Not yet may “our stern alarums change for peaceful meetings, our dreadful marches to delightful measures.” Grim-visaged war must still be our portion, if our pageant is to depict the outstanding landmarks in our nation’s story. The victories of peace are for the future; now we must hear again the clash of arms, and share once more the joy of victory and the anguish of defeat.

We are still in Scotland, where a successor to Wallace has arisen even before his scattered limbs have rotted away. The new champion is the grandson of that Bruce whom Edward set aside in favour of Baliol. His father, in the old days, was a friend of “Longshanks,” and young Robert Bruce has been trained in all the arts of war and the exercises of chivalry under the eye of the man whose mortal enemy he is destined to be. He comes upon the scene in the dark days succeeding the judicial murder of Wallace, in those bitter months when England’s iron grip is on Scotland. He sees with deep indignation the wretched condition of his countrymen, and cautiously and secretly lays his plans for throwing off the English yoke. He makes a compact with his friend Comyn, who too has royal blood in his veins; but Comyn is a traitor, and reveals the plot to the English king. Bruce receives warning, and ere long he settles accounts with Comyn. In the church of the Gray Friars at Dumfries the two meet face to face. Angry words pass, and Bruce strikes down his treacherous friend on the very steps of the altar. He rushes outside to his comrades. “I doubt I have slain Comyn!” he cries. “You doubt!” says one of them, “I mak’ siccar;” and entering the church he dispatches the unhappy man with many fierce blows.

And now the Bruce has taken the plunge. There is no turning back; he must go forward to a crown, or suffer the fate of Wallace wight. A few faithful friends stand by him, and he hastens to Scone, the coronation place of Scottish kings. A friendly bishop lends him robes, the abbot provides a chair, and the statue of some saint is temporarily despoiled of its circlet to provide a crown.

The news of the outbreak speedily reaches Edward, and throws him into ungovernable rage. He swears that he will never rest until he has hanged, drawn, and quartered the presumptuous knave who has forsworn his oaths and seized the crown. Edward’s nut-brown hair is snow-white now, and his once mighty arm is weak with age, but his determined spirit burns as fiercely as of yore. An advance-guard is pushed on with all speed, and near Perth it comes into touch with the Bruce, who barely escapes from it.

The Bruce must now follow in the footsteps of Wallace, and wander, a hunted fugitive, over many a league of forest and hill. How true now seem the words of his wife at their hasty and impromptu coronation: “Alas! we are but king and queen of the May, such as boys crown with flowers and rushes in their summer sports.” Deserted and distressed, he lives the life of an outlaw, shooting his own venison and catching his own fish. But he is not sad and gloomy, as Wallace was wont to be. He cheers his little company by many a good-humoured sally and the recital of heroic deeds. Summer passes, and the pageantry of autumn descends upon the woods; but still he is a king without a throne, a wanderer without a home. The wild life of a hunted fugitive may not be borne during the dread winter by the ladies of his company, so he sends them with many a dark foreboding of evil to the care of his brother, and then takes ship for the remote island of Rathlin, off the north Irish coast, where he winters safe from his foes.

Here, in his island retreat, bitter news reaches him. His wife and daughters have been seized and imprisoned in England. His brother and his relatives have been captured and hanged, his estates have been forfeited and given to others, and the Pope has driven him out of the Church for his sacrilege at Dumfries. No wonder the Bruce sits under his juniper tree “steeped to the lips in misery.”

But with the kindly spring he makes another bid for fortune. He sails to the Isle of Arran, and has hardly landed before he well-nigh walks into a trap laid for him. Then begins a fresh period of difficulty and danger, of hairbreadth escapes and desperate deeds. Slowly but surely the tide turns in his favour. The preachers are with him; a prophecy has been discovered which assures him of victory; stout hearts begin to flock to his side; his cause gains ground every day. By the middle of May he is no longer a hunted fugitive but a leader of forces. He has defeated two English earls in the field, and they are shut up in the castle of Ayr, which he is closely besieging.

Now old Edward begins to move. He is too weak and ill to throw his long limbs across a horse, so they carry him on a litter in front of his army. At Carlisle the prospect of the strife he loves so well gives him a slight renewal of strength. He mounts his horse for the last time, and leads the march in the old way. But it is the final flicker of life’s flame, and at Burgh-on-Sands, within sight of the tossing Solway, he yields him to the power that conquers even kings. To his bedside he calls his vain, pleasure-loving son, and bids him swear a solemn oath never to cease from strife until the Scots are thoroughly subdued. “Boil the flesh off my bones,” he is said to have cried, “and keep them safe, and as oft as the Scots assemble their forces, let my bones lead the van.” So he dies, fierce and implacable to the last, and the breath is hardly out of his body ere his degenerate son sighs for his jugglers and minstrels and the careless pleasures of the court he has left behind.

He advances half-heartedly to Ayr; but the Bruce has retreated before him, knowing well the temper of his foe. At the first decent opportunity Edward hies him southward, and Bruce resumes his work of ridding the land of the English. One by one the castles are captured by storm or stratagem; day by day the English power grows weaker and weaker, and the Bruce grows stronger and stronger. At last the flag of England, once to be seen everywhere, flies only over the castle of Stirling. Its stout-hearted defender is almost starved into submission. He will surrender on midsummer day, unless he is relieved before it dawns by an English army.

The new Edward must leave his elegant trifling and bestir himself, unless Scotland is to be hopelessly lost. Hitherto his reign has been singularly inglorious, and his barons have made him, as he says, no longer master in his own house. But he will show them that the spirit of his sire still lives in him. He will invade Scotland, and the Bruce shall feel the weight of his heavy hand. Stirling shall be relieved; he will take up the wager of battle that Scotland has thrown down.

Forthwith he assembles the most powerful army that has ever yet menaced Scotland. Mindful of the archers’ victory at Falkirk, he scours the country for bowmen, and every man of them boasts that he “carries the lives of four-and-twenty Scotsmen at his belt.” Forty thousand mounted men are with him, and a prouder and more confident array never took the field.

Bruce has chosen his ground well. His front and right are defended by the Bannock burn, which winds through two morasses, and at one place has steep, wooded banks. On the left, where the ground is open, he has honeycombed the field with pits that look firm and level to the eye, but are terrible snares for cavalry. Only one way of approach is open, and that is strewn with caltrops to lame the horses.

It is the Sabbath morning of June 23rd, in the year 1314. On comes the English host, with its countless banners, standards, and pennons waving in the breeze. The sun glints from burnished helmet and spear as the dense battalions draw near. To an observer on the castle walls it would seem that they were about to make an immediate attack. The Bruce is arraying his men, clad in full armour, and carrying a battle-axe in his hand, but riding a light palfrey in place of the heavy charger that is to carry him to-morrow. That panoply of armour which he wears hides the real man from you. Were you to see him out of harness, you would mark his strong and powerful frame, his close, curly hair, his full, broad forehead, his high cheek-bones, and the square and massive jaw that tells of determination and dogged courage.

Now the English army halts, and a vainglorious knight, one Sir Henry Bohun, seeing the Bruce so poorly horsed, thinks to do a deed of valorous renown. So he spurs his charger, and levelling his spear bears down upon the Scottish king. As he comes rushing on at full speed, the Bruce twitches his palfrey’s bridle, and the little creature obediently starts aside. Then, as the knight goes rushing by, Bruce rises in his stirrups and smites him fiercely on the helmet with his battle-axe. It crashes through helmet and skull, and the riderless steed gallops wildly away. The first stroke of the great fight has been struck, and the Bruce has won. As he rides back to his lines his knights take him to task for his adventure, reminding him that an accident would have robbed them of their leader. Bruce listens to their chidings, and only replies, “I have broken my good battle-axe.”

Another misfortune befalls the English. Three hundred young horsemen, eager for the fray, see a clear way lying before them to the castle. On they spur towards it, but find their road blocked by a party of Scottish spearmen, who form a deadly circle of bristling steel. In vain the knights spur their horses to the attack; the schiltron remains unbroken, though hidden from sight by the cloud of dust and heat which rises from the plain. Now the spearmen advance and drive back the weary and disheartened horsemen. Grim foreboding this of the great fight to-morrow.

The short summer night falls on the battlefield, and loud sounds of revelry come from the English camp. The Scots sleep in the open, and when the sun has risen Edward sees them massed in schiltrons beneath their banners. “Will yon Scotsmen fight?” he asks of a veteran by his side. “Yea, siccarly, sire,” he replies, and at the moment the Scots bend the knee as the crucifix is borne along their line. “Yon folk kneel for mercy,” says the king; and again the veteran replies, “Yea, sire, but not of you. Yon men will win or die.” “So be it,” cries Edward, and gives the signal for his trumpeters to sound the charge.

On dash the English horsemen with levelled spears, and now you hear the loud crash as lance clangs on shield. Down go men and horses, only to be trodden under foot by the ranks behind. Nothing can break the Scottish ranks.

But where are the archers who wrought such havoc at Falkirk? Now is their time. Alas, they have been badly posted, and are unsupported by men-at-arms. A few hundred Scots horsemen are sufficient to send them flying hither and thither without the hope of ever rallying again.

Meanwhile a great hand-to-hand contest is raging. You hear the shouts and cries of the warriors, the groans of the wounded and dying, the loud clash of meeting weapons, as the vast, dense mass of the English rises and falls like waves of the sea. It is a mob that fights on the narrow field, and not an army. The ground is cumbered with fallen men and horses. Many a good knight has no room to swing his weapon. He cannot advance, and the pressure behind will not let him retreat. But slowly and surely the throng is pushed back by the Scottish spears, and the day looks black for England.

All discipline is now lost, and the battle is a series of individual struggles. Lifting their eyes, the hard-pressed English see a fresh host marching down a neighbouring hill, and hear their slogans peal out above the din and tumult of battle. They are camp followers who have cut down saplings for banner-poles and spread their blankets for standards; but, in sooth, they look a warlike and formidable band in the distance. The hearts of the English fail them at the sight; they waver, and the Scots press on with redoubled vigour. The retreat has begun; it will soon be an utter rout.

The English king gallops to Dunbar without drawing rein. His followers scatter hither and thither. All is over. The great battle is lost and won. The Bannock burn is choked with the dead bodies of the slain; thirty thousand English lie dead on that fatal field. The great task which Wallace had set himself is accomplished. Scotland has won her independence, thanks to the skill of Bruce, the courage of his men, and the incompetence of King Edward. “From the dust and reek of that burning day Scotland emerges a people, firm in a glorious memory.”