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, a soldier or two being suddenly struck down by the fire, he exclaims, "Yea! this insolency is not to be endured." The moment is come. "God and Queen Mary!" shouts Rupert; "Charge!" In one instant that mass of motionless statues becomes a flood of lava; down in one terrible sweep it comes, silence behind it and despair before; no one notices the beauty of that brilliant chivalrous array,--all else is merged in the fury of the wild gallop; spurs are deep, reins free, blades grasped, heads bent; the excited horse feels the heel no more than he feels the hand; the uneven ground breaks their ranks,--no matter, they feel that they can ride down the world: Rupert first clears the hedge,--he is always first,--then comes the captain of his lifeguard, then the whole troop "jumble after them," in a spectator's piquant phrase. The dismounted Puritan dragoons break from the hedges and scatter for their lives, but the cavalry "bear the charge better than they have done since Worcester,"--that is, now they stand it an instant, then they did not stand it at all; the Prince takes them in flank and breaks them in pieces at the first encounter,--the very wind of the charge shatters them. Horse and foot, carbines and petronels, swords and pole-axes, are mingled in one struggling mass. Rupert and his men seem refreshed, not exhausted, by the weary night,--they seem incapable of fatigue; they spike the guns as they cut down the gunners, and, if any escape, it is because many in both armies wear the same red scarfs. One Puritan, surrounded by the enemy, shows such desperate daring that Rupert bids release him at last, and sends afterwards to Essex to ask his name. One Cavalier bends, with a wild oath, to search the pockets of a slain enemy;--it is his own brother. O'Neal slays a standard-bearer, and thus restores to his company the right to bear a flag, a right they lost at Hopton Heath; Legge is taken prisoner and escapes; Urry proves himself no coward, though a renegade, and is trusted to bear to Oxford the news of the victory, being raised to knighthood in return. For a victory of course it is. Nothing in England can yet resist these high-born, dissolute, reckless Cavaliers of Rupert's. "I have seen them running up walls twenty feet high," said the engineer consulted by the frightened citizens of Dorchester: "these defences of yours may possibly keep them out half an hour." Darlings of triumphant aristocracy, they are destined to meet
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