William Wallace by Andrew Fisher

Author:Andrew Fisher
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781841585932
Publisher: Birlinn
Published: 2012-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

C: Carlisle L: Lochmaben N: Newcastle R: Roxburgh E: Edinburgh L: Linlithgow F: Falkirk S: Stirling P: Perth St A: St Andrews LA: Lauder D: Dalhousie T: Temple Liston

7

The Time of Sacrifice, 1298–1303

‘Our beloved William le Walois of Scotland, knight’

Falkirk was the last opportunity which the Scots were to have to break Edward I’s grip on their country. Over the next six years, until the submission of Comyn and his colleagues,1 he tightened that grip inexorably. The campaigns which he fought between Falkirk and that submission were not uniformly successful; a mixture of inefficiency on the part of the English and dogged resistance by the Scots, both in the field and on the diplomatic front, combined to frustrate his design. What he had begun he found difficult to finish. But Edward was not to be diverted, and his unremitting pressure on the Scots, his permanent superiority in men and matériel, and in time the perhaps inevitable war-weariness of those who opposed him brought the conclusion he desired.

For the Scots all of this might have been averted had the outcome of Falkirk been different. It might well have been different. We are accustomed to thinking of Falkirk as a battle which revealed Wallace’s inadequacies as a military leader. But it was also a battle which revealed Edward’s inadequacies. He was saved by good fortune and a battle-plan which, though largely improvised, worked. Wallace’s plan was the better and, as argued above, faltered and failed because of the defection of the cavalry and the feeble contribution of the archers. He could have foreseen neither of these eventualities. Even without these two basic elements in his plan, however, he was able to do serious damage to the English. We have noted the gloating English reports on the number of Scots who fell at Falkirk2 but it is too easily forgotten that English losses were themselves far from incon-siderable. The cavalry was not the only factor in Edward’s army, if the most highly regarded. Thus, the Master of the English Templars merits a mention as the only English casualty of note, in one account.3 A second source, adds ‘five or six esquires’.4 This concentration on the fate of the élite arm in the battle tends to disguise the very heavy losses incurred by the English foot at Falkirk. Opinions vary as to the precise numbers of infantry slain by the Scots, but two authorities on the period, drawing on payroll records, indicate a figure of perhaps two to three thousand.5 For what was not on the English side predominantly an infantry engagement, these were severe losses. The progress of the battle, furthermore, suggests that these losses occurred at that point when, with the Scots ranks decimated by the English cavalry and archers, the schiltroms were at their weakest, immediately prior to their final collapse. If that is so, it is testimony to the innate courage of the Scottish infantry, aided by the discipline brought about by Wallace himself. Like their Scottish counterparts the schiltroms, then, the English foot died unknown, their fate of little consequence to the chronicles.

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