The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]

"He thought that he should dwell lightly, Win him, and have him at his will."

But Bruce, in this fatal movement, when history hung on his hand and eye, uprose in his stirrups and clove Bohun's helmet, the axe breaking in that stroke. It was a desperate but a winning blow: Bruce's spears advanced, and the English van withdrew in half superstitious fear of the omen. His lords blamed Bruce, but

"The King has answer made them none, But turned upon the axe-shaft, wha Was with the stroke broken in twa."

"Initium malorum hoc" ("This was the beginning of evil"), says the English chronicler.

After this double success in the Quatre Bras of the Scottish Waterloo, Bruce, according to Barbour, offered to his men their choice of withdrawal or of standing it out. The great general might well be of doubtful mind—was to-morrow to bring a second and a more fatal Falkirk? The army of Scotland was protected, as Wallace's army at Falkirk had been, by difficult ground. But the English archers might again rain their blinding showers of shafts into the broad mark offered by the clumps of spears, and again the English knights might break through the shaken ranks. Bruce had but a few squadrons of horse—could they be trusted to scatter the bowmen of the English forests, and to escape a flank charge from the far heavier cavalry of Edward? On the whole, was not the old strategy best, the strategy of retreat? So Bruce may have pondered. He had brought his men to the ring, and they voted for dancing. Meanwhile the English rested on a marshy plain "outre-Bannockburn" in sore discomfiture, says Gray. He must mean south of Bannockburn, taking the point of view of his father, at that hour captive in Bruce's camp. He tells us that the Scots meant to retire "into the Lennox, a right strong country"—this confirms, in a way, Barbour's tale of Bruce suggesting retreat—when Sir Alexander Seton, deserting Edward's camp, advised Bruce of the English lack of spirit, and bade him face the foe next day. To retire, indeed, was Bruce's, as it had been Wallace's, natural policy. The English would soon be distressed for want of supplies; on the other hand, they had clearly made no arrangements for an orderly retreat if they lost the day; with Bruce this was a motive for fighting them. The advice of Seton prevailed; the Scots would stand their ground.

The sun of Midsummer Day rose on the rite of the mass done in front of the Scottish lines. Men breakfasted, and Bruce knighted Douglas, the Steward, and other of his nobles. The host then moved out of the wood, and the standards rose above the spears of the soldiers. Edward Bruce held the right wing; Randolph the centre; the left, under Douglas and the Steward, rested of St. Ninian's. Bruce, as he had arranged, was in reserve with Carrick and the Isles. "Will these men fight?" asked Edward, and Sir Ingram assured him that such was their intent. He advised that the English should make a feigned retreat, when the Scots would certainly break their ranks—

"Then prick we on them hardily."

Edward rejected his old ruse, which probably would not have beguiled the Scottish leader. The Scots then knelt for a moment of prayer, as the Abbot of Inchafray bore the crucifix along the line; but they did not kneel to Edward. His van, under Gloucester, fell on Edward Bruce's division, where there was hand-to-hand fighting, broken lances, dying chargers, the rear ranks of Gloucester pressing vainly on the front ranks, unable to deploy for the straitness of the ground.

Meanwhile, Randolph's men moved forward slowly with extended spears, "as they were plunged in the sea" of charging knights. Douglas and the Steward were also engaged, and the "hideous shower" of arrows was ever raining from the bows of England. This must have been the crisis of the fight, according to Barbour, and Bruce bade Keith with his five hundred horse charge the English archers on the flank. The bowmen do not seem to have been defended by pikes; they fell beneath the lances of the mareschal, as the archers of Ettrick had fallen at Falkirk. The Scottish archers now took heart, and loosed into the crowded and reeling ranks of England, while the flying bowmen of the south clashed against and confused the English charge. Then Scottish archers took to their steel sparths—who ever loved to come to hand strokes—and hewed into the mass of the English, so that the field, whither Bruce brought up his reserves to support Edward Bruce on the right, was a mass of wild, confused fighting. In this mellay the great body of the English army could deal no stroke, swaying helplessly as southern knights or northern spears won some feet of ground. So, in the space between Halbert's bog and the burn, the mellay rang and wavered, the long spears of the Scottish ranks unbroken and pushing forward, the ground before them so covered with fallen men and horses that the English advance was clogged and crushed between the resistance in front and the pressure behind.