Thus ended the battle of Marston Moor.  It was not long, indeed, before the royal cavalry, amounting to three thousand men, made their appearance returning from the pursuit.  But the aspect of the field struck dismay into the heart of Rupert.  His thoughtless impetuosity was now exchanged for an excess of caution; and after a few skirmishes he withdrew.  Cromwell spent the night on the spot; but it was to him a night of suspense and anxiety.  His troopers were exhausted with the fatigue of the day; the infantry was dispersed, and without orders; and he expected every moment a nocturnal attack from Rupert, who had it in his power to collect a sufficient force from the several corps of royalists which had suffered little in the battle.  But the morning brought him the pleasing intelligence that the prince had hastened by a circuitous route to York.  The immediate fruit of the victory were fifteen hundred prisoners and the whole train of artillery.  The several loss of the two parties is unknown; those who buried the slain numbered the dead bodies at four thousand one hundred and fifty.[1]

This disastrous battle extinguished the power of the

[Footnote 1:  For this battle see Rushworth, v. 632; Thurloe, i. 39; Clarendon, iv. 503; Baillie, ii, 36, 40; Whitelock, 89; Memorie of the Somervilles, Edin. 1815.  Cromwell sent messengers from the field to recall the three generals who had fled.  Leven was found in bed at Leeds about noon; and having read the despatch, struck his breast, exclaiming, “I would to God I had died upon the place.”—­Ibid.; also Turner, Memoirs, 38.]

royalists in the northern counties.  The prince and the marquess had long cherished a deeply-rooted antipathy to each other.  It had displayed itself in a consultation respecting the expediency of fighting; it was not probable that it would be appeased by their defeat.  They separated the next morning; Rupert, hastening to quit a place where he had lost so gallant an army, returned to his former command in the western counties; Newcastle, whether he despaired of the royal cause, or was actuated by a sense of injurious treatment, taking with him the lords Falconberg and Widerington, sought an asylum on the continent.  York, abandoned to its fate, opened its gates to the enemy, on condition that the citizens should not be molested, and that the garrison should retire to Skipton.  The combined army immediately separated by order of the committee of both kingdoms.  Manchester returned into Nottinghamshire, Fairfax remained in York, and the Scots under Leven retracing their steps, closed the campaign with the reduction of Newcastle. They had no objection to pass the winter in the neighbourhood of their own country; the parliament felt no wish to see them nearer to the English capital.[1]

In the mean time Essex, impatient of the control exercised by that committee, ventured to act in opposition to its orders; and the two houses, though they reprimanded him for his disobedience, allowed him to pursue the plan which he had formed of dissolving with his army the association of royalists in Somersetshire, Devonshire, and Cornwall.[a] He relieved Lime, which had long been besieged by Prince Maurice, one[a] of the king’s nephews, and advanced in the direction