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'Rupert, Count Palatine of the Rhine, Duke of Bavaria' (German: ''Ruprecht Pfalzgraf bei Rhein, Herzog von Bayern''), commonly called 'Prince Rupert of the Rhine', (
17 December 1619 –
19 November 1682), soldier, inventor and amateur artist in
mezzotint, was a younger son of
Frederick V, Elector Palatine and
Elizabeth Stuart, and the nephew of King
Charles I of England, who created him
Duke of Cumberland and
Earl of Holderness.
Prince Rupert had a very varied career. He was a soldier from a young age, fighting against Spain in the Netherlands and the Holy Roman Empire in Germany. Aged 23, he was appointed commander of the Royalist cavalry during the
English Civil War. He surrendered after the
Battle of Naseby and was banished from the British Isles. He spent some time in Royalist forces in exile, first on land then as at sea. He then became a
buccaneer in the Caribbean. Following the restoration, Rupert returned to England, becoming a naval commander, inventor, artist and first Governor of the
Hudson's Bay Company. Prince Rupert died in England in
1682, aged 62.
Early life
Prince Rupert of the Rhine
Rupert was born in
Prague in 1619 at the time of the
Thirty Years' War. Soon after his birth, the family fled from
Bohemia to the
Netherlands where Rupert spent his childhood. He was almost left behind when until a court member, thinking the swaddled prince was a bundle of household goods, tossed him onto a carriage. His mother,
Elizabeth Stuart, sometimes known as the "Winter Queen" (due to her reign as Queen of Bohemia lasting a single winter in 1619), was a daughter of King
James I of England and sister of King
Charles I of England. Consequently, Rupert and his brother
Maurice supported their uncle Charles when the
English Civil War began in 1642.
At an early age he took to soldiering. At the age of fourteen he fought alongside the protestant
Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange at the siege of
Rheinberg in
1633 and at
Breda in
1638 in the
Eighty Years' War in the Netherlands against Spain.
As a child he was at times badly behaved and earned himself the nickname "Robert The Devil". His childhood was not easy; the family had little money after leaving Prague and then the tragic death of one of his brothers by drowning happened and was made more the worse when his father also died, all the while when Rupert was only a teenager. However difficult his childhood may have been Rupert was exceptional in learning all the major European languages and excelled in art and mathematics. By the time he was 18 he was 6ft tall and had become a dashing young prince.
In the
Thirty Years' War, aged 19, Rupert fought for the alliance of Protestants and France at the
Battle of Vlotho (
17 October 1638) during the invasion of
Westphalia. He was captured by the forces of the Imperial General
Hatzfeld and imprisoned in
Linz, Austria, where he studied military textbooks. He was released on parole in
1641, on the condition that he never bear arms against the
Holy Roman Emperor again.
==Career During the
Civil War==
Illustration of a pamphlet titled "The Cruel Practices of Prince Rupert" (1643)
In
1642, aged 24, he was appointed by King Charles to lead the Royalist
cavalry, and he largely deserves the credit for their early successes. His dashing reputation earned him the nickname of the "
Mad Cavalier". He reputedly took a large
poodle dog, named "Boye", into battle with him on several occasions. Throughout the Civil War the soldiers of
Parliament feared this dog, claiming it had supernatural powers (see
familiar). At the end of the war the dog was shot, allegedly with a silver bullet.
Rupert became General of the Horse, and his reputation prospered after routing a Parliamentarian force at
Powick Bridge (
23 September 1642); however he overextended himself at the
Battle of Edgehill (
23 October 1642) and left the Royalist forces unsupported by cavalry at a critical time which perhaps cost them the victory and led almost to defeat.
After Edgehill Rupert asked Charles for a swift cavalry attack on London before the
Earl of Essex's army could return. The King's senior counsellors, however, urged him to advance slowly on the capital with the whole army. By the time they arrived, the city had organised defences against them and the Royalists had perhaps lost their best chance of winning the war.
Rupert continued to impress militarily; in
1643 he captured
Bristol and in
1644 led the relief of
Newark, and much of the royalist army at
Marston Moor. In November
1644 Rupert gained appointment as General of the Royalist army. This increased already marked tensions between him and a number of the king's counsellors. In May
1645 Rupert captured
Leicester but a reversal at the
Battle of Naseby a month later would prove politically damaging.
After Naseby, Rupert regarded the Royalist cause as lost, and urged Charles to conclude a peace with Parliament. Charles, ever the political ''
ingenu'', still believed he could win the war. Faced with an impossible situation, Rupert
surrendered Bristol in September
1645; in response, Charles dismissed him from his service. After demanding a
court-martial, which acquitted him, Rupert played no further part in the Royalist army command. After the
siege of Oxford in
1646, Parliament banished both him and his brother from England.
After the Civil War
For some time after this Rupert commanded the troops formed of English exiles in the French army, and received a wound at Marshal
de Gassion's siege of
La Bassée in 1647. Then, following a degree of reconciliation with Charles, he obtained command of a Royalist fleet. A long and unprofitable naval campaign followed, which extended from
Kinsale to
Lisbon and from
Toulon to
Cape Verde. However, following a naval defeat by
Admiral Robert Blake, Rupert took refuge in the
West Indies. There he followed the life of a
buccaneer, preying on
English shipping. It was during this time period that his beloved brother Maurice, who captained one of the ships in Rupert's small flotilla, was killed. But the prince again quarrelled with the Royalist advisers, and spent six obscure years (1654 to 1660) in Germany and the Netherlands, vainly attempting (as also before and afterwards) to obtain his rightful
apanage as a younger son from his brother
Charles I Louis, Elector Palatine.
Career Following the Restoration
Following the
Restoration of the monarchy under
Charles II, Rupert returned to the service of England, accepting an annuity and becoming a member of the
privy council. He never again fought on land, but, turning admiral like Blake and
Monk, he bore a brilliant part in the
Second Anglo-Dutch War as actual supreme commander of the British fleet from June
1666, gaining a victory in the
St James's Day Battle. His efforts in the
Third Anglo-Dutch War met with humiliating failure (
Battles of Schooneveld,
Battle of Texel).
At some point Rupert, a talented amateur artist, had learned of the printmaking process of
mezzotint invented in 1642 by
Ludwig von Siegen, a German Lieutenant-Colonel who was also an amateur artist. Whether the two ever met is a subject of scholarly controversy, but Siegen had worked as chamberlain, and probably part-tutor, to Rupert's young cousin William VI,
Landgrave of
Hesse-Cassel, with whom Rupert discussed the technique in letters from 1654.
Rupert produced a few stylish prints in the technique, mostly copies of paintings, and introduced it to England after the Restoration. He was wrongly credited by
John Evelyn as its inventor in 1662. However Rupert appears to have invented, or perfected, the "rocker", a key tool in the process. It was Wallerant Vaillant, Rupert's artistic assistant or tutor, who first popularised the process and exploited it commercially.
In 1670, Rupert became the first Governor of the
Hudson's Bay Company, after having sponsored an expedition of
Radisson and
des Groseilliers into Hudson Bay. The HBC was granted a trading
monopoly in the whole Hudson Bay watershed area, an immense territory named
Rupert's Land. In 1869, control of this territory reverted to the British and Canadian governments.
[1]
After his retirement from the active military in around
1674, he engaged in scientific research. He is usually credited with the invention of a form of
gunpowder and an alloy named "
Prince's metal" in his honour. He is also credited with the invention of
Prince Rupert's Drops, glass teardrops which explode when the tail is cracked. He also erected a water-mill on
Hackney Marshes for a revolutionary method of boring guns, however his secret died with him, and the enterprise failed
[2].
In retirement he continued to hold important governmental posts; from
1673, when he was 54, to
1679, he served as England's
Lord High Admiral. He did not marry but lived in the 1670s with a
Drury Lane actress named
Peg Hughes and had a daughter by her, named Ruperta. Ruperta married
Emanuel Scrope Howe, (1663-1709), brother of 1st
Viscount Howe (
1648-
1713), and had five children, Sophia, William, Emanuel, James and Henrietta.
Prince Rupert died at his house in Spring Gardens,
Westminster, on
19 November 1682, and was buried in
Westminster Abbey.
Prince Rupert, British Columbia and the
Rupert River in Quebec are named after him.
Ancestors
In Fiction
Prince Rupert is the protagonist of
Poul Anderson's
alternate history/
fantasy book "A Midsummer Tempest" - where the Prince, with the help of various
Shakespearean characters who are actual persons in this timeline, eventually defeats
Cromwell and wins the
English Civil War.
Notes
1. Hudson's Bay Company - Exploring Westward - 18th Century
2. Granger's Biographical History, vol. ii. p. 407. 4to. edit. Dugdale's Baronage, vol. i. p. 559
Bibliography
★ Ashley, Maurice. ''Rupert of the Rhine''. London: H. Davis, MacGibbon, 1976.
★ Fergusson, Bernard. ''Rupert of the Rhine''. London: Collins, 1952.
★ Irwin, Margaret. ''The Stranger Prince: The Story of Rupert of the Rhine''. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1937.
★ Kitson, Frank. ''Prince Rupert: Portrait of a Soldier''. London: Constable, 1994. ISBN 0094737002.
★ Morrah, Patrick. ''Prince Rupert of the Rhine''. London: Constable, 1976.
★ Petrie, Charles. ''King Charles, Prince Rupert, and the Civil War: From Original Letters''. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974.
★ Thomson, George Malcolm. ''Warrior Prince: Prince Rupert of the Rhine''. London: Secker & Warburg, 1976.
★ Warburton, Eliot. ''Memoirs of Prince Rupert, and the Cavaliers''. London: R. Bentley, 1849;
vol. 1,
vol. 2,
vol. 3.
★ Wilkinson, Clennell. ''Prince Rupert, the Cavalier''. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1935.
See also
★
Prince Rupert's Drop - teardrop shaped glass drops which shatter into powder if the tail end is tweaked.
★
Prince's metal - a brass alloy of 75% copper and 25% zinc used as a gold imitation
★
Ludwig von Siegen - Soldier & Inventor of Mezzotint
External links
★
Prince Rupert of the Rhine biography
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