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.