On beholding Shelly's fall a shout of rage arose from his comrades the Boulogners, and from the long array of demi-lances, whom the Duke of Somerset once more ordered to attack the Scottish right.
"By my faith, duke, you might as well bid me charge a castle wall?" was the angry reply of the Lord Grey, from whose face and neck the blood was still streaming; but now, by the advice of the skilful Earl of Warwick, the Spanish and German arquebusiers, with a body of English archers, were ordered to assail the Scottish columns in front, while several pieces of cannon played upon one flank from Fawside Hill, and the shipping still swept the other with terrible results. The foreign auxiliaries, in ranks eight deep, poured in their heavy shot, firing over forks or rests, full into the faces of the Scottish infantry, who, by the destruction of their light cavalry on the preceding day, were without means of attacking either the cannoniers or the continental troops. Thus the battle soon became general along the whole plain, and the cry of the Scots,—
"Come on, ye dogs! ye heretics!" rose incessantly above the din of the strife; for now there was the rancorous rivalry of creed to inflame the rivalry of race, and the transmitted hatred of a thousand years. Moreover, in this engagement the English were burning to avenge the defeat of their troops at Ancrumford and Paniershaugh, where Sir Ralf Evers and many men had been cut to pieces by the Earl of Angus; and now, filled with fury on beholding the destruction of his castle and the pitiless devastation of his lands, no man in all the army of Arran on this day of blood hewed a passage further into the English host than old Claude Hamilton of Preston, who forgot all about his proffered titles, and with his two-handed sword sent many a younger man to his long home.
The combined movement of the Spaniards, under Gamboa, with the Germans, under Sir Pietre Mewtas, seconded by a body of English archers showering flight and sheaf arrows point-blank into the teeth of the Scottish line, on which (as already related) the cannon were playing from both flanks, drove it into confusion; and, after suffering dreadful losses, the great column of Angus first began insensibly to retire.
At this crisis the whole air seemed laden with sound; The booming of cannon; the rattling explosion of arquebuses, hand-guns, and calivers; the smoke of which rolled like carded wool before the wind; the twang of bows; the whiz of passing arrows, which planted all the turf as they stuck with feathers upward; the clang of swords on swords or helmets; the galloping of horses; the voices of many thousands of men uttering triumphant hurrahs, fierce and bitter imprecations or cries of agony, as they were struck down wounded and bleeding to the earth;—all were there to make a mighty medley of uproar. The air of the sunny morning became dusky with the dust raised by the feet of men rushing in tens of thousands to the mortal shock; and sulphureous with the smoke of gunpowder, which was then almost a new element in Scottish war; and to this new ally in the hands of their foreign auxiliaries on one side, and to the treason and incapacity of the Scottish leaders on the other, England eventually owed the victory.
The recoil of Lord Angus's division caused a panic to run along the whole Scottish line.
It began to waver, to pause, and fall back!
"Treason! treason! to your ranks—to your standards! forward and follow me!" cried Arran, whose magnificent armour, covered with gold embossings made him the aim of many an archer, as he galloped along the line to restore order. He had already had three horses killed under him; the golden oak and pearl-studded coronet had been hewn from his helmet; the diamond cross of St. Andrew and the golden shells of St. Michael had been torn from his breast; he had broken his sword and lance, and now wielded a steel truncheon; his eyes were wild and bloodshot, and his voice had become hoarse by the reiterated orders he had issued. His efforts were vain; and vain also were those of Florence, and a few who attempted to second them; for the rapid advance of the Earl of Warwick's column, and another well-directed volley from the foreign auxiliaries, completed the discomfiture of the ill-led, ill-posted, and ill-disciplined Scots. A total and most disastrous rout ensued! The great army, which one historian likens to "a steely sea agitated by the wind," after a few moments was seen breaking into a thousand fragments, and dispersed in all directions.
"They fly! they fly!" burst from the victors.
All became flight, chaos, confusion; and the fugitives, in their haste to escape the English cavalry, threw aside all that might encumber their movements. More than twenty thousand spears and partisans strewed the ground, with helmets, cuirasses, back-plates, bucklers, gauntlets, swords, daggers, mauls, Jedwood axes, bows, belts, sheafs of arrows, drums, banners, trumpets, cannon, pistols, hand-guns, and all the débris of a mighty host; and the pursuit of the unarmed fugitives continued from one in the day until six in the evening—nor even then were the English sated with slaughter.