ting himself to any distinct utterance on the subject, leaves an impression on the whole unfavourable to Rupert, but Miss Scott supplies details which again give pause to hasty judgement. The case may be stated thus. The Cavaliers had not monetary resources enough to carry the war successfully over a prolonged period; but on the other hand they had, among the volunteers of 1642, material from which a first line of attack might have been constructed sufficient to bear down all opposition in the first or second year of the war. But constructive ability was needed, for, good as the material was, it was raw. No doubt the more fashionable and less puritanical half of the English gentry, in days when duelling was no joke, were less startled by the clash of arms and more practised in the use of weapons than burghers who had been brought up under less barbarous social conventions; no doubt the hunting-field was a better training ground for cavalry than the yeoman's weekly ride to market on his ambling nag; but of actual war there was no more experience among the gentlemen of the county than among the train-bands of the town, and perhaps even less of military organisation. The king's cause required two men, of natural genius and of experience gained in the wars of the Continent: first, a man who could weld the excellent material ready to hand into a cavalry that nothing could resist, and who could lead it on all the various services which that arm could then perform in war; secondly, a man who could conduct the tactics of the battle-field and the strategy of the campaign as a whole, using cavalry and infantry together in their proper place. Now, although Rupert performed the first service to perfection, in so far as it can be perfectly performed without relation to the second, he was not only incapable of performing the second himself, but he stood seriously in the way of its performance by any one else. Before, however, dwelling on the faults which ruined the Cavaliers, for which the prince was only one of many persons responsible, it will be well to insist that it was he who organised the cavalry, who filled them with his own spirit of endurance, confidence, and dashing valour, who led them with extraordinary strategic as well as tactical genius on all services, where he could command, and where they could act alone. All this he did at the age of twenty-two to twenty-three, a record almost unequalled in the annals of youthful achievement. All this immense weight of business and responsibility he had not only carried off successfully, but had impregnated with

his own ideas and his own character, at an age when Bonaparte, a forward youth enough in his way, had only carried out a small though important operation against the fort at Toulon.

But where was the man to use Rupert and his cavalry? Where was the man who might have changed the fate of England and rolled back what is now called the inevitable' advance of freedom? Not only was there no man of genius forthcoming for this high service, but the post of commanderin-chief was to all intents and purposes never filled at all. If Strafford had been allowed to survive, he would at this supreme crisis of the cause of despotism have been at Charles's side to force him to appoint a commander whom men and nephews should obey. But left to himself the king could no more grasp a military than a political necessity. The one bond of union of all the jealous men and selfish interests that clamoured around him, as well as of the more modest and self-sacrificing members of the party, he was so indispensable to them all that if he had remained firm fixed he must, without effort of his own, have become their polestar; but his shiftiness made him their shuttlecock. He might have chosen some man at least not wholly incapable, and said to them all, Friends, country'men, and kinsfolk, here is your general. Either obey his orders without appeal to me, or leave my service.' This he would have done if nature had endowed him with that little strength of will or that considerable want of sensibility with which she has armed three-quarters of mankind. But he had none of the qualities of a shopkeeper. His delicate sense of personal relations, continually reflecting what was near him, but never what was far from him, keenly alive to the claims and susceptibilities, not indeed of his people, nor even of his party, but of all who thronged around him with passionate entreaty to his goodnature and appeal to their past services and present loyalty, would not allow him to enforce discipline among his officers. Thus it came about that he appointed a nonentity as generalin-chief, practically keeping all important decisions to himself and to those who were about his person from time to time. This arrangement was even worse than the fatal system which has lost so many armies, both in ancient and modern warfare, the command on alternate days; for whereas in the case of Paullus and Varro it was always possible to calculate who would be in command on any given date, the boldest gambler in camp would hesitate before he

staked his deferred pay on the issue whether Rupert or Digby, Goring or Forth would have the upper hand on the morrow. If Charles thought that by keeping the strings in his own hands he would secure the desired unity of action, it is only another example of how long a man may live in complete ignorance of himself. Be that as it may, the system set a premium on intrigue and gave a stimulus to jealousy and faction, things that could have been found in the royal camp without the offer of a special reward. Fine old Cavaliers like the Earl of Lindsey and Sir Edmund Verney, men who only asked to be spent or sacrificed for their political principles or their religious ideals, had less influence than they merited under a system that was little better than an indecent scramble for the king's confidence. As the only way to obtain military authority was to push others aside in that scramble, it came to pass that no man could rise to the top without making a host of personal enemies among his future colleagues. Mr. Gardiner has scarcely done justice to the instructive story of the feuds among the royalist military leaders which Miss Scott sets out in fascinating detail. The modern historian, with his tendency to explain everything on difference of principle, is in his own element among the Independents and Presbyterians, the train-bands and the Ironsides, the Wallers and the Leslies, and the Cromwells. But when he carries his notions over to the Cavalier lines, he is soon at fault. His

golden words are spent' over Falkland and Verney, Fuller and Chillingworth. He cannot tie up Rupert in a formula, or state Goring's views on the relation of Church and State. The much-talked-of rivalry of the military and civilian parties is inadequate as a complete explanation of the feuds that divided the Cavalier leaders. The greater part of these were purely personal quarrels, natural among full-blooded men who had been brought up to regard life as an affair, not between parties and creeds, but between man and man, and inevitable under the system which Charles had chosen to establish. They fought, not on points of principle, but on points of precedence; they threw up their commissions not because the Crown had intrigued with the Catholics or offered toleration to the sects, but because this one had not been given a colonelcy, and that one had been expected to carry out the orders of a superior he disliked. The personal motive which Marvell, naturally because he was a poet, gave as the reason why Cromwell

'Did thorough his own side
His fiery way divide,'

'For 'tis all one to courage high

is better applied to Rupert and Goring.

The emulous or enemy,'

exactly explains why those young Capulets and Montagues could not work together for the common cause of their prince. The less violent though no less dangerous quarrel of Essex and Waller is almost the only case of a difference among the Parliamentary generals that was more personal than political. As their divisions generally turned on questions of Church and State, they were of higher significance, and have rightly been treated at greater length by Mr. Gardiner. The contemptuous silence with which he passes over the mutual animosities of the Cavaliers is justified from the point of view from which he writes his history; but those will read Miss Scott's book who are pleased to contemplate on a stage of great historic events the simple passions of life, working in men of uncommon valour, vigour, and talent, but warped by that false definition of personal dignity which is only taught to aristocracies, and wholly unrestrained by the great influences which were then beginning to teach Englishmen of all classes a new view of the value of life and the dignity of man.

It would be a gross injustice to Rupert to class him, without further distinction, with Digby, Goring, and Wilmot. Each of them headed his own party and worked against the others in turn, with a violence or a subtlety of intrigue that was grossly disloyal to the public interest. But whereas Digby, Goring, and Wilmot were each a particular kind of scoundrel, Rupert was a gentleman, loving to friends and often generous to enemies. He was rewarded by the sincere attachment of his devoted servant, honest Will Legge, and of his inseparable brother Maurice, whom death alone after many years divided from him. It is pleasant also to find that the long sufferings of the Civil War and the terrific catastrophe of Marston could not dry up the springs of genuine and honest gaiety in the two brothers. When in January, 1645, the negotiations of Uxbridge were on foot, the Parliamentary proposals contained a long list of excepted persons, who were to expect no pardon,' headed by the names of Rupert and Maurice. The two princes, as their names were read out, caught each other's eye across the council table, and, as if they were back in the nursery at the Hague, fell into a laughter, at which the King seemed displeased, and bid them be quiet.'

6

How much lies in laughter, the cipher-key wherewith we 'decipher the whole man!' Considering that Rupert, who knew enough of war to see the cause was lost, continued to press for the completion of the treaty, the incident is a gracious one, and will make every one wish that he had known the prince.

Rupert's relation to his uncle was at once too intimate and too insubordinate for the requirements of discipline. The advantage he possessed, as nephew, over all competitors, even over the favourite secretary, Digby, was such that whenever he was present with the king he generally had his way. But his ceaseless activity-which made the Parliamentarians think there were four Ruperts, one for each quarter of England-drew him away so often from Oxford, that Digby, who generally retired into the background during these touching family interviews, resumed operations as soon as the clatter of horse-hoofs down High Street told that the war-storm had passed away into the enemy's lines. In a few days messengers would be spurring off with counterorders in quest of the vanished prince, or some friend of Rupert would be disappointed of a commission to which he laid claim. After that it was only a matter of time before an unusual stir in the ante-chamber told that the General of the King's Horse had come back almost unattended, straight as a homing pigeon, by some dangerous short cut through Roundhead territory, full of noisy remonstrance only to be appeased by protestations, caresses, and some compensating concession.

Although the prince suffered injustice on sundry occasions from his uncle's inability to adhere to any fixed course of conferring royal favour, he had upon the whole too much rather than too little of his own way. At the very outbreak of the war he stipulated that in his command of the cavalry he should receive orders from no one but Charles himself— a condition which reduced the general-in-chief to little better than military attendant on the king. It would even be rash to say that Forth, the nominal commander of the royal forces, had the most influential share in drawing up those plans of campaign which he had not the authority to carry out. The really excellent schemes which the king finally approved, for the advance on London in '42 and '43, and for the reduction of the North and West in '44, are of uncertain origin. They are supposed by Mr. Gardiner to have chiefly come from Rupert. It was certainly natural

*Civil War (cabinet edition), vol. ii. pp. 63-4.