Chapter XXIV: Montjoie St. Denis!

Next morning, before daybreak, preparations were made to capture the disarmed bastion, and to effect a lodgment under the walls and town gates.

The rain and wind had passed away, and the keen, bright stars were looking out of the blue sky; but there was no moon, and half-an-hour before dawn, three hundred chosen men of the Scottish regiments of Hepburn, Ramsay, and Lesly--one hundred from each--mustered in front of their wet tents, to storm the Bastion de Louise. They were all volunteers, lightly accoutred, and supplied each with the _chardon de fer_, or crampiron, which was strapped over the shoe by means of a buckle. Previous to this invention, stormers used to take one shoe off, to prevent them from slipping on a rampart.

The Vicomtes de Turenne and Arpajou, neither of whom had completed his twenty-third year, and Sir John Hepburn, led the assault. With them were twenty dismounted cuirassiers of the Scottish guard, of whom I was one, armed with partizans, and carrying daggers and pistols in our girdles.

'Forward, gentlemen, quickly and in silence,' said Sir John, as we marched to the front, and began the ascent of the mountain; 'to-night we shall sup in La Mothe, and drink to the fair maids of old Scotland in the best Burgundy of Duke Charles.'

Followed by a strong covering column, under Colonel Ramsay, we left the trenches in our rear, and almost without a sound advanced over the wet and slippery ground I had so lately traversed twice, until we were within musket-shot of the walls, when the unfortunate explosion of an arquebuse, as a soldier stumbled and fell, gave an alarm, and in a moment after, we heard the drums beating in La Mothe; curving and sparkling, the rockets hissed aloft in fiery circles as the walls were manned and the Lorrainers stood by their guns in the Bastion de Louise, and opened, at random, a fire of small arms upon us.

A brilliant flash, with a deep, hoarse, booming sound, from the town barrier, made me stoop instinctively, as a cannon shot passed over my head, and tore to pieces a poor pikeman in my rear. It struck him right in the breast; a portion of his body hit Lord Dundrennan with such force that he could scarcely breathe for some minutes after; but on we hurried with all speed, anxious to come to blows at a shorter distance.

The coolness of the brilliant Marquis de Gordon, as we advanced, was somewhat amusing. Drawing off his gauntlet, he said to a captain of Ramsay's corps--

'Forbes, I'll trouble you for a pinch of snuff.'

The captain was about to comply, when a second flash broke from the town rampart, and a ball cut him in two.

'Zounds!' said the Marquis, 'M. le Vicomte Arpajou, I shall trouble you, for poor friend and his box have gone together. Comrade,' he added, to a man who fell with a shriek, as his left leg was shattered by a musket-shot, 'why are you making such an outcry? it will not cure you; but here is my silk scarf, 'tis at your service as a bandage.'

'Bravo, comrades and gentlemen!' exclaimed Sir John Hepburn, brandishing his sword; 'here we are at the foot of the glacis!'

Over it, the arquebuses à croc were pouring death and havock among us; but the destruction of their cannon had evidently dismayed the Lorrainers, and deprived them of all confidence. Still their fire was so steady and severe, directed as it was by the dawn which was breaking behind us, and clearly defined our figures, that we wavered now at the edge of the fosse, after surmounting and destroying the stockade by axes, hammers, and crowbars, and there was an unmistakeable reluctance to advance, while the stormers fell fast on every hand, and we heard the tumultuous cheers of Ramsay's covering column, which was pressing on our rear.

Hepburn held aloft his purse.

'Forward, comrades!' he cried; 'a thousand francs to the first with me in the bastion.'

Not a man among us stirred; he grew deathly pale, but still continued to brandish his sword, while the bullets sawed all the turf about him.

'Come on, sirs--my old Scots musketeers and gentlemen of the guard--Dundrennan, Douglas, Blane, and Bruce, follow me!'

'Hepburn, you have insulted us all by this offer of money,' said the Marquis of Gordon.

'My cross of Mont Carmel, in the King's name then,'

he replied, with a flushing cheek, as he tore it from his breast and flung it into the fosse.*

* An incident almost similar occurred with the Irish Brigade at Havannah.

'Hurrah!' burst from every tongue.

'Montjoie St. Denis!' cried Turenne.

'France--France and Scotland for ever!' added the Vicomte Arpajou.

And with wild shouts that rent the air of the calm morning sky, we rushed into the fosse, and planting our echelles against the bastion, ascended, fighting hand-to-hand, and firing our pistols into the faces of the foe, as we grappled for life and death on the summit, and forced a passage in, with the loss of eighty brave Scottish soldiers.

Sir John was the first man on the rampart; the second, and consequently the winner of the cross of Mont Carmel, was one of his own private musketeers, a poor gentleman from the braes of Angus, who rose to be count and general of cavalry in the French army.

The Lorrainers were driven furiously back; but a savage conflict ensued with them between the bastion and the town-gate; and there, in the cold gray light of the morning, were Scottish musketeers and German pikemen, chevaliers in brilliant plate-armour, gentlemen of our Garde du Corps, and those of Lorraine, with the lean and famished bourgeoisie of the town, in their black and battered harness, all mingled in one wild melée of whirling swords and clubbed muskets, as they closed up round the tall figure of Hepburn on one side, and the fierce and energetic Raoul d'Ische on the other.

Side by side two of our cuirassiers had almost hewed a passage to the shattered barrier, the archway of which was encumbered by paths of dead and dying, and behind these the musketeers and pistoleers were nestling, and plying fast their shot.

These two were young Sir Robert Bruce of Blairhall, and old Sir Archibald Douglas of Heriotmuir, who had lost his helmet, and whose silver tresses were glittering in the dewy air.

'You have the precedence here by age,' said Blairhall, saluting him with his bloody rapier; 'my brave friend, lead on!'

'Nay,' said Sir Archibald, lowering also his blade, 'do thou advance, my brave boy; where a Bruce leads, a Douglas may be proud to _follow_!'

Fatal courtesy! It was scarcely exchanged, ere the first was run through by a pike, and a gigantic bourgeois brained the latter by the ampoulette of his clubbed musket. The poor old baronet's brains flew over me, but I pistolled his destroyer, who fell prone into that gory puddle where the two bravest gentlemen of the Garde du Corps Ecossais were lying side by side.

In a moment afterwards I found myself opposed to the Chevalier d'Ische, hand-to-hand, and so closely, that our weapons were engaged up to the very hilt, and being encumbered by a wounded man, who grasped my right leg in his death agony, I received a severe cut on the right cheek.

'Ah, thou diabolical Scot! at last I have thee!' said the Chevalier, grinding his teeth.

'Beware, Chevalier, beware!' said I, infuriated by the sight of my own blood; 'I have sworn to write my name on your skin with a good Scottish dagger!'

'And yet, dog, 'tis to my worthless sister you owe your frippery!--yea, life itself!' he added, with a terrible glance.

'True, true; let us pass--let us part!' said I, feeling sudden compunction, and standing only on my defence.

'In a moment I shall kill you--adieu! do you call that fencing? no lover could be a greater fool than you!--Ah, queen of heaven!--I am gone!' he exclaimed, and tossed his sword into the air. As he threw up his hands, the blood gushed from his mouth, and he fell on his face. A ball, fired by Lord Dundrennan at another person, had pierced his chest, and slain him!

On his fall all resistance ceased; and thus, after considerable loss, at seven o'clock on the morning of the 25th July, 1635, the Scottish general of Louis XIII. hoisted the French standard on the ramparts of La Mothe.