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.
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