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.
* * * * *