frost and snow"; and
Newcastle, who was hoping to be reinforced by detachments from Ormond's
army, was forced to hurry northward single-handed to arrest its march.
He succeeded in checking Leven at Sunderland, but his departure freed
the hands of Fairfax, who in spite of defeat still clung to the
West-Riding. With the activity of a true soldier, Fairfax threw himself
on the forces from Ormond's army who had landed at Chester, and after
cutting them to pieces at Nantwich on the twenty-fifth of January,
marched as rapidly back upon York. Here he was joined by the army of the
Associated Counties, a force of fourteen thousand men under the command
of Lord Manchester, but in which Cromwell's name was becoming famous as
a leader. The two armies at once drove the force left behind by
Newcastle to take shelter within the walls of York, and formed the siege
of that city. The danger of York called Newcastle back to its relief;
but he was too weak to effect it, and the only issue of his return was
the junction of the Scots with its besiegers. The plans of Pym were now
rapidly developed. While Manchester and Fairfax united with Lord Leven
under the walls of York, Waller, who with the army of the West had held
Prince Maurice in check in Dorsetshire, marched quickly to a junction
with Essex, whose army had been watching Charles; and the two forces
formed a blockade of Oxford.

[Illustration: BATTLE OF MARSTON MOOR.]

[Sidenote: Marston Moor.]

Charles was thrown suddenly on the defensive. The Irish troops, on which
he counted as a balance to the Scots, had been cut to pieces by Fairfax
or by Waller, and both in the North and in the South he seemed utterly
overmatched. But he was far from despairing. Before the advance of Essex
he had answered Newcastle's cry for aid by despatching Prince Rupert
from Oxford to gather forces on the Welsh border; and the brilliant
partizan, after breaking the sieges of Newark and Lathom House, burst
over the Lancashire hills into Yorkshire, slipped by the Parliamentary
army, and made his way untouched into York. But the success of this feat
of arms tempted him to a fresh act of daring. He resolved on a decisive
battle; and on the second of July 1644 a discharge of musketry from the
two armies as they faced each other on Marston Moor brought on, as
evening gathered, a disorderly engagement. On the one flank a charge of
the king's horse broke that of the Scotch; on the other, Cromwell's
brigade won as