Scotland: The Story of a Nation. Magnus Magnusson
the Battle of Falkirk in 1298 (see below) – but that can only be a matter of speculation.
Meanwhile Wallace built on his victory at Stirling by leading a large and unruly army into Northumbria and Cumbria on an orgy of vengeful pillage which included Lanercost Priory, near Carlisle – which would not have endeared him to the monks there who were writing up the annals of the time. Only fierce snowstorms brought an end to the harrying of the northern shires, and by Christmas the Scots had withdrawn.
Wallace’s position in Scotland seems to have been made official when he was knighted by an unnamed earl, according to the Scotichronicon, and gained (or took) the title of sole Guardian; in a Latin charter dated 29 March 1298 he styled himself ‘Wilhelmes Wallays, Knight, Guardian of the Kingdom of Scotland and Leader of its armies, in the name of the illustrious Prince, Lord John [Balliol], by the Grace of God King of Scotland, by consent of the Community of that Kingdom’ and ‘by consent and assent of the nobles of the said Kingdom’.
It was too much to hope, however, that all the leading magnates of Scotland would acquiesce to being ruled by someone whom they regarded with contempt (not unmixed with jealousy, perhaps, and even guilt) as a low-ranking young upstart. Someone like Wallace, in their eyes, had no business whatsoever to be leading the Scottish army – that was the role of the nobility. Much has been made of the pusillanimity or even downright treachery of many of the Scottish magnates, but they were caught in a difficult and dangerous situation. Most of them had estates in England as well as in Scotland; they owed allegiance as vassals to two overlords, two kings, and were looking to preserve themselves, their estates and their families. In the 1290s they must have felt, pragmatically, that the future lay rather with the powerful King Edward than with the cause of an independent Scotland espoused by Wallace. The concept of ‘nationalism’ scarcely existed in those days. The Scottish nobility did not, and probably could not, share the stubborn and ferocious resentment which fuelled Wallace’s hatred for all things English: Wallace, the extremist partisan leader, could identify with the dispossessed, the abandoned, the perpetual victims of warfare.
The real test was yet to come. The defeat at Stirling Bridge had been a terrible blow to England’s pride. As soon as Edward had extricated himself from his war with Philippe the Fair in March 1298, he hastened back to England: it was time to deal once and for all with this brigand who had dared to usurp his authority in Scotland. He moved his capital – exchequer, law courts and all – to York and summoned his magnates to a council of war there in May; the Scottish nobles cannily found reasons not to attend, and had sentences of forfeiture passed on them. The campaign was planned down to the very last detail. Finally, on 3 July, Edward crossed the Tweed near Coldstream and started moving slowly through Scotland with a mighty army: 1,500 mounted knights and men-at arms in four brigades, with twelve thousand battle-seasoned foot-soldiers, including a large contingent of Welsh and English archers.
Despite all the meticulous planning, the logistical organisation of moving and victualling such a huge army through hostile territory broke down. The Lowlands of Scotland were bare – the Scots had devastated their own fields and foodstocks in a scorched-earth policy to deprive the invaders of any sustenance. It was said that in all Lothian the English had been able to find only one skinny cow. The momentum of the march began to falter. The army had to stop at Kirkliston, a few miles west of Edinburgh, to await provisions from ships coming up from Berwick; most of the ships never arrived, because of bad weather, and those which did carried wine, not wheat. Soon the great army was hungry, mutinous and riddled with disease; there were furious drunken altercations between the Welsh archers and the English foot-soldiers, leading to brawls in which many died, including some priests who tried to separate the combatants.
It was now an army in deep trouble. Furthermore, Edward had no idea what the enemy was up to – for all he knew, the Scots army might be planning to mount a massive raid into England in his absence. On the morning of Monday, 21 July, he was on the point of falling back to Edinburgh to try to feed and calm his demoralised troops, when two Scottish earls (Dunbar and Angus) sent word to his camp that the Scottish army had been sighted within striking distance, only twenty-nine kilometres away, lurking in the great forest near Falkirk. ‘Praise be to God,’ Edward is alleged to have said, ‘who has brought me out of every strait. They shall have no need to follow me, for I shall go to meet them and on this very day.’
With that he marched his army westwards towards Falkirk. That night he bivouacked on the Burgh Muir south of Linlithgow, in the fields of the present Burghmuir Farm. In case the Scots tried to surprise them with a night raid, the English lay down in combat readiness, the knights with their huge stallions tethered at their sides. At some time during the night, it seems, King Edward was injured by his charger, breaking two ribs. Alarm spread through the uneasy, wakeful army: was the king dead? To calm his men’s fears, the elderly Edward (he was now nearly sixty) hauled himself into the saddle; sitting ramrod straight, he gave the order to break camp at once and move on to engage the enemy.
The Battle of Falkirk (22 July 1298)
Notwithstanding this unwillingness of the great nobility to support him, Wallace assembled a large army; for the middling, but especially the lower classes, were very much attached to him. He marched boldly against the King of England, and met him near the town of Falkirk.
TALES OF A GRANDFATHER, CHAPTER VII
High on a hill to the south-east of Falkirk a mounted patrol of Scottish spearmen caught sight of the English host moving in their direction through the early-morning mist. By the time a detachment of English cavalry had galloped up the hill to engage them, according to the English chroniclers, the Scots had disappeared. Local tradition has it that the leader of the patrol was none other than Wallace himself, perched on a great boulder on a ridge where the village of Wallacestone now stands. The boulder itself has disappeared, but in its place is a tall pillar, erected in 1810, dedicated to the memory of William Wallace.
From that vantage point, Wallace (or whoever else might have been leading the patrol) would have had a commanding view of the surrounding countryside: to his right the English army moving inexorably forward, to his left the Scottish army also, perhaps, on the move – but not, it would seem, yet aware that the English were almost upon them.
We can only speculate about what went through Wallace’s mind when he saw, or was told of, the English advance. Had he expected to see the English army on its way back towards Edinburgh, providing his forces with an easy target for harassment and ambush? Or did he welcome the opportunity of a great showdown with an army which, according to intelligence from his spies, was exhausted and demoralised? Or … or … or?
All conjecture apart, the fact is that on the morning of 22 July 1298, Wallace drew up his army on the slope of a hill somewhere in the Falkirk area, with a forest behind him and a stream with a low-lying boggy meadow in front of him.
What sort of a force had he been able to muster to face the armoured might of England? After his autumn foray into the north of England, Wallace – who now had the authority given to the Guardian of Scotland – had devoted considerable time to enlisting and training a standing army from the Lowlands and Borders for the defence of the realm. The Scotichronicon gives details of his conscription policy – a policy which cut right across the customary obligations of feudal duty of a man to his master – and the meticulous chain of command from groups of five right up to the general himself.
The nucleus of this army was based on spearmen: trained infantry equipped with twelve-foot spears and deployed in huge ‘schiltrons’. These were, in effect, oval-shaped phalanxes – formations of massed ranks, bristling on all sides with spears like monstrous hedgehogs. Each schiltron might consist of 1,500 to two thousand spearmen. In addition, there was a corps of skilled archers from Ettrick under the command of James the Steward’s brother, Sir John Stewart of Jedburgh. Where Wallace’s army was sadly deficient, however, was in heavy cavalry, the armoured squadrons of experienced fighting knights which Edward of England could require as a feudal obligation; the Scots horse were more lightly armed – skirmishers rather than cavalry. So when the two armies faced up to one another on the battlefield at Falkirk, there was a very considerable imbalance in