THE BATTLE.
Near Ilus' tomb, in order ranged around,
The Trojan lines possess'd the rising ground;
The sea with ships, the fields with armies spread,
The victors rage, the dying and the dead.
_Iliad_, book xi.
The joy of Somerset was great on perceiving that the Scots had
quitted their formidable position, and, between his fleet on one
flank and his artillery on the other, were deliberately marching into
a mouth of fire. He and the Earl of Warwick warmly congratulated
each other, and then repaired to their posts. The earl formed his
division on the slope of Inveresk hill; the duke formed his line from
thence till its other flank reached the plain. The mounted
arquebusiers of Don de Gamboa and the men-at-arms of Lord Grey,
flushed by their victory of yesterday, formed the extreme left, while
Lord Dacres commanded the seaward line.
Being armed with shorter pikes than the Scots, the long and serried
array of the English looked compact and low; the sun was in their
rear, and above their long lines of glittering helmets poured aslant
his morning rays, in which every polished sword and point of steel
flashed and sparkled brightly.
On this day the royal standard of England was borne by Sir Andrew
Flammock, a gentleman of approved valour, who rode near Somerset, on
a magnificently caparisoned horse, and in the centre of the whole
army. This scarlet banner, with its three yellow leopards, was the
mark of many an eye, the aim of many a Highland archer, and Lowland
cannonier; thus the unfortunate bearer had no sinecure of his office;
and on Arran saying to those about him,--
"Sirs, I would give a fair barony to have yonder standard in my hand!"
"I care not for baronies," said Florence, who rode by his side; "I
care not for life itself, lord earl,--and thou shalt have the banner,
if human strength can win it."
"Then," adds the vicar of Tranent, who records this episode, "ere the
Lord Arran could reply, the battaile began with a mighty furie."
As the chief intention of Arran was to throw the division of the Earl
of Angus--if not the whole Scottish army--between the English and
their fleet, the flank which marched near the sea, became (as
Somerset had foreseen) exposed to an immediate cannonade from the
whole line of the English ships, sixty-four in number. The booming
of their artillery echoed along the indented shore with a thousand
reverberations, while the pale smoke enveloped all the line of
anchored ships, from their low-waisted and high-pooped hulls, to the
gaudy banners and long wavy streamers which decorated their masts;
and their shot of stone or iron, bowled with fatal precision among
the dense masses of the men of Fife and Mearn, making long and
terrible lanes of death and mutilation--of shattered limbs and
dismembered bodies. This caused a flank movement by which the whole
Scottish line swerved south and westward towards the slope of Fawside
Hill. On perceiving this, Somerset ordered the Lord Grey at the head
of his mailed men-at-arms, and Edward Shelly with his Boulogners to
charge the right wing of the Scots, to the end, that both their
flanks might be driven upon the centre. With this body went the
bearer of the royal standard; and true to his pledge, Florence
galloped to join the right wing of the Scots, that he might be nearer
his intended prize.
"St. George! St. George for England! Come on, my valiant
Boulogners, my true-bred English fighting-cocks!" cried Shelly,
standing in his stirrups, and waving his lance as he spurred in front
of the line.
In solid squadrons, with their barbed horses making the ground shake
beneath their mighty rush, the men-at-arms all clad in shining steel,
with swords uplifted and their faces glowing through their barred
helmets with ardour and excitement, came furiously on, their trumpets
sounding, and the red cross of England waving above them. On came
Edward Shelly at the head of his mounted Boulogners, the last of
those "five hundred light horsemen, cloathed in blue jackets with red
guards," whom King Henry had taken to Boulogne;[*] and with them came
Sir Ralf Vane, Sir Thomas Darcy, and the Lord Fitzwalter, all wearing
magnificent armour, streaming plumes, and gay colours, leading the
column of demi-lancers, a thousand heavy horse, and sixteen hundred
chosen infantry, to break that portion of the Scottish line.
[*] _Vide_ "Relations of the Most Famous Kingdoms." 1630.
The brilliant horsemen first gained the slope of Fawside Hill, and
then making a sweeping wheel to their right, like a rolling sea of
shining men and foaming chargers, they rushed with tremendous fury
down upon the Scottish flank. There was a sudden and a fearful
shock; and again, like a rolling sea from the face of a flinty bluff,
this human tide of valour was hurled back upon itself in confusion
and disorder.
Foremost in the _mêlée_ fought Florence, with his eyes fixed on the
standard, and many a mounted man went down before him, till at last,
with a shout of triumph, he laid his hand upon the pole, as it swayed
to and fro, above the fighting and the falling.
"The standard!" cried Lord Grey; "by Heaven and King Harry's bones,
let us save the standard!"
He made a blow at the left hand of Florence, who gave him a severe
cut across the mouth just as his helmet flew open, and then by a
wound in the neck completed his discomfiture. Sir Andrew Flammock
was roughly unhorsed by Sir George Douglas; but he retained the
standard, by tearing it (as he fell) from the pole, which remained in
the hand of Florence as a trophy of victory.
It was at the present farm-house of Barbauchly that this encounter
took place; and into its muddy ditch, back from the triple line of
gleaming Scottish pikes, there rolled two hundred of Somerset's best
cavaliers. Ratcliff, Clarence, and many others were slain, many more
were wounded; while hundreds of riderless horses, wild with affright,
fled over the field in every direction, some with their entrails
hanging out, having been stabbed in the belly by the spears, the long
double-edged daggers, or Tynedale knives of the Scots. "Rendered
furious by their wounds, many of these chargers carried disorder into
the English companies, which were thrown into such confusion (says an
historian) that the Lord Grey had the greatest difficulty in
extricating them and retreating."
While he drew off his discomfited cavalry to re-form them, there
lingered near the Scottish line a single horseman, whose blue
surcoat, trimmed with gold and slashed with scarlet, worn loosely and
open above his armour, and whose lofty plume, as well as his
trappings and bearing, marked him as an approved soldier and man of
distinction. This was Edward Shelly, in the livery of a Boulogner.
Rising in his stirrups, he thrice waved his lance aloft; and
Florence, remembering their quarrel and appointed duel, rode forth at
once to meet him. He had long since broken his lance; but he now
couched in the fashion of one the pole of the English standard, which
he still retained, and with it he rushed at full speed upon his
challenger.
They met with a furious concussion; but as Shelly's horse swerved,
his lance was broken in two athwart the breast-plate of Florence,
whose impromptu weapon was splintered into twenty fragments on the
right shoulder of the sturdy Englishman, who kept his saddle, but
with difficulty. Each in a moment tossed aside the truncheon or
fragment which remained in his hand, reined up his horse, and drew
his sword; then, in full view of the Scottish right and of the
English left wing, began a sharp hand-to-hand conflict, in which the
utmost skill in the use of the bridle and sword was displayed by both
combatants.
Florence, being reckless alike of life and danger, had evidently the
best of it, as he drove his adversary, at every thrust and stroke,
further up the hill towards the right, until they were within a
bowshot of the tower of Fawside, the barbican of which was crowded by
women and by the old men of the barony, who were all armed, in case
of the place being attacked. It soon became evident that they
recognized their young master, for shouts of
"Forth--forth, and feir nocht!" faintly reached his ear, mingled with
shrill cries of alarm.
Suddenly his horse stumbled and came heavily down on its knees,
throwing him prone to the earth. Ere he could rise, while a shriek
burst from the women in the tower, Shelly had sprung from his horse,
and throwing the bridle over his arm, placed his sword at the throat
of the fallen.
"Here might I slay or capture you, Scot," said he; "but I have not
forgotten your generosity on the night we met in that lonely castle
of the Torwood. Here ends our quarrel; and in this field let us meet
no more, unless it be that the fair one, whose name I jestingly
mentioned on that night----"
"Nay, speak not of her," said Florence mournfully. "I seek not life,
Master Shelly, but rather death; and from so honoured a sword as
thine it were indeed more welcome!"
"Wherefore so sad?" said the Englishman. "Up, man, and be doing;
for, by St. George! you Scots will have your hands full to-day. Here
come our demi-lances again; away to your own band--you have not a
moment to lose!"
Shelly remounted; Florence saluted him, and leaped lightly on his own
horse.
"Farewell, Edward Shelly," exclaimed Florence with an emotion of
enthusiasm; "thou art a soldier as generous as brave. I would rather
be thy friend than thine enemy."
"To-day you have been both, fair sir," replied Shelly, as he wheeled
his horse round. At that moment there came a loud whiz through the
air, and struck by the ball of an arquebuse, which had been fired
from the tower of Fawside, the brave Shelly fell dead from his
terrified horse, which dragged him by the stirrup into the ditch
where so many English were already lying killed and wounded.
Florence cast his eyes upward to the tower-head, from whence the pale
light smoke was still curling. He saw the tall dark figure of a
woman brandishing an arquebuse, and he knew in a moment that the hand
of his stern mother had fired the fatal shot.
"She again!--oh, ruthless hand!" he muttered with a half-smothered
groan; and turning his horse, galloped again to the Regent Arran.
On beholding Shelly's fall a shout of rage arose from his comrades
the Boulogners, and from the long array of demi-lances, whom the Duke
of Somerset once more ordered to attack the Scottish right.
"By my faith, duke, you might as well bid me charge a castle wall?"
was the angry reply of the Lord Grey, from whose face and neck the
blood was still streaming; but now, by the advice of the skilful Earl
of Warwick, the Spanish and German arquebusiers, with a body of
English archers, were ordered to assail the Scottish columns in
front, while several pieces of cannon played upon one flank from
Fawside Hill, and the shipping still swept the other with terrible
results. The foreign auxiliaries, in ranks eight deep, poured in
their heavy shot, firing over forks or rests, full into the faces of
the Scottish infantry, who, by the destruction of their light cavalry
on the preceding day, were without means of attacking either the
cannoniers or the continental troops. Thus the battle soon became
general along the whole plain, and the cry of the Scots,--
"Come on, ye dogs! ye heretics!" rose incessantly above the din of
the strife; for now there was the rancorous rivalry of creed to
inflame the rivalry of race, and the transmitted hatred of a thousand
years. Moreover, in this engagement the English were burning to
avenge the defeat of their troops at Ancrumford and Paniershaugh,
where Sir Ralf Evers and many men had been cut to pieces by the Earl
of Angus; and now, filled with fury on beholding the destruction of
his castle and the pitiless devastation of his lands, no man in all
the army of Arran on this day of blood hewed a passage further into
the English host than old Claude Hamilton of Preston, who forgot all
about his proffered titles, and with his two-handed sword sent many a
younger man to his long home.
The combined movement of the Spaniards, under Gamboa, with the
Germans, under Sir Pietre Mewtas, seconded by a body of English
archers showering flight and sheaf arrows point-blank into the teeth
of the Scottish line, on which (as already related) the cannon were
playing from both flanks, drove it into confusion; and, after
suffering dreadful losses, the great column of Angus first began
insensibly to retire.
At this crisis the whole air seemed laden with sound; The booming of
cannon; the rattling explosion of arquebuses, hand-guns, and
calivers; the smoke of which rolled like carded wool before the wind;
the twang of bows; the whiz of passing arrows, which planted all the
turf as they stuck with feathers upward; the clang of swords on
swords or helmets; the galloping of horses; the voices of many
thousands of men uttering triumphant hurrahs, fierce and bitter
imprecations or cries of agony, as they were struck down wounded and
bleeding to the earth;--all were there to make a mighty medley of
uproar. The air of the sunny morning became dusky with the dust
raised by the feet of men rushing in tens of thousands to the mortal
shock; and sulphureous with the smoke of gunpowder, which was then
almost a new element in Scottish war; and to this new ally in the
hands of their foreign auxiliaries on one side, and to the treason
and incapacity of the Scottish leaders on the other, England
eventually owed the victory.
The recoil of Lord Angus's division caused a panic to run along the
whole Scottish line.
It began to waver, to pause, and fall back!
"Treason! treason! to your ranks--to your standards! forward and
follow me!" cried Arran, whose magnificent armour, covered with gold
embossings made him the aim of many an archer, as he galloped along
the line to restore order. He had already had three horses killed
under him; the golden oak and pearl-studded coronet had been hewn
from his helmet; the diamond cross of St. Andrew and the golden
shells of St. Michael had been torn from his breast; he had broken
his sword and lance, and now wielded a steel truncheon; his eyes were
wild and bloodshot, and his voice had become hoarse by the reiterated
orders he had issued. His efforts were vain; and vain also were
those of Florence, and a few who attempted to second them; for the
rapid advance of the Earl of Warwick's column, and another
well-directed volley from the foreign auxiliaries, completed the
discomfiture of the ill-led, ill-posted, and ill-disciplined Scots.
A total and most disastrous rout ensued! The great army, which one
historian likens to "a steely sea agitated by the wind," after a few
moments was seen breaking into a thousand fragments, and dispersed in
all directions.
"They fly! they fly!" burst from the victors.
All became flight, chaos, confusion; and the fugitives, in their
haste to escape the English cavalry, threw aside all that might
encumber their movements. More than twenty thousand spears and
partisans strewed the ground, with helmets, cuirasses, back-plates,
bucklers, gauntlets, swords, daggers, mauls, Jedwood axes, bows,
belts, sheafs of arrows, drums, banners, trumpets, cannon, pistols,
hand-guns, and all the _débris_ of a mighty host; and the pursuit of
the unarmed fugitives continued from one in the day until six in the
evening--nor even _then_ were the English sated with slaughter.
Exasperated by their first defeat, the demi-lances and the
men-at-arms of Boulogne, were especially severe in their actions.
"Remember Paniershaugh!" was their cry; and others shouted,--
"Shelly, Shelly! remember Ned Shelly!" for, says Master Patten, "On
the field we found that worthy gentleman and gallant officer,
pitifully disfigured, mangled, and discernible only by his beard."
In their haste to escape, many of the Scots cast aside their shoes
and doublets, and fled in their shirts and breeches. Many concealed
themselves in the furrows of the fields, and were passed unseen by
the English cavalry, who swept on after others. In short, it was one
of those routs or panics to which undisciplined troops are at all
times liable.
To Edinburgh the din of the distant battle had come by fits upon the
autumnal breeze; and when the English infantry reached Edmondstone
Edge, and found themselves among the plunder of the Scottish tents
and camp-equipage, the shout they raised was distinctly heard in the
streets of the capital, where that day's slaughter made three hundred
and sixty widows. Among those who fell was the merchant John
Hamilton, mentioned in the thirty-first chapter of our story.
Thousands of the Scots threw themselves into the Esk, and perished
miserably under the cannon from the ships, the shot of the Spaniards,
or the swords of the English horsemen, when they scrambled ashore.
On the narrow Roman bridge, the press of fugitives was frightful, as
the Lord Clinton's great ship was pouring her broadsides upon it, and
on the defiling masses. Here were slain the good Lord Fleming of
Cumbernauld; the Masters of Livingstone, Buchan, Ogilvy, and Erskine,
all sons of earls; the Lairds of Lochinvar, Merchiston, Craigcrook,
Priestfield, Lee, and many others, with their friends and followers,
till the barricade of mail-clad dead impeded the passage of the
living; and so little did their consecrated banner avail the band of
armed monks, that they nearly perished to a man, and the symbol of
"the afflicted Church" was found on the field, soaked in their blood,
torn and trampled under foot. The Esk was literally crimsoned with
blood, for nearly half the Scottish army perished along its banks,
the English having made a vow before the battle, "that if victorious,
they would kill _many_ and spare _few_."
The aspect of the field, says Master Patten, was frightful; the
bodies lay so thick and close.
"Some without legs, some houghed and half-dead, others the arms cut
off, divers their necks half asunder, many their heads cloven, the
brains of sundry dashed out, others their heads quite off, with a
thousand kinds of killing. In the chase," continues this minute
reporter, who writes of the affair with great gusto, "all, for the
most part, were killed either in the head or in the neck; for our
horsemen could not well reach them lower with their swords. And
thus, with blood and slaughter, the chase continued five miles
westward from the place of their standing, which was in the
fallow-fields of Inveresk, unto Edinburgh Park (about the base of
Arthur's Seat), and well-nigh to the gates of the town itself, and
unto Leith; and in breadth, from the shore of the Firth up to
Dalkeith southward; in all of which space _the dead bodies lay as
thick as cattle grazing in a full-replenished pasture_. The river
Esk was red with blood, so that in the same chase were counted, as
well by some of our men who diligently observed it, as by several of
the prisoners, who greatly lamented the result, upwards of fourteen
thousand slain. It was a wonder to see how soon the dead bodies of
the slain were stripped quite naked, whereby the persons of the enemy
might be easily viewed. For tallness of stature, cleanness of skin,
largeness of bone, and due proportion, I could not have believed
there were so many in all their country."
The Lord Chancellor, the Earl of Huntly, with fifteen hundred men,
were captured, and, with thirty thousand suits of mail found in the
camp and on the field, sent on board the fleet.
Previous to all this, Florence collected a few horsemen by the force
of example, and made three desperate charges, which kept Gamboa's
fiery Spaniards and the Lord Fitzwalter's demi-lances in check until
the regent and his train had passed the Esk. On achieving this,
Arran, whose helmet was now completely cloven, and the housings of
whose horse were covered with blood, exclaimed,--
"Fawside, the day is totally lost, and I am living: and without a
single wound!"
"And I too, though seeking death everywhere."
"So much the better; I have for you a task of honour and peril to
perform."
"Name it--quick, my lord; we have not a moment to lose," cried
Florence breathlessly.
"Ride for Edinburgh--get forth the queen and queen-mother, and, with
whatever men you can collect, take the road for the north--there
await my orders--away!"
"Farewell; but I must have one other dash at these English
demi-lances," he exclaimed, wheeling round his horse.
Cold in the cause of Scotland, and heedless whether the field was
lost or won, too many of the peers showed but an indifferent example
to their soldiers; others, with an eye to the promised pensions,
gold, titles, and rewards, wished well to Somerset, and openly fled,
like traitors, as Arran called them. Hence the rhyme, with which the
poor Scots consoled themselves,--
_'Twas English gold and Scots traitors wan
The field of Pinkey, but no Englishman._
According to Buchanan, the Highlanders escaped without loss, as they
formed themselves into a dense circle, and in this strange order
retreated over the most difficult and rocky ground, where no
men-at-arms could follow them. Their retreat was covered by the
MacNabs, among whom the twelve tall sons of Aileen were conspicuous
by their vigour and bravery.
Arran retired with a body of fugitives to Stirling, and on the day
after the battle fresh scenes of disaster and devastation occurred in
Edinburgh. In every street rapine and outrage were triumphant.
Holyrood was sacked, the churches were despoiled, and Leith was set
in flames.
There was one citizen of Edinburgh, who, after bearing himself
gallantly throughout that bloody day, on finding that he was unable
to bear away, like the pious Eneis, his blind and aged father, while
having a young wife and her babes to protect, stood for nearly an
hour amid the flames of rapine and a hundred weapons that gleamed
around him, defending with his two-handed sword the archway that led
to his house. A horde of assailants, flushed with ale, wine,
triumph, and ferocity, opposed him; but valiantly he faced them all,
until a ball from the arquebuse of a Spaniard pierced his heart and
he fell dead. This citizen was Dick Hackerston; but to this hour his
name is borne by the street or wynd which he so valiantly defended.
While the English were stripping the dead and slaying the wounded on
the field, the little garrison in Fawside tower fired on them
briskly, from bartizan and loophole, until they were environed by a
body of men-at-arms under Sir Ralf Vane, who on finding the defender
was a lady, tied a handkerchief to his sword and riding forward
called upon her to yield.
"Yield thou!--false kite, what make ye here?" was the scoffing reply
of the fierce Dame Alison, in whom the events of the day had kindled
the keenest excitement. "I hold my house of the queen of Scotland,
and will yield it to no Englishman,--least of all to a popinjay
squire like thee."
"I am Sir Ralf Vane, madam, a captain of demi-lances, and ere now
have had a château yielded to me by a marshal of France."
"The more fool he," she replied; while Roger of Westmains, sent a
bullet close to Vane's right ear.
"Surrender to thee, indeed!" he exclaimed; "thou loon and heretic
tyke, I would as soon think of ploughing up the devil's croft."
A cannon was now brought up; a single shot blew the gate open; then
the tower was given to the flames; and as none were allowed to come
forth by the doors, and the windows were (as we may still see them)
grated with iron, all within perished miserably.
"The house was set on fire," saith Master Patten complaisantly in his
seventy-fourth page; "and for their good-will all were burnt or
smothered within." So Lady Alison died by the same dreadful death,
which, but a few days before, she had devised for the Hamiltons of
Preston.
Roger of Westmains, many other old men, and the wives of all her
tenants perished with her: but, as already mentioned, the spirit of
this stern woman is still said to haunt the ruined tower on each
anniversary of that day of cattle and disaster, the Black Saturday of
1547.