Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 by Various
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Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859
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He was the King's own nephew,--great-grandson of William the Silent, and
son of that Elizabeth Stuart from whom all the modern royal family of
England descends. His sister was the renowned Princess Palatine, the
one favorite pupil of Descartes, and the chosen friend of Leibnitz,
Malebranche, and William Penn. From early childhood he was trained to
war; we find him at fourteen pronounced by his tutors fit to command
an army,--at fifteen, bearing away the palm in one of the last of the
tournaments,--at sixteen, fighting beside the young Turenne in the Low
Countries,--at nineteen, heading the advanced guard in the army of the
Prince of Orange,--and at twenty-three, appearing in England, the day
before the Royal Standard was reared, and the day after the King lost
Coventry, because Wilmot, not Rupert, was commander of the horse.
This training made him a general,--not, as many have supposed, a mere
cavalry-captain;--he was one of the few men who have shown great
military powers on both land and sea; he was a man of energy unbounded,
industry inexhaustible, and the most comprehensive and systematic
forethought. It was not merely, that, as Warwick said, "he put that
spirit into the King's army that all men seemed resolved,"--not merely,
that, always charging at the head of his troops, he was never wounded,
and that, seeing more service than any of his compeers, he outlived them
all. But even in these early years, before he was generalissimo, the
Parliament deliberately declared the whole war to be "managed by his
skill, labor, and industry," and his was the only name habitually
printed in capitals in the Puritan newspapers. He had to create soldiers
by enthusiasm, and feed them by stratagem,--to toil for a king
who feared him, and against a queen who hated him,--to take vast
responsibilities alone,--accused of negligence, if he failed, reproached
with license, if he succeeded. Against him he had the wealth of London,
intrusted to men who were great diplomatists, though new to power, and
great soldiers, though they had never seen a battle-field till middle
life; on his side he had only unmanageable lords and penniless
gentlemen, who gained victories by daring, and then wasted them by
license. His troops had no tents, no wagons, no military stores; they
used those of the enemy. Clarendon says, that the King's cause labored
under an incurable disease of want of money, and that the only cure for
starvation was a victory. To say, therefore, that Rupert's men never
starved is to say that they always conquered,--which, at this early
period, was true.
He was the best shot in the army, and the best tennis-player among the
courtiers, and Pepys calls him "the boldest attacker in England for
personal courage." Seemingly without reverence or religion, he yet
ascribed his defeats to Satan, and, at the close of a letter about a
marauding expedition, requested his friend Will Legge to pray for him.
Versed in all the courtly society of the age, chosen interpreter for the
wooing of young Prince Charles and La Grande Mademoiselle, and mourning
in purple, with the royal family, for Marie de Medicis, he could yet
mingle in any conceivable company and assume any part. He penetrated the
opposing camp at Dunsmore Heath as an apple-seller, and the hostile town
of Warwick as a dealer in cabbage-nets, and the pamphleteers were never
weary of describing his disguises. He was charged with all manner of
offences, even to slaying children with cannibal intent, and only very
carelessly disavowed such soft impeachments. But no man could deny that
he was perfectly true to his word; he never forgot one whom he had
promised to protect, and, if he had promised to strip a man's goods, he
did it to the uttermost farthing. And so must his pledge of vengeance
be redeemed to-night; and so, riding eastward, with the dying sunlight
behind him and the quiet Chiltern hills before, through air softened by
the gathering coolness of these midsummer eves, beside clover fields,
and hedges of wild roses, and ponds white with closing water-lilies, and
pastures sprinkled with meadow-sweet, like foam,--he muses only of the
clash of sword and the sharp rattle of shot, and all the passionate joys
of the coming charge.
III.
THE FORAY.
The long and picturesque array winds onward, crossing Chiselhampton
Bridge, (not to be re-crossed so easily,) avoiding Thame with its church
and abbey, where Lord-General Essex himself is quartered, unconscious of
their march; and the Cavaliers are soon riding beneath the bases of
the wooded hills towards Postcombe. Near Tetsworth, the enemy's first
outpost, they halt till evening; the horsemen dismount, the flagon and
the foraging-bag are opened, the black-jack and the manchet go round,
healths are drunk to successes past and glories future, to "Queen Mary's
eyes," and to "Prince Rupert's dog." A few hours bring darkness; they
move on eastward through the lanes, avoiding, when possible, the Roman
highways; they are sometimes fired upon by a picket, but make no return,
for they are hurrying past the main quarters of the enemy. In the
silence of the summer night, they stealthily ride miles and miles
through a hostile country, the renegade Urry guiding them. At early
dawn, they see, through the misty air, the low hamlet of Postcombe,
where the "beating up of the enemy's quarters" is to begin. A hurried
word of command; the infantry halt; the cavalry close, and sweep down
like night-hawks upon the sleeping village,--safe, one would have
supposed it, with the whole Parliamentary army lying between it and
Oxford, to protect from danger. Yet the small party of Puritan troopers
awake in their quarters with Rupert at the door; it is well for
them that they happen to be picked men, and have promptness, if not
vigilance; forming hastily, they secure a retreat westward through the
narrow street, leaving but few prisoners behind them. As hastily the
prisoners are swept away with the stealthy troop, who have other work
before them; and before half the startled villagers have opened their
lattices the skirmish is over. Long before they can send a messenger up,
over the hills, to sound the alarm-bells of Stoken Church, the swift
gallop of the Cavaliers has reached Chinnor, two miles away, and the
goal of their foray. The compact, strongly-built village is surrounded.
They form a parallel line behind the houses, on each side, leaping
fences and ditches to their posts. They break down the iron chains
stretched nightly across each end of the street, and line it from end to
end. Rupert, Will Legge, and the "forlorn hope," dismounting, rush in
upon the quarters, sparing those alone who surrender.
In five minutes the town is up. The awakened troopers fight as
desperately as their assailants, some on foot, some on horseback. More
and more of Rupert's men rush in; they fight through the straggling
street of the village, from the sign of the Ram at one end to that of
the Crown at the other, and then back again. The citizens join against
the invaders, the 'prentices rush from their attics, hasty barricades
of carts and harrows are formed in the streets, long musket-barrels are
thrust from the windows, dark groups cluster on the roofs, and stones
begin to rattle on the heads below, together with phrases more galling
than stones, hurled down by women, "cursed dogs," "devilish Cavaliers,"
"Papist traitors." In return, the intruders shoot at the windows
indiscriminately, storm the doors, fire the houses; they grow more
furious, and spare nothing; some towns-people retreat within the
church-doors; the doors are beaten in; women barricade them with
wool-packs, and fight over them with muskets, barrel to barrel. Outside,
the troopers ride round and round the town, seizing or slaying all who
escape; within, desperate men still aim from their windows, though the
houses each side are in flames. Melting lead pours down from the blazing
roofs, while the drum still beats and the flag still goes on. It is
struck down presently; tied to a broken pike-staff, it rises again,
while a chaos of armor and plumes, black and orange, blue and red, torn
laces and tossing feathers, powder-stains and blood-stains, fills the
dewy morning with terror, and opens the June Sunday with sin.
Threescore and more of the towns-people are slain, sixscore are led
away at the horses' sides, bound with ropes, to be handed over to
the infantry for keeping. Some of these prisoners, even of the armed
troopers, are so ignorant and unwarlike as yet, that they know not the
meaning of the word "quarter," refusing it when offered, and imploring
"mercy" instead. Others are little children, for whom a heavy ransom
shall yet be paid. Others, cheaper prisoners, are ransomed on the spot.
Some plunder has also been taken, but the soldiers look longingly on
the larger wealth that must be left behind, in the hurry of
retreat,--treasures that, otherwise, no trooper of Rupert's would have
spared: scarlet cloth, bedding, saddles, cutlery, ironware, hats, shoes,
hops for beer, and books to sell to the Oxford scholars. But the daring
which has given them victory now makes their danger;--they have been
nearly twelve hours in the saddle and have fought two actions; they have
twenty-five miles to ride, with the whole force of the enemy in their
path; they came unseen in the darkness, they must return by daylight and
with the alarm already given; Stoken Church-bell has been pealing for
hours, the troop from Postcombe has fallen back on Tetsworth, and
everywhere in the distance videttes are hurrying from post to post.
The perilous retreat begins. Ranks are closed; they ride silently; many
a man leads a second horse beside him, and one bears in triumph the
great captured Puritan standard, with its five buff Bibles on a black
ground. They choose their course more carefully than ever, seek the
by-lanes, and swim the rivers with their swords between their teeth. At
one point, in their hushed progress, they hear the sound of rattling
wagons. There is a treasure-train within their reach, worth twenty-one
thousand pounds, and destined for the Parliamentary camp, but the thick
woods of the Chilterns have sheltered it from pursuit, and they have
not a moment to waste; they are riding for their lives. Already the
gathering parties of Roundheads are closing upon them, nearer and
nearer, as they approach the most perilous point of the wild expedition,
their only return-path across the Cherwell, Chiselhampton Bridge. Percy
and O'Neal with difficulty hold the assailants in check; the case grows
desperate at last, and Rupert stands at bay on Chalgrove Field.
It is Sunday morning, June 18th, 1643. The early church-bells are
ringing over all Oxfordshire,--dying away in the soft air, among the
sunny English hills, while Englishmen are drawing near each other with
hatred in their hearts,--dying away, as on that other Sunday, eight
months ago, when Baxter, preaching near Edgehill, heard the sounds of
battle, and disturbed the rest of his saints by exclaiming, "To the
fight!" But here there are no warrior-preachers, no bishops praying in
surplices on the one side, no dark-robed divines preaching on horseback
on the other, no king in glittering armor, no Tutor Harvey in peaceful
meditation beneath a hedge, pondering on the circulation of the blood,
with hotter blood flowing so near him; all these were to be seen at
Edgehill, but not here. This smaller skirmish rather turns our thoughts
to Cisatlantic associations; its date suggests Bunker's Hill,--and its
circumstances, Lexington. For this, also, is a marauding party, with a
Percy among its officers, brought to a stand by a half-armed and angry
peasantry.
Rupert sends his infantry forward, to secure the bridge, and a
sufficient body of dragoons to line the mile-and-a-half of road
between,--the remainder of the troops being drawn up at the entrance of
a corn-field, several hundred acres in extent, and lying between the
villages and the hills. The Puritans take a long circuit, endeavoring to
get to windward of their formidable enemy,--a point judged as important,
during the seventeenth century, in a land fight as in a naval
engagement. They have with them some light field-pieces, artillery
being the only point of superiority they yet claim; but these are not
basilisks, nor falconets, nor culverins, (_colubri_, _couleuvres_,) nor
drakes, (_dracones_,) nor warning-pieces,--they are the leathern guns
of Gustavus Adolphus, made of light cast-iron and bound with ropes and
leather. The Roundhead dragoons, dismounted, line a hedge near the
Cavaliers, and plant their "swine-feathers"; under cover of their fire
the horse advance in line, matches burning. As they advance, one or two
dash forward, at risk of their lives, flinging off the orange scarfs
which alone distinguish them, in token that they desert to the royal
cause. Prince Rupert falls back into the lane a little, to lead the
other forces into his ambush of dragoons. These tactics do not come
naturally to him, however; nor does he like the practice of the time,
that two bodies of cavalry should ride up within pistol-shot of each
other, and exchange a volley before they charge. He rather anticipates,
in his style of operations, the famous order of Frederick the Great:
"The King hereby forbids all officers of cavalry, on pain of being broke
with ignominy, ever to allow themselves to be attacked in any action by
the enemy; but the Prussians must always attack them." Accordingly he
restrains himself for a little while, chafing beneath the delay, and
then, a soldier or two being suddenly struck down by the fire, he
exclaims, "Yea! this insolency is not to be endured." The moment is
come.
"God and Queen Mary!" shouts Rupert; "Charge!" In one instant that mass
of motionless statues becomes a flood of lava; down in one terrible
sweep it comes, silence behind it and despair before; no one notices the
beauty of that brilliant chivalrous array,--all else is merged in the
fury of the wild gallop; spurs are deep, reins free, blades grasped,
heads bent; the excited horse feels the heel no more than he feels the
hand; the uneven ground breaks their ranks,--no matter, they feel that
they can ride down the world: Rupert first clears the hedge,--he is
always first,--then comes the captain of his lifeguard, then the
whole troop "jumble after them," in a spectator's piquant phrase. The
dismounted Puritan dragoons break from the hedges and scatter for their
lives, but the cavalry "bear the charge better than they have done since
Worcester,"--that is, now they stand it an instant, then they did not
stand it at all; the Prince takes them in flank and breaks them in
pieces at the first encounter,--the very wind of the charge shatters
them. Horse and foot, carbines and petronels, swords and pole-axes, are
mingled in one struggling mass. Rupert and his men seem refreshed, not
exhausted, by the weary night,--they seem incapable of fatigue; they
spike the guns as they cut down the gunners, and, if any escape, it
is because many in both armies wear the same red scarfs. One Puritan,
surrounded by the enemy, shows such desperate daring that Rupert bids
release him at last, and sends afterwards to Essex to ask his name.
One Cavalier bends, with a wild oath, to search the pockets of a slain
enemy;--it is his own brother. O'Neal slays a standard-bearer, and thus
restores to his company the right to bear a flag, a right they lost at
Hopton Heath; Legge is taken prisoner and escapes; Urry proves himself
no coward, though a renegade, and is trusted to bear to Oxford the news
of the victory, being raised to knighthood in return.
For a victory of course it is. Nothing in England can yet resist these
high-born, dissolute, reckless Cavaliers of Rupert's. "I have seen them
running up walls twenty feet high," said the engineer consulted by the
frightened citizens of Dorchester: "these defences of yours may possibly
keep them out half an hour." Darlings of triumphant aristocracy, they
are destined to meet with no foe that can match them, until they recoil
at last before the plebeian pikes of the London train-bands. Nor can
even Rupert's men claim to monopolize the courage of the King's party.
The brilliant "show-troop" of Lord Bernard Stuart, comprising the young
nobles having no separate command,--a troop which could afford to
indulge in all the gorgeousness of dress, since their united incomes,
Clarendon declares, would have exceeded those of the whole Puritan
Parliament,--led, by their own desire, the triumphant charge at
Edgehill, and threescore of their bodies were found piled on the spot
where the Royal Standard was captured and rescued. Not less faithful
were the Marquis of Newcastle's "Lambs," who took their name from the
white woollen clothing which they refused to have dyed, saying that
their hearts' blood would dye it soon enough; and so it did: only thirty
survived the battle of Marston Moor, and the bodies of the rest were
found in the field, ranked regularly, side by side, in death as in life.
But here at Chalgrove Field no such fortitude of endurance is needed;
the enemy are scattered, and, as Rupert's Cavaliers are dashing on, in
their accustomed headlong pursuit, a small, but fresh force of Puritan
cavalry appears behind the hedges and charges on them from the
right,--two troops, hastily gathered, and in various garb. They are
headed by a man in middle life and of noble aspect: once seen, he cannot
easily be forgotten; but seen he will never be again, and, for the last
time, Rupert and Hampden meet face to face.
The foremost representative men of their respective parties, they
scarcely remember, perhaps, that there are ties and coincidences in
their lives. At the marriage of Rupert's mother, the student Hampden was
chosen to write the Oxford epithalamium, exulting in the prediction of
some noble offspring to follow such a union. Rupert is about to be made
General-in-chief of the Cavaliers; Hampden is looked to by all as the
future General-in-chief of the Puritans. Rupert is the nephew of the
King,--Hampden the cousin of Cromwell; and as the former is believed
to be aiming at the Crown, so the latter is the only possible rival of
Cromwell for the Protectorate,--"the eyes of all being fixed upon him as
their _pater patriae_." But in all the greater qualities of manhood, how
far must Hampden be placed above the magnificent and gifted Rupert! In
a congress of natural noblemen--for such do the men of the Commonwealth
appear--he must rank foremost. It is difficult to avoid exaggeration in
speaking of these men,--men whose deeds vindicate their words, and whose
words are unsurpassed by Greek or Roman fame,--men whom even Hume can
only criticize for a "mysterious jargon" which most of them did not use,
and for a "vulgar hypocrisy" which few of them practised. Let us not
underrate the self-forgetting loyalty of the Royalists,--the Duke of
Newcastle laying at the King's feet seven hundred thousand pounds,
and the Marquis of Worcester a million; but the sublimer poverty and
abstinence of the Parliamentary party deserve a yet loftier meed,--Vane
surrendering an office of thirty thousand pounds a year to promote
public economy,--Hutchinson refusing a peerage and a fortune as a bribe
to hold Nottingham Castle a little while for the King,--Eliot and Pym
bequeathing their families to the nation's justice, having spent their
all for the good cause. And rising to yet higher attributes, as they
pass before us in the brilliant paragraphs of the courtly Clarendon, or
the juster modern estimates of Forster, it seems like a procession of
born sovereigns; while the more pungent epithets of contemporary wit
only familiarize, but do not mar, the fame of Cromwell, (Cleaveland's
"Caesar in a Clown,")--"William the Conqueror" Waller,--"young Harry"
Vane,--"fiery Tom" Fairfax,--and "King Pym." But among all these there
is no peer of Hampden, of him who came not from courts or camps, but
from the tranquil study of his Davila, from that thoughtful retirement
which was for him, as for his model, Coligny, the school of all noble
virtues,--came to find himself at once a statesman and a soldier,
receiving from his contemporary, Clarendon, no affectionate critic, the
triple crown of historic praise, as being "the most able, resolute, and
popular person in the kingdom." Who can tell how changed the destiny of
England, had the Earl of Bedford's first compromise with the country
party succeeded, and Hampden become the tutor of Prince Charles,--or
could this fight at Chalgrove Field issue differently, and Hampden
survive to be general instead of Essex, and Protector in place of
Cromwell?
But that may not be. Had Hampden's earlier counsels prevailed, Rupert
never would have ventured on his night foray; had his next suggestions
been followed, Rupert never would have returned from it. Those
failing, Hampden has come, gladly followed by Gunter and his dragoons,
outstripping the tardy Essex, to dare all and die. In vain does Gunter
perish beside his flag; in vain does Crosse, his horse being killed
under him, spring in the midst of battle on another; in vain does "that
great-spirited little Sir Samuel Luke" (the original of Hudibras) get
thrice captured and thrice escape. For Hampden, the hope of the nation,
is fatally shot through the shoulder with two carbine-balls, in the
first charge; the whole troop sees it with dismay; Essex comes up, as
usual, too late, and the fight at Chalgrove Field is lost.
We must leave this picture, painted in the fading colors of a far-off
time. Let us leave the noble Hampden, weak and almost fainting, riding
calmly from the field, and wandering away over his own Chiltern meadows,
that he loves so well,--leave him, drooping over his saddle, directing
his horse first towards his father-in-law's house at Pyrton, where once
he wedded his youthful bride, then turning towards Thame, and mustering
his last strength to leap his tired steed across its boundary brook. A
few days of laborious weakness, spent in letter-writing to urge upon
Parliament something of that military energy which, if earlier adopted,
might have saved his life,--and we see a last, funereal procession
winding beneath the Chiltern hills, and singing the 90th Psalm as the
mourners approach the tomb of the Hampdens, and the 43d as they return.
And well may the "Weekly Intelligencer" say of him, (June 27, 1643,)
that "the memory of this deceased Colonel is such that in no age to
come but it will more and more be had in honor and esteem; a man so
religious, and of that prudence, judgment, temper, valor, and integrity,
that he hath left few his like behind him."
And we must leave Rupert to his career of romantic daring, to be made
President of Wales and Generalissimo of the army,--to rescue with
unequalled energy Newark and York and the besieged heroine of Lathom
House,--to fight through Newbury and Marston Moor and Naseby, and many a
lesser field,--to surrender Bristol and be acquitted by court-martial,
but hopelessly condemned by the King;--then to leave the kingdom,
refusing a passport, and fighting his perilous way to the seaside;--then
to wander over the world for years, astonishing Dutchmen by his
seamanship, Austrians by his soldiership, Spaniards and Portuguese by
his buccaneering powers, and Frenchmen by his gold and diamonds and
birds and monkeys and "richly-liveried Blackamoors";--then to reorganize
the navy of England, exchanging characters with his fellow-commander,
Monk, whom the ocean makes rash, as it makes Rupert prudent;--leave him
to use nobly his declining years, in studious toils in Windsor Castle,
the fulfilment of Milton's dream, outwatching the Bear with thrice-great
Hermes, surrounded by strange old arms and instruments, and maps of
voyages, and plans of battles, and the abstruse library which the
"Harleian Miscellany" still records;--leave him to hunt and play at
tennis, serve in the Hudson's Bay Company and the Board of Trade;--leave
him to experiment in alchemy and astrology, in hydraulics, metallurgy,
gunpowder, perspective, quadrants, mezzotint, fish-hooks, and
revolvers;--leave him to look from his solitary turret over hills and
fields, now peaceful, but each the scene of some wild and warlike memory
for him;--leave him to die a calm and honored death at sixty-three,
outliving every companion of his early days. The busy world, which has
no time to remember many, forgets him and remembers only the slain and
defeated Hampden. The brilliant renown of the Prince was like the glass
toys which record his ingenuity and preserve his name; the hammer and
the anvil can scarcely mar them, yet a slight pressure of the finger,
in the fatal spot, will burst them into glittering showers of dust. The
full force of those iron times beat ineffectual upon Rupert;--Death
touched him, and that shining fame sparkled and was shattered forever.
* * * * *
SPRING.
Ah! my beautiful violets,
Stirring under the sod,
Feeling, in all your being,
The breath of the spirit of God
Thrilling your delicate pulses,
Warming your life-blood anew,--
Struggle up into the Spring-light;
I'm watching and waiting for you.
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