Chapter LXVIII: The Surprise

With ten of Brissac's dragoons, each having a Scottish musketeer _en croupe_ behind him, I mounted and rode from Lutzelstein about sunset on the 11th, having previously, since mid-day, beset the defile by men disguised and armed, to warn me in case of being anticipated or foiled by an earlier passage of the expected vehicle.

The country around was so solitary that we reached the valley unseen, and I concealed my men in a wood on each side of the way, after throwing across it several large trees as a complete barrier to the coach passing without a desperate struggle on our part. The musketeers piled arms, five on each side of the way; the dragoons unbitted their horses, and, apart from all, I lay under a thick hazel bush, with my sword and pistols beside me, watching the far-stretching vista of the narrow defile, which was gradually growing darker and more gloomy as the light of the set-sun faded beyond the summits of the foliaged hills. I had seldom seen a place more silent or solemn than that sequestered dell as its shadows deepened in the night. It was the scene of our conflict with Pappenheim; and near me lay a human skull--a ghastly relic of that day's conflict; torn perhaps by wolves from the grave where the dead were buried, and left there to be bleached upon the soil, in which it was partly sunk. It was full of earth, and amid that earth some tiny flowerets bloomed. This sad relic of war and mortality imparted an additional gloom to the scene of our night-watch, and the lines of the Spanish poet, beginning Bella Flor, on a similar incident, occurred to me, and may be rendered thus:--

'Ah, beauteous flower! where hast thou grown?
How early is thy blight and bloom!
Thy scented blossoms scarce are blown,
When destined to this ghastly tomb!
'Tis hard to pluck thee at thy birth;
And sad to leave thee in this bed;
To leave thee in thy native earth,
Is but to leave thee with the dead!'

Just as the moon, clear, white, and full, began to rise above a shoulder of the Vosges, one of my scouts came hurrying up to announce that a coach, escorted by a party of horsemen, had entered the defile and was approaching.

'By horsemen, you say: how many?'

'I counted six; three in front and three in rear.'

'Armed?'

'Doubtless, monsieur. I saw the butts of their slung carbines gleam in the moonlight.'

'How far are they distant?'

'About a mile.'

'Bravo, M. le Caporal! get your dragoons on horseback. Musketeers, unpile arms, and look to your matches; though I believe the troopers and I will save you all trouble in this matter.'

While the dragoons were bitting their horses and mounting, and while the musketeers stood to their arms, the moon rose fully above the mountain ridge, pouring a clear, cold, steady light into the narrow vale, along which I could see certain dark and indistinct objects approaching; and as they drew near, six horsemen became visible, escorting a large coach, which was drawn by four black horses, and had two valets behind it. The horsemen were accoutred with holsters, swords, and carbines: three appeared to be gentlemen, having feathers in their hats. With my sword in one hand, and a cocked pistol in the other, I dashed forward at the head of my ten dragoons to bar the passage.

'Halt!' I exclaimed: 'halt, and surrender!'

'In whose name?' demanded a gentleman, drawing a pistol from his holster.

'In the name of Louis of France and Navarre.'

'Perish thou and he together!' replied the other, firing his pistol full in my face; but, fortunately, I made my horse plunge, and so disturbed his aim that the ball whizzed harmlessly past me. 'Forward, messieurs,' he added; 'break through these marauders!'

'Advance,' I exclaimed; 'cut down all who resist.'

'France--France and Navarre!' shouted my troopers, as they fell on with sword and pistol.

I heard the screams of women inside the huge lumbering coach, which was immediately stopped, for the traces were cut, the reins wrenched from the hands of the driver, and two of the horses were shot. A confused firing of pistols, and clashing of swords, with a vast display of kicking, spurring, and hallooing ensued in the moonlight; but in a trice the carriage was ours; three of the attendants were shot, and six, including the valets and driver were taken, dismounted, disarmed, and handed over to the musketeers, who freed the traces from the dead animals, and immediately put the wheels once more into motion; but now, in the direction of Lutzelstein.

All this uproar and loss of life ensued, and was over, almost in the time I have taken to narrate it.

The coach was very old-fashioned, being shaped like an enormous pie-dish, with an elliptical roof, surmounted by a coronet. It was so large that it might have passed for a small cottage on carved and gilded wheels. It was covered by heraldic and allegorical devices, stars, clouds, suns, moons, and elaborate gildings. It had three large glass windows on each side. Perceiving faces at them, and being anxious to learn who these important persons were, of whose progress towards the Rhine, Gordon had been apprised so far off as the trenches at Seltz, and for whose capture the lives of three human beings had been sacrificed, I cantered forward to one of the windows, as the enormous conveyance rumbled up the steep, rocky road, and knocked on the pane with my ungloved hand, in token of amity. It was opened, and a female face, fair as beauty and pale as terror could make it, looked at me imploringly, with eyes whose blue seemed unnaturally bright in the moonbeams, which edged with light the thick masses of her golden hair; and the sentences of apology and inquiry which I had been framing died away on my lips when I recognised the soft features, and heard the beloved voice of--Marie Louise of Lorraine!