Prince Rupert: The Last Cavalier

by Charles Spencer

  The following day Gassion advanced towards the Spanish lines surrounding Armentières, before summoning his generals to a council of war. Rantzau took the opportunity to ask Rupert quietly what ‘that mad man Gassion’ intended to do: he hoped he would not be tempted to order a mounted attack, since the enclosed fields around the town would make it impossible for cavalry to manoeuvre effectively. Rupert’s reply to Rantzau is unrecorded, but we know what he said, when asked to share his opinion with the council of war on the best way to proceed. The prince spoke with the experience of one who had repeatedly been forced to fight in numerically inferior armies against larger forces — he advised against attacking such a powerful enemy. Others agreed with Rupert’s view and Armentières was left to its fate, falling softly into Spanish hands later in the year.

  After the capitulation of Armentières, the victorious Spaniards marched on towards La Bassée, shadowed by Gassion and Rantzau. Gassion’s fearlessness soon led Rupert into fresh danger. He challenged the prince to accompany him on a reconnaissance mission: ‘Are you well mounted, Sir?’ he asked Rupert. ‘Shall we go see the army?’ Intrigued, the prince accepted the invitation and while Rantzau stayed behind with the army, Rupert and Gassion rode off, accompanied by a couple of volunteers. The party had not ventured far when it ran into two or three enemy, Croatian hussars. When these turned tail, Gassion could not resist pursuing them — straight into the teeth of an ambush. A dozen men fired at Gassion and Rupert from a hilltop, while a troop of horses appeared behind them, cutting off their escape.

  Fortunately, some of Rupert’s inner coterie were within sight when the trap was sprung. While the prince and Gassion struggled to safer ground through marshland, reinforcements rode to their rescue. Mortaigne, Rupert’s Gentleman of the Horse, and Sir Robert Holmes, the prince’s page, led a small but determined charge into the Habsburg troops. In the fury of the ensuing firefight, Prince Rupert’s diary noted: ‘Sir Robert Holmes’s leg was shot in pieces just below the knee, and his horse killed under him where he lay upon the place, and Mortaigne also was shot in the hand.’

  Rupert saw that Holmes was struggling on the ground, in agony and with nobody coming to his aid. He rode back into the heat of the action, ‘with great danger and difficulty’, Mortaigne by his side. The prince hauled Holmes onto the back of his horse — Mortaigne was unable to help, because of his wounded hand — ‘and so carried him off; not a man of the French volunteers coming to his assistance’.[361] Such erratic behaviour, by Gassion and his compatriots, left Rupert increasingly disillusioned.

  In a relentless campaign, the prince was next in action outside the besieged stronghold of Landrecy. Mazarin ordered one of his marshals to slip a body of reinforcements into the town by a little-known path. This plan failed because of the incompetence of a local guide. The French were forced to retreat and Rupert was ordered to cover the withdrawal. He commanded four regiments — three of German cavalry, the other of Croats — against a pursuing force of six thousand of Spain’s best troops and their own Croat auxiliaries.

  Rupert showed great skill, overseeing the retreat while keeping the enemy at bay. He was just leaving one pass, with the entire Habsburg force snapping at his heels, when Gassion rode up to him in a quandary: his cannon had become bogged down — should he continue to withdraw, and leave the guns behind, or should he risk serious casualties while trying to extract them from the mud? Rupert calmly took control of the situation. He asked Gassion to send back two of his best infantry regiments — that of Picardie and the Swiss Guards — to provide covering fire, while the prince’s men extricated the artillery. Rupert managed to save the guns and to retire, without losing a single soldier.

  Rupert had barely completed this task when, that same night, he was summoned with his troops to begin the siege of La Bassée. He led his cavalry off immediately, leaving the French infantry to follow. The prince set about the siege with vigorous energy, digging his men in as soon as they arrived. Rupert was alerted to an attempt by Lord Goring — who had thrown in his lot with the Spaniards — to reinforce the garrison with his own English division, which consisted of 1,000 infantry and 200 cavalry. Goring was ambushed: 200 of his men were killed, a similar number were captured, and the rest scattered. The French again claimed not to have lost a man. This was such a successful action that it demanded notice overseas: English, Puritan pamphleteers reported Goring’s reverses with relish, but — reluctant to compliment an even more prominent old foe — omitted to mention that Rupert was the leading light on the French side. Instead, Gassion received the accolades in London: ‘following his own course with his accustomed vigour, by finishing his trenches’.[362] It was the right compliment, awarded to the wrong general.

  La Bassée was difficult to attack, ‘the Spaniards having spent many years in the fortifying thereof’.[363] It had fallen to them in May 1642 after a month’s bombardment by a mighty force under General Francisco de Melle. More than 10,000 cannon balls had pummelled its walls and 3,000 of the attackers had died in the assault. An equally bloody action was anticipated now but, after three weeks, the Spanish commander opened negotiations with Rupert and La Bassée was quietly surrendered to the prince.

  This was a success that aroused Gassion’s envy, and relations between him and Rupert were never to recover. The effect of this was felt immediately. When the French army moved quickly to Lens, Rupert urged an immediate attack on the town by the Picardie regiment. However, Gassion resisted this advice and as a result the opportunity to take the town evaporated. The marshal led his disappointed force back to La Bassée.

  Once there, Gassion invited the prince to accompany him on a minor expedition. Rupert, grateful for the distraction, agreed. He found himself joining a troop of eighty horses in a ride to Eysters, where Gassion was to discuss provisions for the cavalry with a commissar. Learning the marshal and prince’s intended route, a peasant farmer went to Armentières to present the opportunity of an ambush to the Spanish commander. The Spaniard despatched one hundred musketeers to intercept the convoy on its return.

  Rupert rode at the head of the detachment. The road was heading towards some woodland when the alert prince noticed ‘a dog sitting upon his breech, with his face towards the wood’. He passed his distinctive red cloak to his page, Sir William Reeves, and told him to continue as though nothing was out of the ordinary. Rupert then rode up to Gassion, 40 yards ahead of him, with the urgent warning: ‘Have a care, sir, there is a party in the wood.’ The prince had barely uttered these words of warning when the ambush was sprung: a volley of shots rang out and Reeves was among the prisoners taken during the initial confusion. Rupert, keeping his wits about him, pushed his men forward, and they fought their way through the enemy.

  Gassion, however, found the dangerous thrill of the situation irresistible. He turned his horse back towards the Spaniards and shouted: ‘Mon Dieu! Let us break the necks of these rogues!’ He then removed his feet from his stirrups and made to dismount. Rupert and his officers took this to be a signal that they were also to alight. They assumed they would join the marshal in an attack on foot, relying on their pistols and swords against the enemy’s muskets. But Gassion either changed his mind or never intended engaging with the enemy in this way: he suddenly rode off, leaving Rupert’s party dismounted and exposed.

  The Spaniards closed in and Rupert received the most serious wound that his varied military career was to garner: he was shot in the head. The blood-spattered prince was dragged from the fray by his men, conscious but in a dangerous state. When he eventually rejoined Gassion’s main body, the marshal said gravely: ‘Monsieur, I am most annoyed that you are wounded.’ ‘And me also,’ retorted Rupert, with wry understatement.

  This was to be the last of Gassion’s death-defying escapades. While Rupert’s physicians tended his serious injury, the marshal rode off to renew the siege of Lens. Risking his life once too often, Gassion was shot dead, a Spanish musketeer hitting him in the head. His lasting legacy was a reputation
for bravery that frequently crossed over into eccentricity. At least his premonition of doom meant that he left behind no widow.

  *

  Rupert was sent to convalesce. He made a brief trip to Paris, where he paid his compliments to the Court and received praise for his bold efforts on Louis XIV’s behalf. He then repaired to St Germain in October. There he received a letter from his uncle, written from Hampton Court. Charles’s hopes of salvation at the hands of his northern subjects had come to nothing: his Scottish enemies had effectively sold him to his English ones. The king’s progress south showed he still enjoyed widespread popular support: crowds came to cheer him as he passed. He was held under lenient house arrest at Holdenby, the vast royal palace 7 miles to the northwest of Northampton. Charles and Henrietta Maria had halted there a decade earlier, during a triumphal progress through the Midlands. Now his presence was low-key: he enjoyed walking round Holdenby’s gardens, played chess, and visited surrounding mansions for games of bowls. Sundays he devoted to private prayer.

  The queen, meanwhile, was deeply concerned by her husband’s plight: ‘From Paris letters say that the Queen is of late much discontented,’ announced Mercurius Diutinus, ‘and troubled at the hearing of his Majesty’s propounding to come to London, as being out of hope (if he do go to Holdenby, or other of Parliament’s quarters towards London) that his designs will then never be completed.’[364] The nearer that Charles was taken to the capital, the more Henrietta Maria feared for his well-being. Her concern was well placed: the king’s fate was bound up in growing tensions between Parliament, the New Model Army, and extreme political and religious bodies.

  The New Model Army removed Charles from Holdenby to Newmarket, where negotiations began to see if a new, modified role could be found for the king. He was asked to surrender control of the militia for ten years, to trim the power of the bishops, and to exempt five of his leading supporters from a general pardon. The king seemed to be open to these proposals, prompting his captors to restore him to his palace at Hampton Court. In truth, though, he was merely stalling for time, looking for a way out of his worsening predicament. His words to Rupert smack of increasing agitation and despair, tinged with regret for past mistakes:

  Nephew,

  Amongst many misfortunes, which are not my fault, one is, that you have missed those expressions of kindness I meant you, which, I believe, was occasioned by your being in the army. It being likewise the reason that made me write so few letters to you. Besides, the truth is, as my condition is yet, I cannot say anything to you as I would; not being able to second words in the deeds. Wherefore excuse me if I only say this to you now, that, since I saw you, all your actions have more than confirmed the good opinion I have of you. Assuring you that, next my children (I say next) I shall have most care of you or have your company.

  And, be confident that this shall be really performed by

  Your most loving Uncle, and constant faithful Friend,

  Charles R.

  PS — I heard not of your hurt before I was assured of your recovery; for which nobody, without compliment, is gladder than myself ...[365]

  Charles would have been disappointed to learn that the animosity between his nephew and his favourite blazed anew. Digby was now at St Germain, after failing to raise a Royalist army in Ireland, and headed up the faction at court that was most disagreeable to the prince. The differences between the two men were now so dire that, in October 1647, Rupert challenged Digby to a duel, to take place at a crossroads in the Forest of Poissy. Only Henrietta Maria’s personal intervention stopped Rupert and Digby from fighting: she sent Lord Jermyn to confine Digby to his quarters. Digby was so rude to Jermyn that he rode to Rupert and offered his services as a second. However, before the duel could begin, Prince Charles arrived with some guards and arrested Rupert and his other supporters, who included Lord Gerard. Henrietta Maria ordered Rupert and Digby to explain their grievances and brought the matter to a peaceful conclusion.

  The queen was unable to stop a similar contest between the prince and Lord Percy, five months later. Percy’s intimacy with Digby, and his inadequacy as General of Ordnance, had long marked him as one of Rupert’s greater enemies. The prince fought and wounded Percy, ‘the Prince being’, a contemporary reported, ‘as skilful with his weapon as valiant’.[366]

  The duel was a symptom of Rupert’s unhappiness in the court-in-exile. He chose to look for action away from St Germain.

  Chapter Fourteen - General at Sea

  ‘The Mariners of several of the Royal ships set forth in this last summer’s fleet, being by the cunning insinuation of men ill affected to the Peace of this Kingdom seduced, have treacherously revolted from their duty, and do still persist in their disobedience, by which horrid and detestable act in breach of their trust, they have much blemished the honour and credit of the Navigation, and Mariners of this Kingdom.’

  ‘A Declaration of the Lords and Commons’, 14 July 1648

  A short-lived, uncoordinated reignition of Royalist resistance in parts of England and Wales flared up in 1648. Despite its brevity, the Second Civil War was an intense affair, whose repercussions were felt across Britain. Parliamentarian propagandists had sensed the coming of renewed warfare and lashed out at those behind it: ‘Blush for shame ye bastards of England,’ fumed The Lamentation of the Ruling Lay-Elders, in July 1647, ‘(for legitimate children ye cannot be) that prosecute such horrid actions, and hatch such Crocodiles eggs of Rebellion and murder, that the very Infidels, Pagans, Turks, Saracens, and no Nation though never so barbarous and cruel but would shame to own.’[367]

  Loyalty to the Crown remained, to many people, not so much a matter of political choice, but rather a cornerstone of personal creed. As long as the king lived, he would always have supporters. A contemporary pamphlet involved an imaginary interchange between an old Cavalier and an interrogator:

  Question: ‘Then it seems you have been for the King?’

  Answer: ‘I have, Sir, and am still, with all my heart to wish his honour and safety, and I hold it my duty to do so.’[368]

  The Second Civil War began in the spring of 1648 with a rising in Kent led by Goring’s father, Lord Norwich. His force soon combined with a similar one from Essex, commanded by Sir Charles Lucas — who had fought bravely at Powick Bridge and had helped identify the Royalist dead at Marston Moor. When the New Model Army appeared in strong numbers, the Royalists fell back to Colchester, whose sturdy defensive walls were accentuated by a hilltop position and the protective waters of the River Colne. The garrison prepared for a siege they were confident they could withstand until help arrived.

  The king must have greeted news of the rising with hope and relief, for his position was extremely precarious. He had attempted to flee the country, getting as far as the Isle of Wight before being imprisoned there, in Carisbrooke Castle. By now his repeated untrustworthiness had eroded his enemies’ patience and his confinement took on a more restrictive air: ‘The King is now kept from destructive Councils,’ the House of Commons heard in mid January. ‘His Majesty is sad, and spends much time in writing, and at his books.’[369]

  The Moderate Intelligencer gauged the tone and the scope of Charles’s island captivity: ‘Here is a melancholy Court. Walking the round is the daily recreation’.[370] The king was denied his choice of worship: Episcopalianism was not permitted, so he refused to take Communion. Charles was constantly at loggerheads with his chief gaoler, Colonel Hammond, a servant of Parliament and an enemy of monarchy.

  In London, it was believed that the coming year would be a decisive one for the king, yielding up freedom or death. A ditty of the time went:

  Poor Charles pursu’d in forty-one,

  Un-king’d in forty-seven;

  The eighth will place him on his Throne,

  In Earth, or else in Heav’n.[371]

  When, thanks to Digby’s slanders, Charles had been most questioning of Rupert’s integrity, the prince had concluded a letter to the king with a declaration of
infinite loyalty:

  Wherever I am, or how unhappy soever, and by your will made so, yet I shall ever retain that duty to your Majesty which I have ever, as

  Your Majesty’s most humble, and most obedient Nephew, and faithful humble servant,

  Rupert[372]

  The outbreak of the Second Civil War gave the prince a chance to honour his word. He hoped to join Prince Charles as he set off for Scotland, but Lauderdale urged Charles not to bring over a man, ‘against whom both kingdoms have so just cause of exceptions’.[373]

  However, the disjointed rebellion against Parliament on land led to a spectacular result at sea: the majority of the navy, which had lent such important support to Parliament in the Great Civil War, now declared for the king and sailed for Holland. Its sailors had been alienated by the increasing political and religious extremism of the government, and of the army.

  Parliament was rattled. The Lords and Commons condemned the defectors, while offering an amnesty to all who returned to their service within twenty days: ‘But if they shall after the said time prefixed expired persist still in their disobedience, then the Houses will proceed to the reducing of them by force, and doubting not of a good success by the blessing of Almighty God.’[374] At the same time the two Houses offered a generous inducement to those seamen who had remained loyal: they would each receive two months’ wages as a bonus, once the renegades were defeated.

  In July, rumours circulated London that the Prince of Wales had left Calais in a Dutch ship of thirty-five guns. Charles was sailing at the head of five lesser vessels, which some feared were destined for the north of England. ‘But those of better judgements’, wrote one correspondent, ‘suppose that he is rather gone towards Holland. And it is more likely because diverse English officers are gone by land towards Holland.’[375] Heading the list of those believed to be accompanying the heir to the throne was ‘Prince Rupert, the Palsgrave’s brother’.