“Decisive battles of history” are such because of long trains of events
that lead up to them and explode there. Those events form one of the
most interesting studies of historical philosophy; an understanding
of them is necessary to an intelligent reading of subsequent changes.
One of these culminating points and turning points was the Battle
of Bannockburn, fought June 24, 1314, between the Scotch under King
Robert, “the Bruce,” and the English under the ill-starred King Edward
II.
Edward I had been a great fighter. He fought the Scotch so persistently
that his tomb bears the vain-glorious inscription, “Here lies the
Hammer of the Scots.” He died, worn out, in a Scotch campaign (1307),
enjoining on his son, it is said, the pleasant duty of boiling all
the flesh off his father’s bones and carrying them at the head of the
army until Scotland should be crushed. Then he might celebrate at once
the funeral of Scotland’s freedom and of its “Hammer.” Edward II very
wisely disregarded this barbarous dying request. He at once abandoned
the Scotch war.
Seven years of peace followed, during which Scotland was drilling and
gathering strength under Bruce, while England was torn and weakened by
internal quarrels between the king and his dissolute favorites on one
side, and the lawless and tyrannical barons on the other. By the fall
of 1313 the Scotch had cleared the English garrisons out of all their
castles save Stirling, and that, the key to the borders, they besieged.
“Its danger roused England out of its civil strife to a vast effort for
the recovery of its prey.” The army gathered to this task comprised
thirty thousand horsemen, and seventy thousand English, Welsh, and
Irish footmen, raw, undisciplined, disorderly; while Bruce’s army
numbered only thirty thousand, nearly all on foot, but they were inured
to war and reckless fighters, those wild clansmen.
The little burne (brook) of Bannock (pancake) runs through a swamp near
the rock on which Sterling Castle stands. Bruce chose his position, as
he fought the battle, with a genius for arms which showed him to be the
first soldier of his age. On his right flank was the creek and marsh,
on the left the ledge of rocks and castle, in the rear a wooded hill.
The ground in front was cut up by patches of forest and undergrowth
and swamp-holes, so that no large body of the enemy at once could come
at him. This robbed the English of much of their advantage of numbers.
Other precautions, it will appear, took away also the superiority of
his enemy in the matter of cavalry.
The battle which took place here has been much written and sung about,
but rational explanations of its surprising outcome are hard to find.
We may seek them in the disorganization and disaffection of the English
army and the incapacity of its command; in the contrary circumstances
on the Scotch side; and in four striking reverses which befell the
English. But as these reverses were due to superior generalship and
better fighting on the Scotch side, we may as well put the credit where
it belongs, with Bruce and his compatriots.
The first of these four reverses took place the night before the
general engagement. Edward had sent ahead a detachment of eight hundred
knights to relieve the besieged English in Sterling Castle, and hold
it as a base of operations. To send so weak a force upon so important
a task marked the incapacity of the English generalship at the outset.
But the movement was well executed, for the first Bruce knew the
squadron was on his flank and between him and Sterling. Riding up to
Earl Randolph, his nephew, who had been cautioned against this very
manœuvre, he cried, “Randolph, you are flanked. A rose has fallen from
your chaplet.”
Randolph was an English settler in Scotland and was distrusted by the
Scotch; but he made a brave stand against the English. He formed in the
order of Hastings—a hollow square—the front rank kneeling, the next
stooping, the inside line erect, their spears a perpendicular wall of
bristling steel. Around this square and on these points the English
cavalry circled and broke and were used up. Lord Douglas, though a
personal enemy of Randolph, when he saw him sore beset, chivalrously
asked leave to go to his assistance. “No,” declared Bruce, “I’ll
not break my lines. Let him redeem his own fault.” He did—and a few
defeated horsemen galloped away to King Edward to report the first
English repulse. Bruce’s stern decision not to break his order of
battle, even at the risk of a defeat of Randolph, is the key to his
successful control of the undisciplined Scotch, and to his victory.
Early in the day of the 24th the English host came in sight. Edward
rode out with his body-guard to reconnoitre. The first sight that met
his eyes was an aged priest, bare-footed, walking along the Scotch
lines and all the rough soldiers on their knees.
“See,” said the confident king, “They kneel, they cry for mercy.”
“Yea,” said Sir Ingeltram de Umfraville, “they cry for mercy, but it is
to God, not to you.”
Presently came Bruce riding a little Scotch pony along the lines,
giving his men their last directions and words of cheer. English
chivalry, in the person of Sir Henry de Bohun, thought this an
opportunity for cheap glory. Chivalry, with all its pretense of
fairness, took odds when it could, and de Bohun in full armor, on a
heavy Flanders steed, thundered down on Bruce. Dextrously dodging
Bohun’s spear, Bruce rose in his stirrups and, as his enemy careered
past with a great circle in the air he brought his axe down full on
Bohun’s head. The axe was shattered by the tremendous blow, while
helmet and skull were cleft and the brilliant knight rolled in the
dust. A great shout from the Scotch hailed this feat; a damp silence
among the English hailed this defeat No. 2. “The Englishmen had great
abasing,” says old Barbour. As for Bruce, when his chiefs reproached
him for the risk he had taken, he only looked ruefully at the fragment
of the axe-handle in his hand and muttered, “I have broken my good
axe.”
It is at this moment, just before the battle, that Burns puts into the
mouth of Bruce the most inspiring battle-hymn ever written:
Scots wha hae wi’ Wallace bled,
Scots wham Bruce hae often led,
Welcome to your gory bed,
Or to victory.
Now’s the day and now’s the hour;
See the front o’ battle lour.
See approach proud Edward’s power,
Chains and slavery!
Wha will be a traitor knave,
Wha can fill a coward’s grave,
Wha sae base as be a slave,
Let him turn and flee!
Wha for Scotland’s king and law
Freedom’s sword will strongly draw,
Freeman stand or freeman fa’
Let him follow me.
By oppression’s woes and pains,
By your sons in servile chains,
We will drain our dearest veins
But they shall be free!
Lay the proud usurper low!
Tyrants fall in every foe!
Liberty’s in every blow!
Let us do or die!
In the battle which now began, the wisdom of Bruce’s plans appeared.
His small cavalry force he placed in hiding at the right for flank
operations on the dreaded English archers. To cope with the more
dreaded English men-at-arms he had dug all the solid ground along his
line full of pits, set them full of sharp stakes, and covered all
fairly with boughs and turf. His baggage, horses and camp impediments
were parked behind the hill in his rear; the wagoners and servants
(“Gillies”) there secreted were destined to play an important part in
this singular battle—a part so signal that the hill has ever since been
known as Gillies Hill.
The English attack began, as expected, in the assault of archers. It
made havoc among the Scotch with their bull’s-hide bucklers for their
only protection. “Now we’ll cut their bow-strings!” cried Edward Bruce
to the Scotch horsemen in cover, and forthwith they were hewing and
sabering among the English yeomen, who, having no small arms wherewith
to fight hand to hand, were helpless to resist this attack. They were
stampeded and hurled back a confused mass upon the English army. Defeat
No. 3.
The appearance of Scotch horse in the engagement was a surprise to the
English. To meet it they ordered a charge of their own cavalry. Down
the narrow passages they thundered, a galling fire of Scotch arrows in
their faces.
Rushing, ten thousand horsemen came,
With spears in rest and hearts on flame,
That panted for the shock;
Down, down in headlong overthrow,
Horseman and horse the foremost go,
Wild floundering on the field.
Loud from the mass confused the cry
Of dying warriors swells on high,
And steeds that shriek in agony.
They came like mountain torrent red,
That thunders o’er its rocky bed;
They broke like that same torrent’s wave
When swallowed by a darksome cave,
Billow on billow rushing on
Follows the path the first has gone.[E]
“Some of the horses that stickit were,” says Barbour, “rushed and
reeled right rudely.” The fall of the horse in the pits was complete
with hardly a blow from the Scotch. As yet Bruce’s line had not been
touched; Bruce’s brain more than Scotch brawn had won thus far.
The grand charge of Edward’s body-guard, three thousand steel-clad
knights, the pick of English chivalry, was now ordered to redeem the
day. They charged the line of Scotch spearmen and axmen with great fury
and effect—“Sae that mony fell down all dead; the grass waxed with the
blude all red.”
The Scotch knights, until now held in reserve, were led by Bruce
himself, and a most desperate struggle took place, all the forces left
on both sides being engaged. “And slaughter revelled round.”
Just at the moment when the victory hung trembling in the balance, a
strange apparition turned the English pause into a panic. The Scotch
wagoners and camp-followers, impatient of inactivity, had hastily armed
themselves with such knives, clubs, and rejected weapons as were at
hand, improvised banners of tent cloth and plaids, and came marching
over the hill, fifteen thousand strong. They made a “splurge” and a
racket, in inverse ratio to their real formidableness; but coming
directly after the staggering attack of Bruce’s reserves, they had all
the appearance to the English of large reinforcements.
“When they marked the seeming show
Of fresh, and fierce, and marshaled foe,
The boldest broke away.”
Thus the cooks and hostlers precipitated the English defeat and panic.
Edward would have thrown himself away in a personal effort to turn the
defeat, but Sir Giles de Argentine seized his horse’s bridle and led
him out of the fight. Having despatched him and a few faithful comrades
toward the coast, De Argentine said, “As for me, retreating is not part
of my business;” and plunging into the fight, hopelessly and uselessly,
was slain. The king by hard riding reached Dunbar and escaped by sea to
London.
The retreat was more disastrous to the English than the battle. The
bare-legged, bare-headed, bare-armed Scotch, with their long knives,
drove their enemies in large numbers into the river Forth; and Barbour
says the Bannock creek was so choked up that one might walk dry-shod
from bank to bank on the drowned horses and men. The English loss was
ten thousand; among them twenty-seven nobles, two hundred knights and
seven hundred esquires, while twenty-two nobles and sixty knights were
made prisoners. The pursuit continued for miles, every step marked by
blood and booty. Those old knights went soldiering in great style;
their military establishments were enormous and rich. The English camp
was taken, with great booty in treasure, jewels, rich robes, fine
horses, herds of cattle, droves of sheep and hogs (great eaters, those
old English!), machines for the siege of towns, wagon loads of grain
and portable mills; the train of wagons which carried the treasure
into Scotland was sixty miles long. The king’s tent and treasure
were captured, including the royal signet-ring. One prisoner was a
talented Carmelite friar whom Edward had brought along to celebrate his
anticipated victory in verse; but Bruce compelled him to buy his own
release by writing a poem glorifying the Scotch victory instead.
But a greater spoil than all this was found in the ransom of captive
knights and nobles. While the common soldiers were ruthlessly put
to death, the wealthy were carefully spared and well treated. This
was not done so much from the spirit of chivalry as from a spirit of
speculation; wealthy prisoners were the prize for which many great
battles were fought. An explanation of the large number of prisoners
of this class is found in this fact, and in the additional one that a
heavily-armored knight, if once dismounted, could not run away; if once
thrown to the ground he was about as helpless as a turtle turned on
his back. If a poor Scotchman stumbled over one of these dismounted
ironclads his fortune was made—provided the prisoner or his friends had
one. All to do was to cut the strings of his helmet, set your knife
against his throat, and make a good bargain for taking it away again.
The victory of Bannockburn, besides enriching Scotland, forever secured
her independence. It confirmed the fighting qualities of the Scots, in
pitched battle, before the world. It got them the permanent alliance of
France against England, out of which grew those long double wars which
cost England so dearly, and prevented her finally conquering either
country. Ever England was in the situation of the bear which, when she
attacks the French hunter, finds his Scotch mastiff on her haunches. It
gave Scotchmen a new respect among the English, and it no longer was
said an English yeoman carried twelve Scots under his green jacket; so
that to war on Scotland became less a pastime with English soldiers.
For three hundred years, under the influence of the independence
thus sturdily maintained, Scotch character grew as strong and
self-respecting as that of England, so that the union between the two
countries finally took place as a partnership of equals, rather than
upon the conditions under which the lion and lamb are sometimes said
to lie down together—the lamb inside the lion. A different relation
existed between England and Ireland, with all the consequences of shame
to one and suffering to the other that the world has for centuries seen.
Bannockburn was one of the most decisive battles of the world.
[To be continued.]