Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/382

368 of December, a body of horse under Sir-Archibald, the young Earl of Moray, and Sir Simon Frazer, made a dash into the town to surprise him; and he only escaped by springing upon a horse without any saddle, and himself nearly without clothes, leaving behind him his brother Henry slain. His reign had only lasted about three months. Ho escaped to England and to Edward, who received him kindly. The Scotch borderers, elated with this success, rushed in numbers into England, there committing their usual excesses, and thus furnishing Edward with a valid plea for attacking Scotland, and inducing the Parliament to support him in it, which before it had hesitated to do. Edward marched northward with an army not numerous, but well armed and disciplined, and in the month of May, 1333, invested Berwick, defended by Sir William Keith and a strong garrison.

Sir Andrew Murray, the regent, and the Knight of Liddesdale were taken prisoners in some of the skirmishes, and Sir Archibald being immediately named regent in the place of Murray, advanced with a large army to relieve Sir William Keith, who had engaged to surrender Berwick if not succoured by the 20th at sunrise. On the 19th, Douglas, after a severe march, arrived at an eminence called Halidon Hill, a mile or more north of Berwick. It had been the plan of Douglas to avoid a pitched battle with so powerful an enemy, and to endeavour to wear him out by a system of skirmishes and surprises, but the impatience of his soldiers overruled his caution. His army was drawn up on the slope of the hill, and Edward moved with all his force from Berwick to attack them. The ground, now fine, solid, and cultivated land, is represented them to have been extremely boggy. The Scots, however, dashed through the bogs, and then up the hill at the English, whose archers received them with a steady and murderous discharge of arrows. "The arrows," says Tytler (quoting from an old manuscript), "flew thick as motes in the sunbeams, and the Scots fell to the ground by thousands." Douglas dismounted his heavy-armed cavalry to give firmness and impetus to the charge. The Earl of Ross led on the infantry, and King Edward at his side fought on foot in front of the battle. The Scots, though they fought desperately, yet, as, from the marshy ground, they could not come near the archers, and were out of breath with running up the hill, wore thrown into confusion and gave way. The English cavalry under the king, but still more a body of Irish auxiliaries under Lord Darcy, pursued fiercely, giving little quarter. The slaughter was terrible, amounting to 30,000 Scots, and—if the accounts are to be believed—only one knight, an esquire, and thirteen private soldiers of the English fell. Nearly the whole of the Scottish nobles and officers were killed or made prisoners. Amongst the slain were Douglas, the regent himself, the Earls of Ross, Sutherland, and Monteith. Berwick surrendered, and Edward once more overran the country. He again seized and garrisoned the castles, again exacted public homage from Baliol, and compelled him to cede Berwick, Dunbar, Roxburgh, Edinburgh, and all the south-east counties of Scotland—the best and most fertile portion of the kingdom—which were declared to be made part and parcel of England. Such were the consequences of the fatal battle of Halidon Hill.

Edward left an army of Irish and English to support his wretched vassal in his fragment of a kingdom; but no sooner did ho turn homewards than the indignant Scots drove Baliol from even that, and compelled him to seek refuge amongst the English garrisons of the south of Scotland. In the following years, 1335 and 1336, Edward was again obliged to make fresh expeditions into Scotland to support Baliol. Whenever the English king appeared the Scots retired to their mountain fastnesses, while Edward and his army overran the country with little opposition, built the houses, and laid waste the lands of those whom he styled rebels; but, whenever he returned to England, they came forth again, only the more embittered against the contemptible minion of the English king, the more determined against the tyranny of England. The regent. Sir Andrew Murray, pursued with untiring activity Baliol and his adherents. When Edward marched homeward to spend in London the Christmas of 1336, he left Scotland to all appearance perfectly prostrate, and flattered himself that it was completely subdued. Never was it further from such a condition. One spirit only animated the Scottish nation—that of eternal resistance to the monarch who had inflicted on it such calamities, and set a slave on its throne. The Scots sought and wore furnished assistance from France; and now came the diversion from that quarter which proved the salvation of Scotland; now began to work the seeds sown, the elements infused into the English monarchy by Edward I.'s uuprincipled abandonment of his engagement with Count Guy of Flanders for the marriage of his daughter Philippa with Edward of Caernarvon, and his alliance, for political purposes, with France. Edward now claimed the throne of France in right of his mother, and prepared to enforce that claim by his arms. Hence came those long and bloody wars with France which produced an hereditary enmity between the two nations, and by this means, the attention and resources of England divided in the vain attempt to subjugate both France and Scotland, insiured the ultimate loss of both those countries. The ambition of Edward overshot itself. Had he confined his efforts to either of those great objects, he might have succeeded. By far the most important was the annexation of Scotland. It was a truly statesmanlike aim to make one consolidated kingdom of the island; but Edward, with all his talents, had no conception of the manner in which this was to be effected. If Scotland were to be won by arms, the whole of those arms should have been concentrated on that object alone. But it never could be effected by that means; it required a higher development of political wisdom and respect for international rights than wore then arrived at. Before we enter, however, on the narrative of the great French contest, we must mention a few facts which show the state to which Scotland was reduced at this time, and the invincible courage of the people, which called out singular displays of it, even by the women.

After the fatal battle of Halidon Hill, throughout all Scotland only four castles and one small lower held out for David Bruce. The castles of Lochleven, Kildrummie, and Dunbar, three out of the four, were distinguished by sieges which deserve notice. Lochleven Castle stood on an island, in the loch or lake of that name, at Kinross, in