The killed lay in hundreds, and the wounded screaming for water, groaning, rolling, and throwing up their hands and feet, lay in hundreds more, among scattered arms, drums, standards; and then the horrors of the fosse, where a seething mass of living and dead lay piled over each other, head and heels, endwise and crosswise, trod upon, and pierced in a thousand places by the storm of shot that had augmented their number every moment, piling up a hecatomb of slain above the abandoned coffin of the once terrible and reckless Merodé! Among their fallen riders, even in the ditch, as well as on the approach thereto, lay many noble horses, maddened by pain, kicking, plunging, snorting, and shrieking (for a horse, at times, can utter a frightful cry), as they rolled over the helpless wounded, with their iron hoofs breaking legs and ribs, or beating out the brains of those whom the musket-shot had already maimed elsewhere. Use and wont made us regardless of this scene; and now we were sufficiently attracted by another.
While the fugitives were retiring round the angle of the Frankenlake, the two mounted officers already mentioned, were frequently seen endeavouring to rally them, and placing their horses before the flying bands; but they might as well have striven to stay the waves of ocean. At last they appeared to quarrel with each other; we saw their swords gleam as blows were given and thrusts exchanged; their horses reared up, and then plunged past each other; a blade flashed in the sun, and the cavalier on the white horse was struck from his saddle; his charger galloped away, and while he had to limp after his soldiers on foot, the officer with the red plume came galloping madly back towards the breach, waving a white handkerchief to us in sign of truce or peace. Several shots were fired after him by the Merodeurs, but, escaping them, he cleared the corpse-encumbered ditch by one terrific bound, and forcing his noble horse up the rough avalanche of masonry, dismounted in the midst of us, breathless, panting, pale with excitement, anger, and exertion.
"The Count of Carlstein! Rupert-with-the-Red-plume!" cried a hundred voices, in every varying accent of astonishment.
"Ay, gentlemen, your countryman! no longer, I fear, Rupert Count of Carlstein, but simply old Philip Rollo, the soldier of fortune that fate saw him thirty years ago. By one blow of my sword—the same which, not a minute ago, unhorsed that mighty, ambitious, and intolerable tyrant, the Duke of Friedland—I have demolished one of the fairest fortunes that ever a stanch soldier secured by the toil and dangers of a life that can never be lived again. Receive me, I pray you, as your countryman, as a poor and penniless soldier, who comes to seek service under the Swede and Dane."
The count spoke with bitterness, and breathed hard as he leaned on his sword, and our regiment closed round him with surprise and inquiry. Unwilling to tell what I knew would be as poniards in his heart (the fate of Ernestine), I stood a little in the background; while Marshal Leslie, Sir Donald Mackay, and Lord Spynie, all together inquired the cause of quarrel with his general. After taking a sip or two of brandy from the flask of Ian Dhu, and retiring a little apart from the vicinity of the breach—
"You are well aware, gentlemen," said he, "how signal has been the success attending the arms of the emperor and princes of the Catholic League. Driven from Juteland, Christian IV. has been glad to seek shelter by sea, and by wandering among the Danish isles, and the career of conquest has only been stopped by the waters of the Baltic——"
"And the Scottish infantry," interposed old Leslie.
"Yes, marshal, but that I considered as understood. I have long foreseen that this ambition will destroy itself. The combination of the northern kings is what Wallenstein most dreads and hates, as it prevents him obtaining a solid hold upon the Baltic, and from penetrating into Sweden for his own ends, though in the emperor's name. At a great council of war held lately in Vienna, I threw out some hints of Wallenstein's hopes of founding a separate power in northern Europe—a power of which himself would be the head. I represented to the emperor the necessity of making peace with Christian IV. before he invaded Sweden, urging that he could never withstand a union of the northern princes with the hostile Protestants of the empire. The emperor was pleased to hearken to me, and, desirous of peace, despatched me to Stralsund here, with written powers to treat with Christian; these powers he afterwards dared to repudiate, and Wallenstein, who—far from wishing a peace, which would reduce him to a mere civilian again—hopes in the general confusion to achieve such ends as no man hath conceived since the days of Alexander of Macedon, dared to destroy my credentials before my face—yea, but yesterday in council! Hence our high words to-day, under the very muzzles of your cannon. When, enraged by the useless slaughter of which he was the cause, I accused him of daring and criminal ambition, blows were exchanged, and by one I hurled him to the earth, and cut myself off from the empire for ever."
How truly the count had judged of the character of the great Duke of Friedland (or the Archduke of Mechlenburg, as he was generally styled for a time), after events have shown; for they brought to pass that dark scene in the Bohemian Castle of Eagar, where the Scottish colonels, Leslie and Gordon, were compelled to hew off his head in the banqueting hall.
"Ah! here is my friend and namesake, Captain Rollo," said the count, approaching me; "and so, comrade, you have still preserved the gold chain I gave you on that moonlight night by the marshy Elbe. But what is the matter? you look pale as Banquo's ghost. I see starvation in every eye here. Now lead me to my poor girl—the last that fate has left me; for if I have her in my arms, the county of Carlstein, the castles of Giezar and Kœningratz, with all my orders of knighthood and nobility, and my colonel-generalship of the Imperial Cavalry, may go to the devil for aught that I care. Ha—what is this?"