Chapter X: The Forest of Gaich--Or the Captain Dhu (9)

Meanwhile, Major-General James Abercrombie of Glassa, a gallant Scottish officer, with the 1st Scots Royals, the Black Watch, the 55th, or Westmoreland Regiment, the 62nd, or Royal North Americans, and other troops, to the number of seven thousand regulars and ten thousand provincials, landed from nine hundred batteaux, and one hundred and thirty-five whale-boats, with all their cannon, provisions, and ammunition, on the 6th of July, at the foot of Lake George, a clear and beautiful sheet of water thirty-three miles long, and surrounded by high and verdant mountains. That district, now so busy and populous, was then silent and savage. No sound broke the stillness of the romantic scenery, or the depths of the American forest, but the British drum or Scottish pipe, as the troops formed in four columns of attack, and advanced against the Fort of Ticonderoga.

Our regiment, then styled "Lord John Murray's Highlanders," was commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Francis Grant; his second was Major Duncan Campbell of Inveraw, and never did two better or braver officers wear the tartan of the old 42nd. Viscount Howe, a brilliant officer of the old school of puffs, pigtails, knee-breeches, and Ramilie wigs, led the 55th.

Ticonderoga is situated on a tongue of land extending between Lake George and the narrow fall of water that pours with the roar of thunder into Lake Champlain, a hundred feet below. Its ramparts were thirty feet high, faced with stone, surrounded on three sides by water, and on the fourth by a dangerous morass that was swept by the range of its cannon and mortars. The approach to this morass--the _only avenue_ to the fort--was covered by a dense abattis of felled trees of enormous size, secured by stakes to the ground, and having all their branches pointed outward.

The garrison, which consisted of eight battalions, was five thousand six hundred strong; and as the assailants advanced, it was the good fortune of our hero, Adam White, to learn from an Indian scout that three thousand French, from the banks of the Mohawk river, were advancing to reinforce Ticonderoga. These tidings he at once communicated to General Abercrombie, and orders were given to push on without delay. The praise he obtained for his diligence made the breast of our poor "sub" expand with hope; and with a last glance at his relic of Lucy Fleming, he shouldered his spontoon, and hurried with his company into the matted jungle.

The officer who commanded in Ticonderoga was brave, resolute, and determined. Twenty-four years before he had been a grenadier of the Regiment de Normandie, and served with the army of the Rhine under the famous Maréchal the Duke of Berwick. At the siege of Philipsburg in 1734, the Prince of Conti was so pleased by his intrepid bearing, that he placed a purse in hu hand, apologizing for the smallness of the sum it contained; "but we soldiers, mon camarade," continued the prince, "have the privilege to plead that we are poor."

Next morning the young grenadier appeared at the tent of Conti, with two diamond rings and a jewel of great value.

"Monseigneur le Prince," said he, "the louis in your purse I presume you intended for me, and I have sent them to my mother, poor old woman! at Lillebonne; but _these_ I bring back to you, as having no claim to them."

"My noble comrade," replied the prince, placing an epaulette on his left shoulder, "you have doubly deserved them by your integrity, which equals your bravery; they are yours, with this commission in the Regiment de Conti, which, in the name of King Louis, I have the power to bestow."

"Bravo, prince, this is noble!"

"Bravo! it equals anything in Scuderi!" exclaimed two officers, who were at breakfast with the prince.

The first of these was Maurice Count Saxe, general of the cavalry; the second was the famous Victor Marquis de Mirabeau, the future political economist, who was then a captain in the French line.

In twenty-four years this grenadier became a general officer and peer of France by the title of Comte de Montmorin; and in 1758, he commanded the French garrison in Ticonderoga, where he left nothing undone to render that post impregnable. Thus a desperate encounter was expected.

Formed with the grenadiers in the reserve, the 42nd marched with muskets slung, and their thirteen pipers, led by Deors MacCrimmon their pipe-major, made the deep dark forests ring to that harsh but wild music, which speaks a language Scotsmen only feel; and the air they played was that old march, now so well known in Scotland as the "Black Watch;" and loudly it rang, rousing vast flocks of wild birds from the lakes and tarns, and scaring the Red men from their wigwams and camps in the dense forests of pine that covered all the then unbroken wilderness.

The day was hot--the sun being 96° in the shade; the shrubs were all in blossom, and the wild plum and cherries grew in masses and clusters in the jungle, through which the heavily-laden columns of attack forced a passage towards Ticonderoga, leaving their artillery in the rear, as the officer commanding the engineers had reported, that without employing that arm, the works might be carried by storm.

While the reflection of all Lucy might suffer, should he fall, cost poor White a severe pang, he was the first man who sent his name to the brigade-major, as a volunteer to lead the escalade.

"But," thought he, "if successful, my promotion is insured; and if I miss death, I shall, at least, be one step nearer Lucy."

Jack Oswald, who volunteered next, consoled himself by some trite quotation from Bossuet (he was always quoting French writers), that he had not a relation to regret in the world.

The country was thickly wooded, and the guide having lost the track through those hitherto almost untrodden wastes, the greatest confusion ensued. Brigadier-General Viscount Howe, who was at the head of the right centre column, suddenly came upon a French battalion led by the Marquis de Launay, who was in full retreat, and a severe conflict ensued. The viscount, a young and gallant officer, whom Abercrombie styles "the Idol of the Soldiers," fell at the head of his own regiment, the 55th, as he was calling upon the French to surrender. A chevalier of St. Louis rushed forward and shot him by a pistol ball, which pierced his left breast. The chevalier was shot by Captain Monipennie, and received three musket balls as he fell. The French were routed; many were slain, and five officers with one hundred and forty-eight privates were taken.

Meanwhile, the column of which the Black Watch formed a part, had been brought to a complete halt in a dense forest, where the rays of the sun were intercepted by the lofty trees; the guides had deserted, and the officer in command was at a loss whether to advance or retreat, when Adam White, who had been famous for beating the jungle and tigerhunting in India, found a war-path, and boldly taking upon him the arduous and responsible office of guide, conducted the troops through the wilderness; and thus, on the morning of the 8th July, the waters of Lake Champlain, long, deep, and narrow, appeared before them, shining in the clear sunrise, between the stems of the opening forest. Beyond rose the solid ramparts of that Ticonderoga which had proved so fatal to the British arms in the last campaign, faced with polished stones, grim with shady embrasures and pointed cannon, peering over trench and palisade; and over all waved slowly in the morning wind the white banner, with the three fleurs de lis of old France.

Fire flashed from the massive bastion, and then the alarm-gun pealed across the water, waking a thousand echoes in the lonely woods; and the drum beat hoarsely and rapidly the call to arms, as the heads of the four British columns in scarlet, with colours waving and bayonets fixed, debouched in succession upon the margin of that beautiful lake; and there a second time Captain White of Ours was warmly complimented by General Abercrombie for his skill in conducting his comrades through a country of which he was totally ignorant.

"And if I live to escape the dangers of the assault, believe me, sir," continued the general, "this second service shall be recorded to your advantage and honour."

But poor White thought only of his betrothed wife, and far away from the shores of that lone American lake, from its guarded fortress and woods, where the stealthy Red man glided with his poisoned shafts, and from the columns of bronzed infantry, wearied by toil and stained by travel, his memory wandered to that sweet sequestered valley, where the pastoral Tweed was brawling past the windows of the old manse; and to the honeysuckle bower, where, at that moment, perhaps, Lucy Fleming, with pretty foot and rapid hand, urged round her ivory-mounted spinning-wheel; for, in those days of old simplicity, every Scottish lady spun, like the stately Duchess of Lauderdale, so famous for her diamonds and her imperious beauty.

But now the snapping of flints, the springing of iron ramrods that rang in the polished barrels, the opening of pouches and careful inspection of ammunition by companies at open order, gave token of the terrors about to ensue; and old friends as they passed to and fro with swords drawn to take their places in the ranks, shook each other warmly by the hand, or exchanged a kindly smile, for the hour had come when many were to part, and many to take their last repose before the ramparts of Ticonderoga.

"Stormers to the front!" was now the order that passed along the columns, as the arms were shouldered, and the companies closed up to half-distance, while the grenadier companies of the different corps were formed with the Highlanders, as a reserve column of attack; for on them, more than all his other troops, did the general depend; and a fine-looking body of men they were, those old British Grenadiers, whom Wolfe ever considered the flower of his army, though they wore those quaint, sugar-loaf Prussian caps, which we adopted with the Prussian tactics, and though their heads were all floured and pomatumed, with a smart pigtail trimmed straight to the seam of the coat behind, their large-skirted coats buttoned back for service and to display their white breeches and black leggings--their officers with triple-cocked hats and sleeve-ruffles, just as we see them in the old pictures of Oudenarde and Fontenoy.

As Colonel Grant had been wounded by a random shot, Major Duncan Campbell of Inveraw, a veteran officer of great worth and bravery, led the regiment, and Adam White was by his side.

The cracking roar of musketry, and the rapid boom-boom-booming of cannon, with the whistle and explosion of mortars, shook the echoes of the hitherto silent waste of wood and water, and pealed away with a thousand reverberations among the beautiful mountains that overlook Lake Champlain, as the British columns rushed to the assault; but alas! the entrenchments of the French were soon found to be altogether impregnable.

The first cannon-shot tore up the earth under the feet of Ensign Oswald, and hurled him to the ground; but he rose unhurt, and rushed forward sword in hand.

The leading files fell into the abattis before the breastwork, and on becoming entangled among the branches, were shot down from the glacis, which was lofty, and there perished helplessly in scores.

The Inniskillings, the East Essex, the 46th, the 55th, the 1st and 4th battalions of the Royal Americans, and the provincial corps, were fearfully cut up. Every regiment successively fell back in disorder, though their officers fought bravely to encourage them, waving their swords and spontoons; but the French held the post with desperate success. Proud of their name, their remote antiquity and ancient spirit, the Scots Royals fought well and valiantly. At last even they gave way; and then the Grenadiers and Highlanders were ordered to ADVANCE.

While the drums of the former beat the "point of war," and the pipes of the latter yelled an onset, the reserve column, led by Inveraw, rushed with a wild cheer to the assault, over ground encumbered by piles of dead and wounded men, writhing and shrieking in the agonies of death and thirst.

Impetuously the Grenadiers with levelled bayonets, and the Black Watch, claymore in hand, broke through a bank of smoke, and fell among the branches and bloody entanglements of the fatal abattis.

"Hew!" cried White, "hew down the branches with your swords, my lads, and we will soon be close enough."

"Shoulder to shoulder! Clann nan Gael an guillan a chiele," cried old Duncan of Inveraw; but at that instant a ball pierced his brain, he fell dead, and on White devolved the terrible task of conducting the final assault. Oswald was by his side, with the King's colours brandished aloft.

Hewing a passage through the dense branches of the abattis by their broadswords, the Black Watch made a gallant effort to cross the wet morass and storm the breastwork by climbing on each other's shoulders, and by placing their feet on bayonets and dirk-blades inserted in the joints of the masonry. These brave men were totally unprovided with ladders.

White was the first man on the parapet, and while exposed to a storm of whistling shot, he beat aside the muzzles of the nearest muskets with his claymore, and with his left hand assisted MacCrimmon, the pipe-major, Captain John Campbell, and Ensign Oswald, to reach the summit; and there stood the resolute piper, blowing the _onset_ to encourage his comrades, till five or six balls pierced him, and he fell to rise no more.

A few more Highlanders reached the top of the glacis, but they were all destroyed in a moment. White fell among the French, and was repeatedly stabbed by bayonets. And now the Grenadiers gave way; but still the infuriated Black Watch continued that bloody conflict for several hours, and "the order to retire was _three times_ repeated," says the historical record of the regiment, "before the Highlanders withdrew from so unequal a contest."

At last, however, they _did_ fall back, leaving, besides Adam White and Major Campbell of Inveraw, Captain John Campbell (of the fated house of Glenlyon, who had been promoted for his valour at Fontenoy), Lieutenants Macpherson, Baillie, and Sutherland; Ensigns Rattray and Stuart of Banskied, with three hundred and six soldiers killed; Captains Graham, Gordon, Graham of Duchray, Campbell of Strachur, Murray, and Stewart of Urrard, with twelve subalterns, ten sergeants, and three hundred and six soldiers, wounded; making a frightful total of _six hundred and forty-eight_ casualties in one regiment!

Oswald received a ball through his sword arm, but brought off the colours, tradition says, in his teeth!

The last he saw of his friend White was his body, still, motionless, and drenched in blood, under the muzzle of a French cannon, but whether he was then alive or dead it was impossible for him to say.

Four hours the contest had continued, and then Abercrombie retired to the south side of Lake George, leaving two thousand soldiers and many brave officers lying dead before Ticonderoga.

The regiment deplored this terrible slaughter, but the loss of none was so much regretted as Inveraw, Adam White, and old MacCrimmon the pipe-major; and as the shattered band retired through the woods towards a bivouac on the shore of Lake George, the pipers played and many of the men sang "MacCrimmon's Lament," which he had composed on the fall of his father, Donald Bane, who had been piper to MacLeod of Dunvegan, and was killed in a skirmish with Lord London's troops near Moyhall thirteen years before, in the dark epoch of Culloden; and the effect of this mournful Highland song, as it rose up sadly from the leafy dingles of the dense American forest, was never forgotten by the spirit-broken men who heard it:--

"The white mountain-mist round Cuchullin is driven,
The spirit her dirge of wailing has given;
And bright blue eyes in Dunvegan are weeping,
For thou art away to the dark place of sleeping.
Return, return---alas, for ever!
MacCrimmon's away to return to us never!
In war or in joy, to feast or to fray,
To return to us never, MacCrimmon's away!

"The breath of the valley is gently blowing,
Each river and stream is sadly flowing;
The birds sit in silence on rock and on spray,
To return on no morrow, since thou art away!
Return, return, &c.

"On the ocean that chafes with a mournful wail,
The birlinn is moored without banner or sail,
And the voice of the billow is heard to complain,
Like the cry of the Tar' Uisc from wild Corriskain.
Return, return, &c.

"In Dongevan thy pibroch so thrilling, no more
Will waken the echoes of mountain and shore;
And the hearts of our people lament night and day,
To return on no morrow, since thou art away!
Return, return, &c."

For many a year after, this lament was used by the regiment as a dead march.

"With a mixture of grief, esteem, and envy, I consider the great loss and immortal glory acquired by the Scots Highlanders in the late bloody affair," says a lieutenant of the 66th, in a letter dated from Lake George, July 10. "I cannot say for them what they really merit; but I shall ever fear the wrath, love the integrity, and admire the bravery of these Scotsmen. There is much harmony and good regulation amongst us; our men love and fear us, as we very justly do our superior officers; but we are in a most d--nable country, fit only for wolves and its native savages."--_Caledonian Mercury_, Sept 9, 1768.

For many a year after, Ticonderoga found a terrible echo in the hearts of the Highlanders; a cry for vengeance, as if it had been a great national affront, went throughout the glens, and in an incredibly short space of time more than a thousand clansmen volunteered to join the regiment. So the King's warrant came to form them into a second battalion; and it was further enacted that "from henceforth our said regiment be called and distinguished by the title and name of our 42nd, or _Royal Highland Regiment of Foot_, in all commissions, orders, and writings. Given at our Court of Kensington, this 22nd day of July, 1758, in the thirty-second year of our reign." Blue facings now replaced the buff hitherto worn by the corps.

This warrant was issued while the survivors of Ticonderoga were encamped on the southern shore of Lake George.

In due time the tidings of this second repulse of the British troops before that fatal fortress reached the secluded manse on Tweedside; and from the cold and conventional detail of operations, as given in the official despatch of General Abercrombie, poor Lucy turned, with a pale cheek and anxious and haggard eyes, to the list of killed and wounded; and the appalling catalogue that appeared under the head of "Lord John Murray's Highlanders" struck terror to her soul. Her heart beat wildly, and her eyes grew dim; but mastering her emotion, the poor girl took in the fatal roll at a glance, and in a moment her eye caught the doubly distressing announcement--

"_Wounded severely, and since missing, Captain Adam White._"

"God help me now, father!" she exclaimed, and threw herself on the old man's breast; "he is gone for ever!"

"Missing!"

That term used in military returns and field reports to express the general absence of men dead or alive, struck a vague terror, mingled with hope, in the heart of Lucy Fleming. But then White was also _wounded_, and the dread grew strong in her mind that he might have bled to death, unseen or unknown, in some solitary place, with no kind hand near to soothe his dying agony or close his glazing eyes; and expiring thus miserably, have been left, like thousands of others, in that protracted war, unburied by the Red Indians--a prey to wolves and ravens, with the autumn leaves falling, and the rank grass sprouting among his whitened bones.

These thoughts, and others such as these, filled Lucy with a horror over which she brooded day and night; and it was in vain that her only surviving parent, the old minister,

"A father to the poor--a friend to all,"

sought to encourage her by rehearsing innumerable stories of those who had returned, in those days of vague and uncertain intelligence, after being mourned for and given up, yea, forgotten by their dearest friends and nearest relatives; but in the first paroxysm of her grief and terror Lacy refused to be consoled.

The name of the missing man was still borne in the Army List; and by the slaughter of Ticonderoga he was gazetted to the rank of brevet-major, and Oswald to a lieutenancy.

Then weeks and months slipped away, but Adam White was heard of no more.

Every hope that inventive kindness could suggest, or the uncertainty of war, time, and distance could supply, were advanced to soothe the sufferer, who caught at them fondly and prayerfully for a time; but suspense became sickening, and day by day these hopes grew fainter, till they died away at last.

The colonel of the regiment, Lieutenant-General Lord John Murray (son of John Duke of Athole, who, after the revolution, had been Lord High Commissioner to the Scottish Parliament), an officer who took a vivid interest in everything connected with his regiment, spared no exertion or expense to discover the missing officer; but, after a long correspondence with the Marquis de Montcalm, who commanded the French in America, M. Bourlemarque, who commanded near Lake Champlain, and the Comte de Montmorin, commandant of Ticonderoga, no trace of poor White could be discovered, as all prisoners had long since been transmitted to France.

At Chelsea, Lord John Murray appeared in the dark kilt and scarlet uniform of the regiment to plead the cause of its noble veterans who had been disabled at Ticonderoga; and becoming exasperated by the parsimony, partiality, and gross injustice of the Government of George II., a monarch who abhorred the Scots and loved the English but little, he generously offered "the free use of a cottage and garden to all 42nd men who chose to settle on his estates." Many accepted this reward, and the memory of their gallant colonel--the brother of the loyal and noble Tullybardin, who unfurled the royal standard in Glenfinnan--was long treasured by the men of the Black Watch.

But this tale, being a true narrative, though enrolled among our regimental legends, will not permit of many digressions.

White's name disappeared from the lists at last; another filled his place in the ranks, and after a time even the regiment ceased to speak of him, in the excitement of the new campaign in the West Indies, where, in the following year, 1759, the most of his friends fell in the attack on Martinique or the storming of Guadaloupe; and Jack Oswald, who was a strange and excitable character, becoming disgusted with the slowness of promotion, after being "rowed" one morning for absence from parade, sold out, left the service in a pet, became an amatory poet, and then a dangerous political writer, under the well-known _nom de plume_ of Sylvester Otway.

Long, sadly, and sorely did Lucy Fleming pine for the lost love of her youth. The mystery that involved his fate, and the snapping asunder of the hopes she had cherished for yearn, the shattering of the fairy altar on which she had garnered up these hopes, and all the secret aspirations of her girlish heart, affected her deeply. She had all the appearance of one who was dying of a broken-heart; and yet she did not so die. Many have perished of grief and of broken-hearts, but our fair friend with the black ringlets and the black eyes was not one of these.

In time she shook off her grief, as a rose shakes off the dew that has bent it down, and like the rose she raised her head again more beautiful and bright than ever; for her beauty was now chastened by a certain pensive sadness which made her very charming; and thus it was, that in the year 1761--three years after the fatal repulse of the British troops before Ticonderoga--she attracted especial attention at the Hague, whither her father, the amiable old minister, had gone for a season, leaving his well-beloved flock and sequestered manse upon the Scottish border, to benefit the health of his pale and drooping daughter. Being furnished with introductory letters from his friend Home, the author of "Douglas," who was then conservator of Scottish privileges at Campvere, the best society was open to them.

At the balls and routs of the Comte de Montmorin, the French resident, Lucy soon eclipsed all the blue-eyed belles of Leyden and the Hague. Enchanted by the charms of the beautiful brunette, their country-woman, a crowd of gay fellows belonging to the Scots brigade in the Dutch service followed her wherever she went; and those who saw her dancing the last cotillion by M. Brieul of Versailles, the fashionable composer of the day, or the stately and old-fashioned _minuet de la cour_, with the bucks of Stuart's regiments or MacGhie's musketeers, might have been pardoned for supposing that poor Adam White of Ours, and the dark days of Ticonderoga, were alike forgotten--as indeed they were; for Time, the consoler, was fast smoothing over the terrible memories of three years ago; and again Lucy could listen with a downcast eye and a half-smiling blush to the voice that spoke of love and admiration.

Thrice the Comte de Montmorin asked her hand in marriage, and thrice she refused him; but again monseigneur returned to the charge.

"Ah! mademoiselle," said he, "I am lured towards you as the poor moth is lured towards the light--as an eaglet soars towards the glorious sun--soars, but to sink panting and hopeless down to earth again. Never did a Guebre worship the sacred fire with half the tremulous ardour I worship you; for mine is a worship of the heart and soul--the love of father, lover, husband, and brother--all combined in one!"

"And so, M. le Comte, you do admire me," said Lucy, trembling.

"In that, Mademoiselle Fleming, I would only be as other men."

"I love you, mademoiselle."

"But so do many more."

"Mon Dieu! I know that too well; but none love as I do."

It was not in bombast like this that poor Adam White had wooed and won her love; yet in six months after her arrival at the Hague, to the dismay and discomfiture of six entire battalions of the Scots brigade--at least the officers thereof--she became the wife of M. le Comte Montmorin, Peer of France, Knight of St. Louis, and all the royal orders--he who in former days had been the trusty grenadier of Philipsburg and the resolute general at Ticonderoga; and though the old minister sorrowed in his heart for the brave and leal-hearted lad she had loved in other days, and who was buried in his soldier's grave so far away; and though he deemed, too, that the old manse by Tweedside would be lonely now, without her, as the count belonged to an ancient Protestant house in Lillebonne, and had a magnificent fortune, et cetera, he had no solid objection to offer; and so he pronounced the irrevocable nuptial blessing, and handed over his last tie on earth--the last flower of a little flock who were all sleeping "in the auld kirkyard at hame," to the titled stranger.

On the occasion the Scots brigade consoled themselves by giving a magnificent ball; and none danced more merrily thereat than the friend of the lost lover, Jack Oswald, late of Ours, who had been taken prisoner during some of his wanderings, and sent to France; but had made his escape in the disguise of a poissard, and was wandering home, _viá_ the Hague and Rotterdam.

"Poor Adam fell at Ticonderoga," said he, in a pause of the dancing--"I saw him knocked on the head--'tis well he lived not to see this day!"

"But the count is so rich!" said a disappointed man of the Scots brigade.

"Tush!" snarled Oswald, "the fellow is a mere Frenchman--a heartless fool, who would laugh in the face of a corpse, as old Inveraw of Ours used to say."

Let us change the scene to a period of thirty-one years after.

It is now the year 1789.

M. le Comte de Montmorin, a venerable peer, was then the secretary of state for the foreign department under Louis XVI. Madame la Comtesse, after being long the mirror of Parisian fashion, had become a staid and noble matron, with a son in the French Guards, and two marriageable daughters, the belles of Paris. The old minister, their grandsire, had long since been gathered to his fathers, and was sleeping far away, among the long grass and the mossy headstones of his old grey kirk on bonny Tweedside. Another occupied his humble manse, another preacher his pulpit, and other faces filled the old oak pews around it.

The horrors of the French Revolution were bursting over Paris!

The absolute power of the crown of the Louis; the overweening privileges of a proud nobility and of a dissipated clergy, with their total exemption from all public burdens, and the triple tyranny under which the people groaned, had made all Frenchmen mad. A determined and fierce contest among the different orders of society ensued; the mobs rose in arms, and the troops joined them. A new constitution was demanded, and equality of ranks formed its basis; for the cry was,

"Vive the people! down with the rich, the noble, and the aristocrats!"

The flower of the French nobles either perished on the scaffold or fled for safety and for foreign aid; the King himself became a fugitive, but was arrested on the frontiers and brought back to Paris. The streets of that city swam in blood, and the son of Lucy Fleming, a brave young chevalier, perished at the head of his company in defending the beautiful Marie Antoinette, and his head was made a foot-ball by the rabble along the Rue St. Jacques. A thousand times Lucy urged her husband to fly, for Paris had become a mere human shambles, but the determined old soldier of Ticonderoga and Quebec stood by his miserable king, and coolly proceeded each day to the foreign office on foot; for the mobs systematically murdered every aristocrat who dared to appear in a carriage, sacrificing even the valets and horses to their mad resentment.

In July, a vast armed multitude assailed the Bastille, and foremost among the assailants was a Scottish gentleman--known by many as the notorious Sylvester Otway; by others as Jack Oswald of the Black Watch.

After quitting the regiment, this remarkable man (whose father was the keeper of John's coffee-house at Edinburgh) had made himself perfect master of the Greek, Latin, and Arabic languages; and he became a vegetarian, in imitation of the Brahmins, some of whose opinions he had imbibed during service in India. He became a violent political pamphleteer, and on the outbreak of the French Revolution repaired at once to Paris, where his furious writings procured him immediate admission into the Jacobin club, in all the transactions of which he took a leading part, and was appointed to the command of a regiment of infantry, which was raised from the refuse, the savage and infamous population of the purlieus of Paris; and they marched sans breeches, shoes, and often sans shirts, with their hair loose, and their arms, faces, and breasts smeared with red paint, blood, and gunpowder.

At the head of this rabble, on the evening of the 14th of July, Oswald appeared with other leaders before the walls of the terrible Bastille; and bearing in his hand a white flag of truce, summoned the governor, the Marquis de Launay, "to surrender in the name of the sovereign people;" but that noble proudly and recklessly despised this motley rout of armed citizens, and opened a fire upon them. The cannon taken from the Hotel des Invalides soon effected a breach, and a private of the French Guards, with John Oswald, the _ci-devant_ lieutenant of the Black Watch, were the two first men who entered the place. The poor garrison were all slaughtered or taken prisoners; among the latter were De Launay, his master-gunner, and two veteran soldiers, who were dragged to the Place de la Grêve and ignominiously beheaded.

The terrible Bastille, for centuries the scene of so many horrors, and the receptacle of broken hearts, was demolished, sacked, and ruined! The most active in that demolition was the author of "Euphrosyne," and the "Cry of Nature"--the wild enthusiast, John Oswald. Intent on releasing the suffering captives who were believed to be immured there, he hurried, sword in hand, from tower to tower, from cell to cell, and vault to vault; through staircases and corridors, dark, damp, and horrible, where for ages the bloated spider had spun her web, and the swollen rat squattered in the damp and slime that distilled from the massive walls to make a hideous puddle on the floors of clay, amid which the bones of many a hapless wretch, forgotten and nameless now, lay steeping with their rusted chains.

In one of these, the darkest, lowest, and most pestilential--for it was subject to the tides of the Seine, where the oozing water dropped from the vaulted roof, where the cold slimy reptiles crawled, and where the massive walls were wet with dripping slime--he found a human being, almost an idiot, chained to a block of stone. He was old; his hair and beard were white as the thistle-down: he seemed a living corpse; his aspect was terrible, for existence seemed a miracle, a curse in such a place; and on being brought to upper earth and air by these blood-steeped men of the people, he became senseless and swooned.

Three other prisoners were found, and then, to its lowest vaults, the infamous Bastille was levelled--even to its base, and its records of tyranny, torture, suffering, human crime, and inhuman horror perished with it.

"The only State prisoners, where so many were supposed to have entered," says the _Edinburgh Magazine_ for that year, "the only prisoners that were forthcoming in the general delivery amounted to four! Major White and Lord Mazarine were two out of that number. The first gentleman, a native of Scotland, was in durance for the space of twenty-eight years; he had never in that time been heard of by his friends, nor in the least expected thus to be enthralled. When restored to liberty, he appeared to have lost his mental powers, and even the vernacular sounds of his own language. The Duke of Dorset has taken him under his direct protection; this is unasked, and therefore the more honourable."

So this miserable wreck, aged, pale, and wan, worn almost to a skeleton, nearly nude, with his limbs fretted by iron fetters, and all but fatuous; insane, and with scarcely a memory of his native tongue or past existence; in whose eyes the light of life and intelligence seemed dead, and who had forgotten the days when he could weep or feel, was our long-lost comrade, the soldier of Ticonderoga?

Inspired by just indignation, and determined to unravel this terrible mystery, the Duke of Dorset took him in a fiacre to the hotel of the Comte de Montmorin, the only minister then in Paris, to demand the reason of this outrage upon the laws of war, of peace, and of common humanity; but the official of the unfortunate Louis could only shrug his shoulders, make the usual grimaces and apologies, and plead, that as the records of the Bastille had perished in the sack of that prison, it was totally beyond his power to explain the affair; for not a scrap of paper remained to show how or why this brave officer of the Black Watch, who had been wounded and taken prisoner in action in 1758, should have been found in that dreadful place thirty-one years after. The Duke of Dorset perceived, with surprise, that while speaking the Comte de Montmorin was ghastly pale, and that his eyes were filled with terror. It would have made a fine subject for a painter, but a finer still for a novelist--the delineation of this interview, as it took place in the drawing-room of the Hotel de Montmorin on the morning after the demolition of the Bastille.

The unfortunate victim of a government which had long made that infamous prison an engine of tyranny, was introduced by our proud and determined ambassador, who spoke for him in no measured tones; for alas! the poor major could scarcely put three words together, and for some hours seemed to have forgotten the sound of his own voice.

In the stately and now elderly French lady seated on the gilt fauteuil, between her shrieking and pitying daughters, clad in her high stays, hooped petticoat, and figured satin, with an esclavage round her neck, and her white hair powdered and towered up into a mountain of curls, flowers, and feathers, à la Marquise de Pompadour, it was impossible for Adam White to recognise the once beautiful and black-eyed Lucy of his youth--the simple Scottish girl of the quiet old manse on Tweedside, for whom his sorrowing heart had yearned with agony, in the long and dreary days of captivity, and in the longer watches of the silent night, until love and youth and blessed hope all passed away together.

It was as difficult for her to trace in that wan, aged, and resuscitated man, the handsome young officer who had left her side to fight Britain's battles under Amherst and the hero of Quebec. She was now a white-haired matron, and he a wild-eyed, haggard old man--old by premature years, for eight-and-twenty in the Bastille had crushed him by a load of unavailing care and sorrow. How many seasons had passed over that dark and vaulted solitude during which his pained and weary eyes had never met a friendly smile, or his ear welcomed a kindly greeting.

Eight-and-twenty summers had bloomed and withered, and eight-and twenty winters had spread their snows upon the hills! In that long space of time, how many had been wedded and given in marriage, or been laid in their last homes?--how many of the brave and good, the noble and the beautiful, had gone to "the Land of the Leal," where there is no dawning or gloaming, where the sun shines for ever, and the flowers never die!

For eight-and-twenty years all the pulses of life had seemed to stand still; and now, under their changed aspect and character, and ignorant of each other's presence, Lucy Fleming and Adam White stood within the same apartment, without a glance of recognition. Weak, tottering, and frail, White was placed in a chair, and the countess brought wine to him from a side table. His aspect was that of a dying man; her eyes were full of pity, and her daughters wept to see this poor old man, whose wandering faculties were awaking to a new existence after the long and dreamless sleep of eight-and-twenty years, and to whom the upper air, the blessed sunshine, and the twitter of the happy birds, were all as strange and new as if he had never known them.

"Your name, monsieur le prisonnier?" asked her husband, coldly, and with averted eye.

"Adam White--yes, yes--I am sure it was so--Adam White; once a major in the 42nd Regiment of his Britannic Majesty George II.," he replied, with great difficulty and long pauses.

"George II. has been dead these twenty-eight years, sir," replied the Duke of Dorset, kindly placing an arm upon his shoulder, while, with outspread hands and eyes dilated with terror, the countess started back as if a spectre had risen before her.

"Dead! dead!" muttered the major. "I too have been dead, I think--and who now is on the throne?"

"His grandson, George III."

"Know you the crime for which you were arrested, monsieur?" asked the count, who did not seem to notice the agitation of the countess.

The sunken eyes of Major White flashed, but the emotion died at once, for his heart seemed broken and his spirit crushed.

"Crime!" said he; "I was wounded and taken in the assault on Ticonderoga by the Comte de Montmorin."

"I commanded there, and I am he."

"This was thirty-one years ago--my God! oh, my God!"

"Be calm, dear sir," said the Duke of Dorset.

"And you have been all that time in the Bastille?"

"Yes, monseigneur."

"Horrible!" exclaimed the duke.

"You were arrested"--

"One night in the streets of Paris, near the Port St. Antoine, when I was at liberty upon parole, as a prisoner of war."

"When was this?"

"In 1761--three years after Ticonderoga."

"Ah, we had peace with Britain in 1768," said the count, averting his eyes, and endeavouring to assume a composure which he did not feel under the keen scrutiny of Dorset's eye. "And so we meet again--fortune has cast us together once more."

"Fortune--say rather fatality," replied White, as some old memory shook his withered heart.

"Did you ever hear how or why you were arrested?"

"Once, and once only--I was told--I was told that it was on the authority of a _lettre de cachet_, filled up by King Louis in the name of the Comte de Montmorin."

"It is an infamous falsehood!" exclaimed the count, passionately.

"Perhaps so," sighed White, meekly; "the man who told me so has been dead twenty-three years."

"And this arrest was"--

"On the anniversary of Ticonderoga--the night of the 15th of July, 1761."

"The 15th of July!" exclaimed the countess, wildly, and in a piercing voice; "on the morning of that very day my desk was rifled of your letters, and your miniature, Adam White!--O my friend--I see it all--I see this horrible mystery!"

White turned his hollow eyes and haggard visage towards her in wonder. He passed a hand repeatedly across his eyes, as if to clear his thoughts, then shook his white head, and relapsed into dreamy vacancy. After a painful pause, "That voice," said he, "is like one which used to come to me often--very often--in the Bastille; in my dreams it used to mingle with the rustle of the straw I slept on."

He smiled with so ghastly an expression that the Duke of Dorset grew pale with anger and compassion. He had gleaned from White the story of his life, and discovered in a moment that the countess was the Lucy Fleming of his early love; and that the count, on discovering the wounded and long-missing major to be in Paris in 1761, to preclude all chance of the lovers ever meeting again, had consigned him to the Bastille, there to be detained for life, as it was termed "IN SECRET."

"Monseigneur," said he, sternly, "I see a clue to this dark story; and believe me, that the king, whom I have the honour to represent, will take sure vengeance for this act of more than Italian jealousy, and for an atrocity which cannot be surpassed in the annals of yonder accursed edifice, which the mob of yesterday have happily hurled to the earth."

With these words he retired, taking with him Adam White, who seemed reduced to mere childhood, for recollection and animation came upon him only by gleams and at unexpected times. As they withdrew, the countess turned away in horror from her husband, and fainted in the arms of her terrified daughters.

The inquiry threatened by our ambassador was never made. Paris was then convulsed, and France was trembling on the brink of anarchy, even as the weak Louis trembled on his crumbling throne. The exertions of his Grace of Dorset to unravel more of the mystery, and the fears of the Comte de Montmorin, were alike futile, for next morning the poor major was found dead in his bed. He had expired in the night. The sudden revulsion of feeling produced by a release, after so many years of blank captivity, had proved too much for his weak frame and shattered constitution. He was buried in the church of St. Germain de Prez; and when Oswald's sans-culottes lifted the dead man from the bed, to lay him in the humble shell provided by the curé of the parish, there dropped from his breast a locket It contained a miniature and a withered tress of black hair--the last mementoes left to him of all that he had loved in the pleasant days of youth and hope, and prized beyond even blessed hope itself, in the solitude and horror of the long years that had followed Ticonderoga. The ruffians who had desecrated the regal sepulchres of St. Denis respected the heritage of the dead soldier, so that the locket was buried with him; and there, in the ancient church of St. Germain, Oswald, the political enthusiast, interred his old and long-lost comrade with all the honours of war.

The stone which was erected in the church, and of which I have given the brief inscription, is said, traditionally, to have been the gift of a lady--who, need scarcely be mentioned. How long this lady and the count her husband survived the disclosures consequent to the destruction of the Bastille, I have no means of knowing; but French history has recorded the fate of Jack Oswald.

His two sons left Edinburgh and joined him at Paris, where, to illustrate the complete system of equality and fraternity, he made them both drummers in his regiment, among the soldiers of which his severe discipline soon rendered him unpopular; and on his attempting to substitute pikes for muskets, the whole battalion refused to obey, and then officers and men broke out into open mutiny.

"Colonel Oswald's corps," continues the editor of the "Scottish Biographical Dictionary," "was one of the first employed against the royalists in La Vendée, where he was killed in battle. It is said that his men took advantage of the occasion to rid themselves of their obnoxious commander, and to despatch also his two sons, and an English gentleman who was serving in his regiment."

And thus ends another legend of the Black Watch.

VIII.

ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN GRANT.

Colquhoun Grant, a captain of one of our battalion companies during the Peninsular war, was a hardy, active, strong, and handsome Highlander, from the wooded mountains that overlook Strathspey. Inured from childhood to the hardships and activity incidental to a life in the country of the clans, where the care of vast herds of sheep and cattle, or the pursuit of the wild deer from rock to rock, and from hill to hill, are the chief occupations of the people;--a deadly shot with either musket or pistol, and a complete swordsman, he was every way calculated to become an ornament to our regiment and to the service. General Sir William Napier, in the fourth volume of his "History of the Peninsular War," writes of him as "Colquhoun Grant, that celebrated scouting officer, in whom the utmost _daring_ was so mixed with subtlety of genius, and both so tempered by _discretion_, that it is difficult to say which quality predominated."

In the spring of 1812, when Lord Wellington crossed the Tagus, and entered Castello Branco, rendering the position of Marshal Marmont so perilous that he retired across the Agueda, by which the general of the allies, though his forces were spread over a vast extent of cantonments, was enabled to victual the fortresses of Ciudad Rodrigo and Almieda, the 42nd, or old Black Watch, were with the division of Lieutenant-General Grahame, of Lynedoch. The service battalion consisted of 1160 rank and file, and notwithstanding the fatigues of marching by day and night, of fording rivers above the waist-belt, and all those arduous operations by which Wellington so completely baffled and out-generalled Marmont in all his attempts to attack Rodrigo--movements in which the sagacity of the "Iron Duke" appeared so remarkable, that a brave old Highland officer (General Stewart of Garth) declared his belief that their leader had the _second sight_,--not a man of our regiment straggled or fell to the rear, from hunger, weariness, or exhaustion; all were with the colours when the roll was called in the morning.

The information that enabled Wellington to execute those skilful manoeuvres which dazzled all Europe, and confounded, while they baffled, the French marshal, was supplied from time to time by Colquhoun Grant, who, accompanied by Domingo de Leon, a Spanish peasant, had the boldness to remain in rear of the enemy's lines, watching all their operations, and noting their numbers; and it is a remarkable fact that while on this most dangerous service he constantly wore _the Highland uniform, with his bonnet and epaulettes_; thus, while acting as a scout, freeing himself from the accusation of being in any way a spy, "for," adds Napier, "he never would assume any disguise, and yet frequently remained for three days concealed in the midst of Marmont's camp."

Hence the secret of Wellington's facility for circumventing Marmont was the information derived from Colquhoun Grant; and the secret of Grant's ability for baffling the thousand snares laid for him by the French, was simply that he had a Spanish love, who watched over his safety with all a woman's wit, and the idolatry of a Spanish woman, who, when she loves, sees but _one_ man in the world--the object of her passion.

When Marmont was advancing, Wellington despatched Captain Grant to watch his operations "in the heart of the French army," and from among its soldiers to glean whether they really had an intention of succouring the garrison of Ciudad Rodrigo--a desperate duty, which, like many others, our hero undertook without delay or doubt.

Thus, on an evening in February, Grant found himself on a solitary mountain of Leon, overlooking the vast plain of Salamanca, on the numerous spires and towers of which the light of eve was fading, while the gilded vanes of the cathedral shone like stars in the deep blue sky that was darkening as the sun set behind the hills; and one of those hot dry days peculiar to the province gave place to a dewy twilight, when the Tormes, which rises among the mountains of Salamanca, and washes the base of the triple bill on which the city stands, grew white and pale, as it wandered through plains dotted by herds of Merino sheep, but destitute of trees, until it vanished on its course towards the Douro, on the frontiers of Portugal.

Exhausted by a long ride from Lord Wellington's head-quarters, and by numerous efforts he had made to repass the cordon of picquets and patrols by which the French--now on his track--had environed him, Grant lay buried in deep sleep, under the shade of some olive-trees, with a brace of pistols in his belt, his claymore by his side, and his head resting in the lap of a beautiful Spanish peasant girl, Juanna, the sister of his faithful Leon, a warm-hearted, brave, and affectionate being, who, like her brother, had attached herself to the favourite scouting officer of Wellington, and, full of admiration for his adventurous spirit, handsome figure, and winning manner, loved him with all the ardour, romance, and depth of which a Spanish girl of eighteen is capable.

Juanna de Leon and her brother Domingo were the children of a wealthy farmer and vine-dresser, who dwelt on the mountainous range known as the Puerto del Pico, which lies southward of Salamanca; but the vines had been destroyed, the _granja_ burned, and the poor old agriculturist was bayonetted on his hearthstone by some Voltigeurs of Marmont, under a Lieutenant Armand, when on a foraging expedition. Thus Juanna and her brother were alike homeless and kinless.

The girl was beautiful. Youth lent to her somewhat olive-tinted cheek a ruddy glow that enhanced the dusky splendour of her Spanish eyes; her lashes were long; her mouth small, and like a cherry; her chin dimpled; her hands were faultless, as were her ankles, which were cased in prettily embroidered red stockings, and gilt zapatas. With all these attractions she had a thousand winning ways, such as only a girl of Leon can possess. Close by lay the guitar and castanets with which she played and sung her weary lover to sleep.

Her brother was handsome, athletic, and resolute, in eye and bearing; but since the destruction of their house, he had become rather fierce and morose, as hatred of the invading French and a thirst for vengeance were ever uppermost in his mind. He had relinquished the vine-bill for the musket; his yellow sash bristled with pistols and daggers; and with heaven for his roof, and his brown Spanish mantle for a couch, he had betaken himself to the mountains, where he shot without mercy every straggling Frenchman who came within reach of his terrible aim.

While Grant slept, the tinkling of the vesper bells was borne across the valley, the sunlight died away over the mountains, and the winding Tormes, that shone like the coils of a vast snake, faded from the plain. The Spanish girl stooped and kissed her toil-worn lover's cheek, and bent her keen dark eyes upon the mountain path by which she seemed to expect a visitor.