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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
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