The first piece of service he put me upon had like to have embroiled me with one of his favourite colonels.  The king was marching through the Bergstraet, a low country on the edge of the Rhine, and, as all men thought, was going to besiege Heidelberg, but on a sudden orders a party of his guards, with five companies of Scots, to be drawn out; while they were drawing out this detachment the king calls me to him, “Ho, cavalier,” says he, that was his usual word, “you shall command this party;” and thereupon gives me orders to march back all night, and in the morning, by break of day, to take post under the walls of the fort of Oppenheim, and immediately to entrench myself as well as I could.  Grave Neels, the colonel of his guards, thought himself injured by this command, but the king took the matter upon himself, and Grave Neels told me very familiarly afterwards, “We have such a master,” says he, “that no man can be affronted by.  I thought myself wronged,” says he, “when you commanded my men over my head; and for my life,” says he, “I knew not which way to be angry.”

I executed my commission so punctually that by break of day I was set down within musket-shot of the fort, under covert of a little mount, on which stood a windmill, and had indifferently fortified myself, and at the same time had posted some of my men on two other passes, but at farther distance from the fort, so that the fort was effectually blocked up on the land side.  In the afternoon the enemy sallied on my first entrenchment, but being covered from their cannon, and defended by a ditch which I had drawn across the road, they were so well received by my musketeers that they retired with the loss of six or seven men.

The next day Sir John Hepburn was sent with two brigades of foot to carry on the work, and so my commission ended.  The king expressed himself very well pleased with what I had done, and when he was so was never sparing of telling of it, for he used to say that public commendations were a great encouragement to valour.

While Sir John Hepburn lay before the fort and was preparing to storm it, the king’s design was to get over the Rhine, but the Spaniards which were in Oppenheim had sunk all the boats they could find.  At last the king, being informed where some lay that were sunk, caused them to be weighed with all the expedition possible, and in the night of the 7th of December, in three boats, passed over his regiment of guards, about three miles above the town, and, as the king thought, secure from danger; but they were no sooner landed, and not drawn into order, but they were charged by a body of Spanish horse, and had not the darkness given them opportunity to draw up in the enclosures in several little parties, they had been in great danger of being disordered; but by this means they lined the hedges and lanes so with musketeers, that the remainder had time to draw up in battalia, and saluted the horse with their muskets, so that they drew farther off.