Having secured the advantages he had gained in the town and on the works of the castle, by manning all the strong places, Wallace set forward with his chosen troops to intercept De Warenne.
He took his position on a commanding ground about half a mile from Stirling, near to the Abbey of Cambus–Kenneth. The Forth lay before him, crossed by a wooden bridge, over which the enemy must pass to reach him, the river not being fordable in that part.
He ordered the timbers which supported the bridge to be sawed at the bottom, but not displaced in the least, that they might stand perfectly firm for as long as he should deem it necessary. To these timbers were fastened strong cords, all of which he intrusted to the sturdiest of his Lanark men, who were to lie concealed amongst the flags. These preparations being made, he drew up his troops in order of battle. Kirkpatrick and Murray commanded the flanks. In the center stood Wallace himself, with Ramsay on one side of him, and Edwin, with Scrymgeour on the other, awaiting with steady expectation the approach of the enemy, who, by this time, could not be far distant.
Cressingham was not less well-informed of the advance of De Warenne; and burning with revenge against Wallace, and earnest to redeem the favor of De Valence by some act in his behalf, he first gave secret orders to his lieutenant, then set forth alone to seek an avenue of escape, never divulged to any but to the commanders of the fortress. He soon discovered it; and by the light of a torch, making his way through a passage bored in the rock, emerged at its western base, screened from sight by the surrounding bushes. He had disguised himself in a shepherd’s bonnet and plaid, in case of being observed by the enemy; but fortune, favored him, and unseen he crept along through the thickets, till he descried the advance of De Warenne’s army on the skirts of Tor Wood.
Having missed Wallace in West Lothian, De Warenne divided his army into three divisions, to enter Stirlingshire by different routes; and so he hoped, certainly, to intercept him in one of them. The Earl of Montgomery led the first, of twenty thousand men; the Barons Hilton and Blenkinsopp, the second, of ten thousand; and De Warenne himself the third, of thirty thousand.
It was the first of these divisions that Cressingham encountered in Tor Wood; and revealing himself to Montgomery, he recounted how rapidly Wallace had gained the town, and in what jeopardy the citadel would be, if he were not instantly attacked. The earl advised waiting for a junction with Hilton or the lord warden, “which,” said he, “must happen in the course of a few hours.”
“In the course of a few hours,” returned Cressingham, “you will have no Stirling Castle to defend. The enemy will seize it at sunset, in pursuance of the very agreement by which I warded him off, to give us time to annihilate him before that hour. Therefore no hesitation, if we would not see him lock the gates of the north of Scotland upon us, even when we have the power to hurl him to perdition.”
By arguments such as these the young earl was induced to give up his judgment; and, accompanied by Cressingham, whose courage revived amid such a host, he proceeded to the southern bank of the Forth.
The bands of Wallace were drawn up on the opposite shore, hardly five thousand strong, but so disposed the enemy could not calculate their numbers, though the narrowness of their front suggested to Cressingham that they could not be numerous; and he recollected that many must have been left to occupy the outworks of the town and the citadel. “It will be easy to surround the rebel,” cried he; “and that we may effect our enterprise before the arrival of the warden robs us of the honor, let us about it directly, and cross the bridge.”
Montgomery proposed a herald being sent to inform Wallace that, besides the long line of troops he saw, De Warenne was advancing with double hosts, and if he would now surrender, a pardon should be granted to him and his, in the king’s name, for all their late rebellions. Cressingham was vehement against this measure, but Montgomery being resolute, the messenger was dispatched.
In a few minutes he returned, and repeated to the Southron commanders the words of Wallace: “Go,” said he, “tell your masters we came not here to treat for a pardon of what we shall never allow to be an offense; we came to assert our rights-to set Scotland free. Till that is effected, all negotiation is vain. Let them advance; they will find us prepared.”
“Then onward!” cried Montgomery; and, spurring his steed, he led the way to the bridge; his eager soldiers followed, and the whole of his center ranks passed over. The flanks advanced, and the bridge, from end to end, was filled with archers, cavalry, men-at-arms, and war-carriages. Cressingham, in the midst, was hallooing in proud triumph to those who occupied the rear of the straining beams, when the blast of a trumpet sounded from the till now silent and immovable Scottish phalanx. It was re-echoed by shouts from behind the passing enemy, and in that moment the supporting piers of the bridge31 were pulled away, and the whole of its mailed throng was precipitated into the stream.
31 This historical fact relating to the bridge is yet exultantly repeated on the spot, and the number of the Southrons who fell beneath the arms of so small a band of Scots, is not less the theme of triumph.-(1809.)
The cries of the maimed and the drowning were joined by the terrific slogan of two bands of Scots. The one with Wallace toward the head of the river, while the other, under the command of Sir John Graham, rushed from its ambuscade on the opposite bank upon the rear of the dismayed troops; and both divisions sweeping all before them, drove those who fought on land into the river, and those who had just escaped the flood, to meet its waves again, a bleeding host.
In the midst of this conflict, which rather seemed a carnage than a battle, Kirkpatrick, having heard the proud shouts of Cressingham on the bridge, now sought him amidst its shattered timbers. With the ferocity of a tiger hunting its prey, he ran from man to man, and as the struggling wretches emerged from the water, he plucked them from the surge; but even while his glaring eye-balls and uplifted ax threatened destruction, he only looked on them; and with imprecations of disapointment, rushed forward on his chase. Almost in despair that the waves had cheated his revenge, he was hurrying on in another direction, when he perceived a body moving through a hollow on his right. He turned, and saw the object of his search crawling amongst the mud and sedges.
“Ha!” cried Kirkpatrick, with a triumphant yell, “art thou yet mine? Damned, damned villain!” cried he, springing upon his breast: “Behold the man you dishonored!-behold the hot cheek your dastard hand defiled! Thy blood shall obliterate the stain; and then Kirkpatrick may again front the proudest in Scotland!”
“For mercy!” cried the horror-struck Cressingham, struggling with preternatural strength to extricate himself.
“Hell would be my portion did I grant any to thee,” cried Kirkpatrick; and with one stroke of the ax he severed the head from its body. “I am a man again!” shouted he, as he held its bleeding veins in his hand, and placed it on the point of his sword. “Thou ruthless priest of Moloch and of Mammon, thou shalt have thine own blood to drink, while I show my general how proudly I am avenged!” As he spoke, he dashed amongst the victorious ranks, and reached Wallace at the very moment he was freeing himself from his fallen horse, which a random arrow had shot under him. Murray, at the same instant, was bringing up the wounded Montgomery, who came to surrender his sword, and to beg quarter for his men. The earl turned deadly pale; for the first object that struck his sight was the fierce knight of Torthorald, walking under the stream of blood which continued to flow from the ghastly head of Cressingham, as he held it exultingly in the air.
“If that be your chief,” cried Montgomery, “I have mistaken him much-I cannot yield my sword to him.”
Murray understood him: “If cruelty be an evil spirit,” returned he, “it has fled every breast in this army to shelter with Sir Roger Kirkpatrick; and its name is Legion! That is my chief!” added he, pointing to Wallace, with an evident consciousness of deriving honor from his command. The chief rose from the ground dyed in the same ensanguined hue which had excited the abhorrence of Montgomery, though it had been drawn from his own veins, and those of his horse. All, indeed, of blood about him seemed to be on his garment; none was in his eyes, none in his heart but what warmed it to mercy and to benevolence for all mankind. His eyes momentarily fell on the approaching figure of Kirkpatrick, who, waving the head in the air, blew from his bugle the triumphal notes of the Pryse, and then cried to his chief: “I have slain the wolf of Scotland! My brave c............