King of England in Westminster Abbey, the Scotch had the pleasure of thinking the prophecy was fulfilled. When we look at that old stone, though we need not believe that Jacob's head ever lay upon it, when we try to think of the generations and generations of people who have gazed upon it with reverencethe wild Irish of old, the half wild and patriotic Scotch, the brave and serious English; of the sovereigns who have been enthroned on it, from the old savage times, when they still thought the stone would groan aloud if a false pretender sate upon it, down to our good Queen Victoria, we cannot help feeling, like the Scotch and the Londoners of old, that it is too precious a thing to be lightly parted with. LECTURE XXVI.-SCOTLAND VICTORIOUS. Wallace. Battle of Stirling Bridge. The second conquest._ Battle of Falkirk. Robert Bruce. His coronation. Death of Edward I. Battle of Bannockburn. 1. WHILE Edward was in Scotland he made as many as possible of the great lords and bishops come forward and do homage to him again. The Scotch seem to have thought nothing of making and breaking oaths of this kind. Some little time afterwards the same ceremony was repeated, and, as Baker says, "it seems swearing of fealty was with the Scots but a ceremony without substance, as good as nothing; for this is now the third time they swore fealty to King Edward, yet all did not serve to make them loyal." When the king left Scotland he took a great many of the Scotch nobles with him, and the others who were left at home were carefully watched, lest they should incite the people to rebel; but after his return to England things did not go on very well. The English began to build castles and fortresses, and did many other things to offend and insult the Scotch. There was a great deal of strife, discontent, and confusion, and the Scotch people only wanted a spirited and clever leader to help them rise up against the foreign oppressors. Wallace. 2. Though Edward had taken away or silenced all the natural heads of the people, such a leader soon made his appearance. His name was William Wallace; a name very dear to the Scotch to this day. Wallace was neither a great lord nor quite a man of the people. He was rather in the middle rank. An old ballad says "he was cummyn of Gentilmen." "His Fadyr was a manly Knyght They say he was wonderfully tall and handsome, strong and brave. His terrible sword was fit for an archangel rather than for a man. He was, no doubt, a remarkably clever man also ; just the leader the Scotch needed. The English contrived to affront and insult him, and at last, when he had already been made very furious, they ended by burning down his house and killing his wife. Wallace now openly revolted, and soon collected a band of followers, with whom he began to harass the English. No one can help taking an interest in a man who is defending his native land against foreign oppressors, and though the English of those days thought him a "pestilent ruffian," a robber and marauder, we are all agreed now in sympathizing with him, and admiring him as a true hero and patriot. We have also another reason for admiring him, and for thinking he did (or at any rate greatly helped) a wonderful work, a greater work even than that of freeing his country would have been; a work which in the end has changed the whole face of Europe, and altered all modern history. 3. Up till this time, ever since the feudal system had been fully established, people had thought more of knights on horseback than of anything else. A knight, and his horse, Knights and and his armour could only be withstood by another foot-soldiers. knight with horse and armour. Both horse and armour were very strong and very expensive; the knight himself was brave, skilful, and highly trained. A leader who had a great many of these knights was likely to conquer any one who had not so many. The rest of the army counted for almost nothing. Two or three such knights would scatter a whole troop of light-armed and inexperienced foot-soldiers. Thus the knights and the nobles grew prouder and prouder. We saw before how they came to call the poorer men who fought on foot "rascals," and that "no great account was made of them." The rich and the poor grew more and more divided; the rich were insolent, the poor were depressed and slavish. 4. Now Wallace, when he began to resist the English, had very few nobles or knights on his side; many who at first seemed inclined to take part with him soon fell away, and submitted to Edward again; almost all his people belonged to the peasantry. And the grand thing he did was to show that they were of some account, that they could stand up against the knights, and could conquer them in defence of their freedom. In other parts of the world, in Switzerland and in Flanders, and perhaps because they heard what Wallace and his men had done, the lower ordersthe burghers and the peasants-began to find they could hold their own against the barons and knights. By degrees the rich grew less proud; the poor grew more bold; till they began to feel what we hope they are still learning more perfectly, that love, and trust, and mutual help are better than disdain, and fear, and hatred. 1297. Battle of Stirling Bridge. 5. Edward sent an army under the Earl of Surrey to stamp out the disturbances. Wallace met them at Stirling Bridge, the principal way of getting from the south to the north; he determined to stop the English there. The English had 1000 men on horseback, the Scotch only 180. The foot-soldiers were more nearly equal, but the English had more of them than the Scotch. Still Wallace entirely conquered the English; the Earl of Surrey fled; and the Scotch, taking arms on all sides, seized on a great many castles and fortresses, and drove almost all the English out of the country. This great victory was a wonderful encouragement to the Scotch people; they were vanquished themselves many times afterwards, and had great troubles, but they never forgot that the proud English had been beaten once, and might be beaten again. 6. Edward now determined to come to Scotland again himself, and put the rebellion down. This time he brought a magnificent army with him, no less than 7000 of those terrible mounted menat-arms, besides a great many men on foot armed in various ways. Wallace, who was not only a brave soldier, but a clever general, did not mean to fight a battle with this formidable army. His plan was to starve them out. Scotland being a poor country to begin with, it would always be hard work for a large foreign army to get food. But Wallace (and those who came after him followed his example) turned it into a wilderness. The people who lived in the southern counties of Scotland, as the war went on, got into the habit of this. As soon as an army was coming they all cleared out, not leaving one man behind, and hastened away to the north; they took with them everything they had, and that was not much, and left a bare waste for the enemy to march through. They used to build poor little huts of turf and loose stones, which could easily be put up again when they came back, if the enemy had knocked them over. 7. This must have been a very miserable kind of life; but the Scotch revenged themselves on the English whenever they could by coming in their turn into the northern counties of England, stealing the cattle and anything else they could find, burning the houses, and killing the people. Not long after this time the inhabitants of these parts were found to be so poor, in consequence of the ravages of the Scotch, that more than sixty towns This was just and villages were excused from paying any taxes. in the same part which William the Conqueror had laid waste 300 years before. It is difficult to realize such things as having happened in our own peaceful, happy country. 8. Wallace then with his army, which was very small compared with Edward's, hung about in concealment, intending, as soon as want of food drove the English to retreat, to come after them, harassing and doing them all the mischief he could. But the plan failed. It is said that two Scotchmen, 1298. who knew where Wallace was, made it known to Edward. Of course he, with his great army, wanted nothing better. They marched straight to the spot, which was near Falkirk, and the two armies confronted one another. Battle of 9. Edward was the very general a soldier loves. He was not what they used to call a "carpet knight;" one who showed to great advantage in bowers and halls, tournaments and games, but not so gallant in real fights and hardships. When Edward went to war he bore all that the meanest soldier had to bear. He would not drink wine when the others were thirsty and could get none. When they had to sleep on the bare ground he lay down and slept on it too. He was not above wheeling a barrow with the rest when they were fortifying Berwick. No doubt his presence inspired his men with hope and enthusiasm. The 10. The two armies were a great contrast to one another. The English one must have been very beautiful to look at. The lords and knights were splendidly armed. The armour two armies. was beautifully enamelled and chased, and “looked as radiant and as delicate as the plumage of a tropical bird." It was not only bright, but richly coloured with blue and scarlet and gold. So were the shields and banners. Even the saddles and bridles of the horses were embroidered and set thick with gems. Each lord and knight had his own special banner, with his crest or badge upon it, by which every one knew him. One would have a falcon, one a lion, one a swan, and so on, which he carried on his shield, and helmet, and flag, so that in the confusion of a battle the leaders would be recognized even when their faces were hidden. From a distance, too, their flags would always be known. Besides his large banner, a nobleman would have a great many smaller flags, called pennons, each with the same badge on it (we read of one famous knight who had 1200 pennons under him), and these would all be flying and fluttering in the breeze. Froissart is often breaking |