enemies sat still, not knowing their strength, but the friends on whom he was now forced to rely were lukewarm in the extreme. The Puritans indeed stayed at home in the south; but the private soldiers, and still more the nobles who composed his army and his council of war, had none of the Cavalier spirit of later times. Although it was not an army with which he could fight a severe battle against a formidable and determined foe, yet, as it was strong in numbers and no worse than indifferent in feeling, he could certainly have conquered Scotland if the force opposed to him had been feeble or disunited. Owing to the presence of Alexander Leslie it was as strong and compact as it was zealous and brave.

It is impossible sufficiently to admire the alternate firmness and moderation, in strategy and diplomacy alike, by which the Scotch brought this dangerous campaign on the Tweed to a peaceful but glorious conclusion. They shed no blood to cry for vengeance between the English and themselves, and they sent home the king, baffled but not insulted. Their devoted expressions of loyalty, their studied moderation of manner throughout the negotiations, must be attributed to the canny wisdom of the Scotch political leaders. But the military operations which first induced Charles to abandon the offensive and remain south of the Tweed, and then frightened him into readiness to grant terms, all without a battle, must be set down to Leslie's knowledge of his art and full appreciation of the political object of the war.

When, next year, the king, in an evil hour for himself, renewed his attempt to reduce Scotland, the conditions were totally changed. The second Bishops' War was not so heroic a business as the first, for the Scotch had not only gained confidence from the success of last summer, but had since seen in the Short Parliament welcome proof that more than half the English people were their friends. Instead of a royal army on the Tweed they had only to deal with a small detachment on the Tyne. But again their political measures exactly balanced the possibilities of the situation, and again Leslie accomplished his military task without a flaw. The rapid march through Northumberland and the occupation of Newcastle (described in Mr. Terry's book in detail that should interest all North-countrymen) put the Scotch in a position militarily secure and politically commanding. As long as Leslie sat safe behind the Tyne the Long Parliament sat safe in Westminster, and the converse

proposition was equally true. As Charles found he had to get rid of one by concession before he could attempt to remove the other by force, he came to Edinburgh in August 1641 and surrendered unconditionally to the Scotch demands. Among other ironical courtesies exchanged on this occasion, he made Leslie Earl of Leven. The old man drove round the town in friendly fashion with the sovereign he had thwarted-and, though he knew it not, dethroned-amidst the hearty cheers of a populace who had conquered their king, and could afford to be goodnatured.

It was

It would have been well for the Scotch if these festivities at Edinburgh had indeed been the end. They had settled their own national problem with a success that would have been final had they not been unfortunately drawn back into the greater vortex of the English civil war. perhaps impossible for them, from the point of view of their own safety, to permit Charles to conquer his Parliament, but their heads were also filled by a less prudent spirit of proselytism, which was to cause terrible woe to both kingdoms. In January 1644 Leven again entered Northumberland, this time at the head of a more professional army than the muster he had commanded on Dunse Law. The troops were regularly enlisted and paid, and the majority, not only of the lieutenants but of the colonels, were soldiers trained in the continental wars. After considerable marching and countermarching in Durham through bitter snowstorms the Scotch army left the town of Newcastle in the rear occupied by the enemy, and, joining hands with their English allies, sat down to the famous siege of York.

Although the great feud had raised up man against man in almost every corner of Britain, it had up to this time remained every where local in character. But in the summer of 1644 the capital of the North of England drew around its walls, with magnetic influence, types of every great party that was struggling to snatch its own triumph out of the victory of Parliament or King. While in the camp of the besiegers Cromwell's speculative troopers from the eastern counties and the more orthodox infantry of Fairfax were taking stock. of their brother Scots, of whom they had for six years heard so much and seen so little, there was hastening up from the south-west, with a scarcely less divided and certainly more motley host, a young man who was to the Cavalier cause what old Leven was to the Scotch nation. For Rupert of the Rhine was the fighting man from over the seas, who had

taken little part in the politics that led to the war and the negotiations that ever failed to put an end to it, but who had, at the outbreak of hostilities, rendered to his party the inestimable service of training a civil people in the ways of war as he had seen it among the Swedes and French. And, like the Scotch general, he had rendered this service not from the tangible motives of Sir Dugald Dalgetty but out of pure fidelity of spirit. Here, however, the parallel stops; for, while the spirit of Leven was fidelity to the Protestant religion and loyalty to the Scotch nation, the spirit of Rupert was fidelity to the friends of his youth and loyalty to Charles Stuart, the patron of his family. Most men are half for the public and half for their friends. But Leven was wholly for the public, and Rupert wholly for his friends. Neither is it hard to see the causes that had turned the cold deep stream of the Scotchman's consideration into a great public channel, and the tumultuous mountain cataract of Rupert's life into a thousand particular loves and hates. Leven, a bastard, a man without family and relations, had been forced to spend the years of his youth, when personal ties with strangers are most easily formed and most firmly knit, in suppression of all sides of himself that would not lead a poor and unknown man to promotion. Meanwhile, under the influence of the Dutch and afterwards of the Swedish services, the cause of Protestantism became to him the one absorbing outside ideal; and as self-interest became satisfied with success the outside ideal occupied more and more exclusively the mind of the old soldier of Gustavus. But besides the ever-present cause of an international religion, the memory of his native land was kept alive as a distant desire; for though far from Scotland he was never far from Scotchmen, and the talk around the camp-fires on the Danube and in the guard-rooms of Pomeranian garrisons turned ever back to the High Street and the Castle, the Firth and the distant hills beyond, the blind road over the moor, the valley head, the farm behind its sparse and wind-bent trees. So that when in 1638, sated with wealth and honours, yet unbound by any close personal ties, Alexander Leslie was called on to fight for the country he had never forgotten and the cause he had ever loved, his whole being answered, Here am I.'

Rupert's experience of life, on the other hand, seemed no less specially designed by Providence to put public considerations to the back of his mind and private motives to the fore. The son of Frederick Elector Palatine and of Elizabeth,

daughter of James I., he had no country; for within a year of his birth (1619) his father lost Bohemia and the Palatinate, and the family established itself in the capacity of distinguished exiles in Holland, halfway between the mother's native England and the father's lost dominions on the Rhine. Flying visits to the one, unsuccessful campaigns into the other, were enough to teach young Rupert the ways of the world, but not enough to give him patriotism or a home. His family, in fact, stood to him in the place of a country. The common claims, privation, and dangers of a doubtful position, bound together the numerous family of sons and daughters with ties unusually strong. The father died in 1632, but the mother's manly and imperious spirit still taught the boys to look forward to the day when they should regain the family inheritance by the sword. In spite of, or perhaps on account of, the fact that they lived largely on the charity of the States of Holland and of their uncle Charles I., the characteristic of the Palatine brotherhood was the opposite of humility. In spite of the fact that they suffered severe privations for want of money, mother and sons alike were buoyant and gay, of wild humour to be merry in spite of fortune.' But reckless courage and love of adventure were the most strongly marked characteristics. When this most electric family quarrelled, the quarrels were not to be laughed at; but during the boyhood of Rupert mother and children were closely allied, and the shocks were felt only by the world outside. Their sister Sophie, who shared her brothers' early fortunes and characteristics, lived to bring into the world a race of kings who were not famous either for prolonged and romantic exile or for love of boisterous and gay adventure. That the daughter of the house of the Palatinate should be the mother of the house of Hanover is one of the freaks of fortune and the mysteries of nature.

6

If Rupert's family stood to him for a country, a high and real code of honour stood to him for a religion. Although he had been brought up with all his brothers and sisters in the strictest ways of Protestant theology, a visit to England and the influence of a host of new and delightful acquaintances at the Court of Henrietta Maria almost made the impressionable young man a Catholic. Fortunately his mother was able, before it was too late, to lure him back to the Continent with the prospect of a campaign. Although he ever afterwards remained staunchly Protestant, often at some cost to himself, it may be suspected that the traditions

VOL. CXCI. NO. CCCXCII.

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of the family, his sense of honour, and his dogged and independent nature, had at least as much to do with his resolution as any deep theological conviction. He was not indeed a special product of that pious and dogmatic century; he was the gentleman adventurer of all ages, the young man of Shakespeare's comedies, detached from abstract considerations and party catch-words, relying in all his sudden decisions upon the genial sense of youth.'

The most important relation of Rupert's life was the strong affection that had sprung up between himself and his uncle Charles I. during these boyish visits to England. The removal of the head of the Palatine family by death, and the extreme youth of his orphan sons, had for some years lent a very good colour to the inaction of the uncle with regard to the reconquest of their lost patrimony; while all that kind words, a hearty welcome, and high favour in the charming English Court could do to win the gratitude of a poor exile, who 'no revenue had but his good spirits,' was done for Rupert with all the gracious dignity of which Charles was born master. The prince had, in fact, promised to serve his patron whenever he should be needed, so that when in August 1642 he received in Holland a commission as General of the King's Horse, he was bound by honour as well as by inclination to accept. Thus his relation to the Civil War was not public but personal. England was not his country, and the quarrel was none of his. Indeed, since the Puritan Parliament had for twenty years been opposed to the royal peace policy, and would certainly have used its victory over the king to prosecute the cause of the exiled Palatines as the common cause of all true Protestants, political gratitude and private interest would alike have placed the prince with his much-abused brother Charles on the side of the Parliament. Let all England judge,' wrote Fairfax, complaining of his famous plunderings, whether 'the burning of its towns, ruining of its cities, and destroying of its people be a good requital from a person of your family, which has had the prayers, tears, purses, and blood of its Parliament and people.' But one ounce of personal gratitude outweighs a pound of political; and, though Rupert raised endless disturbances in what he conceived to be his private interest, he was always eager to sacrifice it to his private honour.

6

Whether this sudden summons across the seas of Rupert of the Rhine proved the blessing or the bane of the Cavalier cause, is no easy question. Mr. Gardiner, without commit