The brave general of the Scots being thus slain by those citizens of Zaberne, who, as Cardinal de la Valette said, 'had been keeping him at bay for the last six months by playing at soldiers,' the colonelcy of his celebrated Scottish regiment devolved upon his cousin, the Laird of Waughton, and the command of the army upon the Duke of Saxe-Weimar.
Under the Marquis of Gordon, the cuirassiers of the Garde du Corps Ecossais continued to serve in Alsace, with the combined army of French, Scots, Swedes, and Germans in the pay of Louis XIII, during the year 1637, and in that time, though we fought no general action, we were severely engaged in many skirmishes and minor affairs. This army, which occupied Alsace, was ably led by the Duke, who had suffered many family injuries from the house of Austria, and fearfully he avenged them in those wars, which devastated the land with such severity, that the brave old Duke of Lorraine and his fiery son, deprived of all but their swords and honour, were ere long reduced to mere private gentlemen, fighting for bread in the Imperial ranks, while the people of their duchy and of Alsace, were reduced to such misery, that, in this year 1637, after the capture of Brissac, the governor was compelled (as the French 'Mercury' records) to place guards upon the burial-places, to prevent the inhabitants, who were mad with hunger, tearing the dead from their graves and devouring them.
Two days after the fall of Zaberne, De Bitche blew up the tower of Phalsbourg, and crossed the Rhine, retiring into the duchy of Baden.
During my absence, the chevaliers of the Scottish Guard had suffered severely; their number was considerably below a hundred now, and I missed many a stalwart form and familiar face from their ranks. Among those who were absent was Adam Scott, the hardy young Laird of Tushielaw, who usually rode on my left hand.
One night, several of us sat smoking and drinking in the garden of a little country-house of which we had taken possession, and there we were making merry talking of all the beautiful and amiable sinners of Paris, such as Ninon de l'Enclos, Marion de l'Orme, the Duchess de Bouillon, Mademoiselle de Chevreuse, and others; of that right royal glutton, Anne of Austria, who, in her anxiety still to please her lovers, had discovered the drugs by which Diana of Poictiers preserved her beauty in extreme old age; a secret written by a sorcerer on the skin of a dead-born child, and long borne about the person of Catherine de Medici. I heard, too, that Clara d'Amboise, my voluptuous, intellectual, and political beauty, still reigned in the heart of Louis, with other gossip of equal interest to Parisian absentees.
During a pause in the conversation, I inquired about my comrade Tushielaw.
'Adam became sick of these fruitless and bootless wars, and went home to old Scotland,' said Patrick Gordon, gloomily; for, on finding that a shower of brevets had come from Paris, and that his name was not among them, our old comrade had of late betaken himself to the soldier's consolation of grumbling; 'and ere long, Blane, I shall go home too, for I am now seventy years old at least.'
'Seventy! How, Marechal de Logis, I deemed you but fifty?' said Dundrennan.
'True; but I have served for twenty years in Denmark, Muscovy, and Brandenburg, and reckon these as forty; yet I am only a poor Marechal de Logis of horse, while such boys as those painted fops De Toneins and Turenne, are camp-masters and knights of all the king's orders. However, my Lord Dundrennan, we have an auld Scottish proverb, which saith a hauf egg is better than a toom doup, so I must e'en content me. When we campaigned ten years ago in Westphalia, a place where, as their own proverb says, you are sure to find bad quarters, worse rations, and long miles, I often heard the 'half egg' quoted by one who is now dead and gone—poor Hepburn—than whom no better soldier ever belted him with steel.'
This compliment to our dead leader was received by all with a silent bow of assent.