which had tempered the splendid weapons he used so well. This was the first great victory of the war; but it produced no decisive effect; for there was no one general to take advantage of it. York fell; but little else resulted from the triumph. Fairfax, Manchester, and Leven all separated to pursue various unimportant objects. They left Rupert time to recruit his shattered forces. They did not march south to help Essex, who was opposed to the King in person. Essex blundered badly, and when he marched into Cornwall was out-manœuvred and surrounded, and finally had to surrender all his infantry. Before this the King had already beaten the Parliamentary general, Waller, at Copredy Bridge, the defeat of the Parliamentarians being turned into disaster by the conduct of the London trained-bands, who, after two years of battle, were still mere militia, insubordinate and prone to desert. It was not with such stuff that victory over the Royalists could be obtained. Mere militia who will not submit to rigid discipline cannot be made the equals of regulars by no matter how many years of desultory fighting. In the War of the American Revolution it was the Continentals—the regulars of Washington, Wayne, and Greene—who finally won the victory, while even to the very end of the struggle the ordinary militia proved utterly unable to face the red-coats. So in the English Civil War, it was the carefully drilled and trained horse and foot of the Eastern Association, and not the disorderly London trained-bands, who overthrew the King’s men. Cromwell had developed his troops just as Grant and Lee, Sherman and Johnston long afterward developed theirs. It is only under exceptional conditions, and with wholly exceptional populations, that it is possible to forego such careful drilling and training. One great reason for the failures of the Parliamentary forces was that their leading generals no longer greatly cared for success. They were Presbyterians, who believed in the Parliament, but who also believed in the throne. They hated the Independents quite as much as they hated the Episcopalians, and felt a growing distrust of Cromwell, who in religious matters was the leader of the Independents, and who had announced that if he met the King in battle he would kill him as quickly as he would kill anyone else. Essex was no more capable of putting a finish to the war than McClellan was capable of overthrowing the Confederacy. The one, like the other, had to make room for sterner and more resolute men.