by G. A. Henty
The following summer he again advanced with the army, this time supported by a fleet of seventy ships. The Scots resorted to their usual strategy, and, when winter came, the invaders had penetrated no further than the Forth. Edward remained at Linlithgow for a time, and then returned to England. Sir Simon Fraser, who had been one of the leaders of the English army at Carlaverock, now imitated Comyn’s example, and, deserting the English cause, joined his countrymen.
The greater part of the English army recrossed the Border, and the Scots captured many of the garrisons left in the towns. Sir John Seagrave next invaded Scotland with from 20,000 to 30,000 men, mostly cavalry. They reached the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, when Comyn and Fraser advanced against them with 8000 men, chiefly infantry. The English army were advancing in three divisions, in order better to obtain provisions and forage. After a rapid night march the Scotch came upon one of them, commanded by Seagrave in person; and conceiving himself sufficiently strong to defeat the Scots unaided by any of the other divisions, Sir John Seagrave immediately gave battle.
As at Falkirk, the English cavalry were unable to break through the Scottish pikes. Great numbers were killed or taken prisoners, Seagrave himself being severely wounded and captured, with twenty distinguished knights, thirty esquires, and many soldiers. Scarcely was the battle over when the second English division, even stronger than the first, arrived on the field. Encumbered by their prisoners, the Scots were at a disadvantage; and fearing to be attacked by these in the rear while engaged in front, they slaughtered the greater portion of the prisoners, and arming the camp followers, prepared to resist the English onslaught. This failed as the first had done; the cavalry were defeated with great loss by the spearmen, and many prisoners taken—among them Sir Ralph Manton.
The third English division now appeared; and the Scots, worn out by their long march and the two severe conflicts they had endured, were about to fly from the field when their leaders exhorted them to one more effort. The second batch of prisoners were slaughtered, and the pikemen again formed line to resist the English charge. Again were the cavalry defeated, Sir Robert Neville, their leader, slain, with many others, and the whole dispersed and scattered. Sir Robert Manton, who was the king’s treasurer, had had a quarrel with Fraser, when the latter was in Edward’s service, regarding his pay; and Fraser is said by some historians to have now revenged himself by slaying his prisoner. Other accounts, however, represent Manton as having escaped.
The slaughter of the prisoners appears, although cruel, to have been unavoidable; as the Scots, having before them a well appointed force fully equal to their own in number, could not have risked engaging, with so large a body of prisoners in their rear. None of the knights or other leaders were slain, these being subsequently exchanged or ransomed, as we afterwards find them fighting in the English ranks.
Seeing by this defeat that a vast effort was necessary to conquer Scotland, King Edward advanced in the spring of 1303 with an army of such numbers that the historians of the time content themselves with saying that “it was great beyond measure.” It consisted of English, Welsh, Irish, Gascons, and Savoyards. One division, under the Prince of Wales, advanced by the west coast; that of the king, by the east; and the two united at the Forth. Without meeting any serious resistance the great host marched north through Perth and Dundee to Brechin, where the castle, under the charge of Sir Thomas Maille, resisted for twenty days; and it was only after the death of the governor that it surrendered.
The English then marched north through Aberdeen, Banff, and Moray into Caithness, carrying utter destruction everywhere; towns and hamlets, villages and farmhouses were alike destroyed; crops were burned, forests and orchards cut down. Thus was the whole of Scotland wasted; and even the rich abbeys of Abberbredok and Dunfermline, the richest and most famous in Scotland, were destroyed, and the whole levelled to the ground. The very fields were as far as possible injured—the intention of Edward being, as Fordun says, to blot out the people, and to reduce the land to a condition of irrecoverable devastation, and thus to stamp out for ever any further resistance in Scotland.
During the three years which had elapsed since the departure of Wallace, Archie had for the most part remained quietly in his castle, occupying himself with the comfort and wellbeing of his vassals. He had, each time the English entered Scotland, taken the field with a portion of his retainers, in obedience to the summons of Comyn. The latter was little disposed to hold valid the grants made by Wallace, especially in the case of Archie Forbes, the Kerrs being connections of his house; but the feeling of the people in general was too strongly in favour of the companion of Wallace for him to venture to set it aside, especially as the castle could not be captured without a long continued siege. Archie and many of the nobles hostile to the claims of Comyn obeyed his orders, he being the sole possible leader, at present, of Scotland. Edward, however, had left them no alternative, since he had, in order to induce the English nobles to follow him, formally divided among them the lands of the whole of the Scotch nobles, save those actually fighting in his ranks.
Archie was now nearly three-and-twenty, and his frame had fully borne out the promise of his youth. He was over the average height, but appeared shorter from the extreme breadth of his shoulders; his arms were long and sinewy, and his personal strength immense.
From the time of his first taking possession of Aberfilly he had kept a party of men steadily engaged in excavating a passage from the castle towards a wood a mile distant. The ground was soft and offered but few obstacles, but the tunnel throughout its whole length had to be supported by massive timbers. Wood, however, was abundant, and the passage had by this time been completed. Whenever, from the length of the tunnel, the workmen began to suffer from want of air, ventilation was obtained by running a small shaft up to the surface; in this was placed a square wooden tube of six inches in diameter, round which the earth was again filled in—a few rapidly growing plants and bushes being planted round the orifice to prevent its being noticed by any passerby.
CHAPTER XI
Robert The Bruce
At the last great invasion by Edward, Archie did not take the field, seeing that Comyn, in despair of opposing so vast a host, did not call out the levies. Upon the approach of the English army under the Prince of Wales he called the whole of his tenants into the castle. Great stores of provisions had already been collected. The women and children were sent away up into the hills, where provisions had also been garnered, and the old men and boys accompanied them. As the Prince of Wales passed north, bands from his army spreading over the country destroyed every house in the district. Archie was summoned to surrender, but refused to do so; and the prince, being on his way to join his father on the Forth, after himself surveying the hold, and judging it far too strong to be carried without a prolonged siege, marched forward, promising on his return to destroy it. Soon afterwards Archie received a message that Wallace had returned. He at once took with him fifty men, and leaving the castle in charge of Sandy Graham, with the rest of his vassals, two hundred and fifty in number, he rejoined his former leader. Many others gathered round Wallace’s standard; and throughout Edward’s march to the north and his return to the Forth Wallace hung upon his flanks, cutting off and slaying great numbers of the marauders, and striking blows at detached bands wherever these were in numbers not too formidable to be coped with.
Stirling was now the only great castle which remained in the hands of the Scotch, and King Edward prepared to lay siege to this. Save for the band of Wallace there was no longer any open resistance in the field. A few holds like those of Archie Forbes still remained in the hands of their owners, their insignificance, or the time which would be wasted in subduing them, having protected them from siege. None of the nobles now remained in arms.
Bruce had for a short time taken the field; but had, as usual, hastened to make his peace with Edward. Comyn and all his adherents surrendered upon promise of their lives and freedom, and that they should retain their
estates, subject to a pecuniary fine. All the nobles of Scotland were included in this capitulation, save a few who were condemned to suffer temporary banishment. Sir William Wallace alone was by name specially exempted from the surrender.
Stirling Castle was invested on the 20th of April, 1304, and for seventy days held out against all the efforts of Edward’s army. Warlike engines of all kinds had been brought from England for the siege. The religious houses of St. Andrews, Brechin, and other churches were stripped of lead for the engines. The sheriffs of London, Lincoln, York, and the governor of the Tower were ordered to collect and forward all the mangonels, quarrels, and bows and arrows they could gather; and for seventy days missiles of all kinds, immense stones, leaden balls, and javelins were rained upon the castle; and Greek fire—a new and terrible mode of destruction—was also used in the siege. But it was only when their provisions and other resources were exhausted that the garrison capitulated; and it was found that the survivors of the garrison which had defended Stirling Castle for upwards of three months against the whole force of England numbered, including its governor, Sir William Oliphant, and twenty-four knights and gentlemen, but a hundred and twenty soldiers, two monks, and thirteen females.
During the siege Wallace had kept the field, but Archie had, at his request, returned to his castle, which being but a day’s march from Stirling, might at any moment be besieged. Several times, indeed, parties appeared before it, but Edward’s hands were too full, and he could spare none of the necessary engines to undertake such a siege; and when Stirling at length fell he and his army were in too great haste to return to England to undertake another prolonged siege, especially as Aberfilly, standing in a retired position, and commanding none of the principal roads, was a hold of no political importance.
A short time afterwards, to Archie’s immense grief, Sir William Wallace was betrayed into the hands of the English. Several Scotchmen took part in this base act, the principal being Sir John Menteith. Late historians, in their ardour to whitewash those who have for ages been held up to infamy, have endeavoured to show that Sir John Menteith was not concerned in the matter; but the evidence is overwhelming the other way. Scotch opinion at the time, and for generations afterwards, universally imputed the crime to him. Fordun, who wrote in the reign of Robert Bruce, Bowyer, and Langtoft, all Scotch historians, say that it was he who betrayed Wallace, and their account is confirmed by contemporary English writings. The Chronicle of Lanercost, the Arundel MSS., written about the year 1320, and the Scala Chronica, all distinctly say that Wallace was seized by Sir John Menteith; and finally, Sir Francis Palgrave has discovered in the memoranda of the business of the privy council that forty marks were bestowed upon the young man who spied out Wallace, sixty marks were divided among some others who assisted in his capture, and that to Sir John Menteith was given land of the annual value of one hundred pounds—a very large amount in those days.
The manner in which Wallace was seized is uncertain; but he was at once handed by Sir John Menteith to Sir John Seagrave, and carried by him to London. He was taken on horseback to Westminster, the mayor, sheriffs, and aldermen, with a great number of horse and foot, accompanying him. There the mockery of a trial was held, and he was in one day tried, condemned, and executed. He defended himself nobly, urging truly that, as a native born Scotsman, he had never sworn fealty or allegiance to England, and that he was perfectly justified in fighting for the freedom of his country.
Every cruelty attended his execution. He was drawn through the streets at the tails of horses; he was hung for some time by a halter, but was taken down while yet alive; he was mutilated and disembowelled, his head then cut off, his body divided in four, his head impaled over London Bridge, and his quarters distributed to four principal towns in Scotland. Such barbarities were common at executions in the days of the Norman kings, who have been described by modern writers as chivalrous monarchs.
A nobler character than Wallace is not to be found in history. Alone, a poor and landless knight, by his personal valour and energy he aroused the spirit of his countrymen, and in spite of the opposition of the whole of the nobles of his country banded the people in resistance against England, and for a time wrested all Scotland from the hands of Edward. His bitter enemies the English were unable to adduce any proofs that the epithets of ferocious and bloodthirsty, with which they were so fond of endowing him, had even a shadow of foundation, and we may rather believe the Scotch accounts that his gentleness and nobility of soul were equal to his valour. Of his moderation and wisdom when acting as governor of Scotland there can be no doubt, while the brilliant strategy which first won the battle of Stirling, and would have gained that of Falkirk had not the treachery and cowardice of the cavalry ruined his plans, show that under other circumstances he would have taken rank as one of the greatest commanders of his own or any age.
He first taught his countrymen, and indeed Europe in general, that steady infantry can repel the assaults even of mailclad cavalry. The lesson was followed at Bannockburn by Bruce, who won under precisely the same circumstances as those under which Wallace had been defeated, simply because at the critical moment he had 500 horse at hand to charge the disordered mass of the English, while at Falkirk Wallace’s horse, who should have struck the blow, were galloping far away from the battlefield. Nor upon his English conquerors was the lesson lost, for at Cressy, when attacked by vastly superior numbers, Edward III dismounted his army, and ordered them to fight on foot, and the result gave a death blow to that mailed chivalry which had come to be regarded as the only force worth reckoning in a battle. The conduct of Edward to Wallace, and later to many other distinguished Scotchmen who fell into his hands, is a foul blot upon the memory of one of the greatest of the kings of England.
Edward might now well have believed that Scotland was crushed for ever. In ten years no less than twelve great armies had marched across the Border, and twice the whole country had been ravaged from sea to sea, the last time so effectually, that Edward had good ground for his belief that the land would never again raise its head from beneath his foot.
He now proceeded, as William of Normandy after Hastings had done, to settle his conquest, and appointed thirty-one commissioners, of whom twenty-one were English and ten so called Scotch, among them Sir John Menteith, to carry out his ordinances. All the places of strength were occupied by English garrisons. The high officers and a large proportion of the justiciaries and sheriffs were English, and Edward ruled Scotland from Westminster as he did England.
Among the commissioners was Robert Bruce, now through the death of his father, Lord of Annandale and Carrick; and Edward addressed a proclamation to him, headed, “To our faithful and loyal Robert de Bruce, Earl of Carrick, and all others who are in his company, greeting;” and went on to say that he possessed the king’s fullest confidence. But though Scotland lay prostrate, the spirit of resistance yet lingered in the hearts of the commonalty. Although conquered now the memory of their past success still inspired them, but until some leader presented himself none could stir. It was in August that Wallace had been executed. Archie had received several summonses from the English governors of Stirling and Lanark to come in and do homage to Edward, but he had resolutely declined, and the task of capturing his castle was too heavy a one to be undertaken by any single garrison; still he saw that the time must come, sooner or later, when he would have to choose between surrender and death. When matters settled down it was certain that a great effort would be made to root out the one recalcitrant south of the Forth. For some time he remained gloomy and thoughtful, a mood most unusual to him, and his mother, who was watching him anxiously, was scarcely surprised when one day he said to her:
“Mother, I must leave you for a time. Matters can no longer continue as they are. Surrender to the English I will not, and there remains for me but to defend this castle to the last, and then to escape to France; or to cross thither at once, and enter the service of the French king, as did Wallace. Of these courses I would
fain take the latter, seeing that the former would bring ruin and death upon our vassals, who have ever done faithful service when called upon, and whom I would not see suffer for my sake. In that case I should propose that you should return and live quietly with Sir Robert Gordon until times change.”
Dame Forbes agreed with her son, for she had long felt that further resistance would only bring ruin upon him.
“There is yet one other course, mother, and that I am about to take; it is well nigh a desperate one, and my hopes of success are small, yet would I attempt it before I leave Scotland and give Aberfilly back again to the Kerrs. Ask me not what it is, for it were best that if it fail you should not know of it. There is no danger in the enterprise, but for a month I shall be absent. On my return you shall hear my final resolve.”
Having attired himself as a lowland farmer, Archie proceeded to Edinburgh, and there took ship for London; here he took lodgings at an inn, which he had been told in Edinburgh was much frequented by Scotchmen who had to go to London on business. His first care was to purchase the garments of an English gentleman of moderate means, so that he could pass through the streets without attracting attention.
He was greatly impressed with the bustle and wealth of London.
“It is wonderful,” he said to himself, “that we Scots, who were after all but an army of peasants, could for nigh ten years have supported a war against such a country as this, and it seems madness to adventure farther in that way. If my present errand fails I will assuredly hold firm to my resolve and seek a refuge in France.”
Archie ascertained that Robert the Bruce lodged at Westminster, and that great gaieties were taking place at the court for joy at the final termination of hostilities with Scotland, now secured by the execution of Wallace. He despatched a letter to the earl by a messenger from the inn, saying that one who had formerly known him in Scotland desired earnestly to speak to him on matters of great import, and begging him to grant a private interview with him at his lodging at as early an hour as might be convenient to him. The man returned with a verbal reply, that the earl would see the writer at his lodging at nine o’clock on the following morning.