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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Prince Rupert Biography RUPERT, PRINCE (1619-82). A nephew of Charles I of England and his ablest cavalry leader in the Civil War. He was born at Prague, Dec. 17, 1619, the son of the Elector Palatine Frederick V. He served in the Thirty Years' War on the Protestant side in the Netherlands and in Westphalia and in 1638 he was taken prisoner, but secured his release in 1642 in time to take service under Charles I at Nottingham. He was given command of the cavalry and he fought impetuously and successfully at Worcester, Edgehill, and Brentford in 1642. In 1643 he made himself master of Bristol. He took part in the disastrous battles of Marston Moor (1644) and Naseby (1645). His surrender of Bristol in September, 1645, so angered the King that he was deprived of his command and requested to leave England. He declined to do so and submitted to a court-martial, which partially acquitted him. In 1648 he received the command of the English Royalist fleet, and for nearly three years kept his ships afloat. In 1651, however, Blake attacked the Prince's squadron at Malaga and sank most of his ships. With the vessels remaining Rupert escaped to the West Indies, where, with his brother Maurice, he led a buccaneering life. After the loss of his brother at sea Rupert went again in 1653 to France and later to Germany, remaining abroad until the Restoration in 1660, when he returned to England and served on sea against the Dutch in the wars of that period. The last 10 years of his life were spent in retirement in chemical and other researches. Although he did not discover the art of engraving in mezzotint, the real inventor of which appears to have been a German, Von Siegen, Rupert did much to make the art widely known. Consult: Eliot Warburton, Memoirs of Prinee Rupert and the Cavaliers (3 vols., London, 1849) \; Lord Ronald Gower, Rupert of the Rhine (ib., 1890); Eva Scott, Rupert, Prince Palatine (New York, 1900). The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XX (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 229. |