While disaster had thus overtaken the Parliamentary right, on the left Cromwell had completely the upper hand. His steel-clad troopers crashed into Rupert’s horsemen at full speed. The fight was equal for some time, neither stubborn Roundhead nor gallant Cavalier being able to wrest the mastery from the other. But Rupert, who always depended upon one smashing blow, and put his main force into his front line, did not, like Cromwell, understand how best to use a reserve. Cromwell’s reserve—the Scotch cavalry—came up and charged home, and the Royalist horse were overthrown with the shock. “God made them as stubble to our swords,” said Cromwell. [Illustration: Cromwell’s Engagement with the Marquis of Newcastle’s Regiment of “Whitecoats” in the Battle of Marston Moor. ] Sending his leading troops in pursuit, to prevent the enemy from rallying, Cromwell instantly gathered the bulk of his horse and fell on the right wing of the Royalist foot—already hard pressed by the foot of the Eastern Association. The King’s men fought with dogged courage, most conspicuous among them being Newcastle’s own Northumbrian Regiment, the famous Whitecoats, who literally died as they stood in the ranks. Sweeping down the line the Ironsides smashed one regiment after another, until, in the fading summer evening, Cromwell had almost circled the Royalist army, and came to their left wing, where he saw the Royalist horse charging the right flank of the Scots and harrying the routed Yorkshire foot. Immediately he reformed his thoroughly trained squadrons almost on the same ground where Goring’s horse stood at the beginning of the battle, and fronting the same way. The foot of the Association formed beside them, and just before nightfall the Puritan cavalry and infantry made their final charge. Goring’s troopers were returning from their pursuit; Lucas’s men were recoiling from their last charge, in which Lucas himself had been captured. They were scattered like chaff by the shock of the steel-clad Cromwellian troopers, riding boot to boot; and the remaining Royalist foot shared the same fate. The battle was over just as night fell, stopping all pursuit. But there was little need of pursuit. As at Waterloo, the very obstinacy with which the fight had been waged made the overthrow all the more complete when at last it came. Night went down on a scene of wild confusion, with thousands of fugitives from both armies streaming off the field through the darkness; for the disaster to the right wing of the Parliamentary army had resulted not only in the rout of all the Yorkshire men and half of the Scotch, but also in the three Parliamentary commanding generals, Leven, Manchester, and Lord Fairfax, being swept off in the mass of fugitives. The fight had been won by Cromwell, not only by the valor, coolness, keen insight, and power of control over his men, which he had showed in the battle itself, but by the two years of careful preparation and drill