"The Duc de Broglie."
On hearing this, to me, familiar name, it was my turn to feel a tinge of vexation.
"Our muster-place is Fulda; there the allies are to be concentrated;" and with his constant smile which showed all his white teeth, with his gold eyeglass in his right eye, and his gilt spurs ringing, our gay staff-officer left me.
As it is my object to confine these pages as much as possible to my own adventures, avoiding anything like a general narrative of the war, the reader may learn briefly, that when summoned to the field, the Scots Greys marched to Hesse, "through roads which—as our records have it—no army had ever traversed before," and encamped at Rothenburg, in a pleasant vale, sheltered by high hills.
In April we moved to Fulda, from whence Prince Ferdinand began to advance at the head of thirty thousand men against the Duc de Broglie, whom we found strongly posted near the village of Bergen, which occupies a wooded eminence between Frankfort and Hanover. This village was defended by earthen works, along which were rows of corbeilles, as the French name those large baskets which, on being filled with earth, are placed close to each other, and serve to cover the defenders of a bastion. They are usually eighteen inches high, and are always wider at the top than at the bottom; thus the opening between forms a species of loophole, and through these apertures the red musketry was flashing incessantly as we came within range.
On the 13th of April we attacked the duke.
Early in the morning our corps took post in the line of battle; but it was not till ten a.m. that the columns of attack moved across the plain in front of the French army, whose artillery bowled long and bloody lanes through them.
"Preston," said Major Maitland, as we formed squadrons to attack a body of cavalry; "that column consists of at least fifteen hundred tried men, under the Count de Lusignan, and you have but five hundred——"
"True—but mine are tried soldiers," was the old man's proud reply; "soldiers second to none in Europe."
These were no vain words, for in less than two minutes, by one desperate charge, we had routed them.