The king, as was to be expected, was thrown into violent grief at the news of the bloody death of his beloved friend. He roused himself to something like energy; vowed deadly vengeance on all concerned, and proceeded to raise and march troops for the purpose. The barons stood in arms to receive him, and for the remainder of the year they maintained a hostile attitude, but fought no battle. The king's resentment, as evanescent as his better purposes, then gave way; the barons consented to solicit his pardon on their knees; and this pretended humility flattered him into compliance. The plate and jewels of Gaveston were surrendered into his hands, and he was implored to confirm their deeds by proclaiming the late favourite a traitor. Here, however, Edward stood firm; he not only refused, but declined also to confirm the ordinances they had passed. But they had accomplished the grand object of destroying the hated favourite, and therefore were the more willing not to press the king too closely on other points. All classes in the nation now began to cherish hopes that they might be led to chastise the Scots, and to win back, if possible, the brilliant conquests of Edward I.
For seven years the feeble and inglorious Edward II. had now suffered the loss of his great father's acquisitions in Scotland, and the reverses and disgraces of the English arms to remain unavenged. Occupied with the society of his favourite, the effeminate pleasures of the court, and the consequent contentions with his barons, he had allowed Bruce to proceed, with all the activity and resources of a great mind, to reassure the people of Scotland, retake the castles and forts, and strengthen himself against attack. Bruce had gradually risen from a condition the most perilous and enfeebled to one of considerable strength. His soldiers now held every stronghold except that of Stirling; and the governor of this fortress, by the permission of Bruce himself, appeared in London to inform the king that he had stipulated that if the castle were not relieved by the feast of St. John the Baptist (the 24th of June) it should be surrendered.
Thus the reign of this weak monarch was the rescue of Scotland. Had not this spiritless king interposed between two such monarchs as the First and Third Edward, it is difficult to suppose that Scotland could have maintained its independence. But, with the golden opportunity of an incompetent enemy, Providence had also sent Scotland one of the greatest men which it ever produced. Robert Bruce, driven to seek refuge in the most inaccessible wilds and mountains during the dominion of Edward I., and even pursued there by some of his own countrymen, such as the Lord of Lorn, and the relatives of the Red Comyn, no sooner saw the incapable ruler who had succeeded the "Hammer of Scotland," as Edward I. is styled on his tomb in Westminster Abbey, than he seized every favourable opportunity for regaining the castles and strongholds from the English. As fast as he mastered them he laid them in ruins, for he could not afford garrisons to defend them, and he knew that the feeling of the country was with him.
Thus at last it came to pass that the English had only the castle of Stirling left in all Scotland; and Sir Philip Mowbray, after a brave defence, had agreed to deliver that up if not relieved by a certain day. He had, as we have said, arrived in London with this message. Perhaps even such a message as this, full of national disgrace, might not have moved Edward out of his epicurean listlessness, but it aroused the nobles. They exclaimed unanimously that it would be an eternal shame thus to let the conquest of Edward I. fall out of their hands without a blow. It was therefore resolved that the king should lead an army to the rescue.
A royal summons was issued for all the military force of England to meet the king at Berwick on the 11th of June, 1314. The most warlike of the British subjects from the French provinces were called forth; troops were enlisted in Flanders; the Irish and Welsh were tempted in great numbers to Edward's standard by hopes of plunder; and altogether an army of not less than 100,000 men, including 40,000 cavalry—3,000 of whom, men and horse, were clad in complete armour—assembled. A large fleet attended to act in concert with the army; and at the head of this mighty force the king took his way towards Edinburgh, advancing along the east coast, and thence along the right bank of the Forth to Stirling.
Robert Bruce, who had been lying before Stirling awaiting the result of Sir Philip Mowbray's mission to London, now saw that the fate of the kingdom must be decided on or near that spot. His army was much inferior to the English one in numbers, amounting to between 30,000 and 40,000 men. But then they were tried troops, fighting for the very existence of their country, and under such leaders as Robert Bruce, Randolph, and Douglas—men whom they had followed into exploits almost miraculous. The English army was far better armed and provided, except in one particular, and that the most essential of all—a commander. Instead of being led by a man of courage, experience, and sagacity, they had a timid, effeminate puppet; and when so much depended on the commander-in-chief—even more than at the present day—that single circumstance was fatal.
Bruce made preparations for the decisive struggle with his usual ability. He had collected his forces in the forest called Torwood; but as he knew the superiority of the English, not merely in numbers, but in their heavy-armed cavalry (far better mounted and equipped than his own) and in their archers (the very best in the world), he determined to provide against these advantages. He therefore led his army into a plain on the south side of Stirling, called the New Park, close beneath which the English army would be obliged to pass through a swampy country broken up with watercourses, while the Scots stood on firm, dry ground. With this morass in front, and the deep, woody, and broken banks of the little rivulet of Bannockburn on his right, so rocky that no troops could pass them, he took care to secure the more assailable ground on his left by digging a great number of pits, about knee-deep, which he covered with brushwood, and over that with turf, so as to look like solid grassy ground. In these pits he is said by some writers to have fixed pointed stakes. The whole ground, says Barbour, the poetical chronicler, was like a honeycomb with the holes. Besides this, Bruce sought to disable the English cavalry by sowing the front of the battle-field with those cruel, four-pointed steel spikes called caltrops and crow-feet, which lamed and disabled the horses which trod upon them.
THE BORE-STONE, BANNOCKBURN, IN WHICH BRUCE PLANTED HIS STANDARD.
Bruce then divided his forces into four divisions. Of these he gave the command of the right wing, flanked by the Bannockburn, to his brother Edward; of the left, near Stirling, to Randolph, who was posted near the church of St. Ninians, and had orders at all risks to prevent the English from throwing succours into the city; Sir James Douglas and Walter the Steward commanded the centre; and Bruce headed the reserve in the rear, consisting of the men of Argyll, the islanders, and his own vassals of Carrick.