It is in this way that all excesses in the hour of victory defeat the very ends they were intended to subserve. They weaken the perpetrators, and not the subjects of them. In the mean time, while young Edward, at the head of his army, was marching on from the westward toward London to intercept the queen, the Earl of Warwick, who has already been mentioned as a friend of Lady Cecily, had also assembled a large force near London, and he was now advancing toward the northward. The poor king was with him. Nominally, the king was in command of the expedition, and every thing was done in his name, but really he was a forlorn and helpless prisoner, forced wholly against his will--so far as the feeble degree of intellect which remained to him enabled him to exercise a will--to seem to head an enterprise directed against his own wife, and his best and strongest friend. The armies of the queen and of the Earl of Warwick advanced toward each other, until they met at last at a short distance north of London. A desperate battle was fought, and the queen's party were completely victorious. When night came on, the Earl of Warwick found that he was beaten at every point, and that his troops had fled in all directions, leaving thousands of the dead and dying all along the road sides. The camp had been abandoned, and there was no time to save any thing; even the poor king was left behind, and the officers of the queen's army found him in a tent, with only one attendant. Of course, the queen was overjoyed at recovering possession of her husband, not merely on his own account personally, but also because she could now act again directly in his name. So she prepared a proclamation, by which the king revoked all that he had done while in the hands of Warwick, on the ground that he had been in durance, and had not acted of his own free will, and also declared Edward a traitor, and offered a large reward for his apprehension.