Toward a due understanding of the extraordinary merits of Robert Bruce it is necessary to take a cursory view of the power with which he had to contend and of the resources of that kingdom, which, at that critical juncture, Providence committed to his charge. The power of England, against which it was his lot to struggle, was, perhaps, the most formidable which then existed in Europe. The native valor of her people, distinguished even under the weakest reign, was then led on and animated by a numerous and valiant feudal nobility. That bold and romantic spirit of enterprise which led the Norman arms to the throne of England and enabled Roger de Hauteville, with thirty followers, to win the crown of the Two Sicilies still animated the English nobles; and to this hereditary spirit was added the remembrance of the matchless glories which their arms had acquired in Palestine.
The barons who were then arrayed against Robert Bruce were the descendants of those iron warriors who combated for Christendom under the walls of Acre, and defeated the whole Saracen strength in the battle of Ascalon; the banners that were then unfurled for the conquest of Scotland were those which had waved victorious over the arms of Saladin; and the sovereign who led them bore the crown that had been worn by Richard in the Holy Wars, and wielded in his sword the terror of that mighty name at which even the accumulated hosts of Asia were appalled.
Nor were the resources of England less formidable for nourishing and maintaining the war. The prosperity which had grown up with the equal laws of our Saxon ancestors, and which the tyranny of the early Norman kings had never completely extinguished, had revived and spread under the wise and beneficent reigns of Henry II and Edward I. The legislative wisdom of the last monarch had given to the English law greater improvements than it had ever received in any subsequent reigns, while his heroic valor had subdued the rebellious spirit of his barons and trained their united strength to submission to the throne. The acquisition of Wales had removed the only weak point of his wide dominion and added a cruel and savage race to the already formidable mass of his armies. The navy of England already ruled the seas, and was prepared to carry ravage and desolation over the wide and defenseless Scottish coast; while a hundred thousand men armed in the magnificent array of feudal war and led on by the ambition of a feudal nobility poured into a country which seemed destined only to be their prey.
But, most of all, in the ranks of this army were found the intrepid yeomanry of England—that peculiar and valuable body of men which has in every age contributed as much to the stability of English character as the celebrity of the English arms, and which then composed those terrible archers whose prowess rendered them so formidable to all the armies of Europe. These men, whose valor was warmed by the consciousness of personal freedom and whose strength was nursed among the inclosed fields and green pastures of English liberty, conferred, till the discovery of firearms rendered personal accomplishments of no avail, a matchless advantage on the English armies. The troops of no other nation could produce a body of men in the least comparable to them, either in strength, discipline, or individual valor; and such was the dreadful efficacy with which they used their weapons that not only did they mainly contribute to the subsequent triumphs of Cressy and Azincourt, but at Poitiers and Hamildon Hill they alone gained the victory, with hardly any assistance from the feudal tenantry.
These troops were well known to the Scottish soldiers, and had established their superiority over them in many bloody battles, in which the utmost efforts of undisciplined valor had been found unavailing against their practiced discipline and superior equipment. The very names of the barons who headed them were associated with an unbroken career of conquest and renown, and can hardly be read yet without a feeling of exultation.
Names that to fear were never known,
Bold Norfolk’s Earl de Brotherton
And Oxford’s famed De Vere;
Ross, Montague, and Manly came,
And Courtney’s pride and Percy’s fame,
Names known too well in Scotland’s war
At Falkirk, Methoven, and Dunbar,
Blazed broader yet in after years
At Cressy red and fell Poitiers.
Against this terrible force, before which in the succeeding reign the military power of France was compelled to bow, Bruce had to array the scanty troops of a barren land and the divided force of a turbulent nobility. Scotland was in his time fallen low, indeed, from that state of peace and prosperity in which she was found at the first invasion of Edward I, and on which so much light has been thrown by the ingenious research of our own times. The disputed succession had sowed the seeds of inextinguishable jealousies among the nobles. The gold of England had corrupted many to betray their country’s cause; and the fatal ravages of English invasion had desolated the whole plains, from which resources for carrying on the war could be drawn.
All the heroic valor, the devoted patriotism, and the personal prowess of Wallace had been unable to stem the torrent of English invasion; and when he died the whole nation seemed to sink under the load against which his unexampled fortitude had long enabled it to struggle. These unhappy jealousies among the nobles, to which his downfall was owing, still continued and almost rendered hopeless any attempt to combine their forces; while the thinned population and ruined husbandry of the country seemed to prognosticate nothing but utter extirpation from a continuance of the war. Nor was the prospect less melancholy from a consideration of the combats which had taken place. The short spear and light shield of the Scotch had been found utterly unavailing against the iron panoply and powerful horses of the English barons, while the hardy and courageous mountaineers perished in vain under the dreadful tempest of the English archery.
What, then, must have been the courage of the youthful prince, who, after having been driven for shelter to an island on the north of Ireland, could venture with only forty followers to raise the standard of independence in Scotland against the accumulated force of this mighty power! What the resources of that understanding, which, though intimately acquainted from personal service with the tried superiority of the English arms, could foresee in his barren and exhausted country the means of combatting them! What the ability of that political conduct which could reunite the jarring interests and smother the deadly feuds of the Scottish nobles! And what the capacity of that noble warrior who, in the words of the contemporary historian,[22] could “unite the prowess of the first knight to the conduct of the greatest general of his age,” and was able in the space of six years to raise the Scottish arms from the lowest point of depression to such a pitch of glory that even the redoubted archers and haughty chivalry of England fled at the sight of the Scottish banner!
Nor was it only in the field that the great and patriotic conduct of Robert Bruce was displayed. In endeavor to restore the almost ruined fortunes of his country and to heal the wounds which a war of unparalleled severity had brought upon this people he exhibited the same wise and beneficent policy. Under his auspicious rule, husbandry revived, arts were encouraged, and the turbulent barons were awed into subjection. Scotland recovered during his administration in a great measure from the devastation that had preceded it; and the peasants, forgetting the stern warrior in the beneficent monarch, long remembered his sway under the name of the “good King Robert’s reign.”