about eleven
o'clock at night
While Sir John Hepburn lay before the fort and was preparing to storm it , the king 's design was to get over the Rhine , but the Spaniards which were in Oppenheim had sunk all the boats they could find . At last the king , being informed where some lay that were sunk , caused them to be weighed with all the expedition possible , and in the night of the 7th of December , in three boats , passed over his regiment of guards , about three miles above the town , and , as the king thought , secure from danger ; but they were no sooner landed , and not drawn into order , but they were charged by a body of Spanish horse , and had not the darkness given them opportunity to draw up in the enclosures in several little parties , they had been in great danger of being disordered ; but by this means they lined the hedges and lanes so with musketeers , that the remainder had time to draw up in battalia , and saluted the horse with their muskets , so that they drew farther off . The king was very impatient , hearing his men engaged , having no boats nor possible means to get over to help them . At last , about eleven o'clock at night , the boats came back , and the king thrust another regiment into them , and though his officers dissuaded him , would go over himself with them on foot , and did so . This was three months that very day when the battle of Leipsic was fought , and winter time too , that the progress of his arms had spread from the Elbe , where it parts Saxony and Brandenburg , to the Lower Palatine and the Rhine . I went over in the boat with the king . I never saw him in so much concern in my life , for he was in pain for his men ; but before we got on shore the Spaniards retired .