The generality of his prisoners Bruce directed should be kept safe in the citadel; but to Mobray he gave his liberty, and ordered every means to facilitate the commodious journey of that brave knight whom he had requested to convey the insane Lady Strathearn to the protection of her husband.
Mowbray accepted his freedom with gratitude, and gladly set forth with his unhappy charge to meet his sovereign. Expectation of Edward’s approach had been the reason of his withdrawing his herald from the camp of Bruce, and though the king did not arrive time enough to save Stirling, Mowbray yet hoped he might still be continuing his promised march. This anticipation the Southron’s loyalty would not allow him to impart to Bruce, and he bade that generous prince adieu, with the full belief of soon returning to find him the vanquished of Edward.
At the decline of day Bruce returned to his camp, to pass the night in the field with his soldiers, intending next morning to give his last orders to the detachments which he meant to send out under the command of Lennox and Douglas, to disperse themselves over the border counties, and there keep station till that peace should be signed by England which he was determined, by unabated hostilities, to compel.
Having taken these measures for the security of his kingdom and the establishment of his own happiness, he had just returned to his tent on the banks of the Bannockburn when Grimsby, his now faithful attendant, conducted an armed knight into his presence. The light of the lamp which stood on the table, streaming full on the face of the stranger, discovered to the king his English friend, the intrepid Montgomery. With an exclamation of glad surprise Bruce would have clasped him in his arms; but Montgomery dropping on his knee, exclaimed, “Receive a subject as well as a friend, victorious and virtuous prince! I have forsworn the vassalage of the Plantagenets; and thus, without title or land, with only a faithful heart, Gilbert Hambledon comes to vow himself yours and Scotland’s forever.”
Bruce raised him from the ground, and welcoming him with the warm embrace of friendship, inquired the cause of so extraordinary an abjuration of his legal sovereign. “No light matter,” observed the king, “could have so wrought upon my noble Montgomery!”
“Montgomery no more!” replied the ear, with indignant eagerness; “when I threw the insignia of my earldom at the feet of the unjust Edward, I told him that I would lay the saw to the root of the nobility I had derived from his house, and cut it through; that I would sooner leave my posterity without titles and without wealth, than deprive them of real honor.62 I have done as I said! And yet I come not without a treasure, for the sacred corpse of William Wallace is now in my bark, floating on the waves of the Forth!”
62 This event is perpetuated in the crest of the noble family of Hamilton in Scotland.
The subjugation of England would hardly have been so welcome to Bruce as this intelligence. He received it with an eloquent though unutterable look of gratitude. Hambledon continued: “On the tyrant summoning the peers of England to follow him to the destruction of Scotland, Gloucester got excused under a plea of illness, and I could not but show a disinclination to obey. This occasioned some remarks from Edward respecting my known attachment to the Scottish cause, and they were so couched as to draw from me this honest answer; my heart would not, for the wealth of the world, permit me to join in the projected invasion, since I had seen the spot in my own country where a most inordinate ambition had cut down the flower of all knighthood, because he was a Scot who would not sell his birthright! The king left me in wrath and threatened to make me recant my words — I as proudly declared I would maintain them. Next morning, being in waiting on the prince, I entered his chamber, and found John le de Spencer (the coward who so basely insulted Wallace on the day of his condemnation); he was sitting with his highness. On my offering the services due from my office, this worthless minion turned on me, and accused me of having declined joining the army for the sole purpose of executing some plot in London, devised between me and my Scottish partisans for the subversion of the English monarchy. I denied the charge. He enforced it with oaths, and I spurned his allegations. The prince, who believed him, furiously gave me the lie, and commanded me as a traitor to leave his presence. I refused to stir an inch till I made the base heart of Le de Spencer retract his falsehood. The coward took courage on his master’s support, and drawing his sword upon me, in language that would blister my tongue to repeat, threatened to compel my departure. He struck me on the face with his weapon. The arms of his prince could not then save him; I thrust him through the body, and he fell. Edward ran on me with his dagger, but I wrested it from him. Then it was that, I reply to his menaces, I revoked my fealty to a sovereign I abhorred, a prince I despised. Leaving his presence before the fluctuations of so versatile a mind could fix upon seizing me, I hastened to Highgate, to convey away the body of our friend from its brief sanctuary. The same night I embarked it and myself on board a ship of my own, and am now at your feet, brave and just king! — no longer Montgomery, but a true Scot in heart and loyalty.”
“And as a kinsman, generous Hambledon!” returned Bruce, “I receive and will portion thee. My paternal lands of Cadzow, on the Clyde, shall be thine forever; and may thy posterity be as worthy of the inheritance as their ancestor is of all my love and confidence.”
Hambledon, having received his new sovereign’s directions concerning the disembarkation of those sacred remains, which the young king declared he should welcome as the pledge of Heaven to bless his victories with peace, returned to the haven, where Wallace rested in that sleep which even the voice of friendship could not disturb.
At the hour of the midnight watch, the trumpets of approaching heralds resounded without the camp. Bruce hastened to the council-tent to receive the now anticipated tidings. The communications of Hambledon had given him reason to expect another struggle for his kingdom, and the message of the trumpets declared it might be a mortal one.
At the head of a hundred thousand men, Edward had forced a rapid passage through the Lowlands, and was now within a few hours’ march of Stirling, fully determined to bury Scotland under her own slain, or, by one decisive blow, restore her to his empire.
When this was uttered by the English herald, Bruce turned to Ruthven with an heroic smile:
“Let him come, my brave barons, and he shall find that Bannockburn shall page with Cambus–Kenneth!”
The strength of the Scottish army did not amount to more than thirty thousand men against this host of Southrons. But the relics of Wallace were there! His spirit glowed in the heart of Bruce. The young monarch lost not the advantage of choosing his ground first, and therefore, as his power was deficient in cavalry, he so took his field as to compel the enemy to make it a battle of infantry alone.
To protect his exposed flank from the innumerable squadrons of Edward, he dug deep and wide pits near to Bannockburn, and having overlaid their mouths with turf and brushwood, proceeded to marshal his little phalanx on the shore of that brook till his front stretched to St. Ninan’s Monastery.
The center was led by Lord Ruthven and Walter Stewart; the right owned by the valiant leading of Douglas and Ramsay, supported by the brave young Gordon with all his clan; and the left was put in charge of Lennox, with Sir Thomas Randolph, a crusade chieftain, who, like Lindsay and others, had lately returned from distant lands, and now zealously embraced the cause of his country.
Bruce stationed himself at the head of the reserve; with him were the veterans Loch-awe, and Kirkpatrick, and Lord Bothwell with the true De Longueville, and the men of Lanark, all determined to make this division the stay of their little army, or the last sacrifice for Scottish liberty and its martyred champion’s corpse. There stood the sable hearse of Wallace, rather than yield the ground which he had rendered doubly precious by having made it the scene and the guerdon of his invincible deeds! When Kirkpatrick approached the side of his dead chief, he burst into tears, and his sobs alone proclaimed his participation in the solemnity. The vow spread to the surrounding legions, and was echoed, with mingled cries and acclamations, from the furthest ranks.
“My leader, in death as in life!” exclaimed Bruce, clasping his friend’s sable shroud to his heart; “thy pale corpse shall again redeem the country which cast thee, living, amongst devouring lions! Its presence shall fight and conquer for thy friend and king!”
Before the chiefs turned to resume their martial stations, the abbot of Inchaffray drew near with the mysterious iron box, which Douglas had caused to be brought from St. Fillan’s Priory. On presenting it to the young monarch, he repeated the prohibition which had been given with it, and added, “Since, then, these canonized relics (for none can doubt they are so) have found protection under the no less holy arm of St. Fillan, he now delivers them to your youthful majesty, to penetrate their secrets, and to nerve your mind with redoubled trust in the saintly host.”
“The saints are to be honored, reverend father, and on that principle I shall not invade their mysteries till the God in whom alone I trust, marks me with more than the name of king; till, by a decisive victory, he establishes me the approved champion of my country — the worthy successor of him before whose mortal body and immortal spirit I now emulate his deeds. But as a memorial that the host of heaven do indeed learn from the bright abodes to wish well to this day, let these holy relics repose with those of the brave till the issue of the battle.”
Bruce, having placed his array, disposed the supernumeraries of his army, the families of his soldiers, and other apparently useless followers of the camp, in the rear of an adjoining hill.
By daybreak the whole of the Southron army came in view. The van, consisting of archers and men-at-arms, displayed the banner of Earl de Warenne; the main body was led on by Edward himself, supported by a train of his most redoubted generals. As they approached, the bishop of Dunkeld stood on the face of the opposite hill between the abbots of Cambus–Keneth and Inchaffray, celebrating mass in the sight of the opposing armies. He passed along in front of the Scottish lines barefoot, with the crucifix in his hand, and in few but forcible words exhorted them by every sacred hope, to fight with an unreceding step for their rights, their king, and the corpse of William Wallace! At this abjuration, which seemed the call of Heaven itself, the Scots fell on their knees, to confirm their resolution with a vow. The sudden humiliation of their posture excited an instant triumph in the haughty mind of Edward, and spurring forward, he shouted aloud, “They yield! They cry for mercy!”
“They cry for mercy!” returned Percy, trying to withhold his majesty, “but not from us. On that ground on which they kneel, they will be victorious or find their graves.”
The king contemned this opinion of the earl, and inwardly believing that, now Wallace was dead, he need fear no other opponent (for he knew not that even his cold remains were risen in array against him), he ordered his men to charge. The horsemen, to the number of thirty thousand, obeyed; and, rushing forward, with the hope of overwhelming the Scots ere they could rise from their knees, met a different destiny. They found destruction amid the trenches and on the pikes in the way, and with broken ranks and fearful confusion, fell or fled under the missive weapons which poured on them from a neighboring hill. De Valence was overthrown and severely wounded, and being carried off the field, filled the rear ranks with dismay; while the king’s division was struck with consternation at so disastrous a commencement of an action in which they had promised themselves so easy a victory. Bruce seized the moment of confusion, and seeing his little army distressed by the arrows of the English, he sent Bothwell round with a resolute body of men to drive those destroying archers from the heights which they occupied. This was effected; and Bruce coming up with his reserve, the battle in the center became close, obstinate, and decisive. Many fell before t............