Trusting to those supplies which were promised to him from every part of Reformed Christendom, he had attended the convocation of the Saxon states, held at Lauenburg, in March, 1625, where he entered into a league with the rich burghers who inhabited the free cities of the circle, and was chosen Captain-General of the confederate army, which was to muster in the duchy of Holstein. From thence, with 25,000 Danes, Scots, and Germans, he crossed the Elbe, and was joined at the Weser by 7000 Saxons.
Under Tilly, the forces of the Catholic league hovered on the opposite bank; while Wallenstein, attacking Count Mansfeldt at Dessau, cut to pieces 10,000 Protestants, and received the title of Prince of Friedland. Mansfeldt died of a broken heart. Duke Christian died soon after; and thus the Danish monarch was left alone to cope with the two greatest generals the empire ever possessed.
One town after another became their prey, and at a decisive battle fought near the castle and village of Lütter in Barenberg, the Danes and their Scottish allies were defeated by the Catholics, with the loss of sixty standards, their whole artillery, many officers of distinction, and four thousand men, who were left dead upon the field.
This was on the 27th August, 1626, a full month before we sailed from Cromartie. This severe blow at Lütter compelled Christian to retreat to Stade, in the duchy of Bremen, and to that place we supposed Sir Donald would march the small portion he commanded, of the quota sent by our mother Caledonia to the German war.
After an easy voyage of five days, during which the Unicorn and Crown Royal never lost sight of each other, on the 15th of October we entered the broad bosom of the Elbe; and, just as the hazy sun was setting, dropped our anchors in the mud, opposite Glückstadt, a little city on the northern or right bank of the river.
The spire of the great church, and the cannon on the ramparts, were shining in the last rays of the sun, and the many trees which encircled the fortifications gave a pleasant aspect to the place. The harbour is large, and at the end of the canal which ran from it into the town, there was a large tower built on piles of oak, encircled by platforms having batteries of cannon to command the Elbe. This tower has long since disappeared. Our cannon saluted the Danish cross which was flying on the wooden tower, the cannon of which replied by a salute of forty pieces to our double flags; for, according to the order of his majesty James VI., issued in 1606, we carried the interlaced crosses of St. Andrew and St. George at our main-masthead, and the Scottish ensign on the colour staff at our stern. Soon after we anchored, Sir David Drummond (a cavalier of the house of Meedhope), who commanded two thousand Danish foot in the city, came off in a gay pinnace to bid us welcome, and pay his respects to our colonel, the great Sir Donald Mackay of Farr and Strathnaver.
Being Scotsmen, we naturally looked for hills in surveying the coast, but we might as well have looked for the pyramids of Egypt; for there were only swampy morasses lying on both sides of the turgid Elbe, which was dyked, to keep out the water from the fields where the fat sleepy cattle were chewing the cud, surrounded by rich grass, and the drowsy hum of the evening flies.
The broad river flowed slowly and turgidly, and being impregnated with mud, was all of a yellow colour, unlike the pure deep blue of those fierce torrents, that, bearing trees and rocks with them, rush from the giant mountains of our native land. The fortifications were built on piles, and innumerable water-rats were swimming and paddling among the mud and slime that oozed between the timber.
Though the sun was shining, a frowsy pestilential fog rested on the bosom of the river, and overhung the town; there was a closeness, a stillness in the atmosphere, which imparted a strange dulness to the place, and seemed to infect us; for our soldiers while they crowded the sides of the vessels, instead of being full of gesture and animation like Highlanders, were silent and inert, like the fat old burghers who sat on the parapets, smoking their long Dutch pipes without any sign of motion or life. The sentinels stood like statues on the ramparts, and their motionless pikes glittered like stars in the sunlight.
By break of day next morning—at least an hour before the sun had risen from the flat morasses, and while the same white mist was resting on the river—we disembarked in large flat-bottomed boats, and drew up in order under our colours, by companies on the quay, while our pipes played Mackay's pibroch, Brattach bhan clan Aiodh, till the Holsteiners stuck their fingers in their ears, and the stones of the street shook below us.