rmies, it appeared from past experience, that so many
haughty nobles, proud of the preeminence of their families, would never
submit to personal merit, whose superiority they were less inclined
to regard as an object of admiration than as a reproach and injury
to themselves. To these exhortations Wallace replied that, if he had
hitherto acted alone, as the champion of his country, it was solely
because no second or competitor, or what he rather wished, no leader,
had yet appeared to place himself in that honorable station: that the
blame lay entirely on the nobility, and chiefly on Bruce himself, who,
uniting personal merit to dignity of family, had deserted the post which
both nature and fortune, by such powerful calls, invited him to assume:
that the Scots, possessed of such a head, would, by their unanimity
and concord, have surmounted the chief difficulty under which they now
labored, and might hope, notwithstanding their present losses, to oppose
successfully all the power and abilities of Edward: that heaven itself
could not set a more glorious prize before the eyes either of virtue or
ambition, than to join in one object, the acquisition of royalty with
the defence of national independence: and that as the interests of his
country, no more than those of a brave man, could never be sincerely
cultivated by a sacrifice of liberty, he himself was determined, as
far as possible, to prolong, not her misery, but her freedom, and was
desirous that his own life, as well as the existence of the nation,
might terminate when they could no otherwise be preserved than by
receiving the chains of a haughty victor. The gallantry of these
sentiments, though delivered by an armed enemy, struck the generous mind
of Bruce: the flame was conveyed from the breast of one hero to that
of another: he repented of his engagements with Edward; and opening
his eyes to the honorable path pointed out to him by Wallace, secretly
determined to seize the first opportunity of embracing the cause,
however desperate, of his oppressed country.[*]

* This story is told by all the Scotch writers; though it
must be owned that Trivet and Hemingford, authors of good
credit, both agree that Bruce was not at that time in
Edward's army.

{1299.} The subjection of Scotland, notwithstanding this great victory
of Edward, was not yet entirely completed. The English army, after
reducing the southern provinces, was obliged to retire for want of