The Steps to the Empty Throne

”Stay, you!” Bruce cried authoritatively. He pointed.

“I see no blood. No single wound amongst you. What sort of battle was this?”

Scowls greeted that, and angry words. Men pointed backwards, in protest, outrage. But they were edging onwards.

“You are Lennox’s men, are you not? Where is your lord?”

Some shook their heads. Some pointed on, up the hill, some back.

Clearly none knew.

Unhappily the Bruces rode on, the seven hundred doubtful behind them.

The next group they encountered wore the blue-and-gold of Stewart, led by a knight in armour.

“You are Stewarts,” Bruce challenged him.

“Who are you?

And where is the Steward?”

“We are of Menteith. I am Sir John Stewart of Cardross. I know not

where the Steward is. Or my lord of Menteith. All the lords have gone

…”

“Gone where, man? Is all over? The battle?”

“God knows! There may be fighting still. The foot. Wallace’s rabble. In their schiltroms of spears. Since they cannot flee. But all else is finished.”

“You … you deserted Wallace and the foot?”

“Deserted! Who are you to talk of deserting? You were not there.

They hurled all their strength at us. Between the schiltroms.

Their cavalry and bowmen both. Thousands on thousands of them. The Constable’s array broke first. In the centre. Then they were in amongst us. Behind us. We had no choice …”

“The Constable, you say? The Comyns—they gave way first?

But there were no great number of them …?”

“The Constable took command of the centre cavalry. As was his right.

The English threw all their strength at him …”

“Aye. Enough …” Without waiting to hear more, Bruce waved on his company.

The long but fairly low and gentle hog’s-back of open woodland that was Callendar Hill sank at its east end to the valley of the Westquarter Burn. Where a tributary stream joined this below the south-east face of the hill was an area of marshland surrounding a small reedy loch. On the open slopes above this, Wallace had drawn up his army to make its stand. It was a reasonably good defensive position, the best that the Falkirk vicinity had to offer probably; but it was all on a comparatively small scale, and the water barrier only a minor one. The loch marsh itself would not take cavalry, but the burn that flowed either end of it could be splashed through. As an impediment a vast army, therefore, it was inadequate. And worst of all, the relatively short distances involved meant that the long-range English and Welsh archers could remain drawn up on the east side of the loch and still pour their arrows into the Scots ranks beyond.

Bruce and his people, their formation somewhat broken up by negotiating the woodland and the streams of fleeing wounded, reached the last of the trees. They saw the land across the valley as literally black with men and horses and all the paraphernalia of war, stretching almost as far as eye could see, a dire sight.

Though this enormous concourse was not in fact engaged, too great to be marshalled and brought to bear on Wallace’s chosen ground. Only the cavalry and the archers were involved, as yet—to the Scots’ downfall.

For, of course, it was in these two arms that Wallace was weak.

His great mass of spearmen and sworders, however nimble and tough, were of little avail against these. The Guardian had drawn up his host in four great schiltroms, square phalanxes of spearmen, densely packed, facing out in all directions, bristling hedgehogs of pikes and lances and halberds, on which an enemy would throw himself with but little effect. Between these he had set his comparatively few bowmen, backed by the cavalry of the lords.

And thus awaited the onslaught.

But unhappily all was within range of the massed thousands of Edward’s long-bowmen, who with a methodical, disciplined expertise poured in a continuous stream, a flood-, of their deadly yard-long shafts. Against these the Scots were helpless, their own few archers hopelessly outranged, and indeed the first to fall, as primary targets of the enemy. Thereafter the hissing murderous hail had been raised to fall mainly upon the cavalry behind. Here the execution was less lethal, because of breastplates, helmets, chain mail and toughened leather; but even so there was much havoc, especially amongst the horses.

Under cover of this fatal deluge, Edward’s pride, his heavy chivalry

had swept round the loch and crossed the burns, in two horns; the left

under Roger de Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, and Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of

Hereford; the right under Bishop Beck of Durham and no less man

thirty-six senior captains. These both drove uphill, and as the bowmen

ceased to shoot at a given signal, bore in in five great prongs of

perhaps a thousand each, ignoring the squares of spearmen and

concentrating all on the lines of cavalry ranked between the schiltroms. It was then that High Constable Buchan signalled in turn, and at it the Scots nobility broke and turned back. The command was to reform in one mass up the hill, to put in a powerful counter-attack downhill;

but this never materialised. The protective shelter of the wood was too great a temptation, and the Comyns’ example infectious.

The Scots chivalry rode off the field of Falkirk, to fight, perhaps, another day.

This had left Wallace and his foot in four isolated groups, round which Edward’s armoured horse eddied and circled unhindered.

Not all of the Scots nobility and gentry had bolted with the cavalry of course. Many had gone to join Wallace, on foot.

But these found themselves on the outside of the bristling walls of

spears, with the grim-vis aged angry spearmen in no mood to open and

break their tight ranks to let them in. Mostly they died there under

the trampling hooves of the English des triers

By the time that Bruce and his seven hundred arrived on the scene of carnage, all this was a thing of the past. There were only the two schiltroms now, the debris of the others making a trampled bloody chaos of the long slope. These two that were left had lost much of their shape and were tending to coalesce;

but they were still fighting, doggedly, their perimeter dead being swiftly and steadily replaced by men from within the squares, to die in their turn as the massed horsemen raged round and round, driving in -with lance and sword, battle-axe and heavy mace.

Many of Edward’s proud chivalry littered the slopes of Callendar Hill, also, the horses in particular skewered, hamstrung and disembowelled by those deadly spears. The heaps and piles of slain, of both sides, grew thicker and thicker towards the foot of the slope—for this was the way that the battle moved, not uphill towards the wood and escape. The English cavalry were exploiting the advantage of site that should have belonged to their Scots counterparts; downhill. They were thundering in charges time and again down the slope, to overwhelm the schiltroms by sheer weight and impetus, in a trampling, screaming avalanche of horseflesh and armoured humanity. Already the lowermost Scottish spearmen were up to their knees in the mire and water of the valley-floor. Perhaps Wallace was deliberately allowing this to happen, for in the soft ground the heavy cavalry would be unable to come in at them. But then, there was still the serried ranks of the waiting archers, not to mention the vast mass of the so-far uncommitted English foot.

For desperate moments Bruce sat his mount, eyeing that scene.

What could he do? Nothing that he might attempt could possibly turn the tide of battle now. To stand still was inglorious, useless.

To turn and flee like the others was unthinkable. His men were not armoured. He himself, like Nigel, was in travelling clothes, not full mail. Most of them bestrode Highland shelts. They were the lightest of light horse. Against some of the best heavy chivalry in all Christendom, battle-trained veterans—and outnumbered six or eight to one.