Page:Life of Sir William Wallace.pdf/13

 to pursue him, and for that purpose advanced to Stirling. At the news of their approach, Wallace charged the citizens, under pain of death, to continue the blockade of the castle, and hastened himself to seize on the pass between the Ochil and Grampian Hills, so that when the English army came to cross the Forth at Stirling they saw the patriots, on a rising ground, near the Abbey of Cambuskenneth, ready to oppose their passage. Warrenne endeavoured to practise the same arts which had been so successfully employed at Irvine, but without effect, for Wallace was not now thwarted or controlled by the counsels of those fickle and perfidious barons with whom he had formerly been surrounded. "Return," said he, to two friars; sent by Warremne to negotiate terms of peace, "we came not here to treat, but to assert our rights, and set Scotland free. Let them advance, they will find us prepared."

Thus disappointed, the English commanders hesitated and disagreed with regard to the plan they should adopt. To march along the bridge, in order to attack the Scottish camp, would have been forfeiting all the advantages arising from superiority of numbers, and exposing the army to inevitable defeat; to remain inactive was judged disgraceful; while an endeavour to penetrate into the north by another way, and relinquish their present position, would expose the southern counties to the fury of the Scots. Deliberation proved fruitless; despising, therefore, an enemy they had so often conquered, and urged on by the rashness of Cressingham, who passionately exclaimed, "Why do we thus protract the war, and waste the king's treasures? Let us fight, as is our bounden duty." The English at last determined to attack the Scottish camp by advancing along the