The Steps to the Empty Throne

“Use all cruelty,” he ordered—Edward Plantagenet! How many thousands they have slain, God knows. Far, far more than on the Falkirk field. Women and children. Especially on the lands of those who supported Wallace—the old Earl of life’s lands. Menteith’s.

Strathearn’s. Murray of Tullibardine’s. And the Church’s.

Mine. My St. Andrews is now a smoking desert. He spares neither kirk nor monastery, monk nor nun. Dunfermline. Balmerino.

Lindores. Dunblane. Inchaffray. All these abbeys and their towns.

And many another. No mercy. All to be destroyed.

And now he has turned west. To punish Lennox, the Steward, Crawford.

And yourself, my lord!”

“Aye.” That came out on a long sigh.

“Edward, at least, will no longer think me his man! He comes here, you think?”

“He has sworn to punish all whom he says rebelled against his peace! Will he spare Bruce, whom once he held close? But who now holds the SouthWest against him. You should know, if any!”

“He will not. But … I cannot hold the SouthWest against him. Not against this great host. You know .”

”I know it. But you can do what Wallace has done. Deny him food,

drink, comfort. Burn the land before him, my lord. Leave him nothing. Burn this castle and town. For, God knows, what you do not burn, he will I Alas for this poor Scotland! But only so shall we save her freedom.”

“Freedom, yes. And freedom …? Is it worth this, my lord Bishop?

This cost?”

“Freedom is worth this and more, my friend. Freedom is worth the last breath we draw. Freedom is life. And the life after life. Is there aught greater? Faith, worship, charity, peace—what are these, without freedom to exercise them? Freedom is the soul of the nation. What profit all else if we lose it?”

Long Bruce gazed at the wary man’s stern face, deeply moved by his vibrant words. He inclined his head.

“Very well. Tell Wallace that I burn the SouthWest. For freedom. As my brothers even now are burning over the Border. The Lord Nigel I sent to Annandale, then to Galloway, to raid over the West March. But . dear God—it is easier to burn other men’s lands than your own!”

“I know it, friend. How many men have you assembled here?”

“Four thousand. So few against Edward’s hordes.”

“Four thousand men can do a deal of burning…!”

So Edward Plantagenet, leaving a blackened smoking desert behind him at Glasgow and the lower Clyde, marched south, up Clyde with his legions—and found only smoking desert before him. Rutherglen, Bothwell, Lanark, he found empty, black, smouldering, and all the land around and ahead billowing unending smoke-clouds in the hazy autumn sunshine. Like an army of Goths and Vandals, grim-faced, their eyes red-rimmed from more than their own smoke, Bruce’s men of Carrick, Cunninghame and Kyle, with volunteers from far and near, efficiently, methodically, destroyed the land, their own land, herding the people with roughest kindliness into the hills. Towns and villages were emptied, the matches pulled off the roofs to burn in the streets, with all stored food and fodder mat. could not be carted away. Churches and monasteries were denuded of all mat made them places of worship, and left vacant shells. Castles and manors were cast down, where possible, rendered untenable, un defendable and left open, deserted. Farm lands were wasted and despoiled, hay and grain fired, standing corn trampled flat, all beasts and poultry that could not be driven off into the hills slaughtered and tossed on to the blazing barns and byres and cot-houses. Mills, markets, fisheries, harbours, hutments—all were cast down and devastated, in a twenty-mile belt from the sea to the burgeoning purple heather of the wild uplands—now fuller of folk than they had ever been before. From Clydesdale right down into Galloway the pattern was repeated, and the smoke rose over a once-fair land, by day a black rolling pall that darkened the sun, by night a murky red and ominous barrier stretching from horizon to horizon. The folk cooperated, in the main, even did their own burning. There was short shrift for those who objected.

The English, in fuming rage, sought other adversary than fire and smoke, and found none—save odd and pathetic hiders in woods and deans and caves, whom they outraged, tortured and hanged. Day after day they marched south, a blackened snarling host, the fine colourful display of their chivalry dimmed and soiled now, angry, ravenous men; and each day their march grew longer, as their empty bellies forced them on, hoping, hoping for some area undestroyed, some green oasis in the black desert overlooked.

But there was none, save in the high fastnesses of the flanking hills, Scotland’s ultimate refuge, where Edward dared not let his mutinous men stray—for such as did seldom returned.

A great deal of food is necessary to feed over 100,000 men. The leadership was losing control. Great bodies of troops were running amok, fighting with each other, falling sick by the thousand, doing unmentionable things in their terrible hunger. Shaking his fist at the gaunt ruins of the burned-out castle of Ayr, reached on the 27th day of August, Edward, in impotent fury, after giving orders Bruce must be pursued deep into his Carrick hills, right to the Mull of Galloway if need be, countermanded it all, and ordained the swiftest possible withdrawal to the Border, to English soil. It was as near flight as anything the Plantagenet had ever faced. He left a woeful trail of the weak, the sick and the weary behind him, of men and horses and equipment. And out from the wilderness lairs the folk of the charred land crept by night, knives in hand.

The King, with the view of fair England at last, on 6th September, and

much in sight reeking, as black as what lay behind them, turned in

terrible, savage wrath on Annandale, the last of the Scottish dales,

which the younger Bruces had largely spared, after all their

building-up from Clifford’s raid. Now even that expert, in Edward’s

train, had to confess himself mastered. If a land can be crucified,

the lordship of Annandale was, that September of 1298. When, in the remote tower of Loch Doon, amongst the great heather hills where Carrick and Galloway meet, Nigel brought word of it, Robert Bruce would have wept if he could. Tears were a luxury few Scots could rise to that autumn.

Edward himself was near to tears, at Carlisle, where he halted at last, too tough a nut for the Bruce brothers to have cracked.

But they were tears of sheerest choler. For not only had he to bear the humiliations of his undignified scramble back to his own soil, and the frustrations of a campaign abandoned in midcourse, with the benefits of a great victory squandered, and the outrage of mutinous soldiery—now his own lords turned mutineer. And not merely a few disgruntled nonentities, but the greatest of all-Norfolk, the Constable; Hereford; Lincoln; Northumberland.

These, and lesser barons, when they heard that Edward was intent only on garnering vast food supplies, re-equipping and disciplining his army, and then marching back into Scotland to complete his task, refused flatly to co-operate. They claimed that this was not only profitless but contrary to the promises that the King had made on his return from France, he would rule henceforth with the acceptance of his nobility and parliament. In fury the monarch named them treasonable, seditious dogs—and though, on second thoughts, he hastily convened a council, there at Carlisle, and named it a parliament, it was too late. Norfolk, Hereford, and those like minded marched off with their followings for the south, leaving an angry sovereign and a make-believe parliament to pass edicts for further ambitious mobilisation, the large-scale provisioning necessary, and the equipping of a great fleet of vessels which would proceed round the Scottish coastline, keeping pace with the armies, and supplying them without fail.