"Until you spoke—none," said he, a deep smile on his tiger-like mouth. Offended by his brevity, I gazed sternly at him, for there was something striking, if not terrible, in the fierce smile with which he honoured me. It was as deceitful and satanic as such grey eyes as his, could assume. "But have Spaniards ever grey eyes?" thought I; "can this indeed be that frightful Bandolo, of whom the baron spoke? his sister's eyes were so beautiful——"
The order to march cut short my reflections. Ten shrill fifes and ten drums struck up merrily the famous "Scottish march;" pikes, banners, and muskets were sloped in the sun, and in broad sections we poured through the streets and fortifications of Glückstadt, the houses, bridges, and casemated ramparts of which gave back the tread of our marching feet, the rat-tat-tat of the drums, and the sharp note of the fifes, with a thousand reverberations, as we marched towards the Stor. This was not in the direction of the Imperialists; but there King Christian had planted his royal standard, and appointed the rendezvous of his troops.
It was but an easy day's march distant from Glückstadt, over a flat country; for the little duchy of Holstein, which unites the mainland of Denmark to the great continent of Germany, is almost level. The land seemed nowhere to possess what we Scots call a military aspect; there were few or no positions whereon the inhabitants might meet or repel invaders, yet the Holsteiners are brave men. The flatness of the country wearied us; we would have given the world for a glimpse of a mountain; and I frequently heard our hill-climbing clansmen marvelling how, when the country was made, the mountains were forgotten. The road lay straight before us, bounded either by heath, or cultivated fields, or by meadows, where enormously fat cattle were browsing; and from whence the pretty dairymaids, clad in short petticoats of broad-striped red and yellow stuff, with braided hair and hats of plaited straw, shading their blooming faces, ran off as we approached, being scared either by a rustic terror of soldiers, or the foreign aspect of our tartan garb. Thatched farms, shaded by pale green weeping willows, close-clipped hedgerows, or low stone dykes, succeeded each other in monotonous succession; here and there rose grassy hillocks, with reedy tarns of green and turgid water between them, or occasional thickets of beech, where the summer birds were singing; but though there was little wood generally, there were abundance of wild-roses, which flourished by the wayside, and scented the balmy air.
There were no tremendous rocks like the Sutors of Cromartie, hurling the waves of ocean back upon themselves; no deep or savage glens, like Sulbhein in Assynt; no sheets of foam rolling in thunder over a precipice, like the torrent of Foyers; no vast forests like those of the Grants; no fierce streams like the Spey and the Fiddich; and no vast lakes like those inland seas that lie in the great Glen of Albyn; but every thing was like the fat burghers of Hamburg and Lübeck, or the twenty-breeched boors of the Low Countries—flat and sleepy, quiet and insipid.
About mid-day we crossed the Stor, and entered Itzhoe, a small trading town, which lies at the foot of a gentle eminence, defended by a small castle, on which we saw the royal standard with the hearts and lions of Denmark flying, announcing that King Christian resided there.
We found the little town crowded by his troops, the streets encumbered by artillery, powder and baggage waggons; the churches and houses were filled with troops; others were bivouacked in the fields along the bank of the river, and on our approach great numbers of our countrymen, who served under the Danish banner, came forth to meet us; for in the army, which mustered about twenty-five thousand, there were not less than twelve thousand Scots, including officers; Lord Nithsdale's three regiments consisted each of three thousand men; Sir James Leslie's and ours, made two thousand more; and there were more than one thousand Scottish cavaliers, all officers, who led or served in the regiments of German Reitres, Danish Pikes, and the Count de Montgomerie's French Musketeers, many of whom I shall have occasion to mention in the course of my adventures.
On the very day after our joining the main army, we were nearly involved in a quarrel with the king, which, by disgusting his Scottish auxiliaries, might have ended all his projects of conquest, and caused his forces to melt away.
Christian IV., the hero of Denmark, the brother-in-law of our late King James VI., and uncle of King Charles I., was a gallant soldier, then esteemed no way inferior in personal qualities or reputation to his rival, the great star of the north, Gustavus Adolphus; but far his superior in military pride and keen desire for fame. Under his active government, Denmark had risen in importance, and, after her separation from Sweden, had acquired a powerful navy, a brave and well-disciplined army, a well-ordered exchequer, and, such prosperity as she never could have possessed in the days of her union; for an ancient kingdom, which possesses national institutions, should never surrender them while the sword can maintain them, and never place itself at the mercy of another; and right glad was I to see that my own native Scotland remembered this, when, in 1606, King James insidiously projected his incorporating union, which was happily baffled by the true patriots of the time, as I hope aggression will always be baffled and repelled by their posterity, lest we become a province of the southern kingdom.
Enfeebled by its unnatural union, Denmark, when once free of Sweden, began to assume a high place in the scale of European nations; and though the proud and haughty Christian could not surrender his claim to the Swedish crown, and while the Swedes gloried in their freedom, so recently acquired under Gustavus Vasa, both Christian and Gustavus Adolphus saw that the clouds of battle were gathering on the German frontier, that the day was at hand when they would be compelled to abandon their national quarrel and petty jealousies, and for common safety to unite their arms against the skill of Tilly, the courage of Wallenstein, and the vast power of the empire. A treaty of peace between Christian and Gustavus had been completed at Copenhagen on the 20th January, 1613, principally by the mediation of our king, James VI.; but the approach of external danger had only smothered for a time the dispute of the northern kings.
To return: On the day after our reaching the headquarters at Itzhoe, we were reviewed by the king, who ordered Sir Donald "to draw up the regiment in battaglia," on the plain before the gates of the town. The day was beautiful; thin as gauze, a pale haze curled up from the banks of the Stor, and the sun shone brightly on the quaint old town and older castle of Itzhoe.