On the day immediately after the review, Sir Donald, with seven companies of the regiment, was ordered to cross the Elbe, leave two companies at Stade, and march towards the Weser, where he joined the troops of that valiant Welsh veteran, old General Morgan, who with four strong battalions lay above Bremen, watching the Imperialists. King Christian was determined we should suffer in detail, and suffer sorely, for our stubborn pride in the affair of the colours; thus, while the main body of the Danish army occupied Stade, the second city in the duchy of Bremen, our company of M'Farquhars, with the wing of the regiment under the major, marched to Lauenburg, the capital of a duke who there levies a toll upon the Elbe. There the colonel joined us with one company from the Weser, leaving the other four to defend Boitzenburg, for which place Ian was ordered to march the M'Farquhars with all speed, as sergeant-major Dunbar was to be assailed by the Imperialists under the famous Count of Carlstein, who, with Tilly and the main army, was pressing forward, to drive back all the outposts of the Protestant king, to penetrate into Holstein and the Danish isles. On these marches our soldiers behaved with admirable order; there was no marauding, for, though their pay was small, our poor Highlanders were moderate in their desires. Each carried a small havresack filled with Hamburg meal, and a little of that mixed in water, morning and evening, contented them. The ability with which they could endure long abstinence and hard marching, is remarkable; for in the olden time the Celtic huntsman took but one meal in the day--his _diot mhor_. But there was a Lowland pikeman, Dandy Dreghorn, who, being unable to practise such abstinence, found himself impelled to swallow a whole bowl of cream, in a certain dorpe through which we passed; for this he was ordered to run the gauntlet, and that no taint of degradation from the stripes might remain, I was required (according to the custom of war) to wave thrice the ensign of St. Andrew above his head. It was about the sunset of an evening in the middle of July, 1627, when we approached Boitzenburg, which is a small town of Mecklenburg-shwerin, pleasantly situated at the junction of the Boitze with the Elbe, the passage of which we were to defend against the Imperialists, until the last man of us had kissed the sod, for so were our orders worded. A vast force under Tilly was approaching Denmark from the centre of Germany, and one of those columns, destined to pass the Elbe and Weser, under the great Count of Carlstein, was marching directly upon the point we were to bar. As the count was determined at all risks to pass the stream, our somewhat forlorn duty was destined to be hard and hazardous; but the affair of the colours still rankled in the mind of King Christian, and he had resolved, and even said to Lord Nithsdale, that "the regiment of Strathnaver should pay dearly for its Scottish pride!"