One would have imagined that the fact of the host being drawn from the northern half of England alone would have been obvious from the dates. The orders from which Mr. Oman takes the numbers demanded were only issued from Newminster on May 27,[596] and ordered a rendezvous of the force at Wark (Northumberland) on June 10. The troops were to be there on that day “armis competentibus bene muniti, ac prompti et parati ad proficiscendum” to the immediate relief of Stirling. The time was desperately short, and haste was enjoined (“exasperes, festines”). Moreover, the English leaders were clearly not such fools as Mr. Oman imagines. The “orders” state that foot are wanted because the Scots
nituntur, quantum possint, ... in locis fortibus et morosis (ubi equitibus difficilis patebit accessus) adinvicem congregare.
Common sense tells one that 60,000 foot could not be manœuvred in such country, and would only prove an encumbrance. Edward, therefore, only summoned less than 22,000. As to his horse, Mr. Oman writes: if the English “had, as is said, three thousand equites coperti, men-at-arms on barded horses, the whole cavalry was probably ten thousand” (p. 575). But why? At Falkirk, sixteen years before, Edward I., he writes (p. 565), had
the whole feudal levy of England at his back. He brought three thousand knights on barded horses, and four thousand other men-at-arms.
If 3,000 “barded horses” implied 4,000 other horsemen in 1298, why should they imply 7,000 in 1314? More especially, why should they do so when, as we have seen, the king, in summoning his foot forces, himself described the scene of the campaign as “ubi equitibus difficilis patebit accessus,” so that he was most unlikely to take a large force of cavalry?[597] Estimating the horse on the Falkirk basis, the English host cannot have amounted to more than 30,000 men instead of the 60,000 or 70,000, horse and foot, at which Mr. Oman reckons it.[598]
And what of the Scotch? Let us compare these passages:
| The front between the wood and the marsh was not much more than a mile broad, a space not too great to be defended by the forty[599] thousand men whom Bruce had brought together p. 571). | There was only something slightly more than a mile of slope between the wood and the marshes.... This was well enough for the main line of the Scottish host, formed in three lines of perhaps twenty-five[600] thousand men in all (p. 575). |
It is true that the Scottish king had a fourth battle in reserve, but, according to Mr. Oman’s plan, it was no larger than the others, if so large. It would only, therefore, add some 8,000 men to the above 25,000. Where then are the 40,000?
From the numbers of the forces I now pass to their disposition on the field. With each of his successive narratives of the battle Mr. Oman has given us a special—and different—ground plan. In all three of these the English ‘battles’ are shown as composed of horse and foot,—the horse in the front of each, the foot behind. But in the earliest of these (1885) three such ‘battles’ are shown, in the second (1895) five, and in the third (1898) ten.[601] Will the number increase indefinitely? Again, as to the famous “pottes,” dug as traps for the English horse. In the earliest narrative these are described as covering the Scottish flank “to the left,” and in the second, as dug by the Scots “on their flanks,” though in both the ground plans they are shown in a cluster on the left flank alone. When we turn, however, to the latest account (1898), we find them shown, no longer on the flanks, but as a single line along the Scottish front, and described as dug by Bruce “in front of his line,” so that they “practically covered the whole assailable front of the Scottish host” (p. 572).
Lastly, on that all-important point, the disposition of the English archers, we are shown in the first ground plan the “English archers considerably in advance of the main body,” and, indeed, almost all on the Scottish side of the burn. In his second they are still in front of the host, but no longer across the burn. In his third there are no “archers” shown, and the English ‘battles’ themselves are depicted as close up to the burn. But to realize the completeness of the contradiction, one must place side by side these two passages: