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 with no foe that can match them, until they recoil at last before the plebeian pikes of the London train-bands.  Nor can even Rupert’s men claim to monopolize the courage of the King’s party.  The brilliant “show-troop” of Lord Bernard Stuart, comprising the young nobles having no separate command,—­a troop which could afford to indulge in all the gorgeousness of dress, since their united incomes, Clarendon declares, would have exceeded those of the whole Puritan Parliament,—­led, by their own desire, the triumphant charge at Edgehill, and threescore of their bodies were found piled on the spot where the Royal Standard was captured and rescued.  Not less faithful were the Marquis of Newcastle’s “Lambs,” who took their name from the white woollen clothing which they refused to have dyed, saying that their hearts’ blood would dye it soon enough; and so it did:  only thirty survived the battle of Marston Moor, and the bodies of the rest were found in the field, ranked regularly, side by side, in death as in life.

But here at Chalgrove Field no such fortitude of endurance is needed; the enemy are scattered, and, as Rupert’s Cavaliers are dashing on, in their accustomed headlong pursuit, a small, but fresh force of Puritan cavalry appears behind the hedges and charges on them from the right,—­two troops, hastily gathered, and in various garb.  They are headed by a man in middle life and of noble aspect:  once seen, he cannot easily be forgotten; but seen he will never be again, and, for the last time, Rupert and Hampden meet face to face.