"Allan Robertson, of the house of Struan, who, thirteen years ago, was a captain in the Athole Regiment under his Royal Highness Prince Charles, whom God long preserve!"
"Hush—hush!" said Pringle, hurriedly; "remember that you are in the British camp."
"I care not," replied the other, with flashing eyes; "I have shouted his name at Preston, Falkirk and Culloden, and why should I shrink from naming him here?"
Major Pringle kept the Jacobite officer in his quarters, and in a few days he was able to sit up in a camp bed, and converse with ease and coherence; and many Scottish gentlemen of the army whose political sympathies were with the exiled race, frequented the tent, and supplied him with whatever he required and their own necessities could spare. He asked particularly about the wounds on the breast of his dead colonel, the Vicomte de Chateaunoir, and on being informed that they must have been done with a dagger, he became dreadfully excited, and exclaimed,
"Jules de Coeurdefer has murdered him!"
"Who?" exclaimed Major Pringle and several officers who were present.
"A wretch most justly named Coeurdefer, who serves in the French army, to its disgrace; a noble and an outlaw—a soldier and a robber! a ribaud, with whom the Mousquetaires Gris et Rouges have had more than one sword-in-hand encounter."
Among the mass of papers and regimental memoranda, from which these legends are gleaned and prepared, I find this Chevalier Jules de Coeurdefer frequently mentioned us a prominent character during the early part of the Seven Years' War; and some of Robertson's adventures with him during his service in the Grey Mousquetaires were very remarkable. His narrative was as follows.
—————
"We, the Red and Grey Mousquetaires, by forced marches from Paris, quitted the gay Court of Louis XV., and joined the army of M. de Contades about the end of May, crossed the Rhine with him at Cologne, and on the same day the Free Band of the Chevalier de Coeurdefer joined us, to the great annoyance of the whole army; for our hitherto quiet and well-ordered camp became a scene of incessant disquiet, by drunken brawls, duels, and severe military punishments; for as this Franche Compagnie, like the wild Pandoors of Baron Trenck, subsist only by gambling and secret robbery in camp, and by open plunder and ruthless bloodshed in the field, you may imagine our repugnance to co-operate with them; and our astonishment that leaders so strict as M. de Contades or Prince Xavier of Saxony would tolerate their presence among us for a moment. Their ranks were filled by men of all nations—runaway students, spendthrifts, cashiered officers, deserters, fugitive malefactors—in short, by men ready for any desperate work, and being deemed the cheapest food for gunpowder, they had enough of it.