CAMEO XXXVIII.

Bannock

burn.

the force of his arm, that the knight dropped dead from his horse, with his skull cleft nearly in two.

The Scottish chiefs, proud of their King's prowess, but terrified by the peril he had run, entreated him to be more careful of his person; but he only returned by a tranquil smile, as he looked at the blunted edge of his weapon, saying "he had spoilt his good battle-axe."

In revenge for this attack, the Scots pursued the English vanguard for a short distance, but the king recalled them to their ranks and made speech, calling on them all to be in arms by break of day, forbidding any man to break his line for pursuit or plunder, and promising that the heirs of such as might fall should receive their inheritance without the accustomed feudal fine.

All night there was the usual scene; the smaller and more resolute army watched and prayed, the larger revelled and slept. Edward, among his favourites and courtiers, had hardly believed that there would be any battle, and had no notion of generalship, keeping his whole army compressed together, so that their large numbers were encumbering instead of being available. Five hundred horse were closely attached to his person, with the Earl of Pembroke, Sir Ingeltram de Umfraville, and Sir Giles de Argentine, the last a gallant knight of St. John. When he rode forward in the morning, Edward was absolutely amazed at the sight of the well-ordered lines of Scottish infantry, and turning to Umfraville, asked if he really thought those Scots would fight! At that moment Abbot Maurice of Inchaffray, who had just been celebrating mass, came bare-footed before the array, holding up a crucifix, and raising his hand in blessing, as all the army bent to the earth, with the prayers of men willingly offering themselves.

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They kneel! they kneel!" cried Edward. mercy."

"They are asking

'They are, my liege," said Umfraville, "but it is of God, not of us. These men will win the day, or die upon the field."

"Be it so," said the King, and gave the word.

The Earls of Gloucester and Hereford rushed to the charge with loud war-cries. Each Scot stood fast, blowing wild notes on the horn he wore at his neck, and the close ranks of infantry stood like rocks against the encounter of the mailed horse, their spears clattering against the armour in the shock till the hills rang again. Randolph meanwhile led his square steadily on, till it seemed swallowed up in the sea of English; and Keith, with the five hundred horsemen of the Scots army, making a sudden turn around Milton bog, burst in flank upon the English archery, ever the main strength of the army. long-bow had won, and was again to win, many a fair field; but at Bannockburn the manoeuvre of the Scots was ruinous to the yeomanry, who had no weapons fit for a close encounter with mounted men-atarms, and were trodden down and utterly dispersed.

The

The ground was hotly contested by the two armies; banners rose and fell, and the whole field was slippery with blood and strewn with

66

fragments of armour, shivers of lances and arrows, and rags of scarfs
and pennons.
The English troops began to waver. "They fail they
fail!" was the Scottish cry, and as they pressed on with double
vehemence there rose a shout that another host was coming to their
aid. It was only the servants on the Gillies Hill, crowding down in the
excitement of watching the battle, but to the dispirited English they
appeared a formidable reinforcement of the enemy; and Robert Bruce,
profiting by the consternation thus occasioned, charged with his reserve,
and decided the fate of the day. His whole line advancing, the
English array finally broke, and began to disperse. Earl Gilbert of
Gloucester made an attempt to rally, and, mounted on a noble steed, a
present from the King, rode furiously against Edward Bruce; but his
retainers hung back, and he was borne down and slain before his
armorial bearings were recognised. Clifford and twenty-seven other
Barons were slain among the pits, and the rout became general. The
Earl of Pembroke, taking the King's horse by the bridle, turned him
from the field, and his five hundred guards went with him. Sir Giles
de Argentine saw them safely out of the battle, then saying, "It is not
my custom to fly !” he bade Edward farewell, and turned back, crying,
"An Argentine!" and was slain by Edward Bruce's knights.

Douglas followed hotly on the King, with sixty horse, and on the way met Sir Laurence Abernethy with twenty more, coming to join the English; but finding how matters stood, the time-serving knight gladly proceeded to hunt the fugitives, and they scarcely let Edward II. draw rein till he had ridden sixty miles, even to Dunbar, whence he escaped by sea.

Bannockburn was the most total defeat which has ever befallen an English army. Twenty-seven nobles were killed, twenty-two more and sixty knights made prisoners, and the number of obscure soldiers slain, drowned in the Forth, or killed by the peasantry, exceeds calculation. The camp was taken, with an enormous booty in treasure, jewels, rich robes, fine horses, herds of cattle, machines for the siege of towns, and, in short, such an amount of baggage that the waggons for the transport were numerous enough to extend in one line for sixty miles. Even the King's signet was taken, and Edward was forced to cause another to be made to supply its place. One prisoner was a Carmelite friar named Baston, whom Edward of Caernarvon had brought with him to celebrate his victory in verse; whereupon Robert imposed the same task by way of ransom, and the poem, in long rhyming Latin verses, is still extant.

The plunder was liberally shared among the Scottish army, and the prisoners were treated with great courtesy and generosity. The slain were reverently buried where they fell, except Lord Clifford and the Earl of Gloucester, whose corpses were carried to St. Ninian's kirk, and sent with all honour to England.

Bruce had not forgotten that the blood of the Clares ran in his own veins, and that Gloucester had warned him of his danger at King

CAMEO XXXVIII.

Rout of

Edward II.

CAMEO XXXVIII.

Release of Bruce's family.

Edward's court: he not only lamented for the young Earl, but he released Ralph de Monthermer, the stepfather of Earl Gilbert, and gave him the signet ring of Edward II. to bear home.

Gilbert was the last male of the stout old line of De Clares, Gloucester, and his estates descended to his three sisters-Margaret, the widow of Gaveston; Eleanor, the wife of Hugh le Despenser; and Elizabeth, who shortly after married John de Burgh, Earl of Ulster.

The Earl of Hereford had taken refuge in Bothwell Castle, but was unable to hold it out, and surrendered. He was exchanged for captives no less precious to Robert Bruce than his well-earned crown. The wife, daughter, and sister, who had been prisoners for eight years, were set free, together with the Bishop of Glasgow, now blind, and the young Earl of Mar. Marjory Bruce had grown from a child to a maiden in her English prison, and she was soon betrothed to the young Walter, Steward of Scotland; but it was enacted that if she should remain without a brother the crown should descend to her uncle Edward.

That midsummer battle of Bannockburn undid all the work of Edward I., and made Scotland an independent kingdom for three hundred years longer. Ill government, a discontented nobility, and a feeble king, had brought England so low, that the troops could not shake off their dejection, and a hundred would flee before two or three Scottish soldiers. Bruce ravaged the northern counties every summer, leaving famine and pestilence behind him; but Edward II. had neither spirit nor resolution to make war or peace. The mediation of the Pope and King of France was ineffectual, and years of warfare passed on, impressing habits of perpetual licence and robbery upon the borderers of either nation.

CRUSADES were over. The dream of Edward I. had been but a dream, ! and self-interest and ambition directed the swords of Christian princes against each other rather than against the common foe. The Western Church was lapsing into a state of decay and corruption, from which she was only partially to recover at the cost of disruption and disunion, and the power which the mighty Popes of the twelfth century had gathered into a head became for that very cause the tool of an unscrupulous monarch.

The colony of Latins left in Palestine had proved a most unsuccessful experiment; the climate enervated their constitutions; the poulains, as those were called who were born in the East, had all the bad qualities of degenerate races, and were the scorn and derision of Arabs and Europeans alike; nor could the defence have been kept up at all had it not been for the constant recruits from cooler climates. Adventurous young men tried their swords in the East, banished men there sought to recover their fame, the excommunicate strove to win pardon by his sword, or the forgiven to expiate his past crime; and, besides these irregular aids, the two military and monastic orders of Templars and Hospitallers were constantly fed by supplies of young nobles trained to arms and discipline in the numerous commanderies and preceptories scattered throughout the West.

Admirable as warriors, desperate in battle, offering no ransom but their scarf, these knightly monks were the bulwark of Christendom, and would have been doubly effective save for the bitter jealousies of the two orders against each other, and of both against all other Crusaders. Not a disaster happened in the Holy Land but the treachery of one order or the other was said to have occasioned it, and on the whole the greater degree of obloquy seems usually, whether justly or not, to have

CAMEO XXXIX.

The Rem

nant of the Crusaders.

CAMEO XXXIX.

Fall of
Acre.

1292.

Death of
Boniface
VIII.

1294.

lighted on the Knights of the Temple. They were the richer and the prouder of the two orders; and as the duties of the hospital were not included in their vows, they neither had the same claims to gratitude nor the softening influence of the exercise of charity, and were simply stern, hated, dreaded soldiers.

After a desperate siege, Acre fell, in 1292, and the last remnant of the Latin possessions in the East was lost. The Templars and Hospitallers fought with the utmost valour, forgot their feuds in the common danger, and made such a defence that the Mussulmans fancied that, when one Christian died, another came out of his mouth and renewed the conflict; but at last they were overpowered by force of numbers, and were finally buried under the ruins of the Castle of the Templars. The remains of the two orders met in the Island of Cyprus, which belonged to Henry de Lusignan, claimant of the crown of Jerusalem. There they mustered their forces, in the hope of a fresh Crusade ; but as time dragged on, and their welcome wore out, they found themselves obliged to seek new quarters. The Knights of the Hospital, true to their vows, won sword in hand the Isle of Rhodes from the Infidel, and prolonged their existence for five centuries longer as a great maritime power, the guardians of the Mediterranean and the terror of the African corsairs. The Knights Templars, in an evil hour for themselves, resolved to spend their time of expectation in their numerous rich commanderies in Europe, where they had no employment but to collect their revenues and keep their swords bright; and it cannot but be supposed that they would thus be tempted into vicious and overbearing habits, while the sight of so formidable a band of warriors, owning no obedience but to their Grand Master and the Pope, must have been alarming to the sovereign of the country. Still there are no tokens of their having disturbed the peace during the twenty-two years that their exile lasted, and it was the violence of a king and the truckling of a pope that effected their ruin.

Philippe IV., the pest of France, had used his power over the French clergy to misuse and persecute the fierce old Pontiff Boniface VIII., and it was no fault of Philippe that the murder of Becket was not parodied at Anagni. Fortunately for the malevolent designs of the king, his messengers quailed, and contented themselves with terrifying the old man into a frenzied suicide instead of themselves slaying him. The next Pope lived so few days after his election that it was believed that poison had removed him, and the cardinals remained shut up for nine months at Perugia trying in vain to come to a fresh choice. Finally, Philippe fixed their choice on a wretched Gascon, who took the name of Clement V., first, however, making him swear to fulfil six conditions, the last and most dreadful of which was to remain a secret until the time when the fulfilment should be required of him.

Lest his unfortunate tool should escape from his grasp, or gain the protection of any other sovereign, Philippe transplanted the whole papal court to Avignon, which, though it used to belong to the Roman empire,