GENERAL RUTHVEN.

MONG the varied characters who figure in the great drama of the Civil War, by no means the least interesting, though certainly by far the least remembered, is the one whose name stands at the head of this paper, Patrick Ruthven, Earl of Forth and Brentford, general-in-chief of the king's army from 1642 to 1644. Not only has the memory of this gallant old man suffered from neglect, but from obloquy. He served a losing cause with dogged fidelity; yet on the defeat of his party, he escaped the penalty so cruelly exacted from many of his comrades. His failing, too, was one which ever debars a man of action from attaining the highest rank of success. He had yet the additional misfortune of having made, by his blunt honesty, an enemy of one of those men who have the power of damning to everlasting fame; and we can hardly be surprised that an impression prevails in the minds even of those few who know more of him than his name, that he was a genuine soldier of fortune, the prototype of Walter Scott's Dalgetty, a rough, rash, brutal, reckless partisan, encumbered by no principles which would distress him when the surrender of his master absolved him from his allegiance. That he should have been twice restored from forfeiture seems, to the believers in Clarendon's faithfulness, a proof of his easy compliance with the principles against which he had fought, while his habits gained credence for the stories of successes ill-followed up, or irritating bravado persisted in to the prejudice of the royal interest. His very portrait was attributed to another man, and hung in Oxford as that of Prince Maurice. No monumental inscription recorded his celebrity; no heirs were left to perpetuate his honours. Creatures of the most obscure origin and doubtful reputation found biographers and eulogists; while the trusted servant of Gustavus, and the successful rival of the fiery Rupert, was almost or altogether forgotten. Yet, clearly, his history must be worth a brief share of attention; and even upon the basis of the few facts possible to comprise in a short sketch, will be found to refute much of the slanderous discredit which has gathered round his name.

Patrick Ruthven was the great grandson of William, first Lord Ruthven-ancestor of the Earls of Gowrie, whose strange and tragical story has afforded so much material for theory and romance

by his second wife, Christian Forbes. His grandfather, indeed, was the only legitimate issue, according to English law, of the old lord, inasmuch as the first wife's children were all born before marriage according to Scots' custom, however, he ranked but as a cadet, though he seems to have been a man of substance; and among his lands are recorded those of Liberton, where, as the readers of the "Heart of Mid Lothian" will remember, Reuben Butler afterwards plied the scholastic tawse.

Like many a bonny Scot of his day, Ruthven carried his sword to the market where honour was of promptest purchase, preferring, like a cavalier of spirit, to follow the fortunes of the Lion of the North, the invincible Gustavus, rather than waste his prowess in petty Scottish feuds, or inglorious British expeditions commanded by unworthy favourites.

When the King of Sweden besieged Riga in 1621, Ruthven held a colonel's command in his army; and during the ten years which intervened between that siege and the battle of Leipsic, at which he commanded a brigade, doubtless took his share in the many mighty petty leaguers, storms, and onslaughts which made the Protestant hero's service irresistibly delectable to all true-bred cavaliers, as Dalgetty has it. Our hero was high in the favour of Gustavus for two reasons: the first, his gallant behaviour in the field; the second, and more singular, that he was possessed of so strong a head as to be a match for the insatiable topers whom it was necessary for the Swedish monarch, from policy or courtesy, occasionally to entertain. In 1631, when the Elector of Saxony and other Protestant princes were entertained by Gustavus at Halle, the king took Monro by the shoulder, and said in a whisper, "I wish, Monro, you could be master of the bottles and glasses to-night in the absence of old Major-general Sir Patrick Ruthven; but you want a strength of head to relieve me on such an occasion, and make your way through an undertaking of so extraordinary a nature." Gustavus, after the surrender of Ulm in the same year, made Ruthven governor of the place, "by way," says Harte, "of a reputable sinecure," as his majesty never liked any general turned of sixty, and Sir Patrick had nearly arrived at that age. Shortly afterwards he showed his appreciation of his services by a grant of the county of Kirchberg, worth some eighteen hundred pounds a-year, part of the confiscated estates of the great Counts Fugger of Augsburgh, the most considerable family which at that era had been ennobled by merchandise. It would seem that the

government of Ulm was scarcely the sinecure which Harte would represent it. It was the magazine of the royal army, as well as a refuge and rendezvous in case of disaster, so that it required an able and vigilant commander, more particularly as Gustavus appears to have been unable to spare more that 1200 men for its defence. The general performed his duty not only with credit against the enemy, but by his vigilance suppressed two conspiracies in their infancy, this being part of the good service for which he was gratified by the Kirchberg estate.

In fact, he had acquired not only wealth but reputation by his foreign service; as Dugdale says, "from his youth trained up in the wars of Sweden, Denmark, Russia, Livonia, Lithuania, Poland, Prussia, and Germany, he had gained no little skill and honour; and it was no doubt with satisfaction that Charles I., now about to embark on that contest which was to end so disastrously for him, received the tender of the services of so experienced a soldier as Gustavus's" field-marshal of the bottles."

Upon the 22nd of June, 1639, the Castle of Edinburgh having been delivered to the Marquis of Hamilton, General Ruthven was made governor, and the garrison reinforced with soldiers from England. The political and religious atmosphere of Scotland was at that period in a volcanic condition, though the short peace of Berwick had but just been concluded; and Charles, no doubt, wished to have in the principal fortress of his northern kingdom a man of military knowledge, in whom he might thoroughly confide. Ruthven was not long in gaining some experience of the spirit which animated one class of the population; for on the 2nd of July, "coming in coach with the Lord Treasurer and Lord Kinnoul from the castle thro' the high street of Edinburgh, the devout wives who at first put life in the cause," says Guthry's memoir, " did now, when it was in danger to be buried, restore it again, by invading them, and throwing stones at them." During the winter the dissension increased, and one of the complaints made by Charles was, that Lieut.-General the Lord Ettrick (for to this dignity he had been advanced) had been refused stone, timber, and other material, to strengthen the works of that fortress, which the burghers of Edinburgh were now openly blockading. Ruthven had threatened to cannonade the town, but refrained from so doing, while the citizens constructed impromptu fortifications of horse-litter and midden, as high, says the contemporary account in the "Memoire of the Somervilles," as the tops of

the highest houses. At length, early in June, 1640, hostilities openly began. The governor had refused to allow the regalia of Scotlandthen, as now, in the custody of the castle-to be borne before the Parliament on their meeting. An arrow was shot over the castle wall, with a letter fastened to it, requiring him to surrender in fortyeight hours. The reply was conveyed by the thunder of his cannon. The Parliament gratified their resentment by declaring his property forfeited to the public use, and, egged on by their evil genii, the fanatical preachers, compelled General Lesly, against his better judgment, to turn the blockade into a formal siege. A full account of this transaction has been preserved by the pen of James Somerville of Drum, who, like Montrose and many other loyal Scotsmen, was at that time an officer of the Covenanting army. His narrative is very amusing from its naïve candour: not attempting to conceal his admiration for his foemen, or his contempt for those "zealotes of the feminine complectione," to whom, and their allies the ministers, he attributes the mismanagement of the assault. Of the four batteries raised against the castle, one only was effective, he says, being planted on the Castle Hill, north of the High Street, about sixty paces from the Spur outwork of the castle. Somerville's opinion is considerably supported by the fact that this was the spot selected by Cromwell for the situation of his only battery when besieging the castle in 1650. Here Somerville himself was stationed, and in right of this position, after a cannonade on both sides of more noise than effect, he had the right of commanding the storming party, who were directed to assault the castle when the mine, which they were pushing under the Spur outwork, should have created a breach. The sentinels of the garrison, however, detected the operations of the besiegers, and by the Governor's orders removed their cannon from the Spur, and quietly retired to the second rampart. On the explosion taking place, Somerville's men, who had rushed in with the expectation of forcing their way forward through the same passage as the retreating defenders of the outwork, found themselves fairly entrapped like our soldiers in the Redan; exposed to a cross fire, and unable to reach their antagonists. Their supports, too, were cut off; the officer in command being wounded, and the men losing heart; so that the storming party were fain to shelter behind a low wall, and await some favourable chance of escape. While thus situated, Ruthven addressed Somerville by name, begging him to withdraw his men, "under the favour of my shot; I have no pleasure in the fall of so many gallant

men." Somerville, however, stood resolutely to his post until Lesly himself commanded him to retire; conduct which, after the surrender of the castle, called forth the personal eulogium of Lord Ettrick, accompanied by the gift of his own sword to the gratified biographer. After sustaining with unabated courage the attacks of the national army for more than three months, Ruthven found his garrison, by no means strong originally, so reduced in numbers by the ravages of disease, occasioned by the want of water and of fresh provisions, as scarcely to be able to furnish sentinels for the walls. Rumours of peace between Charles and his Scottish subjects were also rife, and may have assisted to induce Ruthven to parley for terms. His white flag was replied to by the visit of an embassy from the committee of estates, whom he entertained with the politic abundance of liquor he had learned to offer by his German experience, not permitting them either to enter the castle beyond the porter's lodge in the third gate, lest they should discover the sad state of the garrison. The ultimate result of this conference was the surrender of the castle on highly honourable terms; for, quoth the gallant commander, "If I thought the surrender should bring in question my loyalty, I would leave my bones there." They marched down to Newhaven with arms and baggage, and colours flying, with six pieces of cannon, escorted by a regiment of foot to keep off the "rascalitie," who, debarred from stone-throwing by the armed force, as well as by the voluntary presence of some of the principal nobility of the patriotic party, contented themselves with a shower of execrations, wishing Ruthven and his accomplices at the bottom of the sea. The dignified demeanour of the old general, who disdained to cast an eye upon his revilers, and marched down the street with the same grace as if he were at the head of an army, awakens the evident admiration of Somerville, no less than does his liberality, as evidenced by a gratuity of 201. (query Scots) to the soldiers who guarded him. At Newhaven he embarked for England, and on the 11th of November he was restored from forfeiture by the Scottish Parliament, at the instance of his old comrade and late opponent, Lesly; though, as Bishop Guthry shrewdly remarks, nothing was done for the restoring of his money.

He joined Charles at Shrewsbury in August, 1642, and, though a field-marshal of the army, was present at the battle of Edgehill, in the capacity of second-in-command of the cavalry under Prince Rupert. Upon the death of the Earl of Lindsey, October 23rd, he