands than hers to touch them. Now, she herself, whose sentiment had been so fine, so delicate, so noble, was but a poor corpse, too; but there was no sisterly hand to smooth her tresses, and arrange the ghostly garments of her long repose. She was left completely to strangers and hard-hearted followers of the camp.
I feared I would become mad, and so forget all about the plague and the siege; but I never left her side until the second day, when a tremendous salvo from the camarade battery made my heart leap within me; and then I heard the rattling drum and the yelling bagpipe summoning our soldiers to the walls. A new thought seized me!
I kissed her soft cheek, and that cold lip, whose icy touch sent a thrill of horror and agony to my heart; then, grasping my claymore, I threw myself at the head of my company, and rushed to the last defence of the Frankendör, with a deep and settled resolution to fall—to die!
I found that a salvo had completely breached the curtain of the bastion at the Frankendör; that thedebrisof 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 SpanishArcabuziersof 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.
We entered the room where she lay, and the stillness of death was there. We approached her with reverence; and when I stretched my hand towards the veil that covered her, it was with the air of a monk displaying the sacrament, for the remains of those we love are to us the holiest of all holy things.
"Ernestine—oh, my Ernestine!" sobbed the count. I thought that the veil which shrouded her figure moved.
It was but fancy.
We stood silent, for our hearts swelled with the most intense sadness, and were filled by the memory of the past.
Language cannot portray what the count felt, for the shock was so sudden. Within one hour his pale cheek had sunk; his eyes were inflamed, and his voice trembled. The very profundity of the poor father's affliction had dried up the ordinary channels of grief, and thus no tear escaped to relieve his agony.
The face of Ernestine had still its unpleasant expression, and yet, amid its awful stillness, I could have sworn a spasm contracted it.
The coffin was preparing; two of Spynie's soldiers were making it.
For a time the count was like a statue; frozen, impassible. I have said his grief was of that kind which had neither tears nor words. It escaped in deep, dry, agonizing sobs, and he clenched his nether lip with his teeth till the blood came.
"Blessed God, thou triest me sorely! Both are gone! both gone now!—and I am alone in this wide, dreary world again. At my age 'tis said we cannot weep."
In brief terms, I informed the count of the relationship between us, and how Ernestine and I had discovered at Nyekiöbing, that he was my long lost uncle, Philip—and she my cousin. He gazed at me as if he thought I raved; then he seemed to be convinced, and then dismissed it from his mind; for surprise, regard, and all minor emotions, had shrunk before the tornado of great and overwhelming grief.
"How long has she been dead?" he asked, in a low and husky voice.
"Since yesterday at noon—yesterday morning, she was alive and spoke to me."
The tears now burst from the eyes of the old soldier, and, stooping over the body, he embraced and kissed it.
Suddenly he uttered a cry, and turned to me with wildness and astonishment in his eyes.
"She is warm—she lives! Ernestine! Ernestine!"
I sprang to his side, and clasped one of her hands in mine.It was quite warm!
There was a convulsive motion in her fingers and feet; she opened her eyes, and a faint sigh escaped her; joy and terror bewildered me for a moment. Then I rushed away in search of a surgeon. Hurrying through the streets bareheaded, and without sword, scarf, or doublet, the first I met was no other than old Pennicuik. He thought me seized by delirium; but accompanied me without delay to the room of Ernestine, who seemed to be again hovering between life and death.
How dimly and confusedly that new day of terror, grief, and joy floats before me! I was like one who suffered from vertigo; I do not think I had the full use of my senses. Pennicuik immediately ordered all the windows to be opened; he took the pillows from under her head; he bathed her temples with Hungary water,eau de luce, and warm brandy; he spunged her little hands and snow white arms in vinegar and warm water; and a little wine was gently poured between her lips. Then, after the fashion of the female nurses at the Altenburg hospital, he blew air into her lungs by the nostrils.
In two days she was so fully restored to life as to be able to relate to us all her sensations, some of which were very remarkable.
She had dreamed that she was dead, and yet was sensible of all that passed around her. At times it seemed as if her spirit left her body, and yet remained near it—appearing to hover over that which it had no longer the power to move. When I kissed her, and closed her eyes, she had felt the touch of my hand without having the power of opening her eyes again. The horror of being buried alive occasioned her the utmost agony; and when she heard persons moving about her—when she heard sounds in the street, especially the jangle of the death-cart bell, herunexpressedagitation was terrible; but her soul could no longer act upon her fettered tongue, and she felt icy cold. Hence those spasmodic contractions of feature which I had actually seen, but thought were the result of my own disturbed fancy. The approach of her father, and the sound of his voice, gave a new impulse to her almost prostrate mind; it resumed its wonted power over her weakened organisation, and produced the sudden warmth which had startled him, when he thought he was embracing her for the last time.
Language has no power to describe the joy of such a restoration, as it seemed, from the very jaws of the grave; but it formed the subject of two sermons—one preached by Father Ignatius, and the other by the reverend Gideon Geddes, who construed the affair very differently; for the Jesuit affirmed that she had been restored to life by virtue of certain blessed reliques which he had cunningly slipped below her pillow; while the Presbyterian declared that she had merely been restored to existence, that she might live to see the errors of popery and its ways; and if the reader partake my joy and satisfaction, he or she will pardon my having kept them behind the curtain for a single chapter.
Little more remains to be told.
Rendered desperate by the successive defeats he had sustained since the battle of Lütter, Christian IV. was compelled, at the conference of Lubeck in 1629, to accede to the terms of a treaty of peace offered by the great Duke of Friedland, who then restored to Denmark all that he and Tilly had taken beyond the Elbe; and the siege of Gluckstadt, which had been so valiantly defended by the Scottish cavaliers of Sir David Drummond, was raised. The conditions imposed upon Christian were, that he should no more interfere in the German affairs than he was entitled to do as Count of Holstein; that on no pretext was he to enter the circles of Lower Germany; that he was to leave the weak and timid family of the palatine to its fate; and that the Scottish troops in his service were to quit it forthwith.
Thus, by a strange combination of misfortunes, was the most gallant of the Danish monarchs compelled to retire ingloriously from the great arena of the German war.
After thanking us for our services, he bade us adieu, and I saw the tears glisten in the only eye that war had left him. He sailed—not to rejoin his queen, who always met him with coldness in his reverses—but to seek the society and solace of the fair Countess of Fehmarn, his wife of the left-hand; who, whether in victory or defeat, had ever welcomed him with joy, gratitude, and love.
Repulsed, as related, in his last attempt to obtain Stralsund by assault, the great and ambitious Duke Albrecht, after a four months' siege, in which he lost upwards of twelve thousand of his best and bravest soldiers, was compelled to spike his cannon, burn his camp, destroy his baggage, and retreat into Saxony, thus acknowledging that neither his skill nor his mighty host had availed him before the valour of Marshal Leslie's Scottish garrison.
The plague passed away with him, and health, happiness, (and fresh provisions,) all flowed together into Stralsund. The good and industrious citizens resumed their wonted occupations; and, so sensible were they of the protection our swords had afforded, that they made old Field-marshal Leslie a magnificent present of silver-plate, and ordered medals* to be struck in honour of the Scottish troops.
* Some of these are still (I believe) in possession of the Leven family.
It was arranged that the Highland regiment of Strathnaver, then reduced to about four hundred men, should enter the Swedish service with Sir Alexander Leslie, and that all the Scottish and French volunteers who served King Christian, should accompany them; but as Ian Dhu and I had seen enough of the German wars to enable us to acquit ourselves in Scottish society at home; and, moreover, as a cloud was darkening in the political horizon of the north, we took a sad farewell of the brave fellows we had led in so many arduous encounters, and prepared to return to our native glens. The count prepared to accompany us.
"I am now sick of war," said he; "and, as King Jamie said of old, have a salmon-like instinct to revisit the place of my nativity."
Aware that reverses of fortune might one day come upon him, and that his estates of Carlstein, Giezar, and Kœningratz in Bohemia, were perhaps little better than so many castles in the air, the count, like a wary old soldier, had gradually secured vast sums in the hands of those famous and wealthy merchants, Thomas Watson of Leith, and Herr Dübbelsteirn of Glückstadt. Thus he was as independent of the family at Craigrollo as I; for, on my marriage with Ernestine (which we had arranged should take place in the old kirk of St. Regulus at home), I would receive a handsome share of the count's prize-money, which would form a very reputable estate, the more so if we could secure the two baronies of poor Kœningheim; but I feared that would be no easy matter, as various real or imaginary relations had already possessed themselves of all his towers and places of strength.
However, we fully hoped to be able to give direct contradiction to the old prophecy anent the family heirloom, and the absurd assertion that never a Rollo throve in this world if his mouth was unable to receive its mighty disc.
I shall never forget the day on which we marched from Stralsund; for we all embarked together. My dear comrades to enter on the long and glorious career of the new German war; Ernestine, the count, Ian, and myself, with Phadrig Mhor, to return to old Scotland; for Ian was to be married to his Moina, and Phadrig remembered that there was a lint-locked lassie in Strathdee, who would be very well pleased if again he came back to her and the green forests of Braemar.
Ernestine had fully recovered, and had become more beautiful and radiant than ever.
She wept when honest Father Ignatius lifted up his long bony hands and blessed her, before departing, staff in hand, as he said, "like St. Argobastus the Scot," on his lonely pilgrimage after the Imperial host.
The Swedish fleet lay at anchor in the Sound to receive the regiment, which my heart bled to leave.
The good shipScottish Crown, with all her sails loose, and a spring upon her cable, waited to receive us.
On one side lay the deserted trenches and dismantled batteries of the discomfited Wallenstein; here lay a brass cannon with the moss upon its muzzle; there a mound, where the fresh grass sprouted above the calm repose of the dead, and the autumn flowers expanded in the morning sunshine.
On the other side rose busy Stralsund, its shining walls decorated by silken banners, and its church-bells tolling merrily; for now, war, disease, and desolation, had passed away together.
Between, lay the blue waters of the narrow Sound, where the white sails of the Scottish and Swedish ships were flapping in the morning wind.
By the round archway, by the stony streets, and the frowning bastions, our hoarse drums beat merrily, and the shrill fife, with the proud war-pipe of the Gaël, rang upon the breeze; the green tartan waved, and the silken banners with the Red Lion and the Silver Cross rustled above our heads. All our hearts beat high with hope and ardour; and yet it was not without a sigh of regret for the brave Scottish hearts that had grown cold for ever beneath Jaromar's walls, that we marched down to the crowded and sunny beach for embarkation.
THE SCOTS IN DENMARK.
Some account of the Scottish troops who went to Denmark about 1625, will be found in the "Memoirs of Sir John Hepburn," recently published by the author of this work. They appear to have mustered as follows:—