DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.70302#0469
ADVENTURES OF MRS. CHRISTIAN DAVIES.
423
having placed her children with a nurse, dressed herself
in a suit of her husband’s clothes. Thus equipped, she
repaired to an officer who was beating up for recruits, and
enlisted with him by the name of Christopher Welsh.
It was not lono- before she embarked with the other
recruits, and landing at Williamstadt in Holland, they
immediately proceeded to join the grand army, then
encamped at Landen, and on the eve of a general engage-
ment. In this battle our heroine received a wound from
a musket-ball a little above the ankle, which rendered
her incapable of service for two months.
In the course of the following summer she was taken
prisoner with a foraging party by the French, and carried
to St. Germain en Laye, but very soon exchanged. In
the winter of 1684, being in quarters at Gorcum, she made
love to the daughter of a burgher of that place, whose
affections she contrived to gain, as much by her spirit as
by the passion she pretended for her : for a serjeant of the
same regiment, having grossly insulted the girl, was
challenged and dangerously wounded by our heroine, who
was imprisoned as the aggressor. By a representation
of the circumstances, the burgher, however, procured her
release, but she was discharged from the regiment.
She now entered into Lord John Hayes’s dragoons ; and
after the taking of Namur a child was sworn to her, for
which, rather than betray the secret of her sex, she agreed
to provide ; but it died in a month, and thus delivered
her from that expence, though it left her the reputation of
being a father.
On the conclusion of the peace of Ryswick in 1697,
the army was disbanded, and our heroine repaired to her
native land, where she found means to see her mother,
children, and friends, without being known to them. It
was not long before the war of the Spanish succession
commenced ; and her martial inclination being awakened,
she
423
having placed her children with a nurse, dressed herself
in a suit of her husband’s clothes. Thus equipped, she
repaired to an officer who was beating up for recruits, and
enlisted with him by the name of Christopher Welsh.
It was not lono- before she embarked with the other
recruits, and landing at Williamstadt in Holland, they
immediately proceeded to join the grand army, then
encamped at Landen, and on the eve of a general engage-
ment. In this battle our heroine received a wound from
a musket-ball a little above the ankle, which rendered
her incapable of service for two months.
In the course of the following summer she was taken
prisoner with a foraging party by the French, and carried
to St. Germain en Laye, but very soon exchanged. In
the winter of 1684, being in quarters at Gorcum, she made
love to the daughter of a burgher of that place, whose
affections she contrived to gain, as much by her spirit as
by the passion she pretended for her : for a serjeant of the
same regiment, having grossly insulted the girl, was
challenged and dangerously wounded by our heroine, who
was imprisoned as the aggressor. By a representation
of the circumstances, the burgher, however, procured her
release, but she was discharged from the regiment.
She now entered into Lord John Hayes’s dragoons ; and
after the taking of Namur a child was sworn to her, for
which, rather than betray the secret of her sex, she agreed
to provide ; but it died in a month, and thus delivered
her from that expence, though it left her the reputation of
being a father.
On the conclusion of the peace of Ryswick in 1697,
the army was disbanded, and our heroine repaired to her
native land, where she found means to see her mother,
children, and friends, without being known to them. It
was not long before the war of the Spanish succession
commenced ; and her martial inclination being awakened,
she