The Battle of Falkirk

At dawn on 22 July 1298 the English army, led by Edward I in person, marches through the deserted streets of Linlithgow. It is tired and hungry. None of the soldiers have eaten since the previous day. The king himself is nursing two broken ribs after his horse trod on him during the night. For weeks he has wandered through south-west Scotland, hunting William Wallace. The Scottish leader has led Edward a merry dance through a burnt and wasted landscape, but now the dance is almost over. Acting on a tip-off from a Scottish spy, the king has finally tracked down his quarry.

A band of Scottish spearmen are glimpsed on the hill opposite Linlithgow. Some of Edward's men rush forward to attack, but the Scots have vanished. The king orders his tent to be pitched on the brow of the hill, so he and the bishop of Durham can hear the mass of Magdalene. It is her feast day.

As the sun rises, the entire Scottish host can be seen drawn up on the side of a hill near Falkirk. Wallace has set up his army like a human fortress. Most of his infantry are armed with twelve-foot spears, arranged in four bristling circles or schiltrons. Each schiltron is made up of two rings of spears, linked together and pointing in all directions. For extra protection they are surrounded by fences of stakes tied together with ropes. Between the schiltrons Wallace has placed his archers under Sir John Stewart of Bonkyll, second son of the High Steward of Scotland and uncle of the Black Douglas. Behind the infantry Wallace posts his cavalry, a few hundred knights and men-at-arms.

When informed of all this, Edward hesitates. He proposes to give his soldiers a meal before they go into battle. His captains say this is too risky, since the armies are only divided by a narrow stream. While the men eat, the Scots might attack. This is most unlikely, but Edward is no fit state to argue.

“Be it so,” he says wearily. “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.”

The first division or 'battle' of English heavy cavalry rumbles forward, led by the earls of Hereford and Lincoln. They gallop straight into a bog in front of the Scottish position. While the Scots hoot and jeer, the English struggle out of the mud and ride about to the western end of the Scottish position. Meanwhile the second battle, led by the fighting bishop of Durham, veers off east to avoid the bog. The bishop orders his men to halt until the third line of English cavalry have come up in support. One of his knights, Ralph Basset of Drayton, sneers at his commander:

“It is not your business, bishop, to teach us about battle. You understand Mass. Go and celebrate Mass, and leave the fighting to us.”

The bishop's knights charge and hurl themselves at the nearest schiltron. Meanwhile the first battle has worked its way round to the west and attacked Wallace's archers. At this point most of the Scottish cavalry turn about and quit the field. As the English cavalry charge home, Wallace roars to his men:

“I have brought you to the ring, now dance if you can.”

His bowmen are slaughtered. The English turn their attention to the schiltrons. They kill some of the men in the outer rings, but cannot batter their way through the hedge of spears. The king comes up with the infantry. His Welsh troops are in a bad mood and refuse to fight, but he still has over ten thousand English and Irish to deploy. These include bowmen of the High Peak in Derbyshire and companies of slingers from Nottingham.

Every archer carries twenty-four arrows in his quiver. They swarm forward and loose a storm of missiles at the schiltrons, who can do nothing but soak it up. When they run out of arrows, some of the English pick up stones and lob them at the Scots. As the schiltrons disintegrate, Edward utters a suitably pious exclamation:

“If the Lord is with me, who will stand against me?”

Now the Welsh decide they would rather be on the winning side. Thousands of bare-legged, red-cloaked Welshmen storm onto the field and tear apart the shattered schiltrons. Wallace's men break, only to be hunted down by the Welsh and butchered in droves. Their bodies are heaped across the moor, says an English chronicler, like snow in winter.

Wallace escapes. Some writers later claim he fled with the Scottish cavalry and left his footsoldiers to their fate. Others say he dismounted and fought among the schiltrons until all was lost. Whatever the truth, he gets away. Thousands of his men do not. The English suffer the loss of over three hundred horses, skewered on Scottish spears, but very few men. Their most notable casualty is Sir Brian de Jay, Master of the Templars, pulled down and killed by the Scots after his horse floundered in the bog.

After the battle Edward's victory is celebrated in a rhyme composed by the monks of Lanercost priory:

“Berwick, Dunbar and Falkirk too,
Show all that traitor Scots can do,
England rejoice! Thy prince is peerless.
Where he leads, follow fearless.”

Another contemporary poem, the Song of the Scottish Wars, remarks of the battle:

“The white thorns are cut down, while the black bilberries are gathered; Wallace, thy reputation as a soldier is lost.”