Cardinal de Lavalette, who commanded us, was a son of the famous Duc d'Epernon, and was particularly an adherent and friend of Cardinal Richelieu. With Sir John Hepburn, he had under his baton, another Camp-Marechal, the Viscount de Turenne, whose military genius and brilliant valour rendered him almost the equal of that great cavalier whom a cannon-shot at the siege of Zaberne was to send prematurely to his grave. The general of the Imperialists was Mathias Count Gallas, a native of Trent, whose reputation and long career of severe and successful service, rendered him a formidable antagonist to the young Cardinal, whose army was to act in conjunction with the Swedes under the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, and to add Alsace to the new conquests of France, whose frontier Richelieu had sworn should be the Rhine. Though Count Gallas had been guilty of great cruelty in Saxony, the brilliance of his achievements in Bohemia, the skill with which he invested Lauff, and pushed the siege of Mantua, and the greatness of mind he displayed in releasing old Count Thurn, because he would not see a brave enemy perish on the scaffold, together with his fine order of battle at Nordlingen, had gained him such a reputation, that the veteran General Leganez, exclaimed, 'The best officer in the world might learn something from Gallas!' His head-quarters were now at Worms, from whence he sent out strong detachments to ravage all the country and capture the places still held by the Swedes, before they could be joined by their new allies the French. He stormed Keizar-Loutar; invested Deux-Ponts; and after forcing Count Mansfeldt's lines before Mentz, threw supplies into the city, and thus stood matters when our army halted on the frontier of Alsace. Having heard from our spies that a thousand of Gallas' cavalry horses were at grass in a verdant hollow near Ingwieler, a little town on the Motter, a tributary of the Rhine, I conceived the idea of decoying, and bringing them all to Lavalette's head-quarters. Full of ardour and enthusiasm, I burned for an opportunity to distinguish myself; and accustomed as I had been to border picqueering and foraging, it seemed an expedition adapted to my skill and capacity. Sir Quentin Home and Lord Dundrennan (they were a pair of inseparables), Raynold Cheyne of Dundargle, the Chevalier, Tushielaw, and another spirit equally reckless, insisted on accompanying me; and on obtaining permission from the Marquis our captain, and from Camp-Marechal Hepburn, we prepared at once to put our scheme in force--quietly and deliberately as we would have done in other days to cross the English frontier, and drive home the fatted beeves of the western wardenrie. 'War is full of rules for practice Mr. Blane,' said the Marquis, as he gave me leave; 'yet it is without any fixed principle; so in this bold stratagem, I trust entirely to your perspicacity, your discernment, and bravery.'