Bidding farewell to the girl, under pretence of going to purchase a commission, Christian enlisted in the 6th Dragoons, commanded by Lord John Hayes, and served all through the campaign of 1695, including the siege of Namur. Nothing remarkable happened to her till the Peace of Ryswick, Sept. 20th, 1697, when she was discharged, and went home to Ireland. None of her friends recognised the stalwart dragoon as being identical with Mrs Welsh; so, in place of claiming her property she found other means of support, until the War of the Spanish Succession broke out, in 1701. Returning to Holland, Christian re-enlisted in the 6th Dragoons.
She served through the campaigns of 1701-2, under the Duke of Marlborough, without being wounded. She was one of the captors of Venlo, Sept. 23rd, 1702, which proved a profitable investment for the English, for they found more than thirty pieces of cannon, twenty thousand florins, and a quantity of plate and jewellery. Christian complains that, the Grenadiers having the start of the Dragoons, she "got very little of the plunder." "I got, however," she confesses, "a large silver chalice and some other pieces of plate," which prize was sufficient to console her.
The Dragoons wintered at Venlo, and a night or two after their arrival she was ordered, with others, to escort the Duke of Marlborough along the banks of the Meuse. "During our march," says Christian, "by the darkness of the night we mistook our way, and going up the country fell in with a hogstye where was a sow with five pigs, one of which I made bold with. I was possessed of it some time," she adds, "when one Taylor, a corporal belonging to Brigadier Panton's Regiment of Horse, attempted to spoil me of my booty, whereupon some words arising, he drew, and made a stroke at my head, which I warding with my hand, had the sinew of my little finger cut in two; at the same time, with the butt-end of my pistol I struck out one of his eyes." Pretty discipline for British soldiers!
After serving all through the campaign of 1703, including the battle of Eckeren, and the sieges of Bonn and Lembourg, she was wounded in the hip at the battle of Donawert, July 2nd, 1704. The musket-ball lodged so firmly in the bone that the efforts of three surgeons in the hospital near Schellenberg were insufficient to extract it. Christian with difficulty warded off the discovery of her sex.