The Scottish Chiefs

by Jane Porter

On Badenoch opening the regent's dispatches, he found they repeated his wish for his brave coadjutors to proceed to the execution of the plan they had sanctioned with their approbation; they were to march directly for Stirling, and on their way dispense the superabundance of the plunder amongst the perishing inhabitants of the land. He then informed the earl, that while the guard he had left him with would escort the liberated Scots beyond the Forth, the remainder of the troops should be thus disposed: Lord Andrew Murray was to remain chief in command in Clydesdale; Sir Eustace Maxwell, to give up the wardship of Douglas to Sir John Monteith; and then advance into Annandale, to assist Sir Roger Kirkpatrick, who must now have begun the reduction of the castles in the west of that province. At the close of this account, Wallace added, that himself, with his brave band, were going to traverse the English counties to the Tees' mouth; and should Heaven bless his arms, he would send the produce round by the Berwick fleet, to replenish the exhausted stores of the Highlands. "Next year," continued he, "I trust they will have ample harvests of their own."

And what Wallace said he hoped to do, he did.

The Southrons' country was panic-struck at the defeat of Percy, his beaten army, flying in all directions before the conquering legions, gave such dreadful and hyperbolical accounts of their might, and of the giant prowess of their leader, that as soon as ever the Scottish spears were seen rising the summit of any hill, or even gleaming along the horizon, every village was deserted, every cot left without inhabitant; and corn, and cattle, and every kind of property fell into the hands of the Scots.

Lord Precy lay immovable with wounds in his castle at Alnwick;** and his hopeless state, by intimidating his followers, contradicted the orders he gave, to face the marauding enemy. Several times they attempted to obey, but as often showed their inability. They collected under arms; but the moment their foe appeared, they fled within the castle walls, or buried themselves in deep obscurities amongst the surrounding hills. Not a sheaf in the fields of Northumberland did the Scots leave, to knead into bread for its earl; not a head of cattle to smoke upon his board. The country was sacked from sea to sea. But far different was its appearance from that of the trampled valleys of Scotland. There, fire had burned up the soil; the hand of violence had leveled the husbandman's cottage; had buried his implements in the ruins; had sacrificed himself on its smoking ashes! There, the fatherless babe wept its unavailing wants, and at its side sat the distracted widow, wringing her hands in speechless misery; for there lay her murdered husband—here, her perishing child!

**This famous castle, of so many heroic generations, is still the princely residence of the head of the house of Percy.

With such sights the heart of Wallace had been pierced, when he passed through the lowland counties of his country; nay, as he scoured the highland districts of the Grampians, even there had he met the foot of barbarian man, and cruel desolation. For thus it was that the Southron garrisons had provisional themselves; by robbing the poor of their bread; and, when they resisted, firing their dwellings, and punishing the refractory with death.

But not so the generous enmity of Sir William Wallace. His commission was, not to destroy, but to save; and though he carried his victorious army to feed on the Southron plains, and sent the harvests of England to restore the wasted fields of Scotland, yet he did no more. No fire blasted his path; no innocent blood cried against him from the ground! When the impetuous zeal of his soldiers, flushed with victory, and in the heat of vengeance, would have laid several hamlets in ashes, he seized the brand from the destroying party, and throwing it into an adjoining brook: "Show yourselves worthy the advantages you have gained," cried he, "by the moderation with which you use them. Consider yourselves as the soldiers of the all powerful God, who alone has conducted you to victory; for, with a few, has he not enabled us to subdue a host? Behave as becomes your high destiny; and debase not yourselves by imitating the hirelings of ambition, who receive, as the wages of their valor, the base privilege to ravage and to murder.

"I wish you to distinguish between a spirit of reprisal, in what I do, and that of retaliation, which actuates your present violence. What our enemies had robbed us of, as far as they can restore, I take again. Their bread shall feed our famishing country; their wool clothe its nakedness. But blood for blood, unless the murderer could be made to bleed, is a doctrine abhorrent to God and to humanity. What justice is there in destroying the habitations and lives of a set of harmless people, because the like cruelty has been committed by a lawless army of their countrymen, upon our unoffending brethren? Your hearts may make the answer. But if they are hardened against the pleadings of humanity, let prudence show your interest in leaving those men alive, and with their means unimpaired, who will produce other harvests, if need be, to fill our scantier granaries.

"Thus I reason with you, and I hope many are convinced; but they who are insensible to argument must fear authority, and I declare that every man who inflicts injury on the houses, or on the persons of the quietest peasantry of this land, shall be punished as a traitor to the state."

According to the different dispositions of men, this reasoning prevailed. And from the end of September (the time when Wallace first entered Northumberland), to the month of November, when (having scoured the counties of England, even to the gates of York) he returned to Scotland, not an offense was committed which could occasion his merciful spirit regret. It was on All Saints Day when he again approached the Esk; and so great was his spoil that his return seemed more like some vast caravan moving the merchandise of half the world, than the march of an army which had so lately passed that river, a famishing, though valourous host.