by H A CULLEY
The rough-hewn stone wall of Turnberry Castle presented little difficulty to him and, gripping the precious key in his teeth, he swarmed up the twenty foot high wall and disappeared over the top. Five minutes later Neil heard the key turn in the lock of the postern gate and it swung outwards to reveal Robbie’s grinning face. As Bruce’s men poured into the castle a sentry on top of the gatehouse cried a warning and started to ring the alarm bell beside him, but it was too late. The garrison was unprepared, half-asleep and outnumbered. After a furious fight, which lasted for less than half-an-hour, the last of the English soldiers surrendered.
The constable, his knights and half his men were either dead or seriously wounded. The survivors were allowed to leave, barefoot and wearing only their braies and under tunics, carrying the wounded on makeshift stretchers. They headed off disconsolately towards Ayr, the last remaining English-held castle in the Bruce lands, some twenty miles away.
‘I have a feeling that we will be seeing them again very soon,’ Edward Bruce said to his brothers with a grin. He turned towards Robert. ‘When do you plan to march there?’
‘As soon as possible. There is no point in delaying and allowing them time to send for reinforcements.’
However, two days later and whilst Robert was still preparing to march on Ayr, a messenger arrived from William Wallace.
‘My lord, Edward Longshanks has arrived at Berwick with a large army, nearly thirty thousand strong. Sir William thinks that that their plan is to march northwards to recapture Stirling Castle and he plans to harass them and weaken them as they go. Their resupply fleet is stormbound and he is using a scorched earth policy so that they can’t exist by foraging. Already the Welsh archers are so hungry that they have rioted. Edward used his cavalry to subdue it and it is said that nearly a hundred Welsh archers perished.’
‘What does the Guardian want of me?’
Robert wasn’t eager to join Wallace and serve under him. His priority was to regain all of his ancestral lands. Although his long term aim was to launch his campaign for the kingdom, he could hardly do that whilst his father was still alive.
‘He needs you to muster as many men as you can and join him at Callender Wood, near Falkirk, my lord.’
‘How long ago did you leave Wallace with this message?’
‘Four days ago, my lord, on the eighteenth of July. I have to travel via Renfrew to deliver it to the Lord Steward as well.’
‘And where were Sir William and the English army then?’
‘Sir William was on his way to the rendezvous and King Edward was near Edinburgh.’
‘It is now the twenty-second. I suspect that we are already too late to join Sir William, but thank you for your message. We must hope for a victory without my help.’
Chapter Eight – The Battle of Falkirk – 22nd July 1298
Sir William Wallace sat on his horse at the edge of Callender Wood at the top of the slope that led down to the marshy ground around the Westquarter Burn. The burn ran across his front and, although it wasn’t much of an obstacle in itself, the boggy ground around it, especially where the Westquarter Burn met the Glen Burn, was a real obstacle to the English cavalry.
He had organised his infantry into four schiltrons, the formation which had proved so successful at Stirling Bridge the previous year. Each schiltron numbered between fifteen hundred and two thousand men armed with pikes some twelve feet long. To enhance the strength of the circular schiltrons the Scots had dug in pointed stakes at an angle of forty five degrees all around the perimeters. Whilst providing good defence against a cavalry charge, they also made the schiltrons somewhat immobile.
Wallace had deployed his eight hundred archers and crossbowmen in three divisions between the schiltrons. Sir James Stewart of Bonkhill, brother of the High Steward, was given overall command of the archers. He placed the three hundred nobles, knights and serjeants in reserve at the rear.
Edward had placed his three thousand knights and mounted serjeants in three divisions in the vanguard with the two thousand archers behind them and then the sixteen thousand men-at-arms and the more lightly armed militia in the rear. He was supremely confident. The enemy numbered no more than nine thousand whereas he had over thirty thousand.
He marshalled his knights under the Earls of Hereford and Norfolk in two battalions on the flanks and placed his serjeants under Sir John de Valence in the centre. Sir John owed the singular honour of commanding the centre to his criticism of the king the previous day for allowing Wallace to choose the ground over which they were to fight. No doubt he still had the disaster at Stirling Bridge in mind. Edward had merely glared at him for several minutes and then told him he could lead the first charge and show everyone how it should be done, as he was such a master tactician.
He swallowed nervously before leading his thousand downhill towards the burn at a walk. As they neared the south bank the ground got softer and softer and the pace got slower and slower. A few of his men got into difficulties, their mounts getting stuck in the soft mud, but the great majority made it through the narrow burn to the far bank. Here the mud was even softer and de Valence soon realised that the green sward he could see from the other side of the burn was, in fact, marsh covered by bright green tussocks that couldn’t support the weight of a man, let alone a horse. Underneath the tussocks was a foot of water and then soft mud.
The horses floundered and quickly became stuck. Many of his men dismounted and tried to lead their horses to the relative safety of the English side of the burn, but they too became mired and immobile. It was then that Wallace sent his archers forward and they began to pick off both men and horses at their leisure.
On the hill opposite the Bishop of Durham looked on in horror before turning to his king, who sat on his horse watching impassively.
‘Sire, we must do something or they will all be slaughtered.’
‘So what? They are serjeants, not knights. At least I won’t have to pay them now. It serves that idiot de Valance right. Perhaps next time he will think more carefully before criticising me in public.’
‘There won’t be a next time, Sire. He fell quite early on.’
King Edward looked carefully and he could just make out John de Valence’s distinctive surcoat as it sank below the surface of the marsh. He grunted and turned to his senior squire.
‘Piers, ride to the Earls of Hereford and Norfolk and tell them to advance, keeping well away from the boggy area where the two streams meet, then cross the main stream and attack the Scots schiltrons from the left and right flanks. Have you got that?’
‘Yes, Sire, Quite clear.’
With that the lad turned his horse and galloped away to the right flank and then then the left. By the time he had returned to his place behind the king both battalions were heading downhill at an angle. Seeing the new threat, the Scots withdrew their archers and the ragged and muddy remnants of the English centre slowly extricated themselves and wearily walked uphill to their original position. Seeing this, the king rode over to them and told them brusquely to take up position as the reserve and to get themselves sorted out. The couple of hundred serjeants that had survived looked at him, some resentfully and some with hate in their eyes. They knew that they had been sacrificed to test the ground and the Scots’ defences, but no-one dared say anything.
The Earl of Norfolk led his knights against the right hand schiltron. The hail of arrows, fired at high trajectory wounded some of the armoured riders and killed quite a few horses but it didn’t disrupt the charge. However, when they crashed into the schiltron the charge disintegrated into chaos. Some horses impaled themselves on the pointed stakes, others ran into the pikes and yet more shied away, throwing their riders. Those that were tossed over their mounts’ heads ended up skewered on the pikes as well.
The same fate awaited the Earl of Hereford’s battalion. As the knights drew back and reformed their squires rode forward with replacement warhorses and weapons. After the second charge even more knights and horses
littered the ground in front of the schiltrons. Some knights had now lost all their horses and were reduced to buying new ones from those fortunate enough to still have spares.
By the time that the third charge had been beaten off many of the stakes were missing and gaps had appeared in the two outside schiltrons. Wallace was busy getting the gaps closed up so he didn’t notice his cavalry moving at first. By the time he did it was too late. The Earl of Buchan had got bored waiting in reserve and had decided that the sight of the English battalion on the right flank milling about, mounting new horses and unprepared, was too good an opportunity to miss.
The Scots horsemen hit the English battalion in a wedge formation. Unfortunately this wasn’t something that they had practiced and the wedge wasn’t tight enough to be effective. It broke apart as soon as it entered the milling English knights and, instead of punching its way through the disorganised English, the charge deteriorated into a series of individual fights. Given that the Scots were outnumbered by three to one, even if some of Edward’s knights were dismounted, the outcome was never in doubt. Within twenty minutes the Scots horsemen were either dead or fleeing north as fast as their horses could carry them.
Edward had held his archers back, knowing that they would be vulnerable to the Scots cavalry. With that threat removed, he now withdrew his knights and sent his bowmen forward to pepper the Scots schiltrons. Some of the English used a bow similar to the Scots but the Welsh longbow was superior in terms of both range and penetrating power. Edward also had two and a half times as many archers as Wallace had. It was an unequal contest and, although the Scots killed some of the enemy archers first, it wasn’t long before Wallace’s archers fled too.
That left the schiltrons on their own. The archers continued to soften them up until enough gaps appeared, then he sent in his infantry. At first the Scots held their formation but they were outnumbered by more than two to one and, once inside the reach of the cumbersome pikes, the Scots were at the mercy of the English halberds, axes and swords. As Wallace watched the last of them flee, pursued by the English horsemen, he sadly turned his horse and, accompanied by just the ever loyal Malcolm Cowan, he rode from the field. It had always been an uneven fight but Wallace might just have won if it hadn’t been for the impetuosity of the Earl of Buchan.
~#~
Whilst William Wallace was fleeing after the defeat at Falkirk, Robert Bruce was studying Ayr Castle. Although it had belonged to him before the English took it, it wasn’t one that he was familiar with. It stood on the banks of the river of the same name and looked fairly impregnable. The one weak spot appeared to be the gate which led from the outer bailey to a small wharf by the river, presumably so that the castle could be resupplied by boat. As he watched from the cover of some trees on the opposite bank a boat arrived loaded with vegetables, the water gate opened and the produce was loaded onto handcarts and wheeled away into the castle. A plan was beginning to form in Robert’s mind.
That night Robert and Edward rowed a small boat downriver loaded with fruit that they had purchased from a farmer in Annbank a few miles upstream. Gavin Stewart sat at the tiller, now nearly nineteen, Robert thought it wouldn’t be long before he would knight him and then he’d have to find another squire. He doubted if he would find one as loyal and conscientious as Gavin though. They were followed by a larger boat containing Neil and twenty men-at-arms. The second boat kept far enough back to be just out of sight from the walls of the castle when Robert docked by the water gate.
As they did so a suspicious sentry peered over the wall and asked them what they wanted.
‘We’ve a delivery of fruit for the castle. We should have been here this afternoon but we had to repair a leak in the boat,’ Robert called back in the local Scots dialect, hoping that his explanation for his arrival after dark would be accepted.
‘I don’t understand what you’re saying. Speak English man.’
Robert did so, hoping that his attempt to garble the language just enough to still be understood would be convincing.
‘Wait there,’ the sentry instructed unnecessarily.
‘Where does he think we’d be going,’ Edward muttered in Norman French.
‘Speak Scots,’ Robert hissed at him.
Just then one of the two gates swung open just enough to permit two men to walk onto the wharf. One appeared to be a knight, though he was not wearing armour, and the other a man-at-arms, who was. As they approached Edward and Robert suddenly leaped up and pushed the startled men aside and ran for the partly open gate. The knight and the man-at-arms were so surprised that they didn’t react for a second or two. By that time the Bruce brothers had reached the gate and killed two more men who were trying to slam it shut again.
Then Gavin jumped out of the boat as they started to run back to the gate and thrust his dagger into the side of the man-at-arms. The knight might have been wearing only tunic and surcoat but he still had his sword belt strapped around his waist and he started to draw the weapon from its scabbard. As he did so Robert Bruce stepped out of the gate again and thrust his sword into the man’s neck. He fell gurgling and thrashing in his death throes beside his companion.
‘Thank you my lord.’
‘No problem Gavin. Can’t afford to lose a good squire. Come on.’
They reached the gate to find Edward holding off two men-at-arms with more arriving every second. For a minute and a half the two brothers and Gavin held the gate, though both Robert and Edward received flesh wounds. Then they heard the grinding of a gunwale against the wharf and thirty seconds later they were shoved out of the way as Neil led his men through the gate. A few minutes later the rest of Robert’s men arrived along the path from where they had been hiding and it was all over half an hour later.
‘What do you want done with the prisoners, Robert,’ Neil asked as Robert’s wounds were being expertly stitched up with catgut by Gavin. Edward’s squire wasn’t as adept with a needle so Edward cuffed him round the head and told him to leave it for Gavin to do, once he had finished with his elder brother. His fourteen-year-old squire looked resentful for a moment than decided that he had better watch Gavin and learn.
Robert sighed. ‘Keep the knights for ransom and turn the rest loose in braies and under tunics, just as we did at Turnberry. When we leave we’ll burn this place down so start setting the fires too.’
Neil looked at Robert reproachfully. ‘You know that none of the garrison we released from Turnberry made it this far. They were all killed by the local people.’
‘So what do you want me to do? Give them a few weapons so that they can take some good Scots with them?’ Robert glared at his brother, trying to ignore the pain he was in as Gavin patched him up. At the moment the squire was digging inside a wound in his thigh to remove bits of chain mail and cloth before washing it out and sewing it up.
‘No, but can’t we at last give them an escort until they are near Renfrew?’
‘I’d be happy to do that if I was certain that Wallace had won and Edward was now legging it back to England with his tail between his legs but, if Longshanks has won then we may need to go into hiding and there is no way that I am splitting my forces in that scenario.’
A week later Robert was back in Turnberry, having left Ayr Castle as a smoking ruin, when news of Falkirk reached him. The messenger had been sent by the High Steward and, along with the unwelcome news of Wallace’s defeat, he also had to tell him that the High Steward’s brother, Sir John Stewart of Bonkhill had fallen. In fact Robert was surprised at how light the Scots casualties seem to have been. He later learned that this was because they had been able to flee through the Callender Wood to the Forest of Selkirk where William Wallace licked his wounds and gathered enough men to him to harass the English who now garrisoned the country.
William Wallace would have felt completely devastated after Falkirk if Mary hadn’t given him the news for which he had been hoping for many years now. At long last she was pregnant. It couldn’t have come at a worse
time as now they were fugitives and having to move constantly. Nevertheless William was delighted and felt that he had something to look forward to.
After Falkirk, Edward advanced to Stirling but found the town abandoned and the castle a ruin. After despoiling St. Andrews, he withdrew to Edinburgh. The Scots had become adept at maintaining a scorched earth policy and the English army arrived at the Scottish capital half starved. They were now totally dependent on resupply by sea.
King Edward was approaching sixty and the years of campaigning were beginning to take their toll. He decided to withdraw to England for the time being and return the following spring to subdue the whole country once and for all; but by then he had other concerns and it was years, rather than months before he came back north of the border.
~#~
William Wallace sat morosely by the fire and nothing that Malcolm Cowan could say would comfort him. Mary Cowan had given birth to William’s son when she had only been seven months pregnant. The baby was stillborn and Mary died from loss of blood a day later, cradled in William’s arms. He blamed himself as he was convinced that her death, and that of his son, had been caused by their constant travel from place to place to avoid the English patrols. After Falkirk it was all too much to bear and he sunk into a deep depression. He had written to the Earls of Buchan and Carrick to resign as Guardian, conscious that the defeat at Falkirk, though not his fault, had tarnished his military reputation beyond redemption. In any case, after Mary’s death the cause of Scottish independence didn’t seem very important to him. His men chaffed at the inaction whilst their leader brooded and they began to desert.
‘William, we can’t just skulk here,’ Malcolm urged him. He too felt the loss of his twin and now his sister very keenly, but the one thing that kept him going was the knowledge that William needed him now more than ever.
