“Here they fell at once upon the Poles, who were working busily at their trenches, and for a time gained a footing there; but a deadly fire of musketry with showers of arrows and stones, opened upon them from all points, compelled the Scots to recoil from the trenches, when they were instantly attacked by crowds of horsemen in mail shirts and steel caps.  Hepburn drew off his men till they reached a rock on the plateau, and here they made their stand, the musketeers occupying the rock, the pikemen forming in a wall around it.

“They had brought with them the portable chevaux-de-frise carried by the infantry in the Swedish service.  They fixed this along in front, and it aided the spearmen greatly in resisting the desperate charges of the Polish horsemen.  Hepburn was joined by Colonel Mostyn, an Englishman, and Count Brahe, with 200 German arquebusiers, and this force for two days withstood the incessant attacks of the whole of the Polish army.

“While this desperate strife was going on, and the attention of the enemy entirely occupied, Gustavus managed to pass a strong force of men and a store of ammunition into the town, and the Poles, seeing that he had achieved his purpose, retired unmolested.  In every battle which Gustavus fought Hepburn bore a prominent part.  He distinguished himself at the storming of Kesmark and the defeat of the Poles who were marching to its relief.

“He took part in the siege and capture of Marienburg and in the defeat of the Poles at Dirschau.  He was with Leslie when last year he defended Stralsund against Wallenstein, and inflicted upon the haughty general the first reverse he had ever met with.  Truly Hepburn has won his honours by the edge of the sword.”

“Wallenstein is the greatest of the Imperial commanders, is he not?” Farquhar asked.

“He and Tilly,” Munro replied. “’Tis a question which is the greatest.  They are men of a very different stamp.  Tilly is a soldier, and nothing but a soldier, save that he is a fanatic in religion.  He is as cruel as he is brave, and as portentously ugly as he is cruel.

“Wallenstein is a very different man.  He has enormous ambition and great talent, and his possessions are so vast that he is a dangerous subject for any potentate, even the most powerful.  Curiously enough, he was born of Protestant parents, but when they died, while he was yet a child, he was committed to the care of his uncle, Albert Slavata, a Jesuit, and was by him brought up a strict Catholic.  When he had finished the course of his study at Metz he spent some time at the University of Altdorf, and afterwards studied at Bologna and Padua.  He then travelled in Italy, Germany, France, Spain, England, and Holland, studying the military forces and tactics of each country.

“On his return to Bohemia he took service under the Emperor Rudolph and joined the army of General Basta in Hungary, where he distinguished himself greatly at the siege of Grau.  When peace was made in 1606 Wallenstein returned to Bohemia, and though he was but twenty-three years old he married a wealthy old widow, all of whose large properties came to him at her death eight years afterwards.