rging at the head of his troops, he was never wounded,
and that, seeing more service than any of his compeers, he outlived them
all. But even in these early years, before he was generalissimo, the
Parliament deliberately declared the whole war to be "managed by his
skill, labor, and industry," and his was the only name habitually
printed in capitals in the Puritan newspapers. He had to create soldiers
by enthusiasm, and feed them by stratagem,--to toil for a king
who feared him, and against a queen who hated him,--to take vast
responsibilities alone,--accused of negligence, if he failed, reproached
with license, if he succeeded. Against him he had the wealth of London,
intrusted to men who were great diplomatists, though new to power, and
great soldiers, though they had never seen a battle-field till middle
life; on his side he had only unmanageable lords and penniless
gentlemen, who gained victories by daring, and then wasted them by
license. His troops had no tents, no wagons, no military stores; they
used those of the enemy. Clarendon says, that the King's cause labored
under an incurable disease of want of money, and that the only cure for
starvation was a victory. To say, therefore, that Rupert's men never
starved is to say that they always conquered,--which, at this early
period, was true.

He was the best shot in the army, and the best tennis-player among the
courtiers, and Pepys calls him "the boldest attacker in England for
personal courage." Seemingly without reverence or religion, he yet
ascribed his defeats to Satan, and, at the close of a letter about a
marauding expedition, requested his friend Will Legge to pray for him.
Versed in all the courtly society of the age, chosen interpreter for the
wooing of young Prince Charles and La Grande Mademoiselle, and mourning
in purple, with the royal family, for Marie de Medicis, he could yet
mingle in any conceivable company and assume any part. He penetrated the
opposing camp at Dunsmore Heath as an apple-seller, and the hostile town
of Warwick as a dealer in cabbage-nets, and the pamphleteers were never
weary of describing his disguises. He was charged with all manner of
offences, even to slaying children with cannibal intent, and only very
carelessly disavowed such soft impeachments. But no man could deny that
he was perfectly true to his word; he never forgot one whom he had
promised to protect, and, if he had promised to strip a man's goods, he
did it to the ut