The Plantagenets: The Three Edwards Part 4

The hills of Lanark were yellow with the mountain pansy and the tormentil when Wallace gathered his men about him and started north to answer the summons. At Perth he met Sir William Douglas, the first man of real consequence with whom he had come in contact. Sir William had commanded the garrison at Berwick and had been held a prisoner in irons for some time, gaining his release on taking an oath of obedience. It seems that oaths sworn under pressure were not regarded seriously, for here was the head of this great family, which through long centuries would be the proudest and most spectacular in all Scotland, in open rebellion again, his sword at his side and his heart filled with zeal for the cause. It was at a later date that the Black Douglas, as the head of the senior branch of the family was known, took as a motto: Let dog eat dog: What doth the lion care?

But Sir William had all the pride and the courage which were the distinguishing traits of the Douglases and had already earned for himself the sobriquet of The Hardy. The Douglas castle and estates were in Lanarkshire, so in a sense he and Wallace were neighbors, but it is doubtful if they had ever laid eyes on each other until they met on this occasion. They must have conceived a mutual respect, for they proceeded to work in concert with the best of results. They decided on an operation which appealed mightily to both of them; they would march on Scone, which lies close to Perth, and pay their respects to William de Ormesby, who was acting as justiciar of the country.

Scone was holy ground to all Scots. It was only a small village, but far back in history it had been the capital of the Picts. The legislative meetings which corresponded in Scotland to the English Parliament had met there on Moot Hill. The abbey still stood, despite Edward's threat to destroy it after carrying off the Coronation Stone. William de Ormesby may have thought that his presence at Scone would lend validity to his actions. In any event, he had set up his courts there and was making himself the persistent gadfly which stung most deeply the pride of the Scots and lightened their purses at the same time. His specialty seems to have been the levying of fines. If a man of any consequence refused to come to Scone and swear fealty to the English monarch, he was either outlawed or fined.

The combined forces of Wallace and Douglas marched to Scone but encountered no resistance there. The justiciar, considering himself too weak to oppose such a determined thrust, had gathered up his records and doc.u.ments and taken flight.

This was the first substantial success for the insurgent forces, and all Scotland rejoiced at the freeing of Scone, even though the stone on which the head of the dying Columba had rested was no longer there. It proved a costly exploit for Douglas. The English king confiscated all of his estates in England and put his wife and children under arrest. Later Douglas himself became a prisoner and was sent back to Berwick, to the familiar cell he had occupied before and the same irons in which his wrists and ankles had been clamped. He died there within the year.

After the success at Scone, Wallace proceeded to sweep like a new broom of rebellion through the country as far north as the circuitous Tay. His forces had been augmented by many of the leaders of dissent, and this gave him a greater prominence in the eyes of the nation; but it would prove a weakness in the end. The Scottish leaders had absolute power in their own clans and they could not be brought to accept the theory of united command. They would fight in their own good time and wherever they saw fit, but they would accept orders from no one. The result of this pigheadedness was a defeat in which Wallace had no part.

Under prodding from the impatient Edward, the English officials in Scotland put together an army and marched unopposed through the Lowlands to a point beyond the Forth. The Scottish leaders could not agree on any plan of military action, and when the two armies met at Irvine no serious opposition was offered the English. The proud Scottish lords, who would not yield an inch in place or precedence to one another, yielded everything to the invaders. After the merest tiff, they laid down their arms and capitulated.

Wallace had played no part in this humiliating farce. While the n.o.ble lords were submitting themselves to whatever punishments might be devised for them he was attacking the rear guard, succeeding to the extent of destroying the baggage of the enemy and most of the guard.

For a time after the farce at Irvine, Wallace continued to lead the only band in open resistance in the Lowlands, and word of his activities finally reached the royal ears. In the insistent notes which Edward dispatched to his lieutenants he began to refer to the knight of Elderslie as "the king's enemy." In the Highlands the fire had not been extinguished. Andrew de Moray, who alone seemed to share the military skill and the full fighting spark which animated the youthful Wallace, had a series of successes in the reduction of castles garrisoned by the English. One of the most colorful exploits of Wallace was chasing Anthony Bek, Bishop of Durham, from the house of Bishop Wishart in Glasgow.

The treasurer, Hugo de Cressingham, seems to have taken too seriously the English triumph at Irvine. Believing that this absurd exhibition meant that the back of the resistance had been broken, he sent optimistic reports to Edward. This may have persuaded the king to devote his full personal attention to his French concerns. Toward the end of August he sailed again across the Channel, leaving the responsibility for subduing the recalcitrant Scots in the hands of the governor, the Earl of Surrey.

The treasurer had said in one of his letters to the king that "William Wallace holds himself against your peace." It would have been well for Edward had he given heed to this particular information. Wallace was indeed holding himself against the king's peace, and the hearts of all the common people of Scotland were with him.

CHAPTER XI.

The Miracle at Stirling Bridge

1.

THE English leaders, fortunately for the Scottish cause, displayed a lack of energy in following up their success. Wallace took advantage of this breathing spell by gathering under his banner the common men of Scotland who had been left leaderless, and so he found himself for the first time with an army under his command. Moving rapidly, he laid siege to Dundee, at the same time sending a large part of his forces to a strong position near Cambuskenneth Abbey, where they threatened Stirling Castle, the gateway to the Highlands. This forced the English command to take action, and an army of fifty thousand foot and a thousand horse marched north under the command of the governor himself, John de Warenne, Earl of Surrey. Warenne was in the late sixties and had been fighting all his life. He had grown weary of warfare and he sat his saddle in bone-stiffened discomfort. He advanced to Stirling by slow stages.

What followed can only be described as a miracle. The military experience of Wallace was limited to his own guerrilla operations. The army he commanded consisted of forty thousand foot (at the most optimistic reckoning) and 180 horse, made up largely of the men who had lost their clan leaders at Irvine but who still wanted to fight. They were brave but they were not trained soldiers in any sense of the word. Their equipment was of the crudest nature. Few of them wore a habergeon, the shirt of iron rings which had been brought back to Scotland by crusaders, and they depended instead on tunics stuffed with wool, tow, or old cloth to soften the edge of a sword thrust. Their weapons were long spears or Lochaber axes. Only a few could be cla.s.sed as gall-oglauch, the pick of the levies from hill and valley, who fought in the front rank when the clans went into battle. Their spirits were high enough, but how far would courage go in opposing the well-trained and well-armed English?

BATTLE OF STIRLING BRIDGE 1297.

The most serious weakness, however, was the army's lack of organization. The best fighting force in the world would be helpless if it lacked authority behind it to supply arms and food and scouting facilities to keep an eye on enemy movements. Wallace lacked everything but men. The absurdity at Irvine had paralyzed the efforts of the high authorities who were supposed to direct the Scottish defense. No arms or food was forthcoming. The wild clansmen drew in their belts and subsisted on a few sc.r.a.ps of dried oatmeal. The few mounted men were quite inadequate to do the scouting thoroughly.

It is clear, however, that Wallace had been born with military genius. Never having heard the word strategy, perhaps, he selected nevertheless the ideal place for the test of strength. The plan of battle he followed showed him to be a master tactician as well. The strength of his army was concealed in the thickets at the base of the Ochils, a steep ridge of hills on the north of the Forth. That river, curling slowly through Stirling except when tidewater enhanced its flow, was crossed by one bridge only, a structure of wood which allowed no more than two hors.e.m.e.n to cross abreast. The Scots were in a position here to swoop down on the English, if they attempted to cross the river, and thus catch them on the Links in a bend of the river where the ground was too swampy for cavalry action. If the tide of battle went against the defenders, they had an easy line of retreat over the rocky Ochils behind them. Here, then, the followers of Wallace, as skillfully disposed as any army could be, watched and waited.

Warenne hugged the delusion that the Scots could be persuaded to give up the struggle and return to their homes. He made several efforts to persuade them and finally sent a pair of itinerant friars as emissaries to Wallace.

"Carry back this answer," said the Scottish commander. "We have not come for peace but to fight to liberate our country. Let them come on when they wish. They will find us ready to fight them to their beards!"

This precipitated a division of counsel in the English high command. Warenne was not an inspired general, but he was wise enough to distrust the situation. How could they tell how many wild clansmen were concealed at the base of the Ochils? It would take a full day for the English army to cross by that solitary bridge. Was it a wise operation to undertake in the face of a foe of unknown numbers? His inclination was to wait and see if a better way of crossing the tide-fed river presented itself. Some Scottish turncoats spoke of a ford farther up which could be used to turn the flank of the Scots. But Cressingham, the treasurer, had come with the English army and he was all for prompt measures. This ambitious and avaricious churchman, described in one of the chronicles as "handsome but too fat," was the evil genius of the English. His parsimony had handicapped the king's forces at the same time that his overbearing att.i.tude had won him the hatred of the Scots. A time-server in his relations with the king, he was thoroughly distrusted by the other high-ranking officials. When a churchman charges soldiers with overcaution and even hints at cowardice, he puts them at a disadvantage.

"There is no use, Sir Earl," he said, "in drawing out this business any longer and wasting the king's revenues for nothing. Let us advance and carry out our duty as we are bound to do."

The decision reached was to cross the bridge and attack the Scots on the other side. It has already been stated that the men Edward had left behind to finish his work were not great soldiers. Nothing could make this clearer than the course they had decided upon. A single glance at the bridge spanning the Forth at one of its deepest parts should have been enough to make them change their minds. Why was the bridge standing?

Wallace had been first on the ground, and there had been plenty of time to destroy this convenient method of crossing the river. A half dozen strong-armed, broad-backed Highlanders, armed with their Lochaber axes-a long-handled type of ax with a hook on the back to yank and draw with-would have had the structure down in no time at all. But there it stood, unharmed, comfortable to cross, with a wide stretch of land left open on the other side, and no enemy in sight, even though the English felt that thousands of hostile eyes watched them from the thickets.

Successful strategy consists in fighting your battles at the time and place which offer the surest promise of a favorable issue. Wallace was a self-made soldier, with only brief experience in a small way to draw upon, but he was an instinctive master of strategy. He had decided, quite obviously, that this was the time and the place to offer battle to Governor Warenne and his large army. The bridge had been left intact as bait, to draw the attention of the enemy from the ford farther up the river where six men could cross abreast safely and where the terrain was not as favorable for defense. Fording a stream as variable and strong as the Forth was not an easy matter. How much simpler to take advantage of this bridge which the stupid Scots had neglected to destroy! Wallace had guessed right. He had gambled that the enemy would elect to use the bridge and had made his dispositions accordingly.

Warenne's tired bones kept him in bed beyond the time when the attack should have been made. Some of the English troops, impatient at the delay, crossed the bridge without raising as much as a derisive shout from the hidden Scots and then returned to their own side to wait for their ancient leader to waken. The sun was high when Warenne emerged. The bridge looked as secure as ever, the green haughs beyond were clear for a good mile, the thickets far back could not conceivably conceal any great number of Scots. The crossing began.

What followed was a supreme test of the generalship of Wallace. He had to choose unerringly the right moment to strike. If he launched his attack too soon, he would succeed only in destroying a small part of the enemy and the main English forces would be left intact. If he waited too long, the invaders would be able to establish a strong enough bridgehead to resist any attack and to enable the rest of the army to cross behind them.

Wallace showed that he had patience as well as judgment. From his high place of concealment he watched the first hors.e.m.e.n come over the bridge at a sedate jog trot to test the security of the structure. When it became evident that nothing had been done to weaken it, the pace became faster. After the hors.e.m.e.n, who spread out fanwise under the command of a capable officer, Sir Marmaduke de Thwenge, came the foot soldiers and the Welsh archers with extraordinarily long bows over their shoulders. Soon the lush green haugh was black with the human stream, and still no sound came from the cover where presumably the Scots were waiting. Or had they decamped during the night, fearing to face such a formidable host? How Wallace succeeded in keeping his excitable troops from any form of demonstration is hard to understand, save that it is known his hand was heavy in discipline and his displeasure swift and harsh.

The Scottish leader waited until eleven o'clock. By that time a very considerable part of the English army had crossed, but not enough to diminish his confidence that he could destroy them. He gave the long-awaited signal.

The wild battle cry of the men from the Highland glens split the air. From behind the semicircle of thicket along the base of the Ochils came thousands of figures leaping in a maddened fury, their robes drawn up around their waists to leave their brawny bare legs free, the chiefs with eagles' feathers in their bonnets, the common men with a sprig of thistle in theirs. They charged across the haughs, brandishing their deadly hooked axes and their long spears, still raising that high, keen cry which sent shivers down the spines of those who had never heard it before. There seemed to be no end to them. They poured forth from the scant cover like nondescript articles from a magician's chest; ten, twenty thousand, and perhaps more. The boggy ground did not delay them, for they were in their bare feet. It seemed a matter of minutes only, after the order was given, for them to make contact with the enemy.

Wallace had shrewdly grouped on his right the best trained of his men, who might reasonably be termed the gall-oglauch of the Scottish army. These troops struck the left flank of the English as they deployed from the bridge and went through them like a knife through a wheel of cheese. So instantly successful was this blow that they took control of the end of the bridge and no more of the English troops could get over. The efforts of those still on the swaying structure had to be devoted to resisting the pressure of the files pressing on behind them, a struggle which resulted in most of them being shoved against the Scottish spears or forced over into the rising waters of the river below. The English who had succeeded in crossing were then driven into a bend of the river to the right of the bridge, and here they were either cut down or shoved into the river, which was now salt with the incoming tide. Few, if any, managed to swim across!

Five thousand men died in less than that number of seconds. Many of the English leaders fell in the carnage, including Cressingham, who had ridden over with the van, intending no doubt to show what a churchman could do and perhaps conning over in his mind the self-laudatory note he would send the king. He was thrown from his horse in the first few moments of conflict and trampled to death. Later, discovering whose body it was, the Scots stripped off his skin and divided it among themselves as souvenirs.

The impotent Warenne sat his horse on the other bank and saw his best soldiers being hacked to pieces by the jubilant clansmen. Realizing that the battle was lost, he gave orders for the bridge to be burned, if possible, and for the army to retreat. His own departure was so precipitate that he rode straight through to Berwick. From that still desolate and sad city he continued on to York, where a letter reached him from the Prince of Wales, who was acting as regent in his father's absence. In this note he was admonished not to leave Scotland until the insurgents were beaten and destroyed.

A cautious general is content with victory and slow in the pursuit of a retreating foe; a great general strikes as hard and as boldly when his enemy is beaten as when the issue is still undecided. Wallace handled the pursuit of the beaten English in the latter tradition, a course made easier by the eagerness of his followers. The victors must have made use of the ford. They were, at any rate, soon hot on the heels of the retreating aliens.

And now the barons of the land, who had been too proud to fight under a commoner, or too sensitive to the possession of their personal estates, came out of retirement to join in the man hunt. Even James the Steward of Scotland and Malcolm, Earl of Lennox, who had been sitting in council with Warenne and promising him men in support of any action, emerged from the safe retreat into which they had skulked and took a hand in the chase.

The once proud English fled down the stony roads in a mad race for their lives. Their heels were seldom free of claymore or spear in the hands of the enraged hounds. They were tracked down in the forests, they were driven into the rivers and streams, the bracken became stained with their blood. Over it all the sun shone warmly as though with approval, and from every thicket the songs of the missel thrush and the sedge warbler seemed to rise higher because the land would now be free.

It had indeed been a miracle.

2.

The activity of Wallace did not cease with the pursuit of Warenne's army. He recruited his forces, often by arbitrary methods such as hanging a few recalcitrant officials, and proceeded to reduce the towns which were still held by the English. The list of strongholds captured in a matter of weeks included Dundee, Edinburgh, Roxburgh, Stirling, and Berwick. Then he burned the English towns immediately south of the border and marched into England to harry Westmorland and c.u.mberland.

Some form of national organization was adopted, but there is nothing in the scanty records of the day to indicate what it was. Wallace was knighted and became officially known as guardian of the kingdom. Undoubtedly he either dictated the measures taken or had a decisive hand in them. That he a.s.sumed such a modest t.i.tle is proof of his lack of ambition and the sincerity and depth of his patriotism. One factor in the situation remained unchanged: the n.o.bility still held sullenly aloof. Accustomed to unchallenged authority in a personal realm, they could not thole any change which took away a jot of their hereditary power and privilege.

It seems more than probable that if the Scottish people could have formed themselves at this stage into a solid front against English aggression they would have defeated any further attempts to rob them of their independence.

Wallace has been charged with barbarous conduct in the chronicles of the day, most of which were written by English monks and reflect the English viewpoint. It is doubtful if he needs any defense. Wars are fought to be won, and they cannot be won by anything but violent measures. Faced by a foe who had fallen on Scotland with fire and sword, the new leader met the invaders with the same weapons. Wallace also burned and harried and left his dead behind him. He was a stern disciplinarian; but only a firm hand could hold together an army which in the first stages could best be described, perhaps, as tatterdemalion. For every story told of his cruelty, there is at least another which demonstrates his fairness and moderation.

A national or world crisis generally produces at least one great man. Scotland, in her hour of desperation, had found a truly remarkable leader in William Wallace.

CHAPTER XII.

Edward and the Horn-Owl

1.

SURPRISE may be felt that Edward was absent from Scotland at such a critical moment, knowing the low caliber of at least some of his chief lieutenants. The truth was that he had another problem on his hands of at least equal importance. He and King Philip the Fair of France were engaged in what might reasonably be termed the first stages of the Hundred Years' War.

The French king has come down through the centuries as an enigma, because some of the very few flashes of him that history supplies make him appear stolid and slow, both of body and mind. It has been a.s.sumed that he depended on the clever lawyer chancellors he employed and that he gave little attention to affairs of state. Yet at all stages of his reign remarkable things were happening in France which made it clear that a ruthless intelligence was at work. Could his first chancellor, Pierre Flotte, a one-eyed jurist from Montpellier with a silver tongue, have been the master mind of the state? Was it Enguerrard de Marigny, a Norman squire, who had been a protege of the queen? Or was it Guillaume de Nogaret, the best and least favorably known of the trio, who was so bold that he tried to make a prisoner of Pope Boniface VIII? Modern opinion seems to have veered to the belief that the power behind all the extraordinary things that happened was Philip the Fair himself.

In appearance he was what might be termed a super-Plantagenet, taller even than Edward of England. In any company he stood a full head above everyone else; and a most unusual head it was, of a pink and white complexion, with blond ringlets and handsome blue eyes. He was immensely strong and could crumple up almost any man with his great white hands. In character he showed some signs of his descent from his grandfather, that great and holy man, Louis IX, who is called St. Louis. One of his first acts on becoming king was to expel women from the court. Only three dishes were served at his table, and his guests had to drink water colored with wine. The desserts were always fruit grown on the royal estates. This may have been either asceticism or parsimony, and no one was sure which.

Once on a chilly day in Paris, with a mizzling rain falling, he was stopped by three soldiers who had some trivial complaint to make. The tall, silent king stood with the moisture falling on his white headpiece, his great feet sinking deep in the mud of the street, and listened attentively. This was what his saintly grandfather would have done, always having an ear for any subject, no matter how humble.

It was strange that he began his reign with the expulsion of women from the court, because in his household circle he was surrounded by them. He had two sisters, the princesses Blanche and Marguerite. Blanche was as lovely as he was handsome; gay, sparkling, slender, with a small foot and a trim ankle. This was the picture of her supplied to Edward by his brother Edmund, who was sent to Paris to make a report. Edward still grieved for his lost Eleanor but he was considering a second marriage, if only for reasons of state. The feminine fashions of the day were the least revealing of almost any period, and Edmund must have secured some of his information from gossipy sources. Authentic or not, the report he sent back depicted the fair Blanche as a veritable fairy-tale princess, and Edward decided that he wanted her for his second wife. The other sister, Marguerite, was slender and somewhat delicate of appearance, with a sweetness of mien rather than beauty.

Philip's own family consisted of three sons and one daughter, Isabella, who was a striking beauty and of whom much will be heard later. She resembled him and not her mother, Jeanne of Navarre, a plump woman with a high complexion, who made up in intelligence what she may have lacked in pulchritude.

In addition there were a great many nieces, most of them daughters of a brother, Charles of Valois, for all of whom husbands had to be found. Charles was a bothersome fellow, garrulous and lacking in judgment, who made a muddle of anything entrusted to him.

Such was Philip the Fair, and it may seem surprising that during the twenty-nine years of his reign many astonishing things came to pa.s.s. The feudal power of the French dukes, who had in their time ruled more of the country than the kings, was reduced, and new machinery for justice and legislation was evolved. The order of Templars was violently dissolved and all their immense wealth confiscated, the head of the order in France being summarily declared guilty of heinous offenses and burned at the stake. When Pope Boniface VIII, who was a strong advocate of the supreme power of the papacy, issued a bull, Clericis laicos (a papal bull was distinguishable by its lead seal), which forbade any king to levy taxes on the clergy without his consent, Philip's opposition forced its withdrawal. As a result of the hostility which followed, Nogaret went to Italy to arrest the Pope and take him back to France for trial and deposition. Only the illness of the Holy Father, who died soon after his room was violently entered by Nogaret at Anagni, prevented the plan from being carried out. Pope Clement, a Gascon by birth, was crowned at Lyons, and one of his first official acts was to appoint nine French cardinals. It was Clement who moved the papal court to Avignon, and thus began the seventy years of exile during which the papacy existed, in what was called a Babylonian captivity, in France. Nogaret may have been one of the blackest villains in history, but he would not have dared plan such a course had he lacked the backing of his king. Behind everything that went on was this ambitious, ruthless, dangerous king.

Nevertheless, the Bishop of Pamiers, Bernard Saisset, who was antagonistic to Philip, had this to say of him: "Our king resembles the horn-owl, the finest of birds and yet the most useless. He is the finest man in the world; but he only knows how to look at people fixedly without speaking." This opinion was widely accepted.

This was the French monarch with whom Edward found himself in almost continuous conflict.

2.

One of the measures adopted by St. Louis to make sure that his people did not suffer from injustice under feudal law was the appointment of a corps of inspectors, known as inquisitor-reformers. These men were everywhere throughout the kingdom, attending the trials and listening to evidence, and reporting cases where any degree of unfairness could be charged. The greathearted king had, it is said, thousands of these inspectors at work to keep an eye on the dukes and counts and their bailiffs. In a world where police rule has so often been supreme, this practice in a faraway day is like a glimpse of Utopia.

Philip the Fair decided to have his own inquisitor-reformers, ostensibly for the same reason. He did not, however, content himself with the scope of his grandfather's plan. He used them for political purposes as well.

The English were still governing Aquitaine and Gascony, the sole remnants of the once great Plantagenet holdings in France. The inquisitor-reformers swarmed in these provinces, and anyone in trouble with the English authorities could appeal the case to the King of France. It reached a stage where the courts of Gascony were empty, although crime was rife in the land. Every malefactor or innocent man, as the case might be, cried out for French protection when laid by the heels. The inquisitors would take the prisoner away, and that would be the last heard of the case. The French courts were swamped, quite apparently, and it took a long time to bring a man to trial. Perhaps they did not make any effort to try them.

Finally the English bailiffs went about their work with large gags made of wood. When they took a prisoner, they pried his jaws open and clamped in one of the gags, saying, "Now, appeal your case to the King of France!"

The explanation was, of course, that the owl-like king had made up his mind to a drastic course of action. He was determined to make it impossible for the English to govern as much as a foot of French soil.

There was trouble between the two countries on the high seas also. The rivalry began when an English ship was seized in the Channel and a cargo taken which amounted to two hundred pounds' worth of wool. The owner demanded justice. When nothing came of the sharp protest lodged with those gimlet-eyed notaries of Philip the Fair, the merchant applied to Edward for letters of marque so he could seize a French merchantman which was lying conveniently in an English port. This request was granted and two hundred pounds' worth of wine was taken. A scream of protest rose from St. Malo, and in no time at all letters of marque were being issued right and left on both sides of the Channel. No merchant ships felt safe in venturing out from port. Cargoes were being seized with piratical thoroughness and in many cases the ships were destroyed. The two-hundred-pound limit was no longer regarded. There was no way of keeping an accounting of the gains and losses, and so it could not be told where the advantage lay.

Finally the shipowners of the two countries decided to fight it out among themselves. A fleet of two hundred English vessels, all privately owned but with towers built above their prows for offensive purposes, put out into the Channel. A fleet of two hundred and twenty-five French ships came out to meet them. A battle was fought off the coast of Brittany, with arrows blackening the sky and clouds of quicklime puffed out when the wind was right, and with maneuvering of ships to make boarding possible. The English won in the end. Most of the French ships disappeared. Some were sunk; some were captured and taken back to English ports. There was considerable loss of blood on both sides.

This episode came close to provoking war between the two countries. Furious protests reached Westminster from Paris, and Edward, in his role of Duke of Aquitaine, was summoned before Philip to answer for what had happened. Needless to state, the English king was too busy with other matters to obey.

But a more vital incitement to hostilities was the English alliance with Flanders. This alliance was the most natural arrangement in the world. The great Flemish cities-Ghent, Bruges, Courtrai, Lille, Ypres-had grown large and wealthy and powerful by their control of the cloth industry of Europe. The Flemish were master weavers, an industrious and practical people. To make the cloth they depended on England and Scotland for wool. This dependence worked both ways, for the English needed Flanders as a market for the loaded wool barges which came down the Thames to London. The alliance called for mutual support in case either country was attacked.

But France had always interfered in the affairs of the Flemish cities. When Guy de Dampierre, Count of Flanders, entered into an open alliance with England, Philip the Fair took the country over and imprisoned Count Guy in Paris. The Flemish cities were too wealthy and powerful and the citizens too stout of heart to remain under alien control, and in 1301 the weavers of Ghent rose in rebellion and ma.s.sacred the French garrison. Philip sent an army to subdue the uprising under the command of Robert of Artois, who had won two battles and was regarded as invincible as well as the very pink of chivalry.

The confident Robert took his army up to the city of Courtrai (then a place of 200,000 population, which ranked it second to Paris) without any regard to the conditions he might expect to find there. Courtrai was well situated for defense, being surrounded by ditches and swampy land. The French commander had no belief in foot soldiers. He had a great array of mounted knights and a relatively small force of archers. He sent the archers in first and, when they seemed to have the advantage over the army of weavers, he was in such a hurry to finish the battle with his n.o.ble hors.e.m.e.n that he rode over the French archers without giving them time to get out of the way. When his knights came out in the open they floundered in the swampy ground and could neither advance nor retreat.

It was the practice of chivalry to take as many prisoners as possible and hold the captured knights for ransom, a very tidy way of making money. The armed weavers did not seem aware of any such rule. All they had ever wanted was to be left alone to make and sell their cloth and live in comfort and honor. Their idea seems to have been that battles were won by killing as many of the enemy as possible. They swarmed over the soft terrain where the knights were floundering in their heavy armor and proceeded to slaughter them all, including the invincible leader.

This victory has been called variously the Battle of the b.l.o.o.d.y Marsh and the Battle of the Golden Spurs, the latter term rising from the fact that more than seven hundred pairs of gold spurs were taken from the heels of the victims and kept on display in an abbey of the city.

Although the English were under obligation to a.s.sist the Flemish cities and the French had their alliance with Scotland, neither country seemed disposed to take such matters seriously. When a plan for a truce between England and France was finally evolved, neither party to it had any hesitation in throwing allies to the wolves. The peace they made, however, was a patched-up affair which was not expected to work for any length of time. The issue between them was too deep to be settled over a council table. The French would never rest until the English had been expelled from the land. On the other hand, every Plantagenet king dreamed still of the days of greatness when Plantagenets held Normandy, Anjou, Brittany, Aquitaine, and Gascony. In the pact they reached, moreover, there was a clause which would later give the English kings a still more glittering objective, the conquest of France.

CHAPTER XIII.

The Defeat and Death of Wallace