Prince Rupert: The Last Cavalier

by Charles Spencer

  Sophie and her sisters rose at seven each morning. They spent the first part of the morning praying, reading the Bible, and attending tutorials. Dancing lessons, from ten until eleven o’clock, provided a welcome break from religious and academic instruction. At eleven o’clock the princes would return from university for lunch. This took place around a long table and was conducted with all the formality of a functioning court. The children could easily forget that their royal family was in exile: ‘When I entered’, Sophie remembered, ‘my brothers were ranged opposite with their Governor and Gentlemen-in-Waiting behind them. I had to make a deep curtsey to the Princes and a little one to the others; a very deep one on taking my place, and a little one to my Governess who with her daughters made a very deep one to me on entering ....’[30] There were further curtseys when the royal children handed their gloves to attendants, another on reaching forward to wash their hands in a bowl, and a final flurry of bobbing when taking their place at table.

  Sophie’s recollections betray a childhood of stultifying monotony. ‘All was so regulated that one knew on each day of the week what one would eat, like in a Convent.’[31] Rigid Calvinism underpinned the timetable: on Sundays and Wednesdays a pair of priests or professors would eat with the children, their conversation always focused on religion. The girls would then have a rest until two o’clock in the afternoon, when another series of lessons would begin. Supper at six was only a brief respite in a day devoted to God. Bible readings and prayers aided the digestion, until the children’s bedtime at half past eight. This was Sophie and her sisters’ daily routine until they were 9 or 10 years old.

  The linchpin of the children’s instruction was the need to become ‘Jesuit-proof’.[32] Frederick felt this could be more easily achieved through learning the Heidelberg Catechism, the embodiment of the Palatinate’s Calvinist state religion, by heart. Upholding Protestantism against Catholicism had caused the family’s displacement, and Frederick and Elizabeth were determined that the children should remember this and celebrate it as the honourable — if regrettable — consequence of virtuous devotion. Their sacrifice could never be viewed as being in vain, if it remained wrapped in the shroud of martyrdom.

  The exiles were repeatedly touched by tragedy. Young Louis died of a fever while teething, prompting Elizabeth to write: ‘He was the prettiest child I had, and the first I ever lost.’[33] An even heavier blow fell in January 1629. Frederick Henry, the eldest prince, had become the Elector’s constant companion. Sir Henry Wotton, in his Reliquiae, called the boy ‘a gentleman of very sweet hope’. We can glimpse exuberance and a boyish charm in a letter he wrote to his grandfather, James I, when aged 9:

  Sire,

  I kiss your hand. I would fain see your Majesty. I can say Nominativo hic, haec, hoc, and all five declensions, and a part of pronomen, and a part of verbum. I have two horses alive that can go up my stairs, a black horse and a chestnut horse.

  I pray God to bless your Majesty.

  Your Majesty’s

  Obedient Grandchild

  Frederick Henry[34]

  Frederick V had hoped to prosper by investing in a Dutch naval expedition. Its return was imminent and it was known to have several captured Spanish galleons in tow. The Palsgrave took 15-year-old Frederick Henry with him to Haarlem-Meere, to see the ships make harbour. However, in order to save time, or perhaps money, Frederick took his son aboard a packed public ferry. It was foggy and, in the confusion of a busy port, their vessel was rammed by a bigger boat and quickly sank. The Elector was thrown clear of the ferry and clung to a rope till pulled from the water. His son was not so fortunate: Frederick could hear him calling, ‘Save me, father! Save me!’ However, in the gloom it proved impossible to locate the boy, and soon his cries stopped. The next morning Frederick Henry was found, his lifeless body tangled in the ferry’s rigging.

  Frederick never recovered from the death of his favourite child. He wrote to inform Charles I of the loss, but found it impossible to describe the depth of his agony: ‘It having pleased God to add to my preceding hardships a new affliction, the pain of which cannot be expressed with the pen.’[35] Charles reacted with sincere compassion. On a practical note, he transferred the £300 annual pension previously drawn by Frederick’s second son (and his own godson), Charles Louis, to Rupert.

  Charles Louis was now the Palatine heir. He was a more serious character than Frederick Henry. He had spent much of his childhood with his sister Elizabeth at their grandmother’s house in Krossen. In 1627, they moved to Leyden. Charles Louis was reserved and prickly, and found it difficult to adjust to life with his fun-loving, energetic siblings. They called their earnest brother ‘Timon’, after the people-hating central figure of Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens. It was a nickname Rupert used against his elder brother all his life.

  Rupert was developing a strongly individual personality. In contrast to Timon’s cold reserve, Rupert was fiery, mischievous, and passionate. His family called him ‘Robert le Diable’ — Rupert the Devil — and marvelled at his bravery and perseverance. A tale from Rupert’s youth gives a snapshot of his energetic and uncompromising nature.

  The Prince took part in a hunting party hosted by his mother. During the chase, the fox tried to escape the hounds by slipping down a hole. Rupert was in time to see one of his favourite dogs disappear after the fox, until it, too, was out of sight. The prince, worried when the hound failed to reappear, started to wriggle into the earth as well. A man called Billingsby, watching first fox, then hound, then prince, go underground, entered the hole himself, took hold of Rupert’s heels, and pulled him out. The prince reappeared, still holding firmly onto the dogs’ back legs. The hound shared its master’s determination: in its jaws was the fox.

  *

  Although Elizabeth was happy to live away from her children during their nursery phase, she moved them from Leyden when they became adolescents. She kept her daughters by her side, at The Hague. The three elder girls, Elizabeth, Louisa Hollandina, and Henrietta, were physically very attractive, and were noted adornments at the Winter Queen’s court. Sophie, who arrived in 1641, was less good-looking, yet she had a wonderful brain and a very quick wit, and became extremely popular. The boys, however, were not needed at court. Elizabeth wanted them to train for their life’s purpose, the retrieval of their father’s lost lands.

  The Elector was dependent on the continued support of others. The United Provinces provided his home and a basic pension, but outside Protestant aid was needed, if the Palatine and Bohemia were ever to be regained. In 1625, Denmark, England, France, Sweden, Transylvania, and various German territories expressed their joint intention of assisting Frederick in his quest.

  England’s involvement seemed to promise much: James I had died in 1625 and had been succeeded by Elizabeth’s brother, Charles. On his deathbed James regretted his stubborn refusal to help the Palatine cause and urged his heir to right the wrong. Charles I was sympathetic to Frederick’s plight and the Elector played on his compassion: he sent Charles a portrait by Poelenberg of his seven elder children (Henrietta and Philip were considered too young for inclusion), with hunting trophies at their feet, in a classical landscape. The grand canvas was accompanied by a humble message: ‘The great portrait in which your Majesty will see all your little servants and maidens whom you bring up.’[36] Frederick was determined that his brother-in-law should honour family obligations, in a way that his late father-in-law had repeatedly failed to do. Charles demonstrated his loyal intentions by declaring war on Spain in support of Frederick. When, in 1625, Charles sent the Duke of Buckingham to attack Cadiz, the royal favourite flew the Palatine flag as his battle standard. It brought him no luck: the attack was a disaster.

  For the next four years, England remained at war with Spain. In 1627 Charles declared that: ‘He had no other original quarrel with Spain but the cause of his dear sister, which he could no more distinguish from his own than nature had done their bloods, so would he never lend ear to any terms of compos
ition, without her knowledge, consent and council.’[37] These were noble sentiments, sincerely meant. However, in 1629, Charles decided to dispense with Parliament for the foreseeable future, and soon found that the raft of questionable fundraising measures he relied on was incapable of supporting a costly foreign policy. The king made immediate peace with France, but found it harder to agree terms with Spain: the issue of the Palatinate could not be resolved to both sides’ satisfaction. In the end it was simply left out of the peace treaty. From 1630, Frederick was once more left without English military aid.

  Yet it was at this point that Frederick enjoyed his greatest hope of restoration. In the autumn of 1629, Sweden and Poland signed a six-year truce. This left the Swedish king, Gustavus Adolphus, free to enter the Thirty Years’ War. The following year he landed in Germany with 10,000 men and in September 1631 he trounced the Imperial army at the battle of Breitenfeld. Frederick believed this was the first steppingstone to ultimate victory. He was flattered by the compliments paid to him by the Swedish military genius. Gustavus Adolphus, meanwhile, appreciated that Germany could only find peace if the Palatine was returned to its electoral family.

  Frederick spent much of his time away from home, on campaign, his sense of princely duty overriding his longing to be with his wife and children. In January 1632 he set off on what he anticipated would be the pivotal campaign — the one that would see him restored at last. Before he left, he wrote to Charles I asking him to look after his wife and children while he was gone. The fighting went well: in May, Frederick accompanied Gustavus Adolphus into Munich, the capital of enemy Bavaria. The Swedish king insisted that Frederick lodge in the abandoned palace of his great adversary, Maximilian. While there, Frederick found many of his cannon, captured at White Mountain a dozen years earlier. He dared to think that the tide had turned — that he would soon be back with his family, in the castle at Heidelberg.

  Such thoughts fuelled Frederick’s terrible homesickness. He and his wife kept up a passionate and constant correspondence, their letters accompanied by gifts, and miniatures of themselves and their children. Frederick wrote to Elizabeth from Munich: ‘I am very pleased that Rupert is in your good books, and that Charles is doing so well ... God make me so happy as to be able to see you again soon!’[38] In fact, the Palsgrave would never be reunited with his wife and children again.

  With ultimate victory in sight, the relationship with Gustavus Adolphus had begun to sour. The Swede insisted that, in return for his restoration, the Palsgrave must guarantee equal rights to his Lutheran and Calvinist subjects. Frederick took offence at this perceived meddling in his sovereignty. He decided to return to his family, rather than resolve the disagreement. Riding from Munich to Mentz, he was struck down by a serious fever, which left him delirious and short of breath. When it seemed that he was over the worst of it, news arrived of the battle of Latzen: his Swedish allies had narrowly won the day, but Gustavus Adolphus had perished in the thick of the fighting.

  Frederick was consumed by depression: his hopes had rested on the continuing military success of the warrior king. Gustavus Adophus’s death made everything desperate, once more. A few days later, to his doctor’s surprise, Frederick died, meekly surrendering a life that had promised so much, but whose defining moment had been the risky acceptance of the Bohemian crown. Frederick was buried in a grave so anonymous that soon its whereabouts were forgotten.

  The following month, on Christmas Eve, Elizabeth wrote to her brother Charles I that she was ‘the most wretched creature that ever lived in this world, and this shall I ever be, having lost the best friend that I ever had, in whom was all my delight’.[39] She had genuinely adored her husband and wore mourning for the rest of her life. A decade later guests commented on how her receiving chamber was still hung with black velvet. Elizabeth remembered all the significant moments she had shared with Frederick and marked the anniversaries of his death by fasting.

  The Winter Queen remained as loyal to her husband’s aims as to his memory. ‘The subjects of this good Prince’, wrote two Englishmen who fought in Gustavus Adolphus’s army, ‘may have plentiful matter of consolation, from that most heroical, and masculine spirited princess, his Queen; and from that sweet and numerous issue, which he bath left behind him: which promises them an entire affranchisement, one day again; and the resettling of a family so many ways considerable, as is one of the first and ancientliest descended, of all Europe. An issue so fair; and for their numbers, such a blessing: as were not only prepared by God, for a present comfort to their widowed mother: but (which their own excellent towardliness, gives pregnant hopes of), for the raising of their own fair family again; and engrafting the Palatine branches, into most of the great Houses of the Empire.’[40] The widow focused her energy on helping Charles Louis reclaim his father’s lost crown.

  Elizabeth received an invitation from her brother Charles to return to England, where he could look after her and her fatherless children. She declined, claiming that she would rather travel home when not in mourning. Elizabeth also pointedly mentioned the military support that the United Provinces were offering Charles Louis for the 1633 campaigning season. She asked, though, that Charles offer his protection to her many children. Apart from God, she said, Charles was their ‘sole resource’.[41]

  Chapter Three - Boy Soldier

  ‘The Low-countreys are (without all controversie) worthily stiled the Academie of warre, where the art militarie (if any where) truly flourisheth…’

  Militarie Instructions for the Cavallrie, 1632

  Tales of brave forefathers heightened Rupert’s early appetite for warfare. His most impressive fighting ancestor was Frederick the Victorious, Count Palatine from 1425 until 1476. An inspirational leader, Frederick was celebrated for his personal bravery and his penchant for the full cavalry charge. In July 1460, at the battle of Pfeddersheim, Frederick led his 2,000 horsemen in an assault against the combined forces of the Archbishop of Mainz, the Count of Leiningen, and Ludwig the Black. Frederick’s battle cry was: ‘Today Prince Elector, or no more!’ This do or die attitude brought total success: Frederick’s enemies were shattered by the Palatine horse and fled the field. The tactics remained the same through the Palsgrave’s subsequent years of triumph.

  As Rupert contemplated a life in arms, the romance of ancestral glory was tempered by the shocking reality of the Thirty Years’ War. The conflict cost tens of thousands of civilian lives and was felt with particular brutality in the Palatinate: located at the crossroads of destruction, its population of 600,000 would be reduced by two-thirds by the conclusion of hostilities. Emperor Ferdinand II used his position as the shield-bearer of Roman Catholicism to annihilate his opponents. Rupert grew up hearing first-hand reports of outrageous Papist cruelty.

  When the Catholic League under Tilly captured Magdeburg, in 1631, its excesses were broadcast round Europe. ‘The church of St John was full of womenfolk’, wrote an eyewitness, Salvius, to the Riksrad of Hamburg, ‘whom they locked in from the outside, thereafter throwing burning torches through the windows. The Croats and Walloons behaved mercilessly, throwing children into the fire and tying the more beautiful and well-off women citizens to their stirrups, made off with them behind their horses out of town. They spiked small children onto their lances, waved them around and cast them into the flames. Turks, Tartars and heathens could not have been more cruel.’[42]

  William Crowne, a member of the Earl of Arundel’s 1636 embassy to the Emperor, wrote in his diary:

  On this same day, seven rebels, the leaders of an armed insurrection of 400 ignorant peasants against the Emperor, were beheaded. The ringleader of the revolt, a fellow who had persuaded himself that no bullet had power to harm him, was led to the scaffold with his face covered and with two men holding him firmly against the block. Here the executioners seized him firmly by the chest with a massive pair of red-hot pincers and, nailing his right hand to the block, chopped it off. Then, quickly drawing the sword he wore at his side, he cut off
the wretched fellow’s head which an assistant raised, shouting into the ears of the dead man: ‘Jesus! Jesus!’ At this juncture, the Jesuit, who had accompanied the criminal and had been admonishing him for his sins, asked those present to join in prayer for the soul of the dead man. Following this came the man’s accomplices, including a young boy, all of whom bore crucifixes in their hands and made their individual confessions at the foot of the scaffold to priests, kissing their hands and feet at the end of every prayer.[43]

  Their penitence was in vain: they were all beheaded and quartered.

  Rupert was encouraged by his mother to take part in this war: ‘He cannot too soon be a soldier’, Elizabeth declared, ‘in these active times.’[44] She knew it was Rupert’s best hope of making his way in life, and of helping his family to win back its lost lands. In 1632, aged 12, Rupert was sent to Rheinberg to serve under his great-uncle Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange. Soldiery was in his blood and he took to his new profession well — a little too well, for his mother’s liking. She heard tales of camp life — of drinking, swearing, gambling, and womanising — and feared for Rupert’s morals. Elizabeth had been prepared to risk her son’s life, but not his soul, and ordered his recall.

  The Prince busied himself honing his fighting skills. Over Christmas, 1633, the Prince of Orange arranged a Passage of Arms, a celebration of military skill that harked back to the age of medieval chivalry. Rupert had just turned 14, but he was tall and powerfully built for his age. A contemporary recorded him ‘carrying away the palm; with such a graceful air accompanying all his actions as drew the hearts and eyes of all the spectators towards him’.[45]