THE CROWN OF FIRE.
For us, a mere "handful," opposed to a column so powerful, there
could be no rest; thus, while one half of our slender force remained
under arms, the others worked hard at the repair and further
strengthening of the works, by means of cannon-baskets filled with
earth, sandbags, beds and mattresses, taken from the houses, and
chandeliers made of roofs and flooring sawn into billets, trussed up
in bundles, and banked over with turf. We made the utmost exertion,
because, though unmolested, we augured, by the constant report of
fire-arms in the Imperial bivouac, that the troops were busy
discharging, cleaning, and preparing their fire-arms for a second
attack.
In one deep grave, within the sconce, we buried our dead, placing
more than forty of them side by side, and so covered them up. The
last we put in was the sergeant, Ronald Gorm.
"Poor Ronald!" said Phadrig Mhor; "'tis thou must perform the
_faire-chloidh_;" for it is a Highland superstition that the soul of
the last person buried in any place, must keep watch there until
another corpse is brought, whose spirit relieves the former.
"Ronald's ghost will not be long on guard," said Ian; "for I am much
mistaken if more heads will not be broken before to-morrow." The
piper played a sweet and sad lament at this unseemly funeral; in the
old Highland fashion, we placed four large stones above that ghastly
tomb, and, in the language of the bards, bade them speak to other
years, and to the men of other times.
The wounded we sent off to Glückstadt in rough country carts, through
the open joints of which their blood ran dripping on the dusty road.
As a protection, a small guard of pikes accompanied them; for our
stragglers and sick were frequently murdered by the boors, whose
cupidity their silver buttons and ornaments served to excite.
A ration of skeidam was served round to us all; and about sunrise,
after doubling the guards and seeing that the Imperialists, though
within cannon-shot, were not intending to molest us, Dunbar ordered
our men to "pile arms," and take some repose. Poor fellows! they lay
down to sleep in their armour, and with their bare legs on the gory
platforms or cold earth; and there, amid the scattered shot, the
exploded shells, the blood gouts, and the broken weapons, I enjoyed
the sound sleep of a wearied soldier, and undisturbed by the
reflection that it might be the last I should ever enjoy; and you,
good reader, would have slept sound also, after the toil, the
carnage, and excitement of such a night as that at Boitzenburg.
Anxious to defend his post with honour, Dunbar--that brave old
cavalier--never slept, but remained watching every movement of the
enemy, whom we permitted, without molestation, to bear away their
wounded from under the very muzzles of our cannon; but the moment
this was over, the pipes sounded, the drums beat, and we were again
roused to man the ramparts, for again they were coming on, and with
renewed vigour, for three battalions of Spanish Imperialists had
joined the Count in the night.
"Pikes and pistols--here they are again!" cried our veteran major, or
sergeant-major, for according to the Danish etiquette we called him
both; "but fear not, my brave hearts, for God is with us, and His
hand is over us. Believe me, gentlemen, our cannon are noway
inferior to theirs for not having Latin mumbled, and holy water
sprinkled, over them by the superior of the Jesuits. So to your
guns, my wight cannoniers--to them again with handspike and
linstock--with rammer and quoin!"
About the closing in of the evening, a dense column of Spanish
infantry, with pikes and musketeers intermingled, suddenly debouched
upon the roadway from behind the little eminence which had sheltered
them, and poured impetuously forward, to assail again the stockades
of the graff; while a brigade of Austrians rushed towards the sluice
which admitted into it the water of the Elbe; and though thrice, by
sheer dint of cannon and musketry, we drove them back, they forced a
passage to the angle of the ditch, and climbing literally over piles
of their own dead and dying, cut the chains by their axes, and,
closing the sluice by sledge-hammers, retired with a loud hurrah; for
immediately the water in the ditch began to subside. On this the
furious Spaniards redoubled their efforts to carry the palisades; but
as these projected at the angle of forty-five degrees from a steep
bank, and were swept by our fire, it was a task of the greatest
danger and difficulty; yet these valiant hearts accomplished it, and
reached the inner edge of the ditch, but as fast as they mounted they
were shot down, and when struck we could see the blood spouting from
their buff coats and corslets as if ejected from a syringe.
"Fire on the sluice!" cried Dunbar to Captain Learmonth, whose
pikemen still worked our cannon; "break through the planks--admit the
Elbe, and fill the graff again."
"It is impossible!" replied that cavalier; "for our guns cannot be
depressed so low."
"Then Heaven help us! for they will soon gain this poor sconce by
storm."
"We can still retire by the bridge," said Learmonth.
"Without orders?" exclaimed Dunbar, the umbriere of whose helmet was,
at that moment, torn away by a shot; "nay, I will die first!"
Learmonth, who was levelling a cannon, was about to make some
devil-may-care reply, when two musket-balls struck him; one pierced
his cuirass, and wounded him in the breast; the other tore away three
fingers of his left hand, and he fell without a cry, but with a heavy
groan, while his lieutenant, old Martin of that Ilk, assumed his
place.
"This, to avenge thee, Balcomie," said he, discharging the cannon,
and unhorsing a cavalier, whose bright armour and waving plumage made
him dangerously conspicuous above the dense mass of Spaniards who
were swarming over the stockades, and lowering their ladders into the
now almost empty fosse.
"Well done, stout Martin!" said Dunbar, brandishing his sword; "to
thy cannon again, and give me another good shot--another like that
for the Queen of Bohemia! Down with that tall fellow in the gilt
armour! Cocksnails, man!--he may be Carlstein himself! Down with
the black eagle, and down with the cross of Burgundy! Load with
cartridge shot my cannoniers, and sweep the stockade; sweep, my
comrades, and be stanch as your swords of steel. Ah! pikes and
pistols--my poor Martin--and thou, too?" he added, as a ball from a
falconet passed through the head of the old lieutenant, and killed
him on the spot: he was the last of the Martins of that Ilk, a good
old family ruined in the affair of the Spanish Blanks, since when he
had fed himself with the blade of his sword among the Scottish bands
in Bohemia, or elsewhere.
It was frightful! Poor Martin's brains flew over me, and, half
blinded, I wiped them off my face with my scarf; while, enraged by
the loss of two favourite officers (though Lowlanders), our clansmen
redoubled their energies, and thus the din increased as the smoke and
slaughter deepened around us.
Brightly the evening sun was shining on the blue water and green
banks of the Elbe; but enveloped in the white cloud of war, inspired
with ferocity, and bent on carnage and destruction, we saw nothing
but the enemy and our dying comrades, who every moment fell heavily
down in their accoutrements, bleeding and in agony, or stone dead, as
the fated shot might strike them; but closing up, shoulder to
shoulder, the little band of survivors stood firm on the parapet
ready to repel the assault; for still the Danish flag was flying on
the colour-staff, and still the Scottish cross was streaming on the
rampart. We--the officers--fought side by side with our musketeers,
till our mustaches were all matted by the wet powder of bitten
cartridges, and our shoulders ached with the exertion of incessant
firing, while the barrels of our muskets became so hot that there was
eminent danger in recharging them; yet still we toiled on. And now
came the crisis; for though three successive storming parties had
been swept away, our ammunition began to fail, and, as the bandoliers
emptied, our fire slackened, and then the Spaniards and
Austrians--pikemen, halberdiers, and musketeers, all mingled
pell-mell--led by officers having pistols in their belts, and swords,
daggers, and demi-lances, poured into the ditch; rushing down their
ladders, and planting them against the wall, they swarmed up its face
in hundreds.
Sheathed in brilliant armour, magnificently inlaid with gold, having
his visor closed, a sword in his right hand and a poniard in his
left, which also grasped a light rondelle or buckler, the tall and
stately Count of Carlstein, wearing above his gorget the Golden
Fleece and the White Eagle, led the forlorn hope.
"Victoria! Victoria!" we heard him crying. "Forward, forward!
swords and pikemen!"
"Sancta Maria!" replied his soldiers, in a thousand varying tones
uniting in one roar; "Sancta Maria! Vivat--vivat!" and that wild cry
of the Austrians was echoed by the wilder hurrah of a regiment of
Croats, who had leaped from their white horses, and were levelling
their long carbines at us, point-blank over their saddles, with
deadly precision. As the foe approached I looked at Ian. With his
eyes flashing under the peak of his helmet, and both hands clenched
on the hilt of his claymore, he was surveying the scene below with
stern calmness. Phadrig Mhor, with a Lochaber axe, stood by his
side, and the M'Farquars, with their empty muskets clubbed, stood
grimly in their ranks. They were a dark, a savage, and picturesque
group.
"You see, my cousin," said Ian, in that grim jesting tone which he
could assume at times; "that King Christian has resolved we shall pay
dearly for declining the Danish cross. We shall all find our graves
by the shore of the Elbe."
"Ye say truth, M'Farquhar," said Dunbar, as he pressed to the front
with a partisan in his hand, and a pair of pistols in his belt; "but
if ever we have a Hegisippus to relate our story, he shall never,
like a lying loon, have it to say that we feared the face of man.
But that king, whose life was saved by the Scottish Rittmaster Hume,
on the day he fled from the battle of Lütter, should have remembered
that trifling circumstance; and also that his sister had the honour
to be queen of fair Scotland. But bide ye--hark!"
Above the uproar in the trench below us, the fire of the Croatian
calivers, and the shouts of the stormers, we heard the clang of a
horse's hoofs on a paved street, and saw a cavalier lightly armed,
galloping in mad haste across the bridge of the Elbe, and in three
seconds he dashed into the heart of the sconce amongst us.
"The Baron Karl of Klosterfiord, aide-de-camp to the king!" exclaimed
Ian and others.
"Herr Dunbar," said he, breathlessly: "you are to abandon the sconce,
spike the cannon if you cannot bring them off, blow up the bridge of
the Elbe, and retire to Lauenburg or Glückstadt."
"'Tis too late, baron--these orders have come too late to save us,"
replied Dunbar, as hand to hand we met the Imperialists, hewing them
from their ladders with swords and halberts, thrusting them down at
push of pike into the fosse, where many of them, by falling head
foremost, perished miserably among the mud and sap below.
Right in the gorge of our embrasure stood the Count of Carlstein,
fighting with sword and buckler against Ian, whose powerful form,
overtopped the foe, though he could not stand erect while swaying his
two-handed sword. Their soldiers pressed on behind them, and deadly
was strife at that point; for against it the enemy were pouring all
their strength and fury. Save an occasional pistol shot, the din was
occasioned alone by the cries of the combatants, and the clash of
their weapons, steel sparkling on steel; and nothing could surpass
the bravery of Count Carlstein and his Spaniards, but that of Ian Dhu
and his company.
Hurled over each other in whole sections by our levelled pikes, we
rolled them into the ditch; but other sections came up in their
places, and their cries rent the air.
"Viva Ferdinand! A Dios! a Cristo y al Espiritu Santo, gloria y
gracias! Victoria! Victoria!" For lack of powder our men hurled
sand, earth, and stones, right into their faces, and Phadrig Mhor
hewed away with his pole-axe like a mower in a ripe clover field.
Amid this dense mass in the embrasure, while pikes were crashing,
swords ringing, and colours flying, swaying to and fro--now on this
side, and now on that--many frightful wounds were given and received.
Ian's right knee, being bare and unprotected, was drenched in blood
from a stab, which raised his Highland blood to the boiling pitch,
and, by one headlong stroke, he hurled the count, as if he had been a
mere puppet, into the heart of the ditch; but his place was
immediately supplied by another cavalier wearing the Imperial scarf,
and carrying in one hand a demi-pike, in the other a banner with the
black eagle.
With one foot on a culverin, and the other on the cope of the
parapet, during this meleé I was handling my half-pike so prominently
that I was the mark of many a bullet, but escaped them all, though
receiving innumerable bruises. While he fought with others, the
sword of my noble cousin shred off many a pike-head, and broke down
many a sword, which menaced me; for, like wight Wallace of old, it
was no uncommon event for Ian Dhu to encounter four men at once, and
knock them all on the head in succession, aiding his friends the
while by many a casual thrust and blow.
In this desperate and destructive struggle their native strength and
skill in the use of their weapons, together with their lofty
position, gave our bare-kneed warriors an immense superiority over
the Spanish or Austrian stormers; but it was evident that, step by
step, by main force of numbers, they would drive us into the heart of
the place, where we would infallibly be all cut to pieces or taken.
Major Wilson, Sir Patrick Mackay, Culcraigie, Kildon, M'Coll of that
Ilk, and others, all fought valiantly in their own ranks; and it was
a glorious sight to see so many brave Scottish cavaliers, all
handling sword and pike as if they had come into the world with
harness on their backs.
But, meanwhile, where was old Dunbar? for he, who usually was in the
thickest of every fray, was not now in the front with his two-handed
cliobh. Our soldiers, who soon missed him, were beginning to lose
heart, and cried repeatedly--
"A Dunbar! a Dunbar!"
"I am here, my comrades! Ah, pikes and pistols--clear the way!"
replied the sturdy veteran, as he sprang into the embrasure, and
hurled among the assailants something which seemed to me like an
immense hoop.
It was enveloped in light smoke, and became covered with flames as it
fell among the dense masses of armed men in the graff below; a sudden
yell arose from thence, and an immediate panic followed.
This wary old veteran, who had served with Camp-Marshal Hepburn and
Sir Andrew Gray in Bohemia, and with Count Mansfeldt in Flanders, in
expectation of an assault, had prepared a _couronne foudroyante_,
which was composed of four iron hoops, bound together with wire, and
studded by loaded pistol barrels, crackers, pointed pieces of iron,
glass bottles filled with powder, and bunches of grenades (those
notable inventions of 1574), the whole being covered with tarred and
oiled flax, which wreathed the hoops with fire as they rolled, a
blazing and exploding mass among the stormers. The barrels of the
pistols, which were loaded to the muzzle, as they became redhot
vomited their leaden contents every where; the bottles of powder
burst, and the grenades exploded, scattering death and mutilation as
their showers of splintered iron, stones, and nails, were driven
among the shrinking storming party, which fled in every direction up
the ladders, over the stockades, and to the farthest ends of the
ditch. For five minutes the panic was general; but those five
minutes saved the soldiers of Dunbar, who cut and destroyed the
scaling-ladders.
A hoarse shout for vengeance burst from the foe. Led on again by the
Count and the cavalier with the black eagle, the Imperialists poured
in thousands into the ditch; bub before fresh ladders were planted
upon those corpse-strewn heaps which filled it, and before the
infuriated pikemen had gained the summit of the parapet, we had drawn
back our twenty brass culverins, traced the horses to them, and
retired in double-quick time by the bridge.
In close ranks, with pikes sloped, and muskets trailed, the three
hundred Highlanders who survived crossed the Elbe; and the horses
galloping at full speed, drew the heavy culverins over the broad
arches with the sound of thunder. Holding his startled charger by
the bridle, Dunbar stood near the klinket of the sconce to spring the
mine the moment the last of us were passed. The M'Farquhars were the
last who retired.
"The colours--the standard! Ensign Rollo, you have left your colours
behind!" cried the old man in a furious tone; "they are still flying
on the parapet, within arm's length of the enemy."
Thunderstruck by his words, I paused irresolutely.
"God's death!" he cried passionately; "the Imperialists have never
yet gained one from our Scottish bands, and shall the first be taken
from the regiment of Strathnaver? Pikes and pistols!--at the risk of
your life, youngster, bring off that standard, or die under it."
He levelled a pistol at me; but at that time I scarcely heard all he
said, as I rushed back to the bastion, where in the hurry of bringing
off the cannon we had left St. Andrew's cross flying. The Austrians
were indeed within arm's-length; a storm of bullets swept around me,
as I tore it down and sprang after my comrades, followed by a swarm
of Imperialists, who now poured over the undefended rampart like a
living flood.
Closely pursued by a volley of oaths and bullets, I ran towards the
bridge of the Elbe, and had almost reached the _tête-du-pont_ when,
lo! the arches rocked beneath my feet, there was a tremendous
explosion, with a broad blaze of lurid light, and then a cloud of
darkness, dust and stones arose before me, and I knew not whether I
was in the clouds or on the earth, as the mine was sprung, and the
great centre arch blown into the air. Like the shower of a volcano,
the debris descended upon the crystal current of the Elbe. Before
me, a deep chasm yawned between the ruined piers; behind me, were the
fierce Imperialists! On the opposite ruin stood Dunbar, still
grasping his restive horse by the bridle.
"I could not help it, Rollo," he cried; "better that one should be
lost, than all!"
I thought my heart would burst under its band of steel; but tearing
the silken colour from its staff, and placing a stone within it, I
flung it across to Dunbar. He snatched it up, sprung into his
saddle, and galloped after the retiring Highlanders, who had now
disappeared in the silent streets of Boitzenburg.
Though encumbered by my back, breast, and headpieces, my heavy tartan
kilt and accoutrements, my first thought was to spring into the river
and swim it, as I had often swam the Dee and Don; but a bullet,
almost spent, struck my head. The good steel cap prevented it from
piercing my brain, but I sank on the spot, and felt the ruin
crumbling under me, as, with one arm overhanging the water, I lay
upon the fragment of the bridge.
I remember no more.