Emergency-service trucks rumbled up Broadway to positions on two sides of Zuccotti Park. Powerful klieg lights blinked on, illuminating about 220 protesters in tents and sleeping bags. The one-square-block plaza was as bright as day. But it was only 1 a.m.

Voices of the police, booming from loudspeakers, echoed through the financial district. Officers swept through the park, picking their way around tents and over sleeping bags, handing out leaflets. Dozens of protesters linked arms and shouted “This is our home,” “Barricade!” and, in one case, “You’re stepping on my bed!”

But the message was clear: Occupy Wall Street’s two-month encampment was coming to a sudden end.

The eviction early Tuesday morning, which ended with the arrests of 140 bleary-eyed protesters who had not heeded the orders to clear out, capped two intense weeks in which Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and his aides tried but failed to negotiate with members of Occupy Wall Street. They concluded that the protesters were unwilling to negotiate and unable to address their encampment’s growing problems on their own.

On Tuesday evening, after a judge agreed that officials could ban tents and tarps, several hundred protesters without sleeping gear returned to the park in Lower Manhattan, began to meet and prepared for an uncertain future.