On both sides the slaughter had been considerable. On Edward's side Lord Say and Sir John Lisle, Lord Cromwell and Sir Humphrey Bourchier, with about fifteen hundred soldiers, bit the dust. On Warwick's side twenty-three knights, among whom was Sir William Tyrrel, and three thousand fighting men fell to rise no more. At length, after a bloody and obstinate contest had been maintained, Edward saw that the time had arrived to strike a sure and shattering blow. There still remained a body of Yorkists who had been kept in reserve for any emergency. The king ordered up these fresh troops, and led them to the assault. Warwick fronted this new peril with haughty disdain; and, in accents of encouragement, appealed to his remaining adherents to persevere. "This," said he, "is their last resource. If we withstand this one charge the field will yet be ours." But the earl's men, jaded and fatigued, could not encounter such fearful odds with success; and Warwick had the mortification of finding that his call was no longer answered by his friends, and that his battle-cry no longer sounded terrible to his foes. Warwick could not now have entertained any delusions as to the issue of the conflict. He was conquered, and he must have felt such to be the case. The disaster was irremediable, and left him no hope. The descendant of Cospatrick did not stoop to ask for mercy, as Simon de Montfort had done under somewhat similar circumstances, only to be told there was none for such a traitor; nor did he, by a craven flight, tarnish the splendid fame which he had won on many a stricken field. Life, in fact, could not any longer have charms for him; and, ceasing to hope for victory, he did not feel any wish to survive defeat. A glorious death only awaited the king-maker--such a death as history should record in words of admiration and poets celebrate in strains of praise. Under such circumstances, the great earl ventured desperately into the thickest of the conflict; and, sword in hand, threw himself valiantly among countless enemies. Death, which he appeared to seek, did not shun him; and he faced the king of terrors with an aspect as fearless as he had ever presented to Henry or to Edward. The king-maker died as he had lived. In the melancholy hour which closed his career--betrayed by the wily archbishop; deserted by the perjured Clarence; abandoned on the field by his new allies; and conquered by the man whom he had set on a throne--even in that hour, the bitterest perhaps of his life, Warwick was Warwick still; and Montagu, perhaps caring little to survive the patriot earl, rushed in to his rescue, and fell by his side.