The English cavalry were still thwarted by the continued resistance of the schiltroms. Their weapons wrought much havoc on the English mounts.49 They could offer no such resistance to Edward’s archers. The English king, now in control of his forces, called back the cavalry. The Scots, their ranks already thinned by the brutal charges of the opposing horse, cannot have been ignorant of what was to come. It is easy to imagine their despair, as they stood, impotent, to await the arrows. It is possible, although by no means certain, that the recalcitrant and detested Welsh now joined the English in the missile attack.50 That, their fate clearly sealed, the Scots did not break, argues well for the discipline which Wallace had instilled in them. They died in large numbers. One English chronicle celebrated the slaughter: ‘They fell like blossoms in an orchard when the fruit has ripened.’51 He goes on the relate that their ‘bodies covered the ground as thickly as snow in winter’. These images, while hardly original, convey the horror of the battle as it was now.
When the archers and the slingers had done their work, Edward sent the knights against the broken, demoralised ranks of the schiltroms. Some of the infantry escaped the arrows and lances only to perish by drowning in the bog below their position. The numbers of Scots who had died on this long day which culminated in a massacre cannot be given with any hope of accuracy. The majority were of the common people who had been Wallace’s strength from the beginning. One would not expect their names to be recorded.52 If unknown, their courage mocked the conduct of their betters. Not all of the latter had betrayed them. The Stewart’s brother, John, met the same fate as his men. Fordun, who found an explanation of the Scottish defeat in the flight of the nobles, especially John Comyn the younger, tells us that Macduff of Fife was killed at Falkirk53 Guisborough relates that although the majority of the Scottish knights fled, a handful fought with the schiltroms.
Of the Scottish lords it is Robert Bruce, earl of Carrick and future king, whose role in respect of Falkirk is the most puzzling. He did not escape the censure of Scottish chroniclers. If their view that he led an English troop against the Scottish rear is dismissed as ‘pure fiction’ by one modern writer,54 Bruce’s most respected biographer twice admits to doubts about Bruce’s part, even his presence at Falkirk.55 Barron, who, in an impassioned chapter defends Bruce against the charge that he was implicated in the death of Wallace,56 does not place Bruce at the battle.57 Like another recent biographer of Bruce,58 he has him working for the Scottish cause in the south-west at the time of Falkirk. The truth is that we do not know if Bruce was at Falkirk, but we can venture that it is unlikely. He was too important a figure not to be mentioned as present if he was there. His activity elsewhere is clear. As with John Comyn, his adversary, his motives elude us. His role in the war since its start suggests equivocation. At the time of Falkirk his support of the Scottish cause did not, it would seem, include sub-ordination to Wallace. Bruce, as always, and again like Comyn, had his own plans and his own ambitions. Treachery, like patriotism, means different things to different men.
In an English chronicle,59 Wallace is pictured uttering a memorable phrase to his army. Rendered into modern English from the original Scots, it reads: ‘I have brought you into the ring: now see if you can dance.’ The phrase may not, as has been suggested, be Wallace’s own.60 It hints at a despair which is not found elsewhere in his, admittedly few, recorded statements. It may be more realistic to interpret the sentiment as a recognition that he had done his best and that events must take their course. This would be more appropriate if, as has been argued, it was not his intention to fight at Falkirk. Once battle was joined, however, his ability to inspire as well as to prepare his army was demonstrated. His mistake was to rely on the support of the cavalry over whom he had not assumed control. Why he did not do so can best be explained by his unwillingness to alienate the nobles. He had not, of course, had experience of handling a force of heavy horse, but we know of no attempt by him to find a commander of horse sympathetic to his ends. Had he done so, the cavalry would, it may be argued, have been used as it was at Bannockburn. What the outcome of Falkirk would then have been must remain an intriguing mystery. He left the cavalry in the control of the lords, perhaps as part of that bargain by which they continued to tolerate, if not support, his tactics of withdrawal. Without that control and the opportunity for glory which, before the battle, it offered, they would have been less willing to continue with his army. Their defection at Falkirk was crucial, but it would be unreasonable to blame Wallace for failing to anticipate and then to prevent it. With that defection the English archers were free. Their work began the slaughter of Falkirk, a battle which brought to an end a campaign by Wallace which was a model for its time and a study for another celebrated Scot.
NOTES
1 Prestwich: Edward I, 478; Watson: Under the Hammer, 52.
2 Prestwich: Edward I, 478–79.
3 Watson: Under the Hammer, 49.
4 Ibid., 52.
5 Chap. 4 above.
6 Guisborough, 307–08.
7 Powicke, op. cit., 687; Prestwich: Edward I, 433–34 and 478; Salzman: Edward I, 141.
8 Prestwich: Edward I, chap. 16 for a detailed account of events.
9 Palgrave: Parl. Writs, i, 312–16.
10 Prestwich: Edward I, 111–12.
11 Guisborough, 324; Cal. Docs Scot., ii, 1177.
12 Barrow: Robert Bruce, 140.
13 Wallace himself may not have found the saint’s intervention unwelcome. His army must by this time have been in some disarray. The problems of carrying back to Scotland the booty which had been taken, the lack of control over the men of Galloway, and the knowledge that he was needed back in Scotland would have been troubling him.
14 The mood is reflected most clearly in Wright: Political Songs, passim.
15 Wright: Political Songs, 160–80, passim.
16 On the effects of the war on English society at this time and later, see Prestwich: The Three Edwards, 72–77; C. McNamee: The Wars of the Bruces, Scotland, England and Ireland 1306–1328, 1997 passim; Summerson, op. cit., vol. I chap. 4; J Scammell: ‘Robert I and the North of England’, EHR, 1 xxiii, 385–403.
17 Barrow: Robert Bruce, 98.
18 Prestwich: Edward I, 479.
19 Prestwich: Armies and Warfare, 117.
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid.
23 On the impact of troops on such a town as Carlisle, see Summerson, op. cit., vol. I, chap. 4, p. 197ff.
24 Prestwich: Armies and Warfare, 133.
25 Watson: Under the Hammer, 62, has 1500. Prestwich: Edward I, 479, suggests that ‘the cavalry forces probably numbered some 3000’.
26 Guisborough, 324–25.
27 Ibid.
28 Barbour: Bruce, 330.
29 `Lothian in the First War of Independence’, SHR, Oct. 1976, 151–71.
30 The contrast here between Barrow’s figure, Robert Bruce, 139, and that quoted above from Prestwich: Armies and Warfare, 133, is, of course, marked. But desertion was a potent factor, and as Prestwich himself says, op. cit., 128, ‘under Edward I, armies in Scotland suffered a constant haemorrhage; indeed, desertions began the moment levies left their country muster point’. On the matter of desertion, see also Watson: Under the Hammer, 131 and 179, for further evidence of Edward’s problems at a later date.
31 Guisborough, 325.
32 Guisborough, 324–25.
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid.
35 Guisborough, 326.
36 Ibid.
37 Robert Bruce, 143n.
38 In Wright: Political Songs, 176, we read in a ‘Song on the Scottish War’, ‘the king subdues in the field near a hundred thousand’.
39 See chap. 4 above.
40 Guisborough, 327.
41 Ibid.
42 Salzman, 143, says: ‘Wallace had not selected his position with any great skill’. Kightly, 178, writes that his position was ‘nothing like so strong as the one he had occupied at Stirling’. Ba
rron, 78, states that the Scots prepared to meet the English ‘in a situation which had few natural advantages and, from which, in the event of misfortune, there was no easy means of escape!
43 Guisborough, 327.
44 Ibid.
45 Fordun, i, 330. Barrow: Robert Bruce, 144, acquits them of the charge of treachery and suggests that they were overcome by panic. He equates their conduct at Falkirk with their behaviour at Dunbar and Irvine. It might be thought that a succession of such failure was in itself a form of treachery, the more so when in the case of Falkirk their role was crucial; they surely betrayed Wallace himself, if not the army, by their flight. Young, op. cit., 168ff, deals with the relationship of Wallace and Comyns both before and after Falkirk.
46 Neither McNair Scott nor Barrow can place Bruce at Falkirk on the Scottish side. Both evade the issue by concentrating on his activity after the battle. McNair Scott, 52; Barrow: Robert Bruce, 145.
47 Bower calls him ‘most valiant’. He and his men were among those who were ‘utterly destroyed’.
48 Prestwich: Armies and Warfare, 133. See also Bradbury: The Medieval Archer, 1985, chap. 5.
49 Cal. Docs Scot., ii, 1007, 1011. See also below, chap. 7.
50 Prestwich: Armies and Warfare, 127 states that, for whatever reason, ‘the Welsh showed little reluctance to be recruited into English armies’. But their role in the Falkirk campaign underlines how unreliable they could be and it is difficult to gauge their contribution to the English victory.
51 Rishanger.
52 Barrow: ‘Lothian in the First War of Independence’ should be consulted for some names.
53 Fordun, i, 330.
54 Kightly, 180. He does, however, add: ‘if present at all, he was fighting on the Scots side.’
55 Barrow: Robert Bruce, 145. See also note 46 above.
56 Barron: op. cit., chap. 15.
57 Barron: op. cit., 77, 78, 181.
58 McNair Scott, 50.
59 Rishanger, 187.
60 Salzman, 143.
C: Carlisle L: Lochmaben N: Newcastle R: Roxburgh E: Edinburgh L: Linlithgow F: Falkirk S: Stirling P: Perth St A: St Andrews LA: Lauder D: Dalhousie T: Temple Liston
7
The Time of Sacrifice, 1298–1303
‘Our beloved William le Walois of Scotland, knight’
Falkirk was the last opportunity which the Scots were to have to break Edward I’s grip on their country. Over the next six years, until the submission of Comyn and his colleagues,1 he tightened that grip inexorably. The campaigns which he fought between Falkirk and that submission were not uniformly successful; a mixture of inefficiency on the part of the English and dogged resistance by the Scots, both in the field and on the diplomatic front, combined to frustrate his design. What he had begun he found difficult to finish. But Edward was not to be diverted, and his unremitting pressure on the Scots, his permanent superiority in men and matériel, and in time the perhaps inevitable war-weariness of those who opposed him brought the conclusion he desired.
For the Scots all of this might have been averted had the outcome of Falkirk been different. It might well have been different. We are accustomed to thinking of Falkirk as a battle which revealed Wallace’s inadequacies as a military leader. But it was also a battle which revealed Edward’s inadequacies. He was saved by good fortune and a battle-plan which, though largely improvised, worked. Wallace’s plan was the better and, as argued above, faltered and failed because of the defection of the cavalry and the feeble contribution of the archers. He could have foreseen neither of these eventualities. Even without these two basic elements in his plan, however, he was able to do serious damage to the English. We have noted the gloating English reports on the number of Scots who fell at Falkirk2 but it is too easily forgotten that English losses were themselves far from incon-siderable. The cavalry was not the only factor in Edward’s army, if the most highly regarded. Thus, the Master of the English Templars merits a mention as the only English casualty of note, in one account.3 A second source, adds ‘five or six esquires’.4 This concentration on the fate of the élite arm in the battle tends to disguise the very heavy losses incurred by the English foot at Falkirk. Opinions vary as to the precise numbers of infantry slain by the Scots, but two authorities on the period, drawing on payroll records, indicate a figure of perhaps two to three thousand.5 For what was not on the English side predominantly an infantry engagement, these were severe losses. The progress of the battle, furthermore, suggests that these losses occurred at that point when, with the Scots ranks decimated by the English cavalry and archers, the schiltroms were at their weakest, immediately prior to their final collapse. If that is so, it is testimony to the innate courage of the Scottish infantry, aided by the discipline brought about by Wallace himself. Like their Scottish counterparts the schiltroms, then, the English foot died unknown, their fate of little consequence to the chronicles. One hundred and ten horses were killed at Falkirk. This figure refers only to cavalry in Edward’s pay. It has been shown that thirteen hundred men fitted into this category.6 Unpaid cavalry might well have given Edward a total cavalry face of some four thousand.7 We may therefore assume higher losses in horses.
Edward had won the battle but Wallace had inflicted serious damage on the English army and the king was forced before long to return to England. His activities between Falkirk and his arrival in Carlisle on 8 September point to a man in no position to benefit from victory. He sent the infantry ahead of him to Carlisle and with his cavalry looked for Scots where he might find them. Perth and St Andrews were burnt by Edward, but at Ayr he found that Robert Bruce, in his patriotic guise, had forestalled him by burning the town himself. As before Falkirk, so again were supplies problematical for Edward. He had no option but to retreat southwards. Something of Edward’s mood may be ascertained from his destruction of Lochmaben as he moved through Annandale–Bruce territory. He had penalised a supporter, the elder Bruce who had never faltered even when insulted by Edward; it was the son, not the father, who was in rebellion.
At Carlisle further problems, redolent of his difficulties with the earls, awaited Edward. Of the earls, Roger Bigod of Norfolk, the marshal, and Humphrey Bohun of Hereford, the constable, were, as far as Edward was concerned, particularly obstreperous. Their adherence in the Falkirk campaign had been achieved only when Edward agreed to implement the arrangements made with Prince Edward in the king’s absence the previous year.8 It had required an oath sworn on the king’s behalf by Warenne, Bek and others that he would carry out the arrangements if successful against Wallace. At Carlisle he prevaricated, to the displeasure of Norfolk and Hereford, then aggravated an already tense situation by a grant of Arran to Hugh Bisset of Antrim, without, as agreed, consulting the earls. Bisset’s original intention had been to join the Scots, but Falkirk convinced him to change his allegiance, an action hardly likely to prove his loyalty in the eyes of Norfolk and Bohun. Pleading that their men were exhausted, the two left Carlisle.
Edward had come close to defeat at Falkirk and the outcome of the battle might well have swung Wallace’s way had his army been larger, swollen by forces supplied by the likes of Bruce and the Stewart. If that had been the case, the Scottish cavalry would have been a more potent factor in the battle. It was not to be. We do not know what reasons prevented the magnates of Scotland from supporting Wallace at this juncture. We can only guess: jealousy, contempt, the politics at which they were more adapt than he, the pragmatism bred in them for generations, divided loyalties. It was left to Wallace to fight a battle which offered Scots their best chance to defeat Edward in the field.
Modern commentators are agreed that Wallace’s resignation of the Guardianship was the direct and inevitable consequence of the defeat at Falkirk.9 His reputation and therefore his hold on the office, it is argued, depended upon continued military success. Denied that, and lacking as he did the advantage of hereditary position or authority on which to fall back, he would thus have had no alternative to resignation. Whether
he gave up his office willingly or otherwise is not known, but it is generally accepted that the opposition of the magnates to him and to what he represented contributed in some measure to his withdrawal from the leadership of the resistance to Edward. There is, undoubtedly, a certain appealing neatness about the sequence of defeat and resignation. It allows for the supremacy of Wallace to be seen as an episode, glorious in itself, but still an episode.
William Wallace Page 15