Prince Rupert: The Last Cavalier

By Charles Spencer

A brilliant history of Prince Rupert of the Rhine from his penniless start, becoming a soldier in his teenage years, up to his life as King Charles I’s most famous and spectacular general.

Born in Prague in 1619, Prince Rupert was set for a life of enormous privilege but when his father, Frederick V, lost his crown Rupert’s family were left with just eight years to flee Prague – they hastened to safety, but left the infant Rupert behind. He was discovered in a final sweep of the deserted palace.

This is the adventurous story of Rupert, from his decision at the age of twelve to become a soldier, through the Thirty Years War and his entry into England, where he became an infamous presence on the battlefield, a classically handsome, swaggering, expert cavalier, and a fierce Royalist who would defend King Charles I to the death throughout the Civil War.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins UK
• Release date: Sep 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9780008373252

Charles Spencer

Charles Spencer was educated at Eton College and obtained his degree in Modern History at Magdalen College, Oxford. He was a reporter on NBC’s Today show from 1986 until 1995, and is the author of four books, including the Sunday Times bestseller Blenheim: Battle for Europe (shortlisted for History Book of the Year, National Book Awards) and Prince Rupert: The Last Cavalier.

Book preview

Introduction

Prince Rupert of the Rhine — it’s a name touched in equal parts by glamour and glory, defeat and disappointment. The poster boy of the Royalist cause, Rupert attracted the unrestrained bile of Parliament’s busy propagandists. They poured out pamphlets besmirching the aims and intentions of the king’s talismanic nephew. His reputation has never fully recovered. However, he has never wanted for admirers: his many portraits show a good-looking and intelligent man, confident and focused. If opinions on the prince are divided, this has long been the case. He achieved his contentious status during some of the most divisive years in British history, which saw Charles I fighting Parliament in the English Civil War.

Those casually acquainted with the conflicts of the 1640s usually know something of the prince’s military reputation — most likely that he was the leader of thundering cavalry charges, which overwhelmed opponents with the shock of their initial impetus, before spinning off the battlefield in woeful indiscipline. There is certainly truth in this popular image: at the first and last of the great Civil War battles, Rupert’s troops sliced effortlessly through the enemy, then galloped after their foes instead of regrouping and re-engaging. At Edgehill, this unruliness robbed the king of victory. At Naseby, massively outnumbered, Royalist failure was probably inevitable, but the early absence of the prince and his squadrons made defeat certain and complete.

At 6 foot 4 inches tall, the sheer physical presence of Rupert was difficult to ignore. He attracted enormous attention from contemporaries. To his followers, he was a man ‘whose very name was half a conquest’. The Marquess of Newcastle, a key Royalist grandee in northern England, wrote to the prince on this theme: ‘Your name is grown so triumphant, and the world’s expectations to look for more from you than man can do; but that is their fault, Sir, and not yours. Long may you live … a terror to your uncle’s enemies, and a preserver of his servants.’

The enemy viewed him in a more apocalyptic light: a Scottish observer, writing in 1644, summoned an awful image of the prince’s approach of the city of York: ‘The manner briefly was thus, Rupert, or the second Nimrod, the mighty Plunderer, the beginning of whose kingdom is confusion, comes in his hunting carrier, with his fellow hunters, and near 20,000 bloodhounds attending them, all more ravenous than wolves, and fiercer than tigers, thirsting for blood.’ To Parliament, the prince was a figure of terror.

When examining Rupert’s life, it is important to do so against a time line: the headline events frequently occurred when he was still very young. Born the son of a newly crowned king and queen, he embarked on a life of exile while still an infant. He gained a reputation as a notable soldier in his teens, exhibiting examples of the courage that marked his life and which frequently verged on the insane. Eventually he was taken prisoner of war. He endured years of incarceration, with periods of genuine deprivation and hardship. However, he used this time to develop his interests in art and science (which would remain dear to him throughout his life), and also experienced his first love — with his gaoler’s daughter.

The prince was returned to freedom as the clouds of civil warfare settled over England. Aged 22, he arrived in time to take command of his uncle’s 800 horsemen, and set about reinforcing and transforming them. They quickly became an eye-catching strike force. Dismissed by Parliament as demonic ‘cavaliers’, loose-living rapists and pillagers, Rupert moulded them into the most feared and effective part of the Royalist army.

The myth of the prince and his cavaliers evolved early in the conflict. On a warm day in the autumn of 1642, Rupert, his brother Maurice, and several of their comrades took time off from convoy duty to lie on the grass near Powick Bridge. Their breastplates lay beside them, while their horses grazed nearby. Suddenly the princes spotted the Life Guard of the Earl of Essex, the enemy lord general, riding towards them at the head of a significant force.

Logic dictated a speedy retreat to the safety of nearby Worcester. Instead, Rupert shouted to his officers to follow him. He then sprung onto his horse and immediately galloped directly at the rebels. The rest of the Royalists went after their young general as quickly as they could: the first proper engagement of the Civil War was joined.

Perhaps only fifty rebels were slain at Powick Bridge, but the significance of the day lay beyond the body count. Parliament had anticipated a short campaign, with speedy victory over a king who was believed to be unpopular and poorly equipped for warfare, but this reverse caused a huge dent to morale at Westminster. Several prominent rebel officers were among the dead and Rupert had shown that his gallantry, and that of his devoted followers, stood between Parliament and victory.

The English Civil War was the backdrop to Rupert’s most famous exploits. His flair on the battlefield led to hopes of finishing off Parliament, in 1643. However, Rupert found he faced enemies who were harder to defeat than those arrayed against him on the battlefield: his colleagues in the king’s council of war were divided, several of them suspicious and resentful of the young, foreign princeling, who enjoyed Charles I’s full favour. The Royalist cause was hamstrung by these internal divisions, which reduced Rupert to smouldering resentment. Meanwhile, Parliament refined its resources, and trained an army of a calibre that the king never possessed.

The prince became increasingly senior, militarily. Victories in the north were nullified by his humiliating defeat at Marston Moor. Naseby followed. His nadir came with the surrender of Bristol, then England’s second city, which allowed Rupert’s enemies to portray him, completely unfairly, as treacherous to the king. As Charles I spiralled towards ultimate defeat, he was ready to believe anything — even that his nephew was responsible for his key reverses. The weak monarch suspected his sister’s son, who was one of his most loyal commanders, rather than question the conniving courtiers who hated the bloodied hero.

After the Civil War, Rupert found brief employment in Louis XIV’s armies. However, he always had one ear cocked, waiting for the summons to serve his uncle’s cause once more. When the call came, he ignored his lack of experience at sea to lead the Royalist navy. It was a difficult assignment, which nobody else wanted. Rupert’s most heroic years followed, as he kept the Stuart banner flying while Parliament triumphed everywhere else. However, the effort of survival was enormous and exacted a heavy cost. The remainder of the prince’s life betrayed the ravages to his health incurred on royal duty.

When tackling Rupert’s life story, I was determined that only a third of the text should cover the key Civil War years of 1642-5: for a man who lived into his sixties, it seemed ridiculous to allot any more space to the four years that established his reputation. Fortunately, the rest of Prince Rupert’s days were filled with fascinating events, as his enquiring mind and his restless spirit took him in a variety of directions.

Every subject of a biography is, of course, to some extent, a product of his or her age. Of Rupert this is particularly so: his experiences, tastes, and interests were reflective of those preoccupying many European aristocrats and princes in the middle decades of the seventeenth century. He was enmeshed in one war after the other, hoping that battlefield success would lead to riches and glory. While he was a brilliant and charismatic cavalry general, he never progressed to successful overall command. However, soldiery — on land and sea — remained his vocation into late middle age.

His wider pursuits were typical of an active patrician with a good brain — many of his hobbies coincided with those of his first cousin, Charles II. Both men, predictably, enjoyed hunting and shooting, pursued actresses (although Rupert’s conquests were paltry in comparison to the king’s plenty), and played energetic tennis: Rupert was reputedly the finest player in England.

However, not all energies were expended in the bedroom and on the sports’ field. Rupert, like Charles II, had a burning interest in science. The Restoration coincided with an expansion of knowledge in chemistry, 1661 seeing the appearance of Robert Boyle’s The Sceptical Chymist, as well as the foundation of the Royal Society. Rupert was one of its first members. He was never afraid to dirty his own hands, spending happy, sweat-drenched, hours labouring in his laboratory and at his foundry. The Prince’s inventions mainly had a military theme, but he also brought mezzotint engraving to Britain. Some believe that he devised the process.

Financial insecurity was Rupert’s constant spur. It explains his never-ending pursuit of business schemes: he was determined to slough off the poverty bequeathed him as a younger son of a dispossessed royal family. The most enduring legacy of this search for wealth is the Hudson’s Bay Company, which the prince established and championed. It opened up vast areas of what is now Canada. The town of Prince Rupert, just south of the Alaskan/Canadian border, is a reminder of Rupert’s interest in North American trade and exploration.

Why write a biography of Prince Rupert now? There have been times when Rupert was better known than is currently the case. Eliot Warburton’s three volumes in the 1840s brought to light much of the correspondence and commentary attached to the glory days of this fascinating man. Subsequent biographies have also tended to concentrate on the Civil War years: there were three such works in 1976 alone. More recently, Frank Kitson has divided Rupert’s military career into two distinct phases — his years as a young general, and those as a middle-aged admiral — and analysed both.

My book looks at the whole man, as well as the context of his life. It does not claim to contain a definitive study of the Civil War, nor of the later Anglo-Dutch Wars. I have instead endeavoured to tell the tale of an intriguing individual, who frightened and inspired his contemporaries, and who was at the centre of a succession of fierce, personal quarrels. His particular foes were George Digby, a foppish courtier, and Samuel Pepys, the inspired naval bureaucrat most often remembered for his diaries.

Rupert was not an easy man. He was a cavalier, but certainly not of the laughing variety. At his best, he was serious, loyal, inspirational, and incisive. At his worst, he was arrogant, inflexible, and irascible. However, he lived life with passion and energy. He regarded himself as a man who would always do the right thing, whatever the cost. His lack of compromise was at once his greatest gift and his most significant impediment.

Prince Rupert of the Rhine hails from a different era, but his conflicting complexities are recognisable to all today that have a broad and compassionate view of the human condition. Writing his latest biography has left me an admirer of this fascinating man, accepting of his shortcomings, and in awe of his extraordinary physical courage. Above all, it is the range of his experiences that is most startling. It is hard to believe that one man packed so much into a single lifetime.

Chapter One

Baptism of Fire

‘Swaddled in Armour, Drums appeasd thy Cries, And the Shrill Trumpet sang thy Lullabies.’

Thomas Flatman, On the Death of the Illustrious Prince Rupert, a Pindarique Ode

Rupert was born in Prague on 17 December 1619, at half past ten at night. He was the third son, and fourth child, of a union that exuded glamour and promised glory. His mother Elizabeth was a British princess famed as a romantic icon throughout the Continent. His father Frederick V was Count Palatine, one of the foremost Protestant princes of Europe. ‘From thy noble Pedigree,’ Rupert’s eulogist would conclude, ‘The Royal Blood … sparked in thy veins.’ [fn1] The princeling’s royal heritage was of a north and middle European stamp: his grandmothers were princesses, one Danish, the other Dutch; his maternal grandfather was James I of England. When James heard that his only surviving daughter had produced a new grandson, he pressed a purse of gold coins into the messenger’s hands, before ordering the drinking of toasts.

Frederick and Elizabeth invited their subjects to file past their baby. Rupert lay in an ebony cradle — a symbol of the rich luxury that they assumed would be his lifelong companion. Another of his gifts was a silver ship, a prophetic offering, for some of Rupert’s most fascinating and challenging years would be at sea. Since he was native-born, unlike his two older brothers, there were calls for Rupert to be declared heir to his parents’ new kingdom — a proposal that failed in the Bohemian parliament by one vote. However, the neighbouring territory of Lusatia proclaimed Rupert as its prince.

Rupert’s christening took place on 31 March 1620, a contemporary recording: ‘The solemnity of his baptism was very extraordinary, there being present the King himself, his brother, two princes of the House of Saxony, the Duke of Anhalt, Elector of Hohenloe, with many other persons of eminent condition …’ [fn2] He was named after an ancestor who had been Emperor between 1400 and 1410, Rupert the Clement. The young prince inherited his forebear’s Christian name, not his disposition.

Bethlem Gabor was chosen as godfather: he was a formidable, Transylvanian, nobleman who claimed the throne of Hungary. Unable to attend the christening in person, he sent Count Thurtzo to represent him. The count, in body armour, received the infant from the priest and held him: a gesture that signalled his absent master’s duty of guardianship. Thurtzo then passed Rupert to the deputies of the Bohemian dependencies, who were also encased in armour. The sight of breastplates and swords in a cathedral was indicative of the close intertwining of the religious and the military in early seventeenth-century Europe. This was a time when senior ecclesiastical figures were at the centre of politics and lay princes were entrusted with spiritual duties.

Rupert’s father had recently, by request, become King of Bohemia, with Elizabeth his queen. The Bohemian nobility needed a Protestant champion to replace, and then stand up to, the Catholic Habsburgs, whom they had recently overthrown. Frederick, after much agonising, had agreed to take on the role. Rarely can the acceptance of an invitation have sparked such colossal devastation. Rupert’s birth took place after the fuse had been lit and just before the powder keg went up. Even as the boy’s arrival was celebrated, plans were forming in Catholic Europe that would impact fatally on his parents’ rule and set the newborn’s life on its helter-skelter course.

*

When Rupert’s parents married, in 1613, it was the conclusion of his mother’s exhaustive search for a suitable husband. By the standards of the age, Elizabeth’s clean features and height marked her out as handsome. Her lineage and charm persuaded people, somewhat against the evidence of her portraits, to declare her a great beauty. There was, however, no doubting her personality. Elizabeth had a confidence and sparkle inherited from her charismatic grandmother, Mary Queen of Scots. Unfortunately, Elizabeth would also match her tragic ancestress for heartbreak.

The princess was seven when her father left Scotland to assume the English throne. It had been left vacant by the death of the girl’s godmother, Elizabeth I. From the start young ‘Lady Elizabeth’ was hugely popular, provoking delighted admiration and praise from all who met her. James believed that royal children prospered better if kept away from the distractions of court life, so Elizabeth was handed over to an aristocratic couple, Lord and Lady Harington — ‘persons eminent for prudence and piety’ [fn3] — for a strict education. The reports from their residence at Combe Abbey, near Coventry, were consistently enthusiastic: ‘With God’s assistance’, Lord Harington wrote, ‘we hope to do our Lady Elizabeth such service as is due to her princely endowments and natural abilities; both which appear the sweet dawning of future comfort to her royal father.’ [fn4]

This princess of rare qualities was celebrated throughout the kingdom. If the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 had been successful in blowing up James and his sons, the conspirators had intended to kidnap Elizabeth, have her crowned, and bring her up a Catholic. ‘What a queen should I have been by this means!’ she said when told of the plan, ‘I had rather have been with my Royal Father in the Parliament House, than wear his Crown on such condition.’ [fn5]

As womanhood approached Elizabeth’s hand became much sought after overseas. The French ambassador met the princess when she was 11 and was captivated by her poise. ‘I assure you’, he reported to Paris, ‘that it will not be her fault if she is not dauphiness — and she might have worse fancies — for she is not at all vexed when it is mentioned to her.’ [fn6] Sir Walter Raleigh thought Elizabeth ‘by nature and education endowed with such princely perfections, both of body and mind, as may well deserve to be reputed a worthy spouse for the greatest monarch in Christendom’. [fn7] Her lengthy list of failed suitors included the kings of Sweden and Spain, the Dauphin of France, and Maurice of Nassau, the Dutch leader.

The collapse of the Spanish suit helps to explain Elizabeth’s eventual choice of husband. James I had hoped that such a union would underline the end of hostilities between England and Spain, and advertise his wise and peace-loving kingship. However, his heir, Prince Henry, spoke for the majority of Englishmen when loudly rejecting his sister’s sacrifice to Popery. ‘The prince hath publicly said’, the Spanish ambassador was shocked to note, ‘that whosoever should counsel his father to marry his sister to a Catholic prince, were a traitor, and that it cannot be but to kill him and his brother, and make the succession theirs; he is a great heretic!’ [fn8]

The most obvious Protestant match was the gifted Swedish prince, Gustavus Adolphus. However, Sweden was at war with Denmark, and the Danish king was Elizabeth’s maternal uncle, so this option fell away. Of the other choices, Frederick V, Count Palatine, was the candidate who stood out. He was the Palsgrave, or ‘Palace Count’, a role his family had filled since the tenth century. As such, he was the senior Protestant prince of the Holy Roman Empire — that hotchpotch of 300 Germanic, Bohemian, Lowland, and Italian lands, which was among the largest realms in Europe. The Count Palatine was one of the seven electors (the other six electors were the Archbishops of Cologne, Mainz, and Trier, and the King of Bohemia, the Duke of Saxony, and the Margrave of Brandenburg) charged by a fourteenth-century Papal Bull with the appointment of the Emperor. However, since the late Middle Ages, the throne — along with those of Hungary and Bohemia — had effectively become the possession of the Habsburg dynasty.

Frederick’s upbringing had more breadth to it than Elizabeth’s cloistered childhood. He had completed his education in Sedan, at the house of his uncle, the Duke of Bouillon. French was the main language spoken at Heidelberg, so this was an opportunity to progress to faultless fluency. His tutor was Tilenus, a Calvinist who stressed the need to guard against the evils of Catholicism. He planted in his pupil the lifelong conviction that the Pope, his Jesuit foot soldiers, and his Spanish Habsburg allies, were conspiring to undermine the rest of Europe for their own gain.

Religion was the cornerstone of a varied education. Frederick became a fine dancer, an adept swordsman, and an accomplished rider. By the time that he inherited the electorate, on his father’s death in 1610, Frederick had the makings of the perfect prince: he was devout, polished, and manly. The following year, when James I took discreet soundings about Frederick’s character and prospects from Bouillon, he received an enthusiastic critique: a perfect physique, a dark complexion and handsome face; a natural athleticism, particularly on horseback; a serious faith and pure morals; a wonderful portfolio of houses, including exquisite hunting lodges; and, when he came of age, arguably the most important electorate of the Holy Roman Empire. Eligibility was not a problem.

However, many in England had expected Elizabeth to marry a king. A prince, albeit one of Frederick’s fine pedigree, was considered too humble a match for the ‘Pearl of Britain’. Protestant supporters of the marriage felt it necessary to stress the importance of the Palatinate to the disappointed: ‘Now for his Highness’s Country’, wrote one of James I’s chaplains, ‘it is neither so small, unfruitful, or mean, as is by some supposed. It is in length about 200 English miles, the lower and the upper country. In the lower the Prince hath 26 walled towns, besides an infinite number of good and fair villages, 22 houses; and the land is very fruitful of wine, corn, and other comfortable fruits for man’s use, having the Rhine and the Neckar running through it. The upper Country hath not so many walled towns and princely houses, but those that are, be generally fairer than in the lower, especially Amberg and Newmarket [sic].’ [fn9]

It was Frederick’s devotion to Protestantism, and his tolerance of all its forms, that ultimately secured Elizabeth’s hand. Since 1555, the rulers of each part of the Holy Roman Empire had been permitted to choose their territory’s official religion. This concession helped to defuse the tension between Roman Catholics and Protestants. Since 1562, with one short-lived aberration, the count’s family had been solidly Calvinist, while its capital, Heidelberg, was known for its religious and intellectual enlightenment. ‘We have to bless God’, wrote an English translator of Palatine scriptures, in 1614, ‘for the religious care of our dread sovereign, in matching his only daughter, a princess peerless, with a Prince of that soundness of religion as the Prince Elector is.’ [fn10]

Although the princess’s mother, Anne of Denmark, was a Catholic sympathiser, her father’s succession to the English throne had been conditional on his promise to uphold Anglicanism. The English Establishment, which had so hurriedly welcomed James, already viewed him with concern. Nobles were appalled by his sale of hereditary titles, which introduced rich parvenus to the aristocracy. Furthermore, his rampant homosexuality was considered troubling in a king, partly on moral grounds, but more practically because his good-looking young favourites bypassed the conventional channels of patronage to gorge themselves on ill-deserved honours.

A sure way for James to regain some popularity was to play the religious card: in 1612 he took England into the Protestant Union, a defensive confederation of nine German principalities and seventeen imperial cities formed by Frederick’s father, and which the young Palsgrave now led. The same year, he agreed that Elizabeth should wed Frederick. The public preacher in Bristol — England’s second city and a place that was to play an important role in Rupert’s adult life — welcomed the betrothal: ‘Unto you happy Prince, and sent of God to increase our happiness’, he said in an open letter, ‘Come in thou blessed of the Lord, for whom the choicest pearl in the Christian world is by God himself prepared. The Lord makes her like Leah and like Rahel [sic], which two builded the house of Israel. Let her grow into thousand thousands, and let her seed possess the gate of his enemies.’ [fn11]

It was expected for princes and princesses to make dynastic marriages. Rupert’s parents were unusual in that theirs was a genuine love match, whose romantic pulse never slowed. Frederick made a sublime impression, on arriving in England. His ‘well-becoming confidence’ [fn12] was noted, as was his ‘wit, courage and judgement’. [fn13] Elizabeth was relieved to be marrying such a dashing young man: when Prince Maurice of Nassau had been presented as a possible mate, she had been repelled by the physical decay of his advanced middle age. By contrast, she fell quickly and completely in love with her handsome, youthful suitor.

The 16-year-old couple, only four days apart in age, married in Whitehall Chapel on St Valentine’s Day, 1613. Elizabeth wore a gold crown, her white dress and loosely hanging hair advertising her virginity. Despite the bride’s simplicity, James managed to spend nearly £100,000 on the celebrations, prompting one of his courtiers to offer a cheerless supplication: ‘God grant money to pay debts.’ [fn14] However, the revelry was not only about fleeting extravagance: William Shakespeare offered an enduring wedding gift, writing a play for the couple. The Tempest was performed fourteen times by the King’s Men during the festivities, for which the players received £150. The Archbishop of Canterbury summed up the hopes of all who witnessed the match: ‘The God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob bless these nuptials, and make them prosperous to these kingdoms and to his Church.’ [fn15]

Frederick left for home ahead of his bride so that he could be in the Palatinate to receive her. Elizabeth travelled with a train of supporters that, by the time it reached the outskirts of Heidelberg, consisted of 12 princes, 30 earls, 1,000 gentlemen, and 2,000 soldiers. Her arrival was greeted with volleys of musket shot and salvoes of cannon fire from the Palatine army. ‘Then they marched altogether orderly in good array,’ wrote an eyewitness, ‘conducting her to Heidelberg, where the citizens wanted no expressions of joy, love, and duty in hearty welcoming of her, & praying for her; all windows being replenished with people of all ages and degrees, and the streets thronged with multitudes of people, drawn thither from all parts, not so much to see the Pageants that were erected to further this honourable entertainment, as to have their eyes filled in beholding of her Highness, whom all honoured and admired.’ [fn16]

Frederick and Elizabeth enjoyed six happy years in Heidelberg. The prince enlarged the pink, sandstone castle for his wife, adding a suite of ten rooms — ‘the English wing’ — to welcome her to her new home. The castle’s floors were made of porphyry, while the cornices were inlaid with gems. Elizabeth’s drawing room was hung with silver decorations, against a background of white marble. The library, with its priceless codices, housed one of the greatest book collections in Europe.

Outside, the Electress’s passion for animals found expression in a monkey-house and a generously proportioned menagerie. The palace garden, the Tiortus Palatinatus’, was famous throughout the Continent, delighting visitors with its system of fountains, its fine statues, and its intricate network of flowerbeds. When an heir, Frederick Henry, was born, Frederick showed his delight by planting an extension to the garden under his wife’s bedroom window: it was laid out with English flowers, to remind the princess of home. Two more children quickly appeared, Elizabeth and Charles Louis, before she fell pregnant with Rupert.

*

The Palatine shared a border with Bohemia. In July 1617, Ferdinand of Austria, a Habsburg prince, was appointed king-elect. The crown was supposedly decided by a vote of the Bohemian nobles, but they felt bypassed and believed that Ferdinand had been foisted on them through trickery. The intensity of Ferdinand’s Catholic faith soon became clear: the new king’s daily routine included several hours in religious meditation and attendance at two masses. Ferdinand reneged on previous assurances and brought in a raft of measures to root out Protestantism in Bohemia, including control of the printing presses. To English diplomats, this made him ‘a silly Jesuited soul’, [fn17] but his leading subjects declined to regard his actions with such lightness. Catholic fanaticism had no place in Prague: the city had produced the fifteenth-century martyr John Hus, burnt to death for questioning Roman orthodoxy. Hus had left behind a tradition of religious tolerance, independence, and diversity: the Hussite majority harmoniously co-existed with Catholics, Calvinists, and even the extreme Church of the Bohemian Brethren.

In May 1618 Ferdinand went too far, ordering the destruction of two Protestant churches in the capital. This prompted a rebellion, led by the Bohemian nobility. Their representatives cornered the two Habsburg regents and their secretary in the council chamber of Hradcany Castle and hurled them from its upper windows. One of the victims, the hefty Jaraslas Martinitz, called out ‘Jesu Maria! Help!’ as he was ejected. The second, Vilem Slavata, clung onto the sill for his life, only loosening his grip when knocked unconscious. Their secretary, Philipus Fabricius, was so terrified by the violence he had witnessed that he put up barely a struggle.

Astonishingly, all three men survived the 80-foot drop, prompting Catholics to celebrate the miraculous intervention of the Blessed Virgin. In fact, salvation had arrived in a more humdrum form: the trio’s billowing cloaks had acted as parachutes, and slowed their fall, before a slurry-pit had cushioned their landing. ‘The Defenestration of Prague’ was a suitably dramatic prelude to the horrors of the ensuing conflict, the Thirty Years’ War.

As Ferdinand arranged avenging armies, the Bohemians sought a new king. After refusals from their first choices, they turned to Frederick to fill the void. He agonised about the decision: his Huguenot and Dutch uncles, his chancellor, as well as his spiritual sense of duty, all told him to consent, but his mother and his father-in-law strongly advised against. The Palsgrave’s family motto was: ‘Rule me, Lord, according to your word.’ Frederick became convinced that God expected him to grasp the opportunity placed before him, for His sake. However, when he eventually agreed to accept the crown, he did so with a sense of deep foreboding. On a dull day in October 1619, waved off by his tearful mother, Frederick rode out with the heavily pregnant Elizabeth by his side, accompanied by young Frederick Henry. It was the last time any of them would see Heidelberg.

*

The omens were initially favourable: the people of Prague noted that the arrival of their new rulers coincided with several days when none of the capital’s civil population died. However, it soon became apparent that Frederick had underestimated the risk he was taking by overestimating the level of support for his cause. Beside his Palatine army of 15,000 men, he had assumed he could also rely on the troops of the Protestant Union. This network of religious allies included several Germanic lands, England, the Dutch United Provinces, Venice, Denmark, and Sweden. But within days of the start of Frederick’s rule, all his calculations were in disarray, for Ferdinand was elected Holy Roman Emperor. This altered everything. The Palsgrave, the Imperial right-hand man, now found himself in armed conflict with his feudal overlord. Many of his German allies found they could not draw their sword against their sovereign master.

Frederick had the opportunity to back down, but two months later he confirmed his acceptance of the crown. Ferdinand, initially unsure of his strength, persisted in urging Frederick to withdraw from Bohemia and return to Heidelberg. If he failed to do this by 1 June 1620, Ferdinand promised, he would attract an Imperial ban. This would place him, and anyone who assisted him, outside the law. Frederick could now be in no doubt: by accepting the throne that wiser men had rejected, and by challenging the orthodoxy of which he was supposed to be the champion, he had raised the possibility of losing everything.

The conduct of Frederick’s allies ushered cataclysm closer. In July, French diplomats persuaded the Protestant Union to remain neutral, while Bohemia faced the consequences of its rebellion alone. Meanwhile, the timing of Frederick’s call for help could not have reached the Dutch United Provinces at a worse time: after decades of fighting for their survival, they were now in the final stages of a truce with Spain, and were gearing up for renewed warfare with the old enemy on their borders. The United Provinces did little more than cheer Frederick on from the sidelines, hoping that his bid for power would succeed, while unable to lend adequate support: some money and 1,500 troops was all they could spare. Similarly, the Swedes and their warrior king, Gustavus Adolphus, were embroiled in a struggle with Poland: they sent Frederick just eight cannon; a pitiful contribution, but more than the Danes and the Venetians mustered between them. In the meantime Bethlem Gabor, Rupert’s supposed protector and Frederick’s sworn ally, chose to pursue his own campaign in Hungary, rather than redirect his forces to help in Bohemia.

The greatest disappointment was James I’s response. He had discouraged his son-in-law from taking the crown of another monarch, and had underlined his disapproval by refusing to send an ambassador to either Frederick or Elizabeth’s coronations. James remained adamant that, as a divinely appointed monarch, he could not raise an army to help a usurper — even if that usurper was his son-in-law. James’s finances were so weak that the task of funding a foreign army was probably beyond him. However, the king’s unhelpfulness was out of kilter with public sentiment: the English held collections for their popular princess and her handsome husband, seeing their cause as fundamentally important in blocking Papist aggression in Europe. These raised £80,000 and produced a small army of 2,250 men. For the Palsgrave, this was nothing like enough.

Emperor Ferdinand, meanwhile, received generous assistance from Catholic allies. Pope Paul V donated 380,000 florins to the Emperor’s cause. Philip III of Spain gave 3 million ducats and sent an army from Flanders under Marquis Spinola. King Sigismund III of Poland, concerned that Frederick was prepared to negotiate with the hated Turks, despatched Cossacks to help suppress the Bohemian revolt.

In the meantime, Saxony, though Protestant, sided with the Emperor. The Elector, John George, was an alcoholic Lutheran who had turned down the Bohemian crown before it was offered to Frederick. He would not allow his Calvinist rival to profit from a gamble that he had declined. Ferdinand’s election as Emperor gave the Saxon an excuse to turn against Frederick: in fighting defiant rebels, he claimed, he was upholding his princely duty to his sovereign lord.

A sizeable force also assembled under the banner of the Catholic League, an alliance of twenty princes sworn to counter the Protestant Union. Its founder was Maximilian, Duke of Bavaria — a Wittelsbach cousin of Frederick’s, who was famed for his penny-pinching greed. He sent an army to assist under Count Tilly, a brilliant Walloon general. Maximilian extracted a secret promise from Ferdinand: if he achieved victory for the Emperor, his reward would be the Palatine electorate.

At the time of Rupert’s birth, Frederick’s enemies comprised a rich array of Imperialists, Catholic Leaguers, and Spaniards. There were 55,000 of them and they were converging on Prague.

*

Kings of Bohemia had a military tradition: one blind predecessor of Frederick’s had fought for France at the battle of Crecy, in 1346. When informed that the day belonged to the English, he ordered his men to lead his horse forward by the bridle, charging into the carnage of defeat. He and his son perished side by side, choosing death with honour over flight or imprisonment. Frederick, the new king, had no experience as a soldier, his military knowledge limited to the regulated tournaments that were a popular diversion at court. Yet now he was commander-in-chief of an army of 35,000 men, who were poorly fed and suffering from low morale. The civilian population was equally dispirited.

The king and queen had forfeited much of the good will that had greeted their arrival in Bohemia. Instead of providing tolerant rule, Frederick had allowed his chief adviser, Abraham Scultetus, to pursue a dogmatic, Calvinist agenda. When Scultetus secretly ordered the felling of an ancient crucifix on Prague’s Charles Bridge, there was outrage. Elizabeth had already alienated many influential subjects because of her apparent frivolity, her revealing décolletage provoking indignation among the ladies, and her lack of punctuality causing consternation among courtiers and churchmen alike. Now she openly supported Scultetus against his critics and was seen to be contemptuous of her subjects’ most dearly held customs and beliefs.

The decisive battle took place against this backcloth of discontent. On 8 November 1620 the two armies faced each other 5 miles to the west of the capital, on the broad summit of White Mountain. Despite his lesser numbers, Frederick’s defensive position was strong: his men were deployed at the top of a ridge, protected by a stream and earthworks. However, the Protestants had failed to dig in as well as they might, complaining that their old spades were useless against the frozen ground.

Assured by his general, Prince Christian of Anhalt, that the enemy would not strike, Frederick returned to Prague for breakfast. Meanwhile, under a blanket of fog, Tilly pushed his army across the stream that separated the two armies and launched a surprise attack. It was not only the Protestants who were taken unawares: when Tilly’s colleague, Carlos Bonaventura Bucquoy, learnt of this risky manoeuvre, he called for an immediate council of war. Here the two generals clashed furiously, their tactical deadlock threatening a paralysis that would play into the Bohemians’ hands.

It was at this point that Father Dominicus, a Carmelite monk from Maximilian of Bavaria’s retinue, stepped forward. He humbly asked permission to speak. Given the floor, Father Dominicus started his address calmly, before being transformed by religious fervour into an impassioned orator. He told the commanders it was God’s undoubted will that they attack the rebel Bohemians: He would ensure victory against an heretical enemy; they need only be the instruments of divine retribution. The Father’s inspired words put fire in the bellies of the Catholic high command. They resumed the action with unity, confidence, and energy.

It was all over in an hour. Four thousand of Frederick’s men were killed or captured, including four of his generals. All his artillery and one hundred of his standards were also taken. The king only arrived at the battlefield in time to see his army utterly broken. He then rushed back to the city that had so briefly been his capital, to find pandemonium in the streets. Recognising his defeat, Frederick sent to Maximilian of Bavaria, requesting twenty-four hours’ grace in which to gather his belongings and quit the city. Maximilian was not feeling generous: he granted his defeated cousin just eight hours to be gone. The royal family and its retinue frantically loaded up their carriages, ready for flight. In the panic, Frederick left behind the Bohemian crown, orb and sceptre.

Prince Rupert was also mislaid. His nurse had placed him on a sofa while she packed and then had either forgotten or deserted him. Christopher Dhona, an intellectual attached to the court from Heidelberg University, was conducting a final sweep of the palace when he was startled to hear the cries of a baby coming from the saloon. He discovered Rupert on the floor, screaming in protest after rolling off the sofa. Dhona scooped up the baby, wrapped him tight, and sprinted to the courtyard. Seeing the last Palatine coach departing, he ran alongside it and tossed the prince through its window. Rupert slipped into the boot where he bounced around among the fugitives’ crammed belongings. Again, the strength of his lungs saved him: the coach’s occupants heard his screams and pulled him to safety while the carriage sped out of Prague’s gates. However, Rupert’s mother was not at hand. Elizabeth was consoling Frederick, and comforting a lady-in-waiting. One of them had lost a kingdom that day, the other a husband.

The fugitives made for Silesia, a neighbouring Bohemian dependency. Elizabeth was in the final trimester of pregnancy and a halt was called at Glatz, so she might rest for a few days. The party then moved on to Breslau, the Silesian capital, where Frederick stayed to organise resistance. He sent his wife, Frederick Henry, and Rupert on to Brandenburg. Frederick was sure the Margrave of Brandenburg would help: he was a fellow Protestant Elector and the husband of Frederick’s sister, Charlotte. However, the margrave proved a reluctant host, fearing Habsburg vengeance if he was seen to assist an Imperial enemy. He allowed the Palatine family to lodge in the castle at Küstrin. It was almost a ruin, half-roofed and crawling with rats. Here, at Christmas, two ladies-in-waiting helped Elizabeth to deliver her fifth child, a son. He was named Maurice after the Dutch stadtholder, Frederick V’s uncle and a rare friend in an increasingly hostile world. All around him, Frederick’s former supporters turned their back on his cause and begged for Habsburg mercy.

The rebel nobles of Prague capitulated a fortnight after the battle of White Mountain. For several months, it seemed that Emperor Ferdinand would forgo vengeance. However, he had not forgotten the rebellion, nor forgiven the rebels. Twenty-seven ringleaders were suddenly rounded up and a scaffold was erected. The condemned were publicly paraded, before torture and execution. Their remains were hacked up and left to decompose in key positions along the Charles Bridge. They stayed on view for several years, reminders of the reward for insurrection.

On 21 January 1621, the Emperor carried out his terrible threat: Frederick was issued with the Imperial ban, for ‘the rupture of the public peace’. There were objections from the Elector’s allies, criticising this ‘so sudden, extraordinary, and most dangerous proceeding’, [fn18] but Frederick was now an outlaw, who could be harmed by anyone with impunity. Young Frederick Henry chose this moment of imminent danger to report on his brothers and sisters to his grandfather in England: ‘Sir, we are come from Sewnden to see the King and Queen and my little brother Rupert, who is now a little sick. But my brother Charles is now, God be thanked, very well, and my sister Elizabeth, and she is a little bigger and stronger than he.’ [fn19]

Frederick’s imperative was to withdraw himself and his family to a place where they would no longer be vulnerable to Habsburg vengeance. The United Provinces felt a moral duty to grant sanctuary to a man who they had encouraged to fight a common enemy, but who had failed. Frederick also had a significant blood link with the Dutch — his mother was the daughter of William the Silent. The republic took in its defeated ally, who was a grandson of their most revered warrior prince.

While baby Maurice, freshly weaned, was sent to live with his aunt in Brandenburg, and Charles Louis and young Elizabeth remained with their grandmother in Krossen, Rupert and Frederick Henry accompanied their parents to The Hague. Here they were housed and given a monthly pension of 10,000 guilders. Their residence was the Hof to Wassenaer, a large town house. Frederick immediately started plotting how best to reclaim his lands. In the summer, the Dutch lent him 150,000 guilders to raise an army.

*

Looking back, the risk of accepting the Bohemian crown had seemed reasonable. Frederick’s formidable pedigree seemed to be matched by an extensive network of support: ‘The great alliances which he had contracted, his high parentage; his mighty supportments, both within Germany, and without it; the considerable eminency of his House, his Estate, and the body of confederates, principally depending upon his directions; together with the hopefulness, that other Princes and Peoples had of him: these were the fair eminencies that differed him from other Princes; and these were the procurers of his election to the Crown of Bohemia.’ [fn20] However, failure made Frederick a figure of ridicule across Europe.

Opponents of the couple gloated at their pitifully short rule, referring to them as the ‘Winter King and Queen’. Such critics viewed their fall as the inevitable result of unreasonable ambition. There was a seventeenth-century proverb: ‘They which take upon them more than of right belongeth, commiteth a great error, and seldom escape unpunished.’ [fn21] Frederick and Elizabeth’s fate seemed to embody this lesson. A 1621 book contains an illustration of Frederick clinging to the wheel of fortune. As it turns, he is spun from his throne into the sea. Friendly Dutch fishermen save him from the waves, hauling him, bedraggled, to safety. The text accompanying the image pulls no punches:

Whoever wishes to understand fortune and misfortune,

Let him observe this play of the Palatine.

Very happy was he in the Empire,

His like was not easy to be found.

He lacked neither people nor lands,

Ruled wisely and with judgement.

A wife of royal lineage,

Who multiplied his high name,

Was bringing happiness with young heirs.

His line would not soon die out.

By rich and poor, by young and old,

He was held in high esteem,

Which then was but just,

For he held the most important Electorate

Of the four lay Electors:

He was a jewel of the Holy Roman Empire.

In sum, he had everything, if only he had been satisfied … [fn22]

Frederick’s doomed opportunism had huge ramifications. It accelerated a conflict that had ready combatants on both sides, and breathed life into the intricate alliances and bitter religious rivalries of Western Europe. During the ensuing Thirty Years’ War, spiritual concerns would be frequently cited. However, the predominant issues confronting the German lands were political and secular.

For Rupert and his siblings, their father’s miscalculation condemned them to a fragile future. Their childhood, instead of taking place in the glorious palace at Heidelberg, would be spent in exile.

Chapter Two

Childhood

‘The news is, that the Prince Palsgrave, with his lady and children, are come to The Hague in Holland, having made a long progress, or rather a pilgrimage, about Germany from Prague.’

Letter of James Howell, a gossip, 1620

Rupert’s childhood was set against his family’s constant expectation of restoration. The prince’s youngest sister Sophie remembered her siblings’ favourite game: a fantasy return journey to Heidelberg. The children would sit on chairs, pretending they were coaches, and then undertake the make-believe ride ‘home’. There were stops, to rest the horses and refresh the travellers, before the longed for destination was reached. Whether this dream homecoming could ever become reality depended on their father and his ability to knit together an alliance strong enough to defeat a many-headed enemy.

By mid 1622, Frederick had lost not just his Bohemian kingdom, but also all his Palatine lands. Their reclamation remained his focus for the rest of his life. The Spaniards proposed that the Palsgrave’s heir, Frederick Henry, be raised at Emperor Ferdinand’s court, in Austria. He would then marry a Habsburg princess and, on coming of age, would be restored to his father’s electorate. The compromise was clearly unacceptable: Frederick Henry would have to become Roman Catholic if he wanted a peaceful return of his ancestral lands. By rejecting this formula, Frederick elected to fight for his crowns, not bargain for them.

Though grateful for the sanctuary offered by the United Provinces, Frederick was keen to minimise his period as a Dutch pensioner: ‘May it please God,’ he wrote to Elizabeth, ‘to give us a little corner of the world, to live there happily together, it is all the good fortune that I desire. But staying at The Hague hardly appeals to me.’ [fn1] Despite his humiliating displacement, Frederick’s marriage continued to be happy and bear fruit, the nursery receiving a new royal recruit on an almost annual basis: Louisa Hollandina was born in 1622 and was made a godchild of the States-General (which resulted in a useful, additional pension, of £200 per year); Louis, the seventh child, appeared in 1623; Edward followed, in 1625; Henrietta, in 1626; Philip, in 1627; Charlotte, in 1629; Sophie, in 1630; and Gustavus, in 1632. There were thirteen children in all: Rupert had seven brothers and five sisters.

Given the continuing expansion of their brood, Frederick and Elizabeth were thankful when, in 1623, the Prince of Orange offered the loan of one of his larger houses. The Prinsenhof had once been a convent dedicated to the memory of St Barbara. It was situated in Leyden, a town known for its learning and for its textile industry, and fronted onto a canal. A bridge over this waterway led to the town’s famed university, which produced large numbers of Protestant priests, and which the Palatine princes attended. The Prinsenhof, long since demolished, was Rupert’s family’s principal home from when he was aged 3 until he turned 21.

Frederick also established a hunting lodge for the family at Rhenen. This was halfway between Arnhem and Utrecht, on the Lek, a tributary of the lower Rhine. The building had previously been a monastery and was a gift from the province of Utrecht, which also provided some of the house’s furniture. It had none of the grandeur