Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 by Various

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859

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THE SPHINX.

Go not to Thebes. The Sphinx is there;
And thou shalt see her beauty rare,
And thee the sorcery of her smile
To read her riddle shall beguile.

Oh! woe to those who fail to read!
And woe to him who shall succeed!
For he who fails the truth to show
The terror of her wrath shall know:

But should'st thou find her mystery,
Not less is Death assured to thee;
For she shall cease, and thou shalt sigh
That she no longer is, and die.

A CHARGE WITH PRINCE RUPERT.

"Thousands were there, in darker fame that dwell,
Whose deeds some nobler poem shall adorn;
And though to me unknown, they sure fought well,
Whom Rupert led, and who were British-born."

DRYDEN.

I.

THE MARCH. JUNE 17, 1643.

Last night the Canary wine flashed in the red Venice glasses on the
oaken tables of the hall; loud voices shouted and laughed till the
clustered hawk-bells jingled from the rafters, and the chaplain's fiddle
throbbed responsive from the wall; while the coupled stag-hounds fawned
unnoticed, and the watchful falcon whistled to himself unheard. In the
carved chairs lounged groups of revellers, dressed in scarlet, dressed
in purple, dressed in white and gold, gay with satins and ribbons,
gorgeous with glittering chains and jewelled swords: stern, manly faces,
that had been singed with powder in the Palatinate; brutal, swarthy
faces, knowing all that sack and sin could teach them; beautiful, boyish
faces, fresh from ancestral homes and high-born mothers; grave, sad
faces,--sad for undoubted tyranny, grave against the greater wrong of
disloyalty. Some were in council, some were in strife, many were in
liquor; the parson was there with useless gravity, and the jester with
superfluous folly; and in the outer hall men more plebeian drained the
brown October from pewter cans, which were beaten flat, next moment, in
hammering the loud drinking-chorus on the wall; while the clink of the
armorer still went on, repairing the old head-pieces and breastplates
which had hung untouched since the Wars of the Roses; and in the
doorway the wild Welsh recruits crouched with their scythes and their
cudgels, and muttered in their uncouth dialect, now a prayer to God; and
now a curse for their enemy.

But to-day the inner hall is empty, the stag-hounds leap in the doorway,
the chaplain prays, the maidens cluster in the windows, beneath the soft
beauty of the June afternoon. The streets of Oxford resound with many
hoofs; armed troopers are gathering beside chapel and quadrangle,
gateway and tower; the trumpeter waves his gold and crimson trappings,
and blows, "To the Standard,"--for the great flag is borne to the
front, and Rupert and his men are mustering for a night of danger
beneath that banner of "Tender and True."

With beat of drum, with clatter of hoof, and rattle of spur and
scabbard, tramping across old Magdalen Bridge, cantering down the
hill-sides, crashing through the beech-woods, echoing through the chalky
hollows, ride leisurely the gay Cavaliers. Some in new scarfs and
feathers, worthy of the "show-troop,"--others with torn laces, broken
helmets, and guilty red smears on their buff doublets;--some eager for
their first skirmish,--others weak and silent, still bandaged from the
last one;--discharging now a rattle of contemptuous shot at some closed
Puritan house, grim and stern as its master,--firing anon as noisy a
salute, as they pass some mansion where a high-born beauty dwells,--on
they ride. Leaving the towers of Oxford behind them, keeping the ancient
Roman highway, passing by the low, strong, many-gabled farmhouses, with
rustic beauties smiling at the windows and wiser fathers scowling at
the doors,--on they ride. To the Royalists, these troopers are "Prince
Robert and the hope of the nation";--to the Puritans, they are only
"Prince Robber and his company of rake-shames."

Riding great Flanders horses, a flagon swung on one side of the large
padded saddle, and a haversack on the other,--booted to the thigh,
and girded with the leathern bandoleer, supporting cartridge-box and
basket-hilted sword, they are a picturesque and a motley troop. Some
wear the embroidered buffcoat over the coat of mail, others beneath
it,--neither having yet learned that the buffcoat alone is sabre-proof
and bullet-proof also. Scantily furnished with basinet or breastplate,
pot, haqueton, cuirass, pouldron, taslets, vambraces, or cuisses,--each
with the best piece of iron he could secure when the ancestral armory
was ransacked,--they yet care little for the deficit, remembering, that,
when they first rode down the enemy at Worcester, there was not a piece
of armor on their side, while the Puritans were armed to a man. There
are a thousand horsemen under Percy and O'Neal, armed with swords,
pole-axes, and petronels; this includes Rupert's own lifeguard of chosen
men. Lord Wentworth, with Innis and Washington, leads three hundred and
fifty dragoons,--dragoons of the old model, intended to fight either
on foot or on horseback, whence the name they bear, and the emblematic
dragon which adorns their carbines. The advanced guard, or "forlorn
hope," of a hundred horse and fifty dragoons, is commanded by Will
Legge, Rupert's life-long friend and correspondent; and Herbert Lunsford
leads the infantry, "the inhuman cannibal foot," as the Puritan journals
call them. There are five hundred of these, in lightest marching order,
and carrying either pike or arquebuse,--this last being a matchlock
musket with an iron rest to support it, and a lance combined, to resist
cavalry,--the whole being called "Swine (Swedish) feathers,"--a weapon
so clumsy, that the Cavaliers say a Puritan needs two years' practice to
discharge one without winking. And over all these float flags of every
hue and purport, from the blue and gold with its loyal "_Ut rex, sit
rex_" to the ominous crimson, flaming with a lurid furnace and the
terrible motto, "_Quasi ignis conflatoris_."

And foremost rides Prince Rupert, darling of fortune and of war, with
his beautiful and thoughtful face of twenty-three, stern and bronzed
already, yet beardless and dimpled, his dark and passionate eyes, his
long love-locks drooping over costly embroidery, his graceful scarlet
cloak, his white-plumed hat, and his tall and stately form, which,
almost alone in the army, has not yet known a wound. His high-born
beauty is preserved to us forever on the canvas of Vandyck, and as the
Italians have named the artist "Il Pittore Cavalieresco," so will
this subject of his skill remain forever the ideal of Il Cavaliere
Pittoresco. And as he now rides at the head of this brilliant array, his
beautiful white dog bounds onward joyously beside him, that quadruped
renowned in the pamphlets of the time, whose snowy skin has been stained
by many a blood-drop in the desperate forays of his master, but who has
thus far escaped so safely that the Puritans believe him a familiar
spirit, and try to destroy him "by poyson and extempore prayer, which
yet hurt him no more than the plague plaster did Mr. Pym." Failing in
this, they pronounce the pretty creature to be "a divell, not a very
downright divell, but some Lapland ladye, once by nature a handsome
white ladye, now by art a handsome white dogge."

The Civil War is begun. The King has made his desperate attempt to
arrest the five members of Parliament, and been checkmated by Lucy
Carlisle. So the fatal standard was reared, ten months ago, on that
dismal day at Nottingham,--the King's arms, quartered with a bloody
hand pointing to the crown, and the red battle-flag above;--blown down
disastrously at night, replaced sadly in the morning, to wave while the
Cavaliers rallied, slowly, beneath its folds. During those long months,
the King's fortunes have had constant and increasing success,--a success
always greatest when Rupert has been nearest. And now this night-march
is made to avenge a late attack, of unaccustomed audacity, from Essex,
and to redeem the threat of Rupert to pass in one night through the
whole country held by the enemy, and beat up the most distant quarters
of the Roundheads.

II.

THE CONDITION OF THE TIMES.

It is no easy thing to paint, with any accurate shadings, this opening
period of the English Revolution. Looking habitually, as we do, at the
maturer condition of the two great parties, we do not remember how
gradual was their formation. The characters of Cavalier and Roundhead
were not more the cause than the consequence of civil strife. There is
no such chemical solvent as war; where it finds a mingling of two
alien elements, it leaves them permanently severed. At the opening
of hostilities, the two parties were scarcely distinguishable, in
externals, from each other. Arms, costume, features, phrases, manners,
were as yet common to both sides. On the battlefield, spies could pass
undetected from one army to the other. At Edgehill, Chalgrove, and
even Naseby, men and standards were captured and rescued, through the
impossibility of distinguishing between the forces. An orange scarf, or
a piece of white paper, was the most reliable designation. True, there
was nothing in the Parliamentary army so gorgeous as Sir John Suckling's
troop in Scotland, with their white doublets and scarlet hats and
plumes; but that bright company substituted the white feather for the
red one, in 1639, and rallied no more. Yet even the Puritans came to
battle in attire which would have seemed preposterously gaudy to the
plain men of our own Revolution. The London regiment of Hollis wore
red, in imitation of the royal colors, adopted to make wounds less
conspicuous. Lord Say's regiment wore blue, in imitation of the
Covenanters, who took it from Numbers, xv. 38; Hampden's men wore green;
Lord Brooke's purple; Colonel Ballard's gray. Even the hair afforded far
less distinction than we imagine, since there is scarcely a portrait of
a leading Parliamentarian which has not a display of tresses such as
would now appear the extreme of foppery; and when the remains of Hampden
himself were disinterred within twenty-five years, the body was at first
taken for a woman's, from the exceeding length and beauty of the hair.

But every year of warfare brought a change. On the King's side, the
raiment grew more gorgeous amid misfortunes; on the Parliament's, it
became sadder with every success. The Royalists took up feathers and
oaths, in proportion as the Puritans laid them down; and as the tresses
of the Cavaliers waved more luxuriantly, the hair of the Roundheads
was more scrupulously shorn. And the same instinctive exaggeration was
constantly extending into manners and morals also. Both sides became
ostentatious; the one made the most of its dissoluteness, and the other
of its decorum. The reproachful names applied derisively to the two
parties became fixed distinctions. The word "Roundhead" was first used
early in 1642, though whether it originated with Henrietta Maria or with
David Hyde is disputed. And Charles, in his speech before the battle of
Edgehill, in October of the same year, mentioned the name "Cavalier" as
one bestowed "in a reproachful sense," and one "which our enemies have
striven to make odious."

And all social as well as moral prejudices gradually identified
themselves with this party division. As time passed on, all that was
high-born in England gravitated more and more to the royal side, while
the popular cause enlisted the Londoners, the yeomanry, and those
country-gentlemen whom Mrs. Hutchinson styled the "worsted-stocking
members." The Puritans gradually found themselves excluded from the
manorial halls, and the Cavaliers (a more inconvenient privation)
from the blacksmiths' shops. Languishing at first under aristocratic
leadership, the cause of the Parliament first became strong when the
Self-denying Ordinance abolished all that weakness. Thus the very
sincerity of the civil conflict drew the lines deeper; had the battles
been fought by mercenaries, like the contemporary Continental wars,
there would have grown up a less hearty mutual antipathy, but a far more
terrible demoralization. As it was, the character of the war was, on the
whole, a humane one; few towns were sacked or destroyed, the harvests
were bounteous and freely gathered, and the population increased during
the whole period. But the best civil war is fearfully injurious. In this
case, virtues and vices were found on both sides; and it was only the
gradual preponderance which finally stamped on each party its own
historic reputation. The Cavaliers confessed to "the vices of men,--love
of wine and women"; but they charged upon their opponents "the vices of
devils,--hypocrisy and spiritual pride." Accordingly, the two verdicts
have been recorded in the most delicate of all registers,--language. For
the Cavaliers added to the English vocabulary the word _plunder_, and
the Puritans the word _cant_.

Yet it is certain that at the outset neither of these peculiarities was
monopolized by either party. In abundant instances, the sins changed
places,--Cavaliers canted, and Puritans plundered. That is, if by cant
we understand the exaggerated use of Scripture language which originated
with the reverend gentleman of that name, it was an offence in which
both sides participated. Clarendon, reviewing the Presbyterian
discourses, quoted text against text with infinite relish. Old Judge
Jenkins, could he have persuaded the "House of Rimmon," as he called
Parliament, to hang him, would have swung the Bible triumphantly to his
neck by a ribbon, to show the unscriptural character of their doings.
Charles himself, in one of his early addresses to his army, denounced
the opposing party as "Brownists, Anabaptists, and Atheists," and in
his address to the city of London pleaded in favor of his own "godly,
learned, and painfull preachers." Every royal regiment had its chaplain,
including in the service such men as Pearson and Jeremy Taylor, and
they had prayers before battle, as regularly and seriously as their
opponents. "After solemn prayers at the head of every division, I led my
part away," wrote the virtuous Sir Bevill Grenvill to his wife, after
the battle of Bradock. Rupert, in like manner, had prayers before every
division at Marston Moor. To be sure, we cannot always vouch for the
quality of these prayers, when the chaplain happened to be out of the
way and the colonel was his substitute. "O Lord," petitioned stout Sir
Jacob Astley, at Edgehill, "thou knowest how busy I must be this day; if
I forget thee, do not thou forget me!"--after which, he rose up, crying,
"March on, boys!"

And as the Puritans had not the monopoly of prayer, so the Cavaliers did
not monopolize plunder. Of course, when civil war is once begun, such
laxity is mere matter of self-defence. If the Royalists unhorsed the
Roundheads, the latter must horse themselves again, as best they could.
If Goring "uncattled" the neighborhood of London, Major Medhope must
be ordered to "uncattle" the neighborhood of Oxford. Very possibly
individual animals were identified with the right side or the wrong
side, to be spared or confiscated in consequence;--as in modern Kansas,
during a similar condition of things, one might hear men talk of a
pro-slavery colt, or an anti-slavery cow. And the precedent being
established, each party could use the smallest excesses of the other
side to palliate the greatest of its own. No use for the King to hang
two of Rupert's men for stealing, when their commander could urge in
extenuation the plunder of the house of Lady Lucas, and the indignities
offered by the Roundheads to the Countess of Rivers. Why spare the
churches as sanctuaries for the enemy, when rumor accused that enemy
(right or wrong) of hunting cats in those same churches with hounds, or
baptizing dogs and pigs in ridicule of the consecrated altars? Setting
aside these charges as questionable, we cannot so easily dispose of
the facts which rest on actual Puritan testimony. If, even after the
Self-denying Ordinance, the "Perfect Occurrences" repeatedly report
soldiers of the Puritan army, as cashiered for drunkenness, rudeness to
women, pilfering, and defrauding innkeepers, it is inevitable to infer
that in earlier and less stringent times they did the same undetected or
unpunished. When Mrs. Hutchinson describes a portion of the soldiers on
her own side as "licentious, ungovernable wretches,"--when Sir Samuel
Luke, in his letters, depicts the glee with which his men plunder
the pockets of the slain,--when poor John Wolstenholme writes to
head-quarters that his own compatriots have seized all his hay and
horses, "so that his wife cannot serve God with the congregation but
in frosty weather,"--when Vicars in "Jehovah Jireh" exults over the
horrible maiming and butchery wrought by the troopers upon the officers'
wives and female camp-followers at Naseby,--it is useless to attribute
exaggeration to the other side. In civil war, even the humanest, there
is seldom much opening for exaggeration,--the actual horrors being
usually quite as vivid as any imaginations of the sufferers, especially
when, as in this case, the spiritual instructors preach, on the one
side, from "Curse ye Meroz," and, on the other side, from "Cursed be he
that keepeth back his sword from blood."

We mention these things, not because they are deliberately denied by
anybody, but because they are apt to be overlooked by those who take
their facts at secondhand. All this does not show that the Puritans had,
even at the outset, worse men or a cause no better; it simply shows
that war demoralizes, and that right-thinking men may easily, under its
influence, slide into rather reprehensible practices. At a later period
the evil worked its own cure, among the Puritans, and the army of
Cromwell was a moral triumph almost incredible; but at the time of which
we write, the distinction was but lightly drawn. It would be easy to go
farther and show that among the leading Parliamentary statesmen there
were gay and witty debauchees,--that Harry Marten deserved the epithet
with which Cromwell saluted him,--that Pym succeeded to the regards of
Stafford's bewitching mistress,--that Warwick was truly, as Clarendon
describes him, a profuse and generous profligate, tolerated by the
Puritans for the sake of his earldom and his bounty, at a time when
bounty was convenient and peers scarce. But it is hardly worth while
farther to demonstrate the simple and intelligible fact, that there were
faults on both sides. Neither war nor any other social phenomenon can
divide infallibly the sheep from the goats, or collect all the saints
under one set of staff-officers and all the sinners under another.

But, on the other hand, the strength of both sides, at this early day,
was in a class of serious and devoted men, who took up the sword so
sadly, in view of civil strife, that victory seemed to them almost as
terrible as defeat. In some, the scale of loyalty slightly inclined,
and they held with the King; in others, the scale of liberty, and they
served the Parliament; in both cases, with the same noble regrets at
first, merging gradually into bitter alienation afterwards. "If there
could be an expedient found to solve the punctilio of honor, I would not
be hero an hour," wrote Lord Robert Spencer to his wife, from the
camp of the Cavaliers. Sir Edmund Verney, the King's standard-bearer,
disapproved of the royal cause, and adhered to it only because he "had
eaten the King's bread." Lord Falkland, Charles's Secretary of State,
"sitting among his friends, often, after a deep silence and frequent
sighs, would, with a shriek and sad accent, ingeminate the words, Peace!
Peace!" and would prophesy for himself that death which soon came. And
these words show close approximation to the positions of men honored
among the Puritans, as when Sir William Waller wrote from his camp to
his chivalrous opponent, Sir Ralph Hopton,--"The great God, who is
the searcher of my heart, knows with what reluctance I go upon this
service."

As time passed on, the hostility between the two parties exceeded all
bounds of courteous intercourse. The social distinction was constantly
widening, and so was the religious antagonism. Waller could be allowed
to joke with Goring and sentimentalize with Hopton,--for Waller was a
gentleman, though a rebel; but it was a different thing when the Puritan
gentlemen were seen to be gradually superseded by Puritan clowns.
Strafford had early complained of "your Prynnes, Pims, and Bens, with
the rest of that generation of odd names and natures." But what were
these to the later brood, whose plebeian quality Mr. Buckle has so
laboriously explored,--Goffe the grocer and Whalley the tailor, Pride
the drayman and Venner the cooper, culminating at last in Noll Cromwell
the brewer? The formidable force of these upstarts only embittered
the aversion. If odious when vanquished, what must they have been as
victors? For if it be disagreeable to find a foeman unworthy of your
steel, it is much more unpleasant when your steel turns out unworthy of
the foeman; and if sad-colored Puritan raiment looked absurd upon the
persons of fugitives, it must have been very particularly unbecoming
when worn by conquerors.

And the growing division was constantly aggravated by very acid satire.
The Court, it must be remembered, was more than half French in its
general character and tone, and every Frenchman of that day habitually
sneered at every Englishman as dull and inelegant. The dazzling wit that
flashed for both sides in the French civil wars flashed for one only in
the English; the Puritans had no comforts of that kind, save in some
caustic repartee from Harry Marten, or some fearless sarcasm from Lucy
Carlisle. But the Cavaliers softened labor and sweetened care with their
little jokes. It was rather consoling to cover some ignominious retreat
with a new epigram on Cromwell's red nose, that irresistible member
which kindled in its day as much wit as Bardolph's,--to hail it as "Nose
Immortal," a beacon, a glow-worm, a bird of prey,--to make it stand as a
personification of the rebel cause, till even the stately Montrose asked
newcomers from England, "How is Oliver's nose?" It was very entertaining
to christen the Solemn League and Covenant "the constellation on the
back of Aries," because most of the signers could only make their marks
on the little bits of sheepskin circulated for that purpose. It was
quite lively to rebaptize Rundway Down as Run-away-down, after a royal
victory, and to remark how Hazlerig's regiment of "lobsters" turned to
crabs, on that occasion, and crawled backwards. But all these pleasant
follies became whips to scourge them, at last,--shifting suddenly into
very grim earnest when the Royalists themselves took to running away,
with truculent saints, in steeple-hats, behind them.

Oxford was the stronghold of the Cavaliers, in these times, as that
of the Puritans was London. The Court itself (though here we are
anticipating a little) was transferred to the academic city. Thither
came Henrietta Maria, with what the pamphleteers called "her
Rattle-headed Parliament of Ladies," the beautiful Duchess of Richmond,
the merry Mrs. Kirke, and brave Kate D'Aubigny. In Merton College the
Queen resided; at Oriel the Privy Council was held; at Christ Church
the King and Rupert were quartered; and at All Souls Jeremy Taylor was
writing his beautiful meditations, in the intervals of war. In the New
College quadrangle, the students were drilled to arms "in the eye of
Doctor Pink," while Mars and Venus kept undisturbed their ancient reign,
although transferred to the sacred precincts of Magdalen. And amidst the
passion and the pomp, the narrow streets would suddenly ring with the
trumpet of some foam-covered scout, bringing tidings of perilous
deeds outside; while some traitorous spy was being hanged, drawn, and
quartered in some other part of the city, for betraying the secrets of
the Court. And forth from the outskirts of Oxford rides Rupert on the
day we are to describe, and we must still protract our pause a little
longer to speak of him.

Prince Rupert, Prince Robert, or Prince Robber,--for by all these names
was he known,--was the one formidable military leader on the royal side.
He was not a statesman, for he was hardly yet a mature man; he was
not, in the grandest sense, a hero, yet he had no quality that was not
heroic. Chivalrous, brilliant, honest, generous,--neither dissolute, nor
bigoted, nor cruel,--he was still a Royalist for the love of royalty,
and a soldier for the love of war, and in civil strife there can hardly
be a more dangerous character. Through all the blunt periods of his
military or civil proclamations, we see the proud, careless boy,
fighting for fighting sake, and always finding his own side the right
one. He could not have much charity for the most generous opponents; he
certainly had none at all for those who (as he said) printed malicious
and lying pamphlets against him "almost every morning," in which he
found himself saluted as a "nest of perfidious vipers," "a night-flying
dragon prince," "a flapdragon," "a caterpillar," "a spider," and "a
_butterbox_."

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