By C. E. BISHOP.

V.—THE BATTLE OF PANCAKE CREEK.

“Decisive battles of history” are such because of long trains of events that lead up to them and explode there. Those events form one of the most interesting studies of historical philosophy; an understanding of them is necessary to an intelligent reading of subsequent changes. One of these culminating points and turning points was the Battle of Bannockburn, fought June 24, 1314, between the Scotch under King Robert, “the Bruce,” and the English under the ill-starred King Edward II.

Edward I had been a great fighter. He fought the Scotch so persistently that his tomb bears the vain-glorious inscription, “Here lies the Hammer of the Scots.” He died, worn out, in a Scotch campaign (1307), enjoining on his son, it is said, the pleasant duty of boiling all the flesh off his father’s bones and carrying them at the head of the army until Scotland should be crushed. Then he might celebrate at once the funeral of Scotland’s freedom and of its “Hammer.” Edward II very wisely disregarded this barbarous dying request. He at once abandoned the Scotch war.

Seven years of peace followed, during which Scotland was drilling and gathering strength under Bruce, while England was torn and weakened by internal quarrels between the king and his dissolute favorites on one side, and the lawless and tyrannical barons on the other. By the fall of 1313 the Scotch had cleared the English garrisons out of all their castles save Stirling, and that, the key to the borders, they besieged. “Its danger roused England out of its civil strife to a vast effort for the recovery of its prey.” The army gathered to this task comprised thirty thousand horsemen, and seventy thousand English, Welsh, and Irish footmen, raw, undisciplined, disorderly; while Bruce’s army numbered only thirty thousand, nearly all on foot, but they were inured to war and reckless fighters, those wild clansmen.

The little burne (brook) of Bannock (pancake) runs through a swamp near the rock on which Sterling Castle stands. Bruce chose his position, as he fought the battle, with a genius for arms which showed him to be the first soldier of his age. On his right flank was the creek and marsh, on the left the ledge of rocks and castle, in the rear a wooded hill. The ground in front was cut up by patches of forest and undergrowth and swamp-holes, so that no large body of the enemy at once could come at him. This robbed the English of much of their advantage of numbers. Other precautions, it will appear, took away also the superiority of his enemy in the matter of cavalry.

The battle which took place here has been much written and sung about, but rational explanations of its surprising outcome are hard to find. We may seek them in the disorganization and disaffection of the English army and the incapacity of its command; in the contrary circumstances on the Scotch side; and in four striking reverses which befell the English. But as these reverses were due to superior generalship and better fighting on the Scotch side, we may as well put the credit where it belongs, with Bruce and his compatriots.

The first of these four reverses took place the night before the general engagement. Edward had sent ahead a detachment of eight hundred knights to relieve the besieged English in Sterling Castle, and hold it as a base of operations. To send so weak a force upon so important a task marked the incapacity of the English generalship at the outset. But the movement was well executed, for the first Bruce knew the squadron was on his flank and between him and Sterling. Riding up to Earl Randolph, his nephew, who had been cautioned against this very manoeuvre, he cried, “Randolph, you are flanked. A rose has fallen from your chaplet.”

Randolph was an English settler in Scotland and was distrusted by the Scotch; but he made a brave stand against the English. He formed in the order of Hastings—a hollow square—the front rank kneeling, the next stooping, the inside line erect, their spears a perpendicular wall of bristling steel. Around this square and on these points the English cavalry circled and broke and were used up. Lord Douglas, though a personal enemy of Randolph, when he saw him sore beset, chivalrously asked leave to go to his assistance. “No,” declared Bruce, “I’ll not break my lines. Let him redeem his own fault.” He did—and a few defeated horsemen galloped away to King Edward to report the first English repulse. Bruce’s stern decision not to break his order of battle, even at the risk of a defeat of Randolph, is the key to his successful control of the undisciplined Scotch, and to his victory.

Early in the day of the 24th the English host came in sight. Edward rode out with his body-guard to reconnoitre. The first sight that met his eyes was an aged priest, bare-footed, walking along the Scotch lines and all the rough soldiers on their knees.

“See,” said the confident king, “They kneel, they cry for mercy.”

“Yea,” said Sir Ingeltram de Umfraville, “they cry for mercy, but it is to God, not to you.”

Presently came Bruce riding a little Scotch pony along the lines, giving his men their last directions and words of cheer. English chivalry, in the person of Sir Henry de Bohun, thought this an opportunity for cheap glory. Chivalry, with all its pretense of fairness, took odds when it could, and de Bohun in full armor, on a heavy Flanders steed, thundered down on Bruce. Dextrously dodging Bohun’s spear, Bruce rose in his stirrups and, as his enemy careered past with a great circle in the air he brought his axe down full on Bohun’s head. The axe was shattered by the tremendous blow, while helmet and skull were cleft and the brilliant knight rolled in the dust. A great shout from the Scotch hailed this feat; a damp silence among the English hailed this defeat No. 2. “The Englishmen had great abasing,” says old Barbour. As for Bruce, when his chiefs reproached him for the risk he had taken, he only looked ruefully at the fragment of the axe-handle in his hand and muttered, “I have broken my good axe.”

It is at this moment, just before the battle, that Burns puts into the mouth of Bruce the most inspiring battle-hymn ever written:

In the battle which now began, the wisdom of Bruce’s plans appeared. His small cavalry force he placed in hiding at the right for flank operations on the dreaded English archers. To cope with the more dreaded English men-at-arms he had dug all the solid ground along his line full of pits, set them full of sharp stakes, and covered all fairly with boughs and turf. His baggage, horses and camp impediments were parked behind the hill in his rear; the wagoners and servants (“Gillies”) there secreted were destined to play an important part in this singular battle—a part so signal that the hill has ever since been known as Gillies Hill.

The English attack began, as expected, in the assault of archers. It made havoc among the Scotch with their bull’s-hide bucklers for their only protection. “Now we’ll cut their bow-strings!” cried Edward Bruce to the Scotch horsemen in cover, and forthwith they were hewing and sabering among the English yeomen, who, having no small arms wherewith to fight hand to hand, were helpless to resist this attack. They were stampeded and hurled back a confused mass upon the English army. Defeat No. 3.

The appearance of Scotch horse in the engagement was a surprise to the English. To meet it they ordered a charge of their own cavalry. Down the narrow passages they thundered, a galling fire of Scotch arrows in their faces.

“Some of the horses that stickit were,” says Barbour, “rushed and reeled right rudely.” The fall of the horse in the pits was complete with hardly a blow from the Scotch. As yet Bruce’s line had not been touched; Bruce’s brain more than Scotch brawn had won thus far.

The grand charge of Edward’s body-guard, three thousand steel-clad knights, the pick of English chivalry, was now ordered to redeem the day. They charged the line of Scotch spearmen and axmen with great fury and effect—“Sae that mony fell down all dead; the grass waxed with the blude all red.”

The Scotch knights, until now held in reserve, were led by Bruce himself, and a most desperate struggle took place, all the forces left on both sides being engaged. “And slaughter revelled round.”

Just at the moment when the victory hung trembling in the balance, a strange apparition turned the English pause into a panic. The Scotch wagoners and camp-followers, impatient of inactivity, had hastily armed themselves with such knives, clubs, and rejected weapons as were at hand, improvised banners of tent cloth and plaids, and came marching over the hill, fifteen thousand strong. They made a “splurge” and a racket, in inverse ratio to their real formidableness; but coming directly after the staggering attack of Bruce’s reserves, they had all the appearance to the English of large reinforcements.

Thus the cooks and hostlers precipitated the English defeat and panic. Edward would have thrown himself away in a personal effort to turn the defeat, but Sir Giles de Argentine seized his horse’s bridle and led him out of the fight. Having despatched him and a few faithful comrades toward the coast, De Argentine said, “As for me, retreating is not part of my business;” and plunging into the fight, hopelessly and uselessly, was slain. The king by hard riding reached Dunbar and escaped by sea to London.

The retreat was more disastrous to the English than the battle. The bare-legged, bare-headed, bare-armed Scotch, with their long knives, drove their enemies in large numbers into the river Forth; and Barbour says the Bannock creek was so choked up that one might walk dry-shod from bank to bank on the drowned horses and men. The English loss was ten thousand; among them twenty-seven nobles, two hundred knights and seven hundred esquires, while twenty-two nobles and sixty knights were made prisoners. The pursuit continued for miles, every step marked by blood and booty. Those old knights went soldiering in great style; their military establishments were enormous and rich. The English camp was taken, with great booty in treasure, jewels, rich robes, fine horses, herds of cattle, droves of sheep and hogs (great eaters, those old English!), machines for the siege of towns, wagon loads of grain and portable mills; the train of wagons which carried the treasure into Scotland was sixty miles long. The king’s tent and treasure were captured, including the royal signet-ring. One prisoner was a talented Carmelite friar whom Edward had brought along to celebrate his anticipated victory in verse; but Bruce compelled him to buy his own release by writing a poem glorifying the Scotch victory instead.

But a greater spoil than all this was found in the ransom of captive knights and nobles. While the common soldiers were ruthlessly put to death, the wealthy were carefully spared and well treated. This was not done so much from the spirit of chivalry as from a spirit of speculation; wealthy prisoners were the prize for which many great battles were fought. An explanation of the large number of prisoners of this class is found in this fact, and in the additional one that a heavily-armored knight, if once dismounted, could not run away; if once thrown to the ground he was about as helpless as a turtle turned on his back. If a poor Scotchman stumbled over one of these dismounted ironclads his fortune was made—provided the prisoner or his friends had one. All to do was to cut the strings of his helmet, set your knife against his throat, and make a good bargain for taking it away again.

The victory of Bannockburn, besides enriching Scotland, forever secured her independence. It confirmed the fighting qualities of the Scots, in pitched battle, before the world. It got them the permanent alliance of France against England, out of which grew those long double wars which cost England so dearly, and prevented her finally conquering either country. Ever England was in the situation of the bear which, when she attacks the French hunter, finds his Scotch mastiff on her haunches. It gave Scotchmen a new respect among the English, and it no longer was said an English yeoman carried twelve Scots under his green jacket; so that to war on Scotland became less a pastime with English soldiers. For three hundred years, under the influence of the independence thus sturdily maintained, Scotch character grew as strong and self-respecting as that of England, so that the union between the two countries finally took place as a partnership of equals, rather than upon the conditions under which the lion and lamb are sometimes said to lie down together—the lamb inside the lion. A different relation existed between England and Ireland, with all the consequences of shame to one and suffering to the other that the world has for centuries seen.

Bannockburn was one of the most decisive battles of the world.

[To be continued.]