Rupert, Prince Palatine

by Eva Scott

For a time they merely talked, and on the death of Matthias they acquiesced in the election of Ferdinand as Emperor: but only a few days later Frederick was invited by the Bohemians to come and fill their vacant throne.

Frederick was not ambitious; left to himself he might have declined the proffered honour, but, urged by his wife and other relations, he accepted it, and departed with Elizabeth and their eldest son, to Prague, where he was crowned amidst great rejoicings.

Among the Protestant princes, three, and three only, approved of Frederick's action; these were Christian of Anhalt, the Margrave of Anspach and the Margrave of Baden. Maurice of Hesse-Cassel, on the contrary, though a Calvinist and an enemy of the Imperial House, strongly condemned the usurpation as grossly immoral; and in truth the only excuse that can be offered for it is Frederick's belief in a Divine call to succour his co-religionists. Unfortunately he was the last man to succeed in so difficult an enterprise; yet for a brief period all went well, and at Prague, November 28th, 1619, in the hour of his parents' triumph, was born the Elector's third son—Rupert.

The Bohemians welcomed the baby with enthusiasm; the ladies of the country presented him with a cradle of ivory, embossed with gold, and studded with precious stones, and his whole outfit was probably the most costly that he ever possessed in his life. He was christened Rupert, after the only one of the Electors Palatine who had attained the Imperial crown. His sponsors were Bethlem Gabor, King of Hungary, whose creed approximated more closely to Mahommedanism than to any other faith; the Duke of Würtemberg, and the States of Bohemia, Silesia, and Upper and Lower Lusatia. The baptism was at once the occasion of a great feast, and of a political gathering; it aggravated the already smouldering wrath of the Imperialists; a revolt in Prague followed, and within a year the Austrian army had swept over Bohemia, driving forth the luckless King and Queen.

Frederick had no allies, he found no sympathy among his fellow-princes, on the selfish nobility and the apathetic peasantry of Bohemia he could place no reliance; resistance in the face of the Emperor's forces was hopeless;—the Palatines fled.

In the hasty flight the poor baby was forgotten; dropped by a terrified nurse, he was left lying upon the floor until the Baron d'Hona, chancing to find him, threw him into the last coach as it left the courtyard. The jolting of the coach tossed the child into the boot, and there he would have perished had not his screams attracted the notice of some of the train, who rescued him, and carried him off to Brandenburg after his mother.

Elizabeth had sought shelter in Brandenburg because the Elector of that country had married Frederick's sister Catharine. But George William of Brandenburg was a Lutheran, and a prudent personage, who had no wish to embroil himself with his Emperor for a cause of which he thoroughly disapproved. He gave his sister-in-law a cold reception, but, seeing her dire necessity, lent her his castle of Custrin, where, on January 11th, 1621, she gave birth to a fourth son. Damp, bare and comfortless was the castle in which this child first saw the light, and mournful was the welcome he had from his mother. "Call him Maurice," she said, "because he will have to be a soldier!" So Maurice the boy was named, after the warlike Prince of Orange, the most celebrated general of that day.[[7]]

To the Prince of Orange the exiles now turned their thoughts. Return to their happy home in the Palatinate was impossible, for Frederick lay under the ban of the Empire, and his hereditary dominions were forfeited in consequence of his rebellious conduct; therefore when, six weeks after the birth of her child, George William informed Elizabeth that he dared no longer shelter her, she entrusted the infant to the care of the Electress Catharine, and taking with her the little Rupert, began her journey towards Holland.

Maurice, Prince of Orange and Stadtholder of Holland, was the eldest son of William the Silent, and brother of Frederick's mother, the Electress Juliana. He had strongly urged his nephew's acceptance of the Bohemian crown, and it seemed but natural that he should afford an asylum to those whom he had so disastrously advised. He did not shrink from his responsibility, and the welcome which he accorded to his hapless nephew and niece was as warm as that of the Elector of Brandenburg had been cold. At Münster they were met by six companies of men at arms, sent to escort them to Emerich, where they met their eldest son, Henry, who had been sent to the protection of Count Ernest of Nassau at the beginning of the troubles; there also gathered round them the remnants of their shattered court, and it was with a shadowy show of royalty that they proceeded to the Hague.