CHAPTER XXII.
A DANGEROUS BOAST.
'In the poor Master of St. Monance we have lost a gallant comrade,' said I, as we began our march the next morning.
'He fell in battle, Blanerne,' said the Marquis; 'well—a Scottish gentleman—a cadet of the house of Calder—has nothing more to ask.'
After receiving the sacrament and twenty rounds of ball cartridge, we advanced towards La Mothe, the operations before which were full of chivalrous little episodes.
Like Bitche, La Mothe, in the bailiewick of Bassignie, had the reputation of being impregnable, as it crowned the crest of a mountain of hard rock, which overlooked all the neighbouring eminences. A tributary of the Maese flowed at its foot. The town had but one gate, which was strongly fortified and guarded by flankers, mounted with brass cannon. It was filled with troops, who, like the inhabitants, were faithful to the Duke of Lorraine; and his Bailiff of Bassignie, the Chevalier Raoul d'Ische, commanded them with vigour and resolution, in which he was ably seconded by the Prince of Vaudemont, who had now joined him with all his fugitive cavalry. Thus we anticipated great trouble in convincing these Lorrainers that their native country should become the property of king Louis.
That no time might be lost in reducing the place, as the army of Count Gallas was only one hundred and fifty miles distant, Camp-Marechal Hepburn, to whom the siege was intrusted, enclosed the town and mountain on all sides. He formed seven batteries of thirty guns against it, and laid five mines under the walls; but our chief difficulty was a low bastion which lay before the entrance. It was mounted by twenty heavy guns, and swept the whole ascent for nearly a mile. This formidable barrier was named, after the Duke's daughter, the Bastion de Louise. It worked us infinite mischief, and though intrenched before it, with all the skill of the great trench-master the Chevalier Antoine de Ville, the Scottish infantry of Ramsay and Lesly suffered severely, losing in killed and wounded nearly fifty men daily.
The wetness of the season increased our discomfort in our tents, and the sharp cold midnight rain that poured and pattered on the canvas walls often penetrated them, while the vibration of the tent pole and straining of the cordage made one dream at times of being at sea, and often at night, when asleep and muffled in my cloak, I saw, in fancy, the black and rocky Rinns of Galloway—my native coast—rise before me, with the wild waves of the western sea dashing on their flinty brows.
The operations before La Mothe were of a very harassing description. While the Cardinal de Lavalette continued his march towards the Rhine, Hepburn, with the Marquis, the Viscomtes of Turenne and Arpajou, the Colonels Lesly and Ramsay, pressed on the siege, which the indefatigable Chevalier d'Ische protracted for nearly five months, until besiegers and besieged were alike weary and exasperated. Vast numbers of our men were buried under earthen banks and parapets by the exploding mines, the bursting of bombs, and by the cannonading; while our trenches were nightly scoured by pike and arquebuse, for the Chevalier and the Prince were reckless and courageous to a fault.
The Marquis de Toneins, a youth who had seen more battles and sieges than he could count years—the idol of Anne of Austria's maids of honour—made our sixth attempt to storm the Bastion de Louise; but was repulsed with unusual slaughter, and lost nearly all his men by their being hurled over the rocks into the river below. De Toneins was wounded by the Prince of Vaudemont, who had singled him out during the assault; and when he was borne bleeding into my tent, the remarkable conversation I had overheard at Sezanne, concerning the divorced Duchess de Charost, recurred to me; when de Toneins fell wounded, Raoul d'Ische tried hard to despatch him by a pike-thrust.
Turenne, the young Marquis's rival alike in love and war, next day made the seventh assault on the same bastion, with the same success, though ably seconded by the Chevalier Ramsay, Knight of St. Lazarus, with his company of the regiment of Hepburn.