"Les Ecossais, retreat!" exclaimed Conté. "'Tis a miracle. Tête Dieu! 'tis surely a bad cause, when the hand of Heaven is against them!"
The Scottish regiments of Coutts, Mackay, Angus, Grahame, and Leven, were cut to pieces, and the English Guards nearly shared the same fate. James Earl of Angus, a brave youth in his twenty-first year, was shot dead at the head of his Cameronians, William Stuart Viscount of Montjoy, Sir Robert Douglas, Lieutenant-General James Douglas, Sir John Lanier, Colonel Lauder, and many other brave Scottish gentlemen were slain, while the Prince de Conté bore all before him.
With the gallant Prince of Wirtemburg it fared otherwise. Pressing onward at the head of his English, he carried off some of the French artillery, and after immense slaughter, stormed the intrenchment which covered their position, but finding himself in danger of being overpowered, he twice sent his aide-de-camp to crave succour from the phlegmatic William and from Count Solmes, a noble of the House of Nassau. Twice over a field that was strewn with thousands of dead and dying, and swept by the fire of so many thousand musquets, cannon, and coehorns, the brave aide spurred his horse to beg succour for the prince his master; but William neglected, and the Dutch noble derided his request.
"Vivat Wirtemburg!" cried Solmes, laughing; "let us see what sport his English bulldogs will make."
At length William shook off the inertness that seemed to possess his faculties amid the storm of war that raged around him, and in person ordered Solmes to sustain the advance of the left wing which Wirtemburg had led on so successfully. Thus urged, the unwilling Lord of Brunsveldt, made an unavailing movement with his cavalry, but left a few English and Danes to sustain the whole brunt of the battle.
Amid the dense smoke that rolled in white clouds and concealed the adverse lines, their carnage and its horrors, again and again the brave old Laird of Scoury led his squadrons to the charge, resolved to force the passage to turn the flank of Luxembourg or die, and again they were repulsed from the abbatis by the courage of the desperate Cavaliers. As yet, not one trooper had penetrated among them, though hundreds and their horses lay groaning and rolling in the agonies of death, entangled among the apple-laden branches of the prostrate trees, grasping and rending them with their teeth in the tortures of dissolution. As yet not one of the Scottish exiles had fallen; but now Mackay ordered a body of his dragoons to dismount, to unsling their short fusees, and from behind the piles of dead and dying men and chargers, to fire upon the abbatis which could afford no protection against bullets.