Читать книгу Scotland: The Story of a Nation - Magnus Magnusson - Страница 58

Notwithstanding this unwillingness of the great nobility to support him, Wallace assembled a large army; for the middling, but especially the lower classes, were very much attached to him. He marched boldly against the King of England, and met him near the town of Falkirk.

TALES OF A GRANDFATHER, CHAPTER VII

High on a hill to the south-east of Falkirk a mounted patrol of Scottish spearmen caught sight of the English host moving in their direction through the early-morning mist. By the time a detachment of English cavalry had galloped up the hill to engage them, according to the English chroniclers, the Scots had disappeared. Local tradition has it that the leader of the patrol was none other than Wallace himself, perched on a great boulder on a ridge where the village of Wallacestone now stands. The boulder itself has disappeared, but in its place is a tall pillar, erected in 1810, dedicated to the memory of William Wallace.

From that vantage point, Wallace (or whoever else might have been leading the patrol) would have had a commanding view of the surrounding countryside: to his right the English army moving inexorably forward, to his left the Scottish army also, perhaps, on the move – but not, it would seem, yet aware that the English were almost upon them.

We can only speculate about what went through Wallace’s mind when he saw, or was told of, the English advance. Had he expected to see the English army on its way back towards Edinburgh, providing his forces with an easy target for harassment and ambush? Or did he welcome the opportunity of a great showdown with an army which, according to intelligence from his spies, was exhausted and demoralised? Or … or … or?

All conjecture apart, the fact is that on the morning of 22 July 1298, Wallace drew up his army on the slope of a hill somewhere in the Falkirk area, with a forest behind him and a stream with a low-lying boggy meadow in front of him.

What sort of a force had he been able to muster to face the armoured might of England? After his autumn foray into the north of England, Wallace – who now had the authority given to the Guardian of Scotland – had devoted considerable time to enlisting and training a standing army from the Lowlands and Borders for the defence of the realm. The Scotichronicon gives details of his conscription policy – a policy which cut right across the customary obligations of feudal duty of a man to his master – and the meticulous chain of command from groups of five right up to the general himself.

The nucleus of this army was based on spearmen: trained infantry equipped with twelve-foot spears and deployed in huge ‘schiltrons’. These were, in effect, oval-shaped phalanxes – formations of massed ranks, bristling on all sides with spears like monstrous hedgehogs. Each schiltron might consist of 1,500 to two thousand spearmen. In addition, there was a corps of skilled archers from Ettrick under the command of James the Steward’s brother, Sir John Stewart of Jedburgh. Where Wallace’s army was sadly deficient, however, was in heavy cavalry, the armoured squadrons of experienced fighting knights which Edward of England could require as a feudal obligation; the Scots horse were more lightly armed – skirmishers rather than cavalry. So when the two armies faced up to one another on the battlefield at Falkirk, there was a very considerable imbalance in military power as well as in numbers.

The site of the battle cannot now be determined with any certainty, alas. The English chroniclers provided a description of the topographical features, but this was general enough to fit a number of candidate places; there are no prominent landmarks, as at Stirling, which would help to pinpoint the spot, and the battle has been sited in various corners of the Falkirk district. However, the course of the battle, when it was joined, seems clear enough from the detailed English accounts.

The Scottish army was drawn up in four (perhaps five) massed schiltrons, each protected by a ring of sharpened wooden stakes roped together. Between the schiltrons were the Ettrick archers, and at the rear was a small force of cavalry provided by the nobility, under the command of Sir John Comyn, the ‘Red Comyn’ of Badenoch. It has been estimated that the Scots were outnumbered by two to one, at least, by the English host.

Before the battle began, Wallace is said by the English chroniclers to have shouted to his schiltrons, ‘I have brought you to the ring – now dance if you can.’ As a battle slogan to enthuse an army, it had a curiously resigned ring to it which chimed ominously with the peril of the situation.

The onset of the English attack was a confused business. Apparently the Welsh foot-soldiers, still seething with resentment at the English, refused to advance against the formidable spear-walls of the schiltrons. So the first charge came from two of the English cavalry squadrons. The leading knights galloped forward in an impetuous and disorderly rush and found themselves floundering in the grassy morass which separated them from the schiltrons; after an undignified scramble out of the marsh they wheeled towards firmer ground on the left to attack from the flank. The second cavalry wave was more circumspect, and cantered diagonally to the right before turning to charge into the other Scottish flank.

The schiltrons held firm; the English knights could make no impression on them, and many of their horses were impaled on the deadly spears. Then came an extraordinary turn of events: the Scots cavalry, which should have gone into action to distract the English knights who were thundering in from both sides, simply abandoned the field without having struck a blow. This was so utterly unexpected that no one has been able to explain it properly. The later Scottish sources, desperate to find an excuse for the defeat of their peerless hero, Wallace, blamed it on either cowardice or a plot by the English nobles to ensure that Wallace would be beaten, even killed. Neither explanation carries much conviction. It remains the great mystery of the Battle of Falkirk.

Even without the help of their cavalry the schiltrons stood firm, and the English knights were unable to break their ranks. So the knights turned instead on the Ettrick archers who, now without the protection of the cavalry, were a much easier target. Their commander, Sir John Stewart, leaped from his mount to stand by his men, but after a gallant resistance they were cut down, every one.

Still the schiltrons held, however; so now Edward recalled his cavalry and called instead upon his ultimate weapon – his own Lancashire archers. They were equipped with the new longbows which would later destroy the chivalry of France at Crécy, Poitiers and Agincourt; their iron-tipped arrows could pierce leather and even chain-mail at a range of six hundred metres. With no cavalry to disrupt them the archers fired volley after relentless volley with deadly accuracy into the packed ranks of the schiltrons – and now, at last, the schiltrons began to waver as great gaps appeared in their defences. This was the turning-point. As the schiltrons disintegrated the English cavalry charged in again, and this time there was no keeping them out. The fighting became a slaughter as the spearmen were overwhelmed and the survivors tried to flee to safety in the cover of the woods behind them.

Wallace himself and some of his men managed to escape to fight another day, but the Scottish casualties had been horrendous. Scotland’s army had been all but annihilated.

The defeat at Falkirk was as total as the victory at Stirling Bridge had been. Wallace had lost some of his most loyal supporters, like Sir John Stewart. In particular, he had lost his trusted and devoted second-in-command, Sir John de Graham, the local hero of the battle: Grahamston, a district of Falkirk, was named in his memory. His elaborate tomb in the graveyard of Falkirk Old and St Modans Church, caged in an ornate wrought-iron cupola, carries epitaphs in Latin and (later) Scots:

Here lyes Sir John the Grame, baith [both] wight [brave] and wise,

Ane [One] of the chiefs who rescewit [rescued] Scotland thrise [thrice].

Ane better knight not to the world was lent [given],

Nor was gude [good] Grame of truth and hardiment [boldness].

The tombstone and the tomb, with its knightly effigy lying on top and a cast of Graham’s sword, have been repaired and restored on several occasions. Graham’s memory is still cherished here.

The dust of that grievous battle has still not settled, seven hundred years later. From it emerged a legend which has survived down the centuries against all the evidence to the contrary: the idea that Robert Bruce, the future king, had fought on the English side against his countrymen at the Battle of Falkirk. Such treachery! Indeed, according to the Scotichronicon and, later, Blind Harry’s Wallace, Bruce himself had led the pursuit of the fleeing Scots and had overtaken Wallace, whom he thereupon upbraided for his arrogance in trying to oppose the power of the King of England ‘and of the more powerful section of Scotland’ – to which Wallace gave this dignified reply:

‘Robert, Robert, it is your inactivity and womanish cowardice that spur me to the liberation of the native land that is legally yours. And indeed it is an effete man even now, ready as he is to advance from bed to battle, from the shadow into the sunlight, with a pampered body accustomed to a soft life feebly taking up the weight of battle for the liberation of his own country – it is he who has made me so presumptuous, perhaps even foolish, and has compelled me to attempt or seize these tasks.’ With these words William himself looked to a speedy flight, and with his men sought safety.

On account of all this, Robert himself was like one awakening from a deep sleep; the power of Wallace’s words so entered his heart that he no longer had any thought of favouring the views of the English.

This alleged exchange between Wallace and Robert Bruce, which was featured prominently in the film Braveheart, has been dismissed by scholars as a complete fabrication: there is no evidence that Bruce was present at the battle. No amount of imaginative embellishment or partisan justification can disguise the bitter fact that Wallace, the leader who had inspired a whole people to fight for independence and nationhood, had failed in his greatest test – and failed disastrously.

Fiona Watson says:

The problem has always been to explain the fact that Wallace could win a stunning victory at Stirling Bridge and then, less than a year later, lose so badly at Falkirk. Personally, I think that Wallace was desperately unlucky. He was without his outstanding military commander, Sir Andrew Murray; and he was up against a new and devastatingly effective weapon – the long-range English longbow. Wallace took a gamble and lost; in 1314, Bruce would take a similar gamble and win. Sometimes you have to take the gamble – otherwise you never can win. And history would be written very differently if the outcomes of these two battles had been different.

And yet defeat did not bring humiliation. Wallace had given point and pride to popular resistance against English dominion, and despite the shattering outcome of the Battle of Falkirk, that spirit of resistance was not broken. If anything, paradoxically, it was greatly strengthened – and now the nobles who had failed to rally to Wallace would lead the resistance for the next six years.