Warenne’s tired bones kept him in bed beyond the time when the attack should have been made. Some of the English troops, impatient at the delay, crossed the bridge without raising as much as a derisive shout from the hidden Scots and then returned to their own side to wait for their ancient leader to waken. The sun was high when Warenne emerged. The bridge looked as secure as ever, the green haughs beyond were clear for a good mile, the thickets far back could not conceivably conceal any great number of Scots. The crossing began.
What followed was a supreme test of the generalship of Wallace. He had to choose unerringly the right moment to strike. If he launched his attack too soon, he would succeed only in destroying a small part of the enemy and the main English forces would be left intact. If he waited too long, the invaders would be able to establish a strong enough bridgehead to resist any attack and to enable the rest of the army to cross behind them.
Wallace showed that he had patience as well as judgment. From his high place of concealment he watched the first horsemen come over the bridge at a sedate jog trot to test the security of the structure. When it became evident that nothing had been done to weaken it, the pace became faster. After the horsemen, who spread out fanwise under the command of a capable officer, Sir Marmaduke de Thwenge, came the foot soldiers and the Welsh archers with extraordinarily long bows over their shoulders. Soon the lush green haugh was black with the human stream, and still no sound came from the cover where presumably the Scots were waiting. Or had they decamped during the night, fearing to face such a formidable host? How Wallace succeeded in keeping his excitable troops from any form of demonstration is hard to understand, save that it is known his hand was heavy in discipline and his displeasure swift and harsh.
The Scottish leader waited until eleven o’clock. By that time a very considerable part of the English army had crossed, but not enough to diminish his confidence that he could destroy them. He gave the long-awaited signal.
The wild battle cry of the men from the Highland glens split the air. From behind the semicircle of thicket along the base of the Ochils came thousands of figures leaping in a maddened fury, their robes drawn up around their waists to leave their brawny bare legs free, the chiefs with eagles’ feathers in their bonnets, the common men with a sprig of thistle in theirs. They charged across the haughs, brandishing their deadly hooked axes and their long spears, still raising that high, keen cry which sent shivers down the spines of those who had never heard it before. There seemed to be no end to them. They poured forth from the scant cover like nondescript articles from a magician’s chest; ten, twenty thousand, and perhaps more. The boggy ground did not delay them, for they were in their bare feet. It seemed a matter of minutes only, after the order was given, for them to make contact with the enemy.
Wallace had shrewdly grouped on his right the best trained of his men, who might reasonably be termed the gall-oglauch of the Scottish army. These troops struck the left flank of the English as they deployed from the bridge and went through them like a knife through a wheel of cheese. So instantly successful was this blow that they took control of the end of the bridge and no more of the English troops could get over. The efforts of those still on the swaying structure had to be devoted to resisting the pressure of the files pressing on behind them, a struggle which resulted in most of them being shoved against the Scottish spears or forced over into the rising waters of the river below. The English who had succeeded in crossing were then driven into a bend of the river to the right of the bridge, and here they were either cut down or shoved into the river, which was now salt with the incoming tide. Few, if any, managed to swim across!
Five thousand men died in less than that number of seconds. Many of the English leaders fell in the carnage, including Cressingham, who had ridden over with the van, intending no doubt to show what a churchman could do and perhaps conning over in his mind the self-laudatory note he would send the king. He was thrown from his horse in the first few moments of conflict and trampled to death. Later, discovering whose body it was, the Scots stripped off his skin and divided it among themselves as souvenirs.
The impotent Warenne sat his horse on the other bank and saw his best soldiers being hacked to pieces by the jubilant clansmen. Realizing that the battle was lost, he gave orders for the bridge to be burned, if possible, and for the army to retreat. His own departure was so precipitate that he rode straight through to Berwick. From that still desolate and sad city he continued on to York, where a letter reached him from the Prince of Wales, who was acting as regent in his father’s absence. In this note he was admonished not to leave Scotland until the insurgents were beaten and destroyed.
A cautious general is content with victory and slow in the pursuit of a retreating foe; a great general strikes as hard and as boldly when his enemy is beaten as when the issue is still undecided. Wallace handled the pursuit of the beaten English in the latter tradition, a course made easier by the eagerness of his followers. The victors must have made use of the ford. They were, at any rate, soon hot on the heels of the retreating aliens.
And now the barons of the land, who had been too proud to fight under a commoner, or too sensitive to the possession of their personal estates, came out of retirement to join in the man hunt. Even James the Steward of Scotland and Malcolm, Earl of Lennox, who had been sitting in council with Warenne and promising him men in support of any action, emerged from the safe retreat into which they had skulked and took a hand in the chase.
The once proud English fled down the stony roads in a mad race for their lives. Their heels were seldom free of claymore or spear in the hands of the enraged hounds. They were tracked down in the forests, they were driven into the rivers and streams, the bracken became stained with their blood. Over it all the sun shone warmly as though with approval, and from every thicket the songs of the missel thrush and the sedge warbler seemed to rise higher because the land would now be free.
It had indeed been a miracle.
2
The activity of Wallace did not cease with the pursuit of Warenne’s army. He recruited his forces, often by arbitrary methods such as hanging a few recalcitrant officials, and proceeded to reduce the towns which were still held by the English. The list of strongholds captured in a matter of weeks included Dundee, Edinburgh, Roxburgh, Stirling, and Berwick. Then he burned the English towns immediately south of the border and marched into England to harry Westmorland and Cumberland.
Some form of national organization was adopted, but there is nothing in the scanty records of the day to indicate what it was. Wallace was knighted and became officially known as guardian of the kingdom. Undoubtedly he either dictated the measures taken or had a decisive hand in them. That he assumed such a modest title is proof of his lack of ambition and the sincerity and depth of his patriotism. One factor in the situation remained unchanged: the nobility still held sullenly aloof. Accustomed to unchallenged authority in a personal realm, they could not thole any change which took away a jot of their hereditary power and privilege.
It seems more than probable that if the Scottish people could have formed themselves at this stage into a solid front against English aggression they would have defeated any further attempts to rob them of their independence.
Wallace has been charged with barbarous conduct in the chronicles of the day, most of which were written by English monks and reflect the English viewpoint. It is doubtful if he needs any defense. Wars are fought to be won, and they cannot be won by anything but violent measures. Faced by a foe who had fallen on Scotland with fire and sword, the new leader met the invaders with the same weapons. Wallace also burned and harried and left his dead behind him. He was a stern disciplinarian; but only a firm hand could hold together an army which in the first stages could best be described, perhaps, as tatterdemalion. For every story told of his cruelty, there is at least another which demonstrates his fairness and moderation.
A national or world crisis generally produces at least one great man. Scotland,
in her hour of desperation, had found a truly remarkable leader in William Wallace.
CHAPTER XII
Edward and the Horn-Owl
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SURPRISE may be felt that Edward was absent from Scotland at such a critical moment, knowing the low caliber of at least some of his chief lieutenants. The truth was that he had another problem on his hands of at least equal importance. He and King Philip the Fair of France were engaged in what might reasonably be termed the first stages of the Hundred Years’ War.
The French king has come down through the centuries as an enigma, because some of the very few flashes of him that history supplies make him appear stolid and slow, both of body and mind. It has been assumed that he depended on the clever lawyer chancellors he employed and that he gave little attention to affairs of state. Yet at all stages of his reign remarkable things were happening in France which made it clear that a ruthless intelligence was at work. Could his first chancellor, Pierre Flotte, a one-eyed jurist from Montpellier with a silver tongue, have been the master mind of the state? Was it Enguerrard de Marigny, a Norman squire, who had been a protégé of the queen? Or was it Guillaume de Nogaret, the best and least favorably known of the trio, who was so bold that he tried to make a prisoner of Pope Boniface VIII? Modern opinion seems to have veered to the belief that the power behind all the extraordinary things that happened was Philip the Fair himself.
In appearance he was what might be termed a super-Plantagenet, taller even than Edward of England. In any company he stood a full head above everyone else; and a most unusual head it was, of a pink and white complexion, with blond ringlets and handsome blue eyes. He was immensely strong and could crumple up almost any man with his great white hands. In character he showed some signs of his descent from his grandfather, that great and holy man, Louis IX, who is called St. Louis. One of his first acts on becoming king was to expel women from the court. Only three dishes were served at his table, and his guests had to drink water colored with wine. The desserts were always fruit grown on the royal estates. This may have been either asceticism or parsimony, and no one was sure which.
Once on a chilly day in Paris, with a mizzling rain falling, he was stopped by three soldiers who had some trivial complaint to make. The tall, silent king stood with the moisture falling on his white headpiece, his great feet sinking deep in the mud of the street, and listened attentively. This was what his saintly grandfather would have done, always having an ear for any subject, no matter how humble.
It was strange that he began his reign with the expulsion of women from the court, because in his household circle he was surrounded by them. He had two sisters, the princesses Blanche and Marguerite. Blanche was as lovely as he was handsome; gay, sparkling, slender, with a small foot and a trim ankle. This was the picture of her supplied to Edward by his brother Edmund, who was sent to Paris to make a report. Edward still grieved for his lost Eleanor but he was considering a second marriage, if only for reasons of state. The feminine fashions of the day were the least revealing of almost any period, and Edmund must have secured some of his information from gossipy sources. Authentic or not, the report he sent back depicted the fair Blanche as a veritable fairy-tale princess, and Edward decided that he wanted her for his second wife. The other sister, Marguerite, was slender and somewhat delicate of appearance, with a sweetness of mien rather than beauty.
Philip’s own family consisted of three sons and one daughter, Isabella, who was a striking beauty and of whom much will be heard later. She resembled him and not her mother, Jeanne of Navarre, a plump woman with a high complexion, who made up in intelligence what she may have lacked in pulchritude.
In addition there were a great many nieces, most of them daughters of a brother, Charles of Valois, for all of whom husbands had to be found. Charles was a bothersome fellow, garrulous and lacking in judgment, who made a muddle of anything entrusted to him.
Such was Philip the Fair, and it may seem surprising that during the twenty-nine years of his reign many astonishing things came to pass. The feudal power of the French dukes, who had in their time ruled more of the country than the kings, was reduced, and new machinery for justice and legislation was evolved. The order of Templars was violently dissolved and all their immense wealth confiscated, the head of the order in France being summarily declared guilty of heinous offenses and burned at the stake. When Pope Boniface VIII, who was a strong advocate of the supreme power of the papacy, issued a bull, Clericis laicos (a papal bull was distinguishable by its lead seal), which forbade any king to levy taxes on the clergy without his consent, Philip’s opposition forced its withdrawal. As a result of the hostility which followed, Nogaret went to Italy to arrest the Pope and take him back to France for trial and deposition. Only the illness of the Holy Father, who died soon after his room was violently entered by Nogaret at Anagni, prevented the plan from being carried out. Pope Clement, a Gascon by birth, was crowned at Lyons, and one of his first official acts was to appoint nine French cardinals. It was Clement who moved the papal court to Avignon, and thus began the seventy years of exile during which the papacy existed, in what was called a Babylonian captivity, in France. Nogaret may have been one of the blackest villains in history, but he would not have dared plan such a course had he lacked the backing of his king. Behind everything that went on was this ambitious, ruthless, dangerous king.
Nevertheless, the Bishop of Pamiers, Bernard Saisset, who was antagonistic to Philip, had this to say of him: “Our king resembles the horn-owl, the finest of birds and yet the most useless. He is the finest man in the world; but he only knows how to look at people fixedly without speaking.” This opinion was widely accepted.
This was the French monarch with whom Edward found himself in almost continuous conflict.
2
One of the measures adopted by St. Louis to make sure that his people did not suffer from injustice under feudal law was the appointment of a corps of inspectors, known as inquisitor-reformers. These men were everywhere throughout the kingdom, attending the trials and listening to evidence, and reporting cases where any degree of unfairness could be charged. The greathearted king had, it is said, thousands of these inspectors at work to keep an eye on the dukes and counts and their bailiffs. In a world where police rule has so often been supreme, this practice in a faraway day is like a glimpse of Utopia.
Philip the Fair decided to have his own inquisitor-reformers, ostensibly for the same reason. He did not, however, content himself with the scope of his grandfather’s plan. He used them for political purposes as well.
The English were still governing Aquitaine and Gascony, the sole remnants of the once great Plantagenet holdings in France. The inquisitor-reformers swarmed in these provinces, and anyone in trouble with the English authorities could appeal the case to the King of France. It reached a stage where the courts of Gascony were empty, although crime was rife in the land. Every malefactor or innocent man, as the case might be, cried out for French protection when laid by the heels. The inquisitors would take the prisoner away, and that would be the last heard of the case. The French courts were swamped, quite apparently, and it took a long time to bring a man to trial. Perhaps they did not make any effort to try them.
Finally the English bailiffs went about their work with large gags made of wood. When they took a prisoner, they pried his jaws open and clamped in one of the gags, saying, “Now, appeal your case to the King of France!”
The explanation was, of course, that the owl-like king had made up his mind to a drastic course of action. He was determined to make it impossible for the English to govern as much as a foot of French soil.
There was trouble between the two countries on the high seas also. The rivalry began when an English ship was seized in the Channel and a cargo taken which amounted to two hundred pounds’ worth of wool. The owner demanded justice. When nothing came of the sharp protest lodged with those gimlet-eyed notaries of Philip the Fair, the merchant applied to Edward for letters of marque
so he could seize a French merchantman which was lying conveniently in an English port. This request was granted and two hundred pounds’ worth of wine was taken. A scream of protest rose from St. Malo, and in no time at all letters of marque were being issued right and left on both sides of the Channel. No merchant ships felt safe in venturing out from port. Cargoes were being seized with piratical thoroughness and in many cases the ships were destroyed. The two-hundred-pound limit was no longer regarded. There was no way of keeping an accounting of the gains and losses, and so it could not be told where the advantage lay.
Finally the shipowners of the two countries decided to fight it out among themselves. A fleet of two hundred English vessels, all privately owned but with towers built above their prows for offensive purposes, put out into the Channel. A fleet of two hundred and twenty-five French ships came out to meet them. A battle was fought off the coast of Brittany, with arrows blackening the sky and clouds of quicklime puffed out when the wind was right, and with maneuvering of ships to make boarding possible. The English won in the end. Most of the French ships disappeared. Some were sunk; some were captured and taken back to English ports. There was considerable loss of blood on both sides.
This episode came close to provoking war between the two countries. Furious protests reached Westminster from Paris, and Edward, in his role of Duke of Aquitaine, was summoned before Philip to answer for what had happened. Needless to state, the English king was too busy with other matters to obey.
But a more vital incitement to hostilities was the English alliance with Flanders. This alliance was the most natural arrangement in the world. The great Flemish cities—Ghent, Bruges, Courtrai, Lille, Ypres—had grown large and wealthy and powerful by their control of the cloth industry of Europe. The Flemish were master weavers, an industrious and practical people. To make the cloth they depended on England and Scotland for wool. This dependence worked both ways, for the English needed Flanders as a market for the loaded wool barges which came down the Thames to London. The alliance called for mutual support in case either country was attacked.
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