The Scots under Soules were faced by the unpleasant fact that only the death of Edward was likely to end the war. There was no sign of that in 1301. In the summer he campaigned in Scotland with his usual vigour, but with as little success as in the previous year. He brought with him his son, Prince Edward, to whom he entrusted the submission of the south-west. It was the king’s wish, it is said,22 that the prince should have ‘the chief honour of taming the pride of the Scots’. The prince was as unsuccessful as his father, but learned something of his intransigence. Edward spent the winter of 1301 to 1302 at Linlithgow, but if it was his capital, he was in no sense the master of Scotland. Soules knew better than to offer Edward the opportunity of a decisive battle, but his tactics of harassment wore the English down and Edward was forced to agree to a truce of nine months on 26 January 1302.
The truce had not rid Scotland of the English presence. Nor could it have had any effect on two significant events of 1302. Bruce defected to the English, the possibility of the restoration of Balliol no doubt a strong factor in his calculations.23 If that is so, it says much for the power of Scottish propaganda both in Rome and at the court of Philip of France, into whose custody Balliol had been released in the summer of the previous year. Bruce, a realistic man when compared to such as Wallace, must have been affected by the general Scottish mood. What damage his defection did to the Scottish cause it is impossible precisely to say. It must, certainly, have been a counter to the Scottish propaganda and it made Edward’s position in the south-west easier.
More serious for Scotland was the change in the fortunes of Philip of France, which occurred after his defeat at Courtrai in July. The arrogance of the French nobility was as great as that of the Scots, and as at Dunbar produced the same outcome if with greater slaughter. Thereafter Philip was less able to support the Scots, even if he had wished to. Unsentimental as he was, the French king, also distracted by his notorious embroilment with the papacy, was looking with a less sympathetic eye than before at the situation in Scotland. He had to assess what the Scots could offer; it is not surprising that he saw no profit in the alliance with them. Soules did not fail to recognise the danger and himself went to France in the autumn. With Lamberton, James the Stewart and Umfraville, among others, he argued in vain. If Rome in 1301 was a happy arena for the Scots, Paris in 1302 was not. The interests of France alone dictated Philip’s answer.
On 20 May 1303, a treaty of peace was signed between France and England at Paris and ratified on 10 July by Edward, who was then at Perth. Scotland, excluded from the treaty, was open to him. Hostilities had resumed with the end of the nine-month truce and Edward had wasted no time in ordering his lieutenant in Scotland, Sir John Segrave (later to bring the captured and doomed Wallace to London), into action. It is with these events that Wallace once more enters the picture. What he had been doing since his work on the Continent we do not know and it is, simply, idle to speculate. For one English chronicler of the period, however,24 there is no doubt as to his role. Wallace, ‘their commander and captain’, was at the head of the Scots. This is plainly incorrect. He could not re-emerge in authority. With Soules in France, affairs in Scotland had passed into the hands of John Comyn,25 the former Guardian who assumed the position for a second time. It is not credible that Comyn should have allowed Wallace the position with which Rishanger credits him. Enemies they may not have been, but Comyn, as at Falkirk, was no admirer of Wallace. That apart, as well as Wallace’s suspicion of Comyn, again the legacy of Falkirk, there is no record of any achievement by Wallace since his resignation of the Guardianship which could, in military terms, have entitled him to command. He had passed from the forefront if not from the minds of the people.
This is not to say that he did not throw himself into the struggle and that he did not, by example, animate the Scottish resistance. He would always do that. But again it is difficult to allot him a precise place in what was happening. It is impossible to state categorically that he was present at the success the Scots achieved at Roslin on February 24 1303.26 Sir John Segrave, on the instructions of his king, who was still not ready to assume command in person in Scotland, was leading a large force of cavalry on a reconnaissance to test the Scottish strength west of Edinburgh when he was set upon by Scottish troops. These, mounted, had come from Biggar in an action in which it is tempting to see the hand of Wallace. Learning of the English advance, they had scorned the darkness and surprised Segrave, whose force suffered badly in the attack.27 A number of English knights were killed, more were captured, and Segrave himself, at the head of the first brigade of horse, was badly wounded. He was rescued soon enough, but had almost met with disgrace. But Wallace was not the leader of this Scottish attack. If he took part, it was under the command of the Guardian, John Comyn, and Simon Fraser. Roslin was not a great victory – it made no difference to the course of events, but it proved that in the tactics of which Wallace was such a master lay the best chance of success for the Scots.
The arrival of Edward himself in Scotland, as so often, swung control of the war away from the Scots. He had summoned his host for May and by the middle of that month had crossed the Border. He was at Roxburgh on 16 May, Ascension Day. He again gave his son a command in the south-west. With the prince went Richard de Burgh, earl of Ulster, Robert Bruce’s father-in-law. Edward moved through the east of Scotland in what was a copy of his progress of 1296. Although it was less of a formality than on the previous occasion, he met little resistance. He had chosen to avoid Stirling with its castle, held by Sir William Oliphant, another of those lesser but still worthy Scots who defied Edward almost to the death. Edward was a master of detail, prepared to employ whatever methods were best suited to his purpose. His army was able to cross the Firth of Forth and thus bypass Stirling on three prefabricated bridges which he had had ferried up the east coast from King’s Lynn. In the following year he would take Stirling with the help of siege engines which the Scots were never able to match. Of course Edward had to find the money for these and the other massive expenses which this and similar campaigns entailed. Edward could never forget this, nor was he allowed to by the magnates and the clergy upon whom he had continued to make the kind of demands which had brought civil war close in the period before Falkirk. Edward could never entirely reconcile himself to the fact that the Scots were as determined as he, and he therefore found an excuse for his failures in Scotland in the shortage of ready money. He had made plain when he wrote in 1301 to the exchequer:
And you can be certain that if it had not been for a lack of money we would have finished the bridge which was started to cross the Scottish Sea and you must understand for sure that if we had been able to cross this season, we would have achieved such an exploit against our enemies that our business in these parts would have been brought to a good and honourable conclusion in a short time.28
The conquest of Scotland would have offered Edward a partial solution to his financial problems. His failure to achieve that conquest may in part explain his growing impatience and, ultimately, violence. But in 1303, while he could not forget the need for money, he was able to enjoy his progress through Scotland. Only at Brechin, where he arrived at the end of July, did he face serious opposition.29 Barron tells us that he found the castles of Urquhart and Cromarty defiant and their capture involved heavy fighting.30 Edward was at Kinloss in September and then returned to Dunfermline, intending to winter there.
It is impossible to say if Wallace was able to make any attempt to interfere with Edward’s progress through the eastern half of Scotland. There is little likelihood that he did, for he had retired into the Forest of Selkirk, so often his lair in the past. The dangers involved in an assault on the powerful and confident army which Edward commanded were too great. The territory over which Wallace would have had to travel to carry out an attack was held by the English. The shelter of the forest, with the opportunity it offered for regrouping and planning away from the threat of harassment by the enemy, could not be ignored. Wallac
e, therefore, now returned to that form of warfare by which he had first made his name – the raid.
The long-established belief, to which Trevelyan, among others, gave expression, that ‘Wallace was a guerrilla leader of genius’,31 has been challenged with great authority by Barrow.32 Wallace’s use of large armies, at Stirling and Falkirk, appears to support Barrow’s argument. The skill with which he trained and then handled these armies in battle shows that he was confident in the set-piece. But he was adept in the command of the smaller as well as of the larger unit. Stirling and Falkirk are evidence of his talent for improvisation rather than of that conservatism of which Barrow writes. It was a talent which he shared with his enemy, Edward I. However meticulous his preparations, Edward excelled in the change of direction, the shift of emphasis, the taking advantage of an opening. He did not defeat the Scots at Falkirk because of his attention to detail. He could not even dictate the course of the battle; his subordinates disregarded him, where they did not disobey him. He did, however, see the weakness of the Scots once the cavalry had fled, and he did not hesitate to bring into action the one branch of his army to which the Scots now had no answer. It may be that genius in war lies in that one quality which Wallace and Edward had in common. In 1303 Wallace was denied an army. He therefore fell back on the tactics of the guerrilla. Since Falkirk the Scots, wisely, had not used the call to arms which produced a large and, if badly handled, an unwieldy force. For Wallace there was no alternative to the raid.
We thus find him issuing from the forest to strike into Annandale and Liddesdale and as far south as Cumberland. He was not, however, in sole control of the considerable force of infantry and horse which was employed on this occasion.33 The raid of June 1303 is of interest for two particular reasons: the leadership and the intention behind the sortie. With Wallace were associated Comyn and Fraser. His relationship with them could not have been easy, for by this time they did not share Wallace’s own attitude to the continuation of the war as such. Balliol, especially after the Anglo-French treaty of 20 May, no longer had any realistic hope of restoration. He himself had settled for a life of retreat, far from the scene of action, and might not have welcomed a return to Scotland. Comyn and Fraser knew this; their submission to Edward was a matter of time. Comyn was still in arms in the autumn, a threat to the English, but a reduced one. Like Bruce, he was not a simple man but as inclined as his opponent to consider his own future. Whether he, again like Bruce, had ambitions to replace Balliol as king, albeit under Edward’s tutelage, is a mystery, but he saw himself as second to none in the Scottish hierarchy. Fraser died in 1306 and, if he is remembered at all, it is as a Scottish martyr. But he could never match Wallace’s resolution. As recently as 1300 he had fought on the English side at the siege and capture of Caerlaverock. His subsequent move into the Scottish camp was never forgotten or forgiven by Edward, whose terms to Fraser were severe. Were Comyn and Fraser at the time of the raid already considering submission? There is no means of answering that question. But the raid was the final throw of the Balliol party, so strongly represented by Wallace, Comyn and Fraser.
If Wallace and his colleagues hoped by their raid into Cumberland to force Edward to turn to its defence and thus relieve the pressure on Scotland, their secondary task must have been to punish Bruce for his defection by striking at his home territory of Annandale. Bruce’s value to the English cause in 1303 and 1304 was not merely one of propaganda. Even those who argue for him must concede that he was active in Edward’s service.34 Comyn therefore, for his part, did not need the excuse of a family feud to attack Annandale. As for Wallace, we can assume that he saw in the raid a legitimate method of exacting revenge upon one whom he would consider a traitor. It was not in his nature to equivocate when the question was one of loyalty to Scotland. He applied throughout his career one elementary test, and that Bruce had failed.
The raid, of course, did not succeed in its primary aim. In that respect, if not desperate, it was from the beginning hopeless. Edward was not to be diverted; in his present campaign lay the best chance of the final subjugation since 1296. In May, despite the blow of the Anglo-French treaty, the Scots, at least those in Paris, were optimistic enough to believe that Edward might again concede a truce.35 Such an attitude was ill-conceived and ill-founded. The facts argued against it. Edward swept through the east; Bruce was his man, Comyn was beginning to weaken. However volatile he might be, Edward was always capable of patience when, as in late 1303, he could see an end in sight. He waited, secure in the knowledge that those who had defied him would, at length, come to him. He was not entirely a cynical man, rather an experienced one. He could categories the Scots with a fair degree of accuracy and had done so from the start of the proceedings to find a king of Scotland. Wallace, unlike the others, defied Edward’s calculations.
He would have no part in the negotiations which led to the general Scottish submission in February 1304. He may have been strengthened in his resolve by outside influences. At various stages throughout the long war the Scots showed themselves capable of the most sublime sentiments, expressed in letters and documents. If the most celebrated example is to be found in the Declaration of Arbroath, there were others too often overlooked. One such was a letter written on 25 May 1303 on behalf of the Scottish delegation then in Paris with the thankless and fruitless task of dissuading Philip IV from an alliance with England.36 We do not know who was responsible for the drafting of the letter, whether it was Soules or Lamberton, or, no less likely in the circumstances, a clerk imbued with their spirit but better able to put their thoughts into words. The letter urges constancy and offers hope. To those for whom it was destined it said: ‘For God’s sake do not despair. If you have ever done brave deeds, do braver ones now. The swiftest runner who fails before the winning-post has run in vain.’ These words might have been written of Wallace rather than for him and those who perserved with him. The letter may never have come to his notice, but how appropriate it was. Tragically, he would fail well before the winning-post, but by that failure he did prove the letter wrong. In late 1303 and early 1304, as Comyn and the other leaders of Scottish resistance were seeking first a respite and then to come into Edward’s peace, he did not swerve from his duty and the task he had set himself. The claim by one English chronicler that Wallace sought terms at the beginning of 1304 does not ring true. The reason is not one based on emotion but on one element of the supposed approach to Edward. Wallace, we are to believe, requested of Edward, through intermediaries, that he be allowed to ‘submit to his honest peace without surrendering into his hands body or head’. This is a standard formula. It is when we consider the words which the chronicler puts into Wallace’s mouth that we are forced to dismiss the possibility that Wallace really meant to submit. Wallace, in this account, was either so naïve or so arrogant that he proposed that ‘the king grant him of his gift, not as a loan, an honourable allowance of woods and cattle and by his writing the seizure and investment for him and his heirs in purchased land’. Not surprisingly, Edward is reported to have been affronted and offered a reward for the death of Wallace. The Wallace we read of here, the Wallace who is also supposed to have made a similar plea to come into Edward’s peace the previous year’37 is neither the Wallace of history nor of tradition.
He was now increasingly alone and isolated. Edward had not wavered in his determination to take him. We cannot put a date to Edward’s decision that Wallace should not be pardoned. It may have been as early as Lanark. Stirling and the destructive raid into the north of England which followed the battle would add to the enormity of Wallace’s crimes. Yet it is possible, as the indictment of 1305 relates,38 that after Falkirk Edward was willing to accept Wallace into his peace. Furthermore, the English king, as has been seen,39 turned down Philip IV’s offer to surrender Wallace to him. Wallace’s reappearance on the Scottish side in 1303 after his embassy on the Continent, and in despite of what Edward took to be his generosity, may have shaped the king’s future attitude.
The king by his letters patent grants to his chief valet Edward de Keith, all goods and chattels of whatever kind he may gain from Monsire Guilliam le Galeys [Wallace] the King’s enemy, to his own profit and pleasure. Provided, however, that if the said Edward by chance under colour of this gift takes anything from other people at the King’s peace, he shall duly answer to those from whom such are taken.40
The king did not deceive himself, then, as to the quality of those he employed, but he himself was not swayed by niceties. To capture Wallace he would scorn no opportunity, send away no man who offered his services. The number of these increased with the submission of 1304.
Edward spent the months of November 1303 to February 1304 at Dunfermline with his second wife, the Frenchwoman Margaret. There he was accessible to the many Scots who now sought to make their peace with him. He was more gracious, in this hour of triumph, than he had been in another, in 1296. His son, less than successful in the south-west in the summer and autumn, had established himself at Perth by Christmas, and it was to him that Edward entrusted the negotiations for the Scottish surrender, for such it was. Comyn, still technically Guardian and in the absence of Soules the obvious choice for the distasteful task, acted for the Scots. Edward was disposed to be generous, even tolerant; the statesmanlike qualities so much admired in the past had not entirely deserted him. He could afford to indulge the Scots; he was their master and they knew it. But nevertheless Comyn conducted himself with an authority and a confidence surprising to us, given the circumstances. He was not Balliol, nor was he required to be. Neither he nor those he represented would be stripped of honour and dignity. Edward understood and accepted that there was no question of unconditional surrender. He knew the importance of this concession if he was to gain and keep the support of the Scots for his plan for their country.
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