The Lion of the North: A Tale of the Times of Gustavus AdolphusHenty, G. A. (George Alfred)
History
The Lion of the North: A Tale of the Times of Gustavus Adolphus
Henty, G. A. (George Alfred)
Gustav II Adolf, King of Sweden, 1594-1632 -- Fiction; Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648 -- Fiction
At five o'clock a tremendous cannonade was opened on the walls from all
the Swedish batteries, and under cover of the smoke the Green Brigade
advanced to the assault. From the circle of the walls a cloud of smoke
and fire broke out from cannon and arquebus, muskets, and wall pieces.
Sir John Hepburn and Colonel Lumsden, side by side, led on their
regiments against the Guben gate; both carried petards.
In spite of the tremendous fire poured upon them from the wall they
reached the gate, and the two colonels fixed the petards to it and
retired a few paces. In a minute there was a tremendous explosion, and
the gate fell scattered in fragments. Then the Scottish pikemen rushed
forward. As they did so there was a roar of cannon, and a storm of
bullets ploughed lanes through the close ranks of the pikemen, for the
Imperialists, expecting the attack, had placed cannon, loaded to the
muzzle with bullets, behind the gates.
Munro's regiment now leapt into the moat, waded across, and planting
their ladders under a murderous fire, stormed the works flanking the
gate, and then joined their comrades, who were striving to make an
entrance. Hepburn, leading on the pikemen, was hit on the knee, where he
had in a former battle been badly wounded.
“Go on, bully Munro,” he said jocularly to his old schoolfellow, “for I
am wounded.”
A major who advanced to take his place at the head of the regiment
was shot dead, and so terrible was the fire that even the pikemen of
Hepburn's regiment wavered for a moment; but Munro and Lumsden, with
their vizors down and half pikes in their hands, cheered on their men,
and, side by side, led the way.
“My hearts!” shouted Lumsden, waving his pike--“my brave hearts, let's
enter.”
“Forward!” shouted Munro; “advance pikes!”
With a wild cheer the Scots burst forward; the gates were stormed,
and in a moment the cannon, being seized, were turned, and volleys of
bullets poured upon the dense masses of the Imperialists. The pikemen
pressed forward in close column, shoulder to shoulder, the pikes
levelled in front, the musketeers behind firing on the Imperialists in
the houses.
In the meantime Gustavus, with the Blue and Yellow Swedish Brigades,
stormed that part of the wall defended by Butler with his Irishmen.
These fought with extreme bravery, and continued their resistance until
almost every man was killed, when the two brigades burst into the
town, the White Brigade storming the wall in another quarter. Twice the
Imperialist drums beat a parley, but their sound was deadened by the
roar of musketry and the boom of cannon from wall and battery, and the
uproar and shouting in every street and house. The Green Brigade, under
its commander, maintained its regular order, pressing forward with
resistless strength. In vain the Austrians shouted for quarter. They
were met by shouts of--“Remember New Brandenburg!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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