Though still suffering
from his wound, Hephurn was ordered to prepare for another arduous
duty—the reinforcing of Marshal Horne, who with a strong column of
cavalry had blocked up Landsberg, a town on the eastern bank of the
Oder, where colonel the Count Gratz commanded five thousand Imperial
infantry, and twelve troops of horse.
Leaving Major-General Leslie at Frankfort, and Sir John Banier to
command the army, Gustavus selected three thousand two hundred
musketeers, eight hundred of Dewbatte's horse, and twelve pieces of
cannon, to-be commanded by a famous artillerist, Colonel Leonard
Tortensohn.
Hepburn was so weak that he could scarcely sit on his horse, and was
compelled to ride slowly; but he paraded and inspected these troops
at grey daybreak on the 5th of April, and saw that they were well
furnished with ammunition and matches, pickaxes, shovels,
sledgehammers, and scaling-ladders. He chose Lieutenant-Colonel
Munro as his second; and having reported to the King that all were
in fighting order, on procuring as guide a blacksmith who had
formerly resided in Landsberg, the command was given to "march.”
After traversing a long and wearying route of more than forty miles
in two days, they halted before Landsberg, having repelled on the
march an attack of the bold and hardy Croats. These irregular troops
were usually ordered on every desperate service, as their mode of
fighting resembled that of the ferocious Pan-dours. They wore short
doublets, and corslets of steel, long white breeches, and fur caps;
their arms were long matchlocks with rifled barrels, sabres and
poniards— plunder was their only pay, and sole incentive to war.
Leading on the advanced guard, Hepburn routed them and slew their
colonel. They retreated towards Landsberg hallooing in a wild mob,
keeping up an incessant fire, and breaking down or blowing up all
the bridges,— a measure which retarded the march of the troops and
the transmission of their cannon.
Landsberg, situated on the Warta, had long been famous for the
manufacture of iron culverins, and Gustavus had twice failed in his
attempts to take it. Three years had been spent by the Imperial
engineers in fortifying it, and all the peasantry, for ten miles
around, had been forced into their service as pioneers and sappers.
To Gustavus it had long been a barrier, as it secured Pomerania,
overawed the Mark, and formed the key to Silesia.
Sir John Hepburn took up a position on one side of the town with his
column of musketeers, while Marshal Horne had already occupied the
other with his troopers.
A strong sconce, or redoubt, fortified with cannon, and having a
graff or wet ditch, (through which ran a rapid stream,) lay in front
of the town, barring the principal approach; and before this
Lieutenant-colonel Munro ran his parallels, and got his troops
intrenched, with the loss of six men only.
By daybreak next morning this active cavalier had the twelve pieces
of cannon mounted on a high platform, from which they battered the
sconce; but so thick was the bank, and so solid its face of masonry,
that Gustavus (who had passed the night at a neighbouring village)
was again compelled to have recourse to the blacksmith, who offered
to point out a private entrance if a floating bridge was constructed
to cross the water, which then covered all a deep morass that
defended the town, and flanked the sconce or redoubt in front of it.
Lieutenant-Colonels Munro and Dewbattel (the former with two hundred
and fifty pikemen, the latter with two hundred and fifty dragoons)
at nightfall crossed this dangerous place by a hastily-constructed
floating bridge, which formed an uncertain and unsteady path, that
sunk and rose alternately among the turgid water of the starlit
swamp; and the heavier ranks of the mail-clad horsemen made it surge
and sink among the mud and water, more deeply than the measured
tread of the Scottish pikemen; but under the blacksmith’s guidance,
without losing a man, the first column reached the skirts of the
town in safety. Hepburn followed with the second, which consisted of
a thousand select musketeers, as the King depended most on him.
All was still and silent in the dark streets of the town, which
bordered close on the swamp; but the gleam of arms, and the moving
of a gloomy column of troops, was soon visible by the dim starlight;
and Munro with his pikemen fell briskly on them. They proved to be
three hundred Imperialists, about to make a sally under the young
Colonel Gratz, son of the governor.
A short but desperate conflict ensued. Munro cut off the Austrians,
and killed their leader, losing only thirty of his own men, who fell
by the first fire. Hurrying on, when he heard the din of this
contest, and saw the flashing of the musketry that reddened the
darkened thoroughfares, Hepburn marched between the town and the
redoubt, which he thus assailed in rear, and stormed in three
minutes, making all within it prisoners. These, with their officers,
in the true Germanic mercenary spirit, immediately offered to take
service under Sweden,—an offer which Hepburn accepted in the name of
Gustavus.
His sudden capture of the sconce on one side, with the approaches of
Marshal Home on the other, compelled the old Count of Gratz to send
a drummer to Munro to beg for terms. His eyes were bound up with a
scarf, and he was conducted to Gustavus, who required an immediate
capitulation of the town; at the same time he thanked Munro and
Dewbattel for their good service, "with large promises of reward;
and to Colonel Hepburn also, for taking in of the Skonce.”
At eight o’clock next morning the Count of Gratz, leaving his
gallant son lying shot in the streets behind him, at the head of his
soldiers, marched out with the honours of war, having all their
baggage with them, and
four field-pieces, with four balls and charges of powder for each.
They crossed the Warta with all their drums beating and colours
displayed, (the white standard with the black Austrian eagle,) on
their march to Great Glogau, in Silesia; and such was the state of
morality among the Imperialists, that with this small garrison there
came forth no less than two thousand female camp-followers. "Thus,”
saith the Swedish Intelligencer, "was a goodly towne and a strong
most basely given vpe by a company of cullions.”
Next day (Sunday) Sir John Hepburn and all the officers had a jovial
meeting in one of the best houses in Landsberg, of which they made
the blacksmith burgomaster, with a largesse of two hundred ducats.
Leaving a garrison there, the detachments on the 18th April
commenced their march back to Frankfort, and rejoined their main
body under General Banier; and on the 29th the whole Swedish army
marched for Berlin. A brief halt was made at Panco, a hunting-house
of the Duke of Brandenburg, to induce him to join the Swedes. Three
days were given him to consider; but persuasion proved unavailing,
although he had put Gustavus in possession of Spandau, a strong
square citadel, having four ramparts forty feet high, overlooking
the confluence of the Havel and the Spree, with one hundred and
fifty pieces of cannon, and having an arsenal for arming twenty
thousand horse and foot.
Sir John Hepburn’s brigade formed part of the force that invested
Berlin, which, even then, was one of the most beautiful of the
German cities, and possessed a stately palace, with the old castle
of Joachim II., who was poisoned there by a Jew in 1572. Alarmed by
this hostile movement of Gustavus, the duke, George-William, sent
his duchess to entreat forbearance; but the Swedish monarch was
inexorable, and the forces of Brandenburg were forced to join his
banner. This prince was a zealous Protestant, and in an assembly
held at Leipzig endeavoured to effect a union between the Lutherans
and Calvinists,—a proposal which the jealousies of the clergy
rendered vain.
In July, Hepburn was ordered with his brigade to Old Brandenburg,
thirty-four miles west from Berlin; and after an easy march of three
days, halting by night in the villages, he arrived there without
molestation, and remained until quite cured of his wound. At that
ancient city of the Prussian States, which is situated in the
fertile Middle Mark, and is divided by the waters of the Havel,
Gustavus had ordered a general rendezvous of his army, calling in
all detachments and outposts, previous to those operations against
the great Austrian general which ended in the decisive field of
Leipzig.
Owing to the swampy state of the morasses amidst which the city
stood, (the houses being built on piles set in the water, which at
certain seasons found its way within the walls, and flowed like a
river through the damp and slimy streets,) a deadly pestilence had
broken out, and the inhabitants were dying by hundreds. A thick
vapour, exhaled from the marshes of the Havel, had settled over the
gloomy city and all the country around it; but above this
pestilential fog, the spire of the old cathedral church stood forth,
a landmark to the marching troops a& they approached it by the
Berlin road.
Hepburn encamped the brigade in the open fields, beyond the
influence of the malaria and its scourge; but on being ordered to
work as pioneers at the fortifications, the pest immediately began
to thin the ranks of his three regiments. Thirty of Munro’s
musketeers died in one week, with Robert Munro, a Fourrier de
Campement and Sergeant Robert Munro, son of the Laird of Culcraig—for
many gentlemen of good family u trailed a pike in the ranks of
Hepburn until commissions became vacant.
About this time one of those volunteers was ignominiously hanged at
Stettin, the capital of Pomerania, for having, contrary to the rules
of war, beaten an insolent boor on whom he was billeted. He had been
"well bred by his parents at home" and had also studied in France.
He had served with distinction under the King of Denmark, especially
at the siege of Stralsund, where he received a wound in the left
arm, of which he never fully recovered the use. His youth and
bravery brought the fair Duchess of Pomerania, and many noble
ladies, to plead for his life: but they sued in vain; and the poor
Scottish pikeman was hanged, "because the governor, being a churlish
Swede, would not remit the satisfaction due to his Majesty.” |