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From Tait's Magazine.

SCOTTISH CAVALIER OF THE OLDEN TIME.*

Oh, woe unto these cruel wars
That ever they began;
For they have reft my native isle
Of many a pretty man.

We would not raise him from the dead, even if we could! For were he here, standing up in all his grim majesty of martial pomp, we would not sneer at him who in his time did his time's work faithfully and manfully. Much less would we worship him as a hero; for even his exploits of bravery and endurance cannot raise him to the standard of a hero of our days. Why not, then, let him rest in his foreign grave? Yes, let him rest, but as a lesson to this century, as a proof that all human excellence and all ideas of human excellence are passing away to make room for other excellence and other ideas of excellence, let us try to raise, though it be but for an hour, the shadow of the shadow of Sir John Hepburn.

In East-Lothian, almost within sight of Berwick-Law, and on the brink of that deep hollow or ford where the Scots defeated and slew Athelstane, the Saxon king, stands a goodly-sized manor-house, overlooking the rocky hills of Dirleton, flanked by an old kirk and surrounded by decayed, moss-covered trees. The stone steps of the mansion are worn away with the tread of many generations of men and women who have passed away and left no trace behind them. Others, the denizens of that old gloomy house, are mentioned here and there in stray parchments and records; and from the collected evidence of these it appears that House Athelstaneford was built by a branch of the Hepburns of Hailes and Bothwell, and that the place was held feudally of their kinsmen the Hepburns of Waughton. These Hepburns of Hailes and Bothwell, and of Athelstaneford and Waughton, were an impetuous

* Memoirs and Adventures of Sir John Hepburn, Knight, Governor of Munich, Marshal of France under Louis XIII. and Commander of the Scots Brigade under Gustavus Adolphus, etc. By James Grant. London: Blackwood and Sons. 1851.

First they took my brethren twain,
Then wiled my love frae me;
Oh, woe unto the cruel wars

In Low Germanie!-Scotch Song.

and warlike family, who took their fill of fighting and plunder in all the frays of the Border. Thus, in January, 1569, we find them expelled from their ancestral seat at Waughton, and assembling in large masses to re-take that place, and Fortalice of Vachtune," where they slew "Vmqle. Johnne Geddes,” and hurt and wounded

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divers otheris," besides breaking into the barbican and capturing sixteen steeds. But while thus employed, they were attacked by the Laird of Carmichael, the Captain of the Tower, who slew three of them and drove off the rest. Among them was George Hepburn of Athelstaneford, who was subsequently tried for the proceedings of that day, and who was acquitted in this case not only, but also for the share he took in Bothwell's insurrection, for his part in which he was ar raigned as having slain "three of the king's soldiers" at the battle of Langsides. Thus, escaping from sieges and battles, and, what is more, from the dangers of the law, George Hepburn died. No one knows how, and whether he came to his end on the field or the scaffold, or in his own house of Athelstaneford. Nor is anything known of the day or year of his death, for little store was in those days set by the life of a simple yeoman. In the year 1616, it is found that his eldest son, George Hepburn, is "retoured" in the lands of Athelstaneford. George's brother was John Hepburn, the chief hero of Mr. Grant's Memoir. We say the chief hero, for he records other names and the deeds of other men of the time.

John Hepburn, the man in buff, had at that time, namely, in 1616, when his father was just dead, reached his sixteenth year. He had had what little schooling sufficed for a younger son of his day, and he was well informed for a lad who left school at fourteen. His back was yet unbent, and his

mind rather stimulated than fraught with learning. But the best acquisition he made at school was a friend, Robert Munro; his class-fellow in youth, his battle-fellow in after years. At that time John Hepburn, too, was distinguished, even on the border, for the skill and grace of his horsemanship, and for the scientific use he made of the sword. And well it was for him that he, whose fortune lay at the sword's point, should have known how to handle that instrument of his future elevation.

For to a youngster from the Scottish border the time offered scarcely any sustenance and much less promotion. The border wars and the home feuds of the Scottish nobles were for the nonce terminated by the accession of James Stuart. So monotonous and void of incident had life on the border become, that John Hepburn and Robert Munro actually set out on a tour to Paris and Poictiers, perhaps for the purpose of study, though it is much more probable that they intended looking out for vacancies in some of the Scotch regiments in France. On this occasion it appears that the rising fame of the great Gustavus Adolphus, of whom he heard frequent commendations, gave birth to a spark of military ardor within his breast which was never extinguished till his death."

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Robert Munro remained in Paris, and learned a soldier's trade in the body-guard of the King of France. How that trade was taught in those days will best be learned from his own account of military punish

ments:

"I was once made to stand, in my younger yeares, at the Louvre-gate, in Paris, for sleeping in the morning when I ought to have been at my exercise; for punishment I was made to stand, from eleven before noone to eight of the clocke in the night, centry, armed with corslet, headpiece, bracelets, being iron to the teeth, in a hot summer's day, till I was weary of my life, which ever after made me more strict in punishing those under my command."

Fye boys! fye boys! leave it not there,
No honor is gotten by hunting the hare,

had its effect on John Hepburn, who consented to "trail a pike in Sir Andrew's band," that is to say, he enlisted as a private soldier in the division.

His captain, Sir Andrew, of all men was most fit to train young soldiers to the trade of arms. He was the type of a soldier of fortune and paid partisan, to whom the camp was a home, the march a recreation, and the day of battle a season of gala and rejoicing. He had seen much service and hard fighting

at home and abroad. As a friend of Lord

Home, he had, in 1594, been outlawed by the General Assembly; and at the battle of Glenlivar, he commanded the Earl of Huntley's artillery, which consisted of "three culverins." This old soldier wore his buff and armor as every-day dress, even in time of peace, and he was never seen without a long sword, a formidable dagger, and a pair of iron pistols, all of which served greatly to annoy the King James Stuart, who said of old Sir Andrew that he was so fortified that, if he were but well "victualled, he would be impregnable." Impregnable though he may have been to cold iron and leaden bullets, yet being sent into Holland, in 1624, with 12,000 English, it is presumed that he perished. with his men, most of whom " deyed miserablie with cold and hunger," and whose bodies lay "heaped upon another," as food for "the dogs and swine, to the horror of all beholders."

But we anticipate. In the year 1620, when John Hepburn joined Sir Andrew's band, he led his force of 1,500 men (and among them 120 moss-troopers whom the King's Council had arrested and enrolled for turbulency) through Leith and Holland into Bohemia.

That unfortunate country was just then exposed to all the horrors of a religious war. The Austrian Emperor had endeavored to enforce his Roman Catholic tendencies, and the States had rebelled and offered their John Hepburn was destined to win his crown to the Elector of the Palatinate, sonspurs in a school which was equally severe, in-law to James Stuart; and it was between though less distinguished. When he re- him and the Emperor. that the princes and turned home, he found Sir Andrew Grey, a powers of Germany and Europe had to soldier of fortune, with a camp of recruits choose. Sir Andrew Grey's Scotch Regiat Monkrig, in the vicinity of Athelstane- ment joined the Elector's force in the camford; and every day drummers were scour-paign against the Emperor's Spanish auxiliing the country, drumming out for volunteers to fight in Bohemia for the Princess Elizabeth and against the German Emperor. song of

Their

aries, under the Marquis Spinola; and in the course of that campaign John Hepburn was promoted to the command of a company of pikes. After the battle of Prague,

where the Elector's forces were signally defeated, and where that prince himself abandoned his own cause, the Scotch troops joined the army of the Count of Mansfield, who undertook to carry on the war on account of the unfortunate Queen. At his side they fought in the Palatinates, in Alsace and in Holland, at which latter place they assisted in the defence of the fortress of Bergen-op-Zoom; and on one occasion cut their way through the Marquis of Spinola's army. On these fights, though we might adduce many instances of bravery and devotion on the part of the heroic Scots, we must nevertheless be silent; for so intrepid were they all, that John Hepburn's deeds are lost amidst the number. His name stands first prominently forward when, at the end of the war in Holland, he led the remains of Sir Andrew's band to Sweden, whither they were attended by the force of the great Gustavus Adolphus. That King, whose camp had risen to be the best military school in Europe, was almost monthly joined by troops of Scotchmen, and Mr. Grant, whose researches on the subject have been minute in the extreme, informs us that not less than 13,104 Scots served in the Swedish army during the wars in Germany.

of our day ever can look; for their corselets were both large and thick, to cover their well-padded doublets, and to resist the dint of bullets. In 1623 he was a colonel and commander of a regiment which formed part of the army which the King of Sweden dispatched against the King of Poland. "It was in this Polish war," says his biographer, "that Hepburn began the series of brilliant achievements which marked his career under the banner of Gustavus. The most important of these deeds of arms was the relief of Mew, a town of Western Prussia, the Swedish garrison of which was closely blockaded by a Polish army of 30,000 men, who were intrenched upon a steep green eminence, cutting off all communication between the town and the surrounding country. The town of Mew being situate on the confluence of the Versa with the Vistula, it was over this eminence that the relieving army had to pass if they would raise the siege. The Poles had, therefore, furnished it with two batteries of ordnance, which commanded the approach by a cross fire, while the whole line of their intrenched infantry, armed with bows and matchlocks, swept the ground which descended abruptly from their earthen parapets. Against this army of 30,000 the Captain John Hepburn, joined by his cou-King of Sweden sent 3,000 Scots foot and sin, James Hepburn of Waughton, was duly installed in the Swedish army, and soon promoted to the command of the Green Scots Brigade. Imagine him, decked with all the panoply of a warrior of that time, dressed in a gorget of richest stuff, covered with cunningly-worked and inlaid armor from the forges of Milan, his head surmounted with the plumed morion, arrow-shaped, with a gilt tiar turning up in front, his hair cut close, his moustache hanging down upon his gorget, and his long sword rattling against his enormous spurs. Imagine the Swedish king's Scotch officer, his resplendent breast- Night was fast setting in when Colonel plate, half covered with a scarlet scarf; his Hepburn began to ascend the hill, by a narjackboots pistol-proof, and accoutred with row and winding path, encumbered by rocks enormous spurs, having each six rowels, and stones, thick underwood and overhangmeasuring three inches from point to point,ing trees, through which the heavily-armed and projecting from a ball of bell-metal, within which were four iron drops, which jingled as he rode or walked. Imagine him leading his band of musketeers and pikemen, all duly clad in helmets, gorgets, buff-coats and breast-plates-the musketeers wearing their heavy matchiocks, the pikemen carrying pikes, varying from fourteen to eighteen feet long, and all of them, from the leader down to the last youngster who trailed a pike, looking more massive and stout than any men

500 horse, under Count Thurn. This force left the Swedish camp in the dusk of the evening; and proceeding quietly and silently by a secret path, they soon came in view of the heights on which the Polish infantry, clad in mail of a half Oriental fashion, and armed with bows, matchlocks, iron maces, lances, scimitars and targets, were strongly intrenched, with their brass cannon bristling through the green brushwood on their right and left. In their rear lay the spires of Mew, the object of the contest and the prize of victory.

soldiers threaded their way with great difficulty, as they clung to the projecting ledges of rock or grasped the furze and underwood in their attempts to gain the summit. Not a sound was heard, not a word was spoken, and even the clang of armor or the jingle of a metal sword-sheath were drowned by the hoarse roar of the impetuous Vistula beneath. Thus guided by the white plume in Hepburn's helmet, the Scots gained the summit and surprised the Poles, who were still work

ing at their trenches. Muskets were clubbed, pikes advanced, and the trenches taken. But bullets, arrows and stones fell upon them in a dense shower, and hordes of Cossacks in mail shirts and steel caps caused them great tribulation by their violent onsets, until Hepburn withdrew his column to a rock, against which he leaned his rear, while his front ranks, their pikes advanced, stood immovable, presenting an impenetrable mass of bristling steel points, with every now and then a murderous volley from the musketeers in the centre. In this position he was reinforced by 200 German arquebusiers, whose assistance enabled him to hold out. Advance was quite out of the question, for all along his front the Poles piled their portable chevaux-de-frise, while the whole of their army attacked him incessantly for two nights and two days. But in the meanwhile, the King of Sweden succeeded in revictualling and regarrisoning the town of Mew. The Poles, whose only hope was to reduce the place by fatigue and hunger, broke up their camp and abandoned the siege.

Nor was it on land alone that Colonel Hepburn and his Scots volunteered the most desperate service. In the year 1630 he was sent, with ninety-two companies of foot and sixteen squadrons of horse in two hundred small vessels, from Elfsnaben, in Sweden, across the stormy Baltic to Pommern, where he remained in country quarters until he received orders to support Sir Donald Mackay's Highlanders in the island of Rügen.

Those Highlanders, then under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Munro, had embarked at Pillan, from whence they were ordered to sail to Wolgast, in Pommern. They were in two Swedish vessels, and their baggage, horses, drums and ammunition were in a small ship which sailed along with them. Driven into the roads of Bornholm by a tempest, the two vessels were separated, and one of them, in which were LieutenantColonel Munro and Captain Robert Munro, with three Highland companies, sprung a leak, and was, after many dangers and hardships to the soldiers, thrown on the coast of the island of Rügen, where she parted amidships, and where the three companies of Highlanders had to cling to the wreck, over which the waves broke with an indescribable fury. Landed at length by means of a raft, which they constructed in the very midst of the surge, they found themselves eighty miles from the Swedish outposts, on an island all the forts of which were in the VOL XXV. NO. II.

hands of the Imperialists, while all their means. of defence consisted in swords, pikes and some wet muskets, while every man of them was drenched, starving and exhausted with danger and toil. But it required greater hardships or dangers to break the spirit of these hardy soldiers of fortune. They hid among the cliffs until night, when they borrowed fifty muskets from the Pommeranian Governor of Rügenwalde Castle, by whose assistance also they gained access to the city and killed and captured the Austrian garrison. Having thus obtained possession of the capital of Rügen, the next thing to be done was to retain the place and defend it against the Austrians, a large force of whom were at Colberg, at the distance of only seven miles from Rügenwalde. Lieutenant-Colonel Munro strengthened the castle by the erection of turf sconces and redoubts, and provisioned it by foraging the country even to the very gates of Dantzig. Then came a siege of nine weeks, with its cannonading, and its daily and nightly skirmishes and sallies, until, one morning, the Austrians fled from their trenches at the ap proach of Colonel Hepburn's Green Brigade and Invincibles.

And here Sir John again appears on the scene, as Governor of the town and castle of Rügenwalde, recruiting among the islanders, and collecting 8,000 fighting men, whom he armed, disciplined, and divided into companies. Having thus created an army, he drove the enemy out of Pommerland, and, lastly, sat down before Colberg to invest and blockade it. In the course of this siege he was superseded in his command by a small German lordling, the Herr von Kniphausen, who held a higher rank in the Swedish army, and to whom we are indebted for many of the feats of the Scottish Hercules, which this Herr von Kniphausen, too weak for execution, planned for the performance of others. Among these feats is the defence of the town and castle of Shevelbrunn, a pass at the distance of five miles from Colberg, and through which the Austrian forces of General Montecuculi, which were marchiug up to the relief of Colberg, would have to pass, before they could approach the

town.

The Herr von Kniphausen's orders were very precise, and much more easy to give than to execute. "Maintain the town," said that beer-bloated Teuton, "so long as you can; but give not up the castle while a single man remains with you." That is to say, not

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"Go in and win!" but "Go in and" be killed; | rialists in New Brandenburg.
"but the longer you can be about it the more
creditable it will be for you."

On the ninth

day the town was taken by assault, and the six hundred Highlanders, with their chief, Colonel Lindsay, then 28 years of age, were unmercifully cut to pieces. Two officers, Captain Innes and Lieutenant Lumsden, es caped by swimming the wet ditch in their armor, and brought the news of their com

Thus instructed, and accompanied by a squadron of steel-clad troopers, Sir John rode forth, thinking the place but "a scurvie hole for any honest cavalier to maintain his credit in." But the Herr von Kniphausen had changed his mind already, and, with-rades' death to the head-quarters of the drawing Sir John and the troopers, he sent Munro and his Highlanders, with exactly the same instructions: to be killed and to take time. These Highlanders fortified the ruined place with ramparts of rock and stockades breast high; and while they were completing their preparations, the earth around shook with the tramp of Flemish horses and mailed men, for 8,000 Imperialists, cuirassiers, Croats and arquebusiers, commanded by Montecuculi, marched up with great speed, but with still greater speed were they driven back by the well-regulated fire of the Highlanders. From their masses, still confused with the hurry of the retreat, a trumpeter advanced, proposing a treaty of surrender, to which Munro replied, "The word treaty having, by some chance, been omitted in my instructions, I have only powder and ball at the service of the Count de Montecuculi." Back rode the trumpeter, incensed with the Scotchman's saucy answer, and on came the Walloons and Croats. And the Highlanders, firing over their earthen breast works, held the foe back with battle-built ramparts of dead men, which lay chin-deep in front of every barricade; and fighting, shooting, always retreating from one work to another, and burning the streets as they fell back, they, with their faces still turned to the enemy, made good their retreat into the castle. But Montecuculi, who was not well pleased with the violence of those 'barekneed soldiers," retreated during the night from Shevelbrunn, not without Munro dispatching" eighteen dragoniers to march after them for bringing me intelligence of his majestie's forces from Statin, which were come betwixt the enemy and Colberg."

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The Austrian garrison of Colberg being hard pressed by the Scots and Swedes, and having no hope of relief from Montecuculi, was at length compelled to capitulate, and marched out with the honors of war, namely, "all in their armor, with pikes carried, colors flying, drums beating, and matches lighted; with bag and baggage, and two pieces of cannon with balls in their muzzles, and lintstocks burning."

Six hundred of Lord Reay's Highlanders were, for nine days, besieged by the Impe

Scotch brigade; and these, with carried pikes, matches lit, six standards displayed, and all the drums beating the "old Scots' march," which the shrill fifes poured to the morning wind, marched upon Frankfort-on-the-Oder, to avenge the death of their comrades on Count Schomberg's Austrian brigade of 10,000 old troops. As they came within sight of the city, they extended their lines, and marching up from different quarters, attacked it. And the Austrians, still reeking with the slaughter of New Brandenburg, and their ravages, their burnings, sackings and murders, the piking of children and the violence done to women in Brandenburg and Pommern, stood up on the line of the embattled wall which girt the city, and which was bright with the glitter of their helmets. Their cannon opened from the ramparts, and, when the smoke was blown aside, their pikes and muskets and sword-blades flashed in the sun. But on that day all the cannonading was a mere prelude, an earnest of what was to follow in the way of attack and defence. For the King of Sweden had yet to reconnoitre the place, which he did in person; and having, for that purpose, come "somewhat too near the town," a sally was made by the Austrians, and the King's party fired at. Two officers fell badly wounded, namely, Lieutenant Munro, of Munro's regiment, and Col. Teuffel (Anglicé Devil) Baron of Zinnersdorf, for whom the King "made great mourn, alleging he had no help then but of Hepburns." And indeed it was John Sinclair, of Hepburn's regiment, who repelled the Imperialists; and, following up his advantage, effected a lodgment in a churchyard, from whence he could enfilade and sweep the enemy's works in flank. Captain Gunter, too, of Hepburn's regiment, accompanied by a dozen of his men, clambered through the moat and reconnoitred the space between the outer rampart and the inner wall. These preparations having been made during the night and on the morning of Palm Sunday, the 3d April, the general assault commenced at five o'clock on the afternoon of that day. We quote it in the words of Mr. Grant's masterly description, adding only that the King of

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