"Be happy, Philip," said he; "for all who love you truly are here—myself and the hundred brave men of your mother's name, who follow the banner of Mackay."
"And you will return in three years?"
"If alive, I will return in one year, despite the offers of our Lowland Chancellor, who has promised me a feudal charter of my hereditary estate, to be granted under the Great Seal at Holy rood, on the day we enter Prague. Dioul! as if M'Farquhar valued the right that was held otherwise than as it was won, by the edge of the sword. Nay, nay, as Donald of the Isles said, I hold my lands by this (laying his hand on his claymore), and not by a sheepskin."
CHAPTER V.
GLUCKSTADT.
His Danish majesty, the gallant King Christian IV., whom we were about to reinforce, was at this time waging with the vast forces of the empire, an unequal warfare in the same cause which the great Gustavus Adolphus, a few years after, maintained so successfully, though he did not survive to behold the conclusion of that bitter contest, which from the gates of Prague spread along the banks of the Po and the shores of the Baltic.
The edict of toleration granted by the Emperor Rodolph II. to the Bohemians, had been revoked; and thus they rose in arms. They had been defeated at the White Mountain, where the chivalry of the Empire trod the standards of the elector Frederick in the dust, and the laurels of the Imperialists were drenched in Protestant blood. Though wedded to a princess of the house of Scotland, the Elector was the basest of cowards, and fled, leaving his queen to her fate. Two hundred thousand persons had been driven into exile; and though the illustrious Count of Mansfeldt, and Christian Duke of Bavaria, for a time defended the Bohemians and the Reformed faith with the most heroic valour, they were driven headlong before the conquering Tilly, whose ferocious legions burst like a torrent into Lower Saxony, giving all to fire and sword, and carrying terror and despair into the hearts of the Protestants.
It was at this desperate crisis, and while Gustavus of Sweden was warring with Poland, that Christian IV. of Denmark, anxious to have the entire glory of saving the Reformed Church of Germany from utter destruction, commenced, as it were, a new crusade against the mighty power of the Emperor Ferdinand, and drew to his banner the flower of the Saxon circles and of the Danish isles, and I may add of our own dear Scottish mountains; for, in addition to nearly fourteen thousand Scots who followed the standard of Gustavus, there were in the Danish army, in addition to our own regiment of fifteen hundred men, Sir Alexander Seaton's, of five hundred; Sir James Leslie's, of a thousand musketeers; while in the same year we were joined by John Maxwell, Earl of Nithsdale. Alexander Lindesay, Lord Spynie (a gallant grandson of Cardinal Beaton), and Sir James Sinclair, son of John Master of Caithness, levied each a regiment of three battalions; and each battalion being a thousand strong, made altogether about eleven thousand Scottish soldiers, who were marching under the Danish cross.*
* Here the Denmylne MSS. corroborate our Cavalier.
The noble King Christian, then the rival of the Swedish conqueror, from his peculiar position, as sovereign of Lower Saxony, of Jutland, and of Denmark (the isles of which secured for him a strong retreat in case of reverses), had many advantages which induced the Protestant powers to give him the command of those forces raised by them to protect the liberties of Germany. Christian urged on Gustavus the necessity of co-operation; but that brave prince being at war with Poland, the Dane was left single-handed, and fearlessly he undertook the terrible task of waging battle with the overgrown empire.