He was dissuaded from attacking immediately and during the day both sides gathered their full strength on Marston Moor, an expanse of wild meadow west of York.

The siege failed, as the Parliamentarian navy could supply and reinforce the port and the garrison flooded wide areas around the city, while the Royalist detachments sent into Lincolnshire were defeated at the battles of Gainsborough[4] and Winceby.

[8] The Marquess of Newcastle was forced to divide his army, leaving a detachment under Sir John Belasyse to watch the Parliamentarians under Lord Fairfax in Hull, while he led his main body north to confront Leven.

[10] Meanwhile, a Parliamentarian cavalry force under Sir Thomas Fairfax, who had been campaigning in Cheshire and Lancashire during the winter, crossed the Pennines and entered the West Riding of Yorkshire.

Initially, the siege was a rather loose blockade as the Covenanters and Parliamentarians concentrated on capturing smaller Royalist garrisons which threatened their communications with Hull.

It was politic to make the Scottish Covenanters pre-eminent in the north as they were the largest single contingent in the army, but Leven was also a respected veteran of the Thirty Years' War.

He assumed the direction of a small Royalist army, based on Chester and commanded by Lord John Byron, raising his force to 2,000 horse and 6,000 foot.

[15] Resting at Bury nearby, Rupert was joined by the Marquess of Newcastle's cavalry under Lord George Goring, which had broken out of York early in the siege, with a small contingent from Derbyshire, and several regiments which were being freshly raised in Lancashire by the Earl of Derby.

The King's advisors on the council of war had overturned Rupert's defensive policies, sending the garrisons of Reading and Abingdon on an offensive in the West Country.

This had left Oxford exposed to a sudden threat from the Parliamentarian armies commanded by the Earl of Essex and Sir William Waller and forced the King to leave the city in haste and head to Worcester, where he was still in danger.

But if that be either lost, or have freed themselves from the besiegers, or that for want of powder, you cannot undertake that work, that you immediately march with your whole strength, directly to Worcester to assist me and my army; without which, or you having relieved York by beating the Scots, all the successes you can afterwards have must infallibly be useless onto me.

From there he proceeded via Clitheroe and crossed the Pennines to Skipton, where he paused for three days from 26 to 28 June to "fix arms" and await some final reinforcements from Cumberland and Westmoreland.

The allies were aware of Rupert's approach and had been hoping that reinforcements from Manchester under Sir John Meldrum[21] and the Midlands under the Earl of Denbigh[22] could ward off this threat, but they learned that these forces could not intervene in time.

Later that day, his forces defeated the Earl of Manchester's dragoons, who had been left to guard a bridge of boats across the Ouse at the village of Poppleton a few miles north of York.

[28] Their foot (infantry), ordnance and baggage set off early on 2 July, leaving the cavalry and dragoons, commanded by Sir Thomas Fairfax, as rearguard.

At about 9 am, the allied generals learned that Rupert's army had crossed the Ouse by the captured bridge of boats at Poppleton and a ford nearby, and was advancing onto Marston Moor.

Rather than join Rupert immediately they temporised, claiming that it would take time to clear the earth and rubble which had been used to block the city gates of York during the siege.

[42] The use of musketeers to disrupt attacking cavalry or dragoons was a common practice in the Swedish Army during the Thirty Years' War, and was adopted by both the Parliamentarians and Royalists at Marston Moor.

Thomas Stockdale recorded the disposition of the troops and the role of Leven in drawing up the order of battle: The Yorkeshire forces strengthened with a great party of the Scotts army hauing the main battle, the Earl of Manchester’s forces the left wing, and the Scotts the right wing, each battle hauing severall reserues and winged with horse, according to Generall Lesleys direction whose great experience did worthyly challenge the prime power in ordering them[f]The Covenanter Sergeant Major General of Foot, James Lumsden, nevertheless observed (in a note on the map he made of the allied army's dispositions) that "... the Brigads drawen up heir as we [illegible] it is not so formal as it ought to be."

On the other hand, a near-contemporary plan of the Royalist dispositions by Rupert's chief engineer, Bernard de Gomme, shows the ditch in its present-day alignment.

[60] On the allied left, Crawford's infantry outflanked and drove back Napier's brigade while Cromwell's horse quickly defeated Byron's wing.

He later wrote: Our Right Wing had not, all, so good success, by reason of the whins and ditches which we were to pass over before we could get to the Enemy, which put us into great disorder: notwithstanding, I drew up a body of 400 Horse.

A messenger from Ireland riding in search of Prince Rupert wrote: In this horrible distraction did I coast the country; here meeting with a shoal of Scots crying out, 'Weys us, we are all undone'; and so full of lamentation and mourning, as if their day of doom had overtaken them, and from which they knew not whither to fly; and anon I met with a ragged troop reduced to four and a Cornet; by and by with a little foot officer without hat, band, sword, or indeed anything but feet and so much tongue as would serve to enquire the way to the next garrisons, which (to say the truth) were well filled with the stragglers on both sides within a few hours, though they lay distant from the place of the fight 20 or 30 miles.

Sir Thomas Fairfax, finding himself alone in the midst of Goring's men, removed the "field sign" (a handkerchief or slip of white paper which identified him as a Parliamentarian) from his hat, and made his way to Cromwell's wing to relate the state of affairs on the allied right flank.

[37] The whitecoats refused quarter and repulsed constant cavalry charges until infantry and Colonel Hugh Fraser's dragoons were brought up to break their formation with musket fire.

Leaving York by way of Monk Bar on the north east side, he marched back over the Pennines, making a detour to Richmond to escape interception.

Once reunited with the Army of both Kingdoms, the remnants of the six broken regiments were put to base service such as latrine duties and the disposing of corpses until they got the chance to redeem themselves during the storm of Newcastle.

Even as some of the newly levied allied regiments were routed by the Royalists, he had ensured he had enough veterans in reserve to replace them and overturn the early gains made by his opponents.

Despite attempts by his political rivals such as Denzil Holles and military critics such as Major General Lawrence Crawford to belittle the part he played,[92] it was acknowledged that the discipline he had instilled into his troops and his own leadership on the battlefield had been crucial to the victory.

[46]The enigmatic English reporter, "T. M.", agreed that Leven still commanded the centre battalia after the initial rout: The Lord of Hosts did so strike up the hearts of the three Noble Generals [that God] took boldness and courage unto them, gathering up those Horse Forces that were left into a body to assist those English and Scotts that stood to it, and set upon them, as David with his small Army upon the numerous company of the Amalekites, while they were rejoicing over their spoils, and smote them until the evening.