his favour. Edinburgh, Roxburgh, Perth, and most of the Scotch
fortresses fell one by one into King Robert's hands. The clergy met in
council and owned him as their lawful lord. Gradually the Scotch barons who
still held to the English cause were coerced into submission, and Bruce
found himself strong enough to invest Stirling, the last and the most
important of the Scotch fortresses which held out for Edward. Stirling was
in fact the key of Scotland, and its danger roused England out of its civil
strife to an effort for the recovery of its prey. At the close of 1313
Edward recognized the Ordinances, and a liberal grant from the Parliament
enabled him to take the field. Lancaster indeed still held aloof on the
ground that the king had not sought the assent of Parliament to the war,
but thirty thousand men followed Edward to the North, and a host of wild
marauders were summoned from Ireland and Wales. The army which Bruce
gathered to oppose this inroad was formed almost wholly of footmen, and was
stationed to the south of Stirling on a rising ground flanked by a little
brook, the Bannockburn, which gave its name to the engagement. The battle
took place on the twenty-fourth of June 1314. Again two systems of warfare
were brought face to face as they had been brought at Falkirk, for Robert
like Wallace drew up his forces in hollow squares or circles of spearmen.
The English were dispirited at the very outset by the failure of an attempt
to relieve Stirling and by the issue of a single combat between Bruce and
Henry de Bohun, a knight who bore down upon him as he was riding peacefully
along the front of his army. Robert was mounted on a small hackney and held
only a light battle-axe in his hand, but warding off his opponent's spear
he cleft his skull with so terrible a blow that the handle of his axe was
shattered in his grasp. At the opening of the battle the English archers
were thrown forward to rake the Scottish squares, but they were without
support and were easily dispersed by a handful of horse whom Bruce held in
reserve for the purpose. The body of men-at-arms next flung themselves on
the Scottish front, but their charge was embarrassed by the narrow space
along which the line was forced to move, and the steady resistance of the
squares soon threw the knighthood into disorder. "The horses that were
stickit," says an exulting Scotch writer, "rushed and reeled right rudely."
In the moment of failure the sight of a body of