A MIDNIGHT MARCH.
The evil fortune which had attended my comrade in his love affair
affected my own spirit, and for several days after rejoining the
Garde du Corps, I felt sad, lonely, and thoughtful. I was separated
from Marie Louise, and though I could scarcely despair, what had I to
give me hope? Yet a faint, a wild, and fantastic hope that did come
at times, faded and grew fainter as day succeeded day.
She seemed ever before me, vividly and distinctly as I had seen her
last; for in this girl's manner, in the clear full expression of her
eye and the melody of her voice, there were an indescribable
fascination; while her conversational powers were so full of
unstudied grace, that, I verily believe, no man could speak with her,
without feeling himself insensibly charmed and lured, he knew not
why, to love her. But of this enough; lest the reader may suspect me
of being less a soldier than a puling sentimentalist.
The recollection of Pappenheim was always sufficient to kindle my
fury. At times, I had a gloomy desire to fall in battle; but not
before I sent the thick-lipped Austrian lord to his last account,
duly attended, if possible, by his friend De Bitche, as aide-de-camp;
and these amiable desires seemed unexpectedly to be in a fair way of
being gratified; for one evening the Marquis de Gordon, who had been
overnight with the Duc de Lavalette, rode hurriedly to our quarters,
and as he passed me at the door of my billet, where I was lounging
and enjoying a pipe of tobacco.
'Now, Blane,' said he, 'your time for vengeance is at hand!'
'How, Marquis?'
'Count Pappenheim, with a thousand Walloon horsemen, all peasants,
raised in the province of Luxembourg, is in the village of
Lutzelstein; and I am ordered to take a sufficient body of cavalry,
and, if possible, cut him off. Attended by a troop of German and
Spanish courtezans, clad in the spoil of plundered provinces, they
have been making merry there for a week past.'
'And the Count de Bitche?'
'Is with him. This fellow who, as Shakespeare says of Talbot,
'------ is so much feared abroad,
That with his name the mothers still their babes,'
has now a fair chance of ending his life under the same trees which
saw his abduction of the Countess of Lutzelstein.'
'And when do we march?'
'To-night.'
'Excellent!'
'Our cuirassiers lead the way; the dragoons of Brissac, under the
Marquis de Toneins, who has just joined from Paris, are to follow.'
'Bravo!' I exclaimed, as a fiery joy swelled up in my heart.
'At daybreak, we will be upon them; and then let the Austrian and
Lorrainer look well to sword and harness, for the Garde du Corps
Ecossais never ride forth on a bootless errand!'
After supping with Home, Dundrennan, and a few others, on an
omelette, with pickled herrings and saur-kraut, dressed with
hog's-lard, a horrible repast, prepared by my German landlady, and
washed down by a few bottles of Rhenish wine, we marched on our
expedition, leaving Zaberne about midnight.
De Brissac's dragoons--still so called because they had been raised
by the marechal of that name in 1600--with our troop of guardsmen,
made up about nine hundred swords. The former were led by the
Marquis de Toneins, formerly camp-master of the regiment de
Normandie, who had succeeded the Duc de Bellegarde, slain before
Phalsbourg; and the Marquis of Gordon commanded the whole. We left
the town at an easy pace, in light marching order, _i.e._,
unencumbered by forage, oats, or valises, but otherwise fully
accoutred with all our arms.
The night was unusually serene; the month was August; and, as I
looked back at Zaberne, I felt somewhat influenced by the beauty of
the scenery and the silence of the hour. Around the city, the Sarre
wound between woods of chestnut, and over it, on a lofty rock, stood
a castle of the Bishops of Strasbourg, in the deep arched windows of
which, red lights that twinkled, showed where Cardinal de Lavalette
still held revel with some of his officers; for that old fortress was
his head-quarters.
While leaving the city by its only avenue, a steep and narrow path,
hewn through the solid rock in the olden time, the French cavalry
trumpets--sharp, shrill, and warlike--rang in the clear atmosphere,
as they played a stirring march; while the aspect of the successive
sections of steel-trapped horsemen, as they defiled by threes from
the ancient arch of the town-gate, and dipped into the deep path of
echoing rock, with helmets, swords, and corslets glinting to the
moon--their bridles and scabbards clanking--was sufficiently stirring
and picturesque to raise even my sombre spirit from the thoughts on
which it had brooded for some days past.
'There sleep the brave whom no earthly trumpet will ever rouse
again,' said Sir Quentin Home to me, as we passed the long and gloomy
mound which marked where we buried the dead.
'By this time to-morrow many of us may be still and cold, as they are
to-night,' thought I.
As we penetrated into the mountains, the music ceased, and we rode in
silence; even conversing in the ranks being forbidden.
The moon shed her clear cold light in a brilliant flood along the
rocky vale. At the bottom of the latter ran a torrent towards the
Rhine. It was bordered by groves of pale-green willow, the branches
and tremulous leaves of which swept up the foam that gleamed on the
chafed rocks and rushing water. In some places, olive-trees and
flowering osiers mingled with them. Apart from the dull, monotonous
tramp of nine hundred horse upon the road or sward, the silence was
broken only by the occasional bark of a shepherd's dog, as its
wakeful ear caught the distant sound; or the ominous bay of a wolf,
prowling on the wooded peaks of the Vosges, and by some strange
instinct scenting blood and slaughter on the midnight breeze already.
A ride of some miles brought us to a cascade, the white foam of which
sparkled like a torrent of pearls as it plunged over the brow of a
rock into a chasm. A single fairy-like rib of stone, forming an arch
high above us, with its span clearly defined against the moon-lighted
sky, gave access over this cascade to the small, but strong feudal
castle of the Counts of Lutzelstein. This torrent flowed from a
little lonely lake which bathed its walls, and was fed by the snowy
rills of the Vosges.
Under Lieutenant Francis Ruthven, in this castle there was a garrison
composed of eighty Scottish musketeers of Ramsay's regiment; but all
was dark and sombre in tower and turret as we defiled through the
valley below, and rode on, on our errand of death, unchallenged and
unseen.
It was now that dark, cold hour which always precedes the dawn.
The Marquis ordered strict silence in the ranks, for we were about to
debouch and form squadrons in the flat and open valley occupied by
the bivouac of Pappenheim's cavalry.
'I have but one thought to-night,' said I to Dundrennan, whom I had
made the confidant of my love affair, and in whose honour I had
perfect reliance.
'To-night! You should rather say this morning. See, the moon grows
pale already--and this thought?'
'Is to have Pappenheim killed or taken; for in either case Marie
Louise will be freed from his obtrusive attentions.'
'If both fail?'
'Then I shall get myself killed.'
'Zounds! nay,' replied the Viscount; 'were I in your predicament, I
should as soon think of hanging myself (like a certain Grecian
blockhead when rebuked by Pythagoras) as of throwing away my life in
battle. Life is a precious commodity, and we never know what a day
may bring forth.'
'True,' said I.
'And the hand of Mademoiselle de Lorraine, deprived as her father is
of land, fortune, rank, and authority, is no longer an object of gain
to Pappenheim, or to any but such a Quixote as you.'
'But he is not the man to relinquish, without a struggle, a bride so
beautiful and so nobly born.'
'We shall see.'
The order to form squadron, manoeuvre, executed from the rear at a
rapid trot, cut short further conversation. De Brissac's dragoons
formed four squadrons of double troops; we formed _one_, and were in
their front about two hundred paces. The country around us seemed
open; the moon had sunk behind the hills. A grove of trees in the
valley before us, with a red light or two from a watchfire, marked
the locality of the enemy, whose bivouac, disposition, and
arrangements were explained to the Marquis, our leader, by a burgher
of Zaberne, who acted as our guide; and who, as he had purposely
misled us, received his fee, and vanished ere the fray began; for by
this traitor the Counts Pappenheim and De Bitche had been duly
informed of our intended attack, and had thus formed a counter-plan
for cutting the whole of us off; though we had fully believed that
nine hundred regular French cavalry were fully equal to the task of
dissipating a thousand Walloon militia.