CHAPTER XXXIV.

THE BATTLE OF SAUCHIEBURN.

"The king has come to marshal us, all in his armour drest; And he has bound a snow-white plume upon his gallant crest." MACAULAY.

The hostile lines were drawing nearer and more near; the shouts of the wild clansmen of Galloway mingling with the slogans of the Merse-men, who shouted "A Home! a Home!" were borne on the wind across the fertile fields that lay between the approaching columns.

A loud report pealed upon the stillness of the sky. It was the Great Lion, a ball from which made a gap in the ranks of the foe; others followed from a green knoll on which the royal culveriniers had posted themselves, but slowly and laboriously, for the gunners of the fifteenth century were somewhat less expert than those of our own day. James gazed fixedly and anxiously at the insurgent bands. He was looking for the prince, his eldest son.

"No victory can come to a heart filled with dark forebodings such as mine," said he to Montrose.

The Duke's reply was lost in the hollow of his helmet.

"No doubt young Rothesay is surrounded by a flattering crowd, all anxious to hail him as _James IV_."

"Ah, say not so, sire," said the faithful old peer, with a sigh; "yet such, alas, is perhaps the fate of kings."

"The fate of kings! thou thinkest so?--to see their own flesh and blood rise in rebellion up against them," replied James, incoherently; "yet is there not an old proverb--a prophecy--which says--what said it?"

Montrose did not reply.

"What said it?" repeated James, impatiently.

"That in Scotland _this year a lion shall be slain by its whelps_."

The king grew pale as death, for at that moment the wind blew out the banner of the third division of the insurgents, and above their long lines of shining helmets he recognised his own imperial flag, with the red lion rampant in its golden field.

"If I this day am slain, and the boy, my son, made king," said he, huskily, "Scotland--Scotland--what will become of her? Lord of St. John, doth not the scripture say, 'woe unto the land whose monarch is a child'? and my simple-hearted Rothesay is but little more in years."

At that moment a number of arrows and caliver-shots whistled past them, and the battle began in earnest, just as the distant bell of St. Ninian's Church tolled twelve.

The scene of this sanguinary encounter was the tract of land now known as Little Canglar, upon the east side of a brook called the Sauchieburn, about two miles from Stirling. A number of weeping-willows--called in Scotland sauch-trees--drooped over the water, and gave a name to the place, as they did to Sir James Shaw's barony. The birds were carolling aloft in the blue welkin; the air was pure, the sunshine bright and warm; the fragrance of the flowers and bearded grass was wafted on the soft summer wind; the mavis sang among the pale green sauches, and the cushat dove sent up its cry from the Torwood's shady oaks. Grey Stirling, the wooded brow of Craig-forth and the Ochil peaks, rose on the north, all mellowed in the summer mist; all nature looked beautiful and smiling; but herd and hirsel fled as the brass cannon opened on the adverse lines, and the shout and shock of the furious onset made the poor shepherd who stood afar off on the lone hill-side, hold his breath and bend his head in prayer--for when Scot met Scot, right well he knew how deadly and how deep would be the sacrilegious slaughter!

The king's vanguard, which was of course composed of his own clan, the gallant Stewarts and other Highlanders, armed with swords, long daggers, bows, and axes, led by John Stewart, Earl of Athole,--the conqueror of the Lord of the Isles--rushed upon the insurgents with a loud yell, such as can only rise from a Celtic throat. This attack was well supported by the king's left wing, composed of five thousand Perthshire spearmen, led by Lord Ruthven.

The Mersemen met them with their levelled lances--those pikes so terrible in warlike annals, "six Scottish ells in length," and an awful conflict took place; while the shouts of "_A Home, a Home!_" on one side, and the shrill cathghairn of the Athole Stewarts, were often turned into the shriek of agony or the groan of death, as the lance was thrust through the Highland lurich, or the claymore found a passage through the Lowland jack; while weapons broke and throats were grasped and daggers driven through plate and mail, through plaid and buff, or the swaying axe split helmets of tempered steel and targets of tough bull's-hide like withered nutshells.

"The first charge was valiantly given," says Drummond of Hawthornden, "launce meeting with launce; so the vanguard of the lords began to yield ground, and was strongly repulsed."

The men of West Lothian shot showers of arrows, to which the Highland archers replied; and for a few minutes the air was darkened by the passing flights, while men fell fast on both hands, and pressing on, pikemen and archers came closing up on every side with axe and sword, till a deadly and disastrous _mêlée_ began between the royalists and insurgents, who rushed upon each other like two torrents broken loose.

On one side was the poor bewildered king, driven forward with this armed tide, confused, sorrowful, and irresolute, with the royal standard borne over his head by the Constable of Dundee; on the other was the heir of Scotland, agitated also by painful irresolution, by remorse and shame, and also having the royal standard above him, but surrounded by a brilliant band of nobles, all shining in polished steel, gold, plumage, and embroidery; and towards that quarter of the enemy's line, young Ramsay, Lord of Bothwell, at the head of the royal guard, made incredible exertions to hew a passage for the purpose of ridding the king, with his own hand, of as many high-born traitors as possible.

James sat motionless on his magnificent grey charger, with this forest of lances and sea of helmets flashing round him; and not one blow did he strike, but kept his eyes fixed with a species of despair on the banner of his son.

Conspicuous among the press of rebel lords and vassals towered the gigantic Earl of Angus, mounted on a powerful Clydesdale horse, and clad in fluted mail, his vizor up, and a profusion of beautiful feathers streaming from his helmet almost to the crupper of his steed. Aloft his mailed hand brandished, with deadly execution, a sword which for length and strength few men could wield, and he sent his voice before him like a trumpet; thus, it needed not the scarlet heart on his golden surcoat to proclaim the terrible Angus--the representative of his lord and chief, the captive Earl of Douglas.

By one blow he clove the Earl of Gleacairn through casque and gorget to the breast, and still pressing forward--

"On, on, my wild men of Galloway!" he cried; "a Douglas! a Douglas! on, on, for I have sworn to ride through this rabble rout _red wat shod and mair_!" (_i.e._, above the feet in blood).

"See ye the Lord Angus, with his helmet open?" cried Sir David Falconer to a Highland bowman; "shoot, my brave Celt, with a will!"

The Gaël--a MacRobert of Struan--shot an arrow, which glanced off the helmet of Angus.

"Shoot again," exclaimed Falconer; "'sdeath, fellow, wert thou a king's archer, I would hang thee in thine own bowstring for such a glee'd shot."

Again the Atholeman shot, and slew the standard-fearer of Angus, instead of his lord.

Undaunted by the terrible aspect of this potent and herculean lord, many knights and gentlemen of the royal army pressed over the crowd of shrieking men and falling horses--over all the wild _dëbris_ of a hand-to-hand combat to reach him; but the most successful was Itamsay of Balmain, captain of the guard, and recently created Lord Bothwell. Though young, slight, and athletic, he rushed upon the formidable Angus, and intent only on killing him, rained his blows thick and fast upon the coat of fluted armour, from which the sparks of fire were driven by every stroke.

"False fool and plebeian villain!" said the disdainful Angus, parrying the blows skilfully with his long Banffshire blade; "methinks ye seem better used to the porridge spurtle than the knightly sword--but die, fellow, die! 'tis the hand of an earl that slays thee," he cried, as his long weapon found entrance under the left pass-guard of Bothwell's armour, and pierced him to the heart. With a wild cry he fell into the seething mass of death and life below. "Next time you meet me in Stirling streets, false loon, you will not pass me unveiled, I wot," added Angus, as he pressed on, cleaving helmets like pippins, and shredding away the tough ash-spears like reeds by a winter brook.

"My God--my God--look on me!" cried the poor king, on seeing this terrible episode, which, more than the thousand others occurring round him, cut him to the soul. Intent on avenging his many wrongs on this imperious rebel, he now for the first time that day drew his sword and put spurs to his horse; but a furious rush of mounted men-at-arms, on both sides, separated them hopelessly.

These were led by Home and Hailes, who, having recognized Falconer, though in plain armour, by the silver falcon which adorned his helmet, and had a knot of scarlet and yellow ribbons in its beak, pressed on to slay him; while the wretched Borthwick, with Sir James Shaw, Sir Patrick Gray, and Sir William Stirling of the Keir, disdaining all such humble antagonists, reserved alike their swords and strength for the king, whom the arch-traitor, their tool, had already indicated by the yellow plume in his head-piece; and towards him, and him only, they pressed surely and warily on.

Falconer, by one stroke, cut the reins of Lord Hailes' horse and so rid himself of one enemy; by another blow he struck Lord Home's casque from his head; yet, bareheaded and half-blinded by pride and fury, the noble pressed on, standing high in his stirrups, and showering blows on every side.

"A Home! a Home! By Saint Anne, fellow," cried he, "thou hadst better been tending the sheep on yon brae side than here in knight's armour."

"Better for you, perhaps, my Lord of Home," said Falconer, as by one skilful thrust, full upon the tempered gorget, he shot him out of his saddle on the heap of men below.

"_Gang warily!_" thundered a voice in his ear, and now the vengeful sword of one whom he trembled to encounter--old Lord Drummond--was flourished above him.

Covering himself, parrying thrusts and warding blows, poor Falconer sought only to escape from an antagonist whom he dared not assail, and for whose safety he would have laid down his life--for he was the father of Sybilla. But the fiery blood of the old noble was at boiling heat; he had seen "this skipper's son" defeat two chiefs of name, to whom he had promised his daughters, and a storm of feudal pride and aristocratic hatred of the king's humble favourite was swelling up within him, and the arquebussier would undoubtedly have been slain, had not Drummond of Mewie, who was hewing away on foot, with a Lochaber axe, hamstrung his horse; and as the snorting animal sank under him, Falconer fell heavily to the earth. His armour protected him from serious injury, but the horses of Borthwick, Shaw, Gray, and Keir, as these worthies spurred on, trampled him down; thus he was stunned, and became unconscious of all that passed over and around him.

A deadly conflict, hand to hand and horse to horse, ensued around the unhappy king, as these four infernal spirits, followed by a thousand others, all superbly mounted and accoutred, left the Duke of Rothesay far in the rear; and though archers and pikemen, troopers and knights, nobles and burgesses, pressed on with straining eyes and noisy tongues, with swords flashing and uplifted, to kill, to capture, or to overbear the most hapless monarch, save one, that ever sat upon the Scottish throne, the four ruffians were ever the nearest to him, but failed to reach him; for old Montrose, Lindesay, and all the loyalists fought nobly in a circle round the yellow plume; and there fell by James's side the Lord Erskine, who was slain by a Drummond; Sir Thomas Semple of Eliotstoun, who was pierced through the neart by a Border spear; William Lord Ruthven, the heritable sheriff of Perth; the Laird of Innes; Alexander Scott, director of the chancery, whose head was carried off by a cannon-ball, and many more gentlemen, with their friends and followers. The royal standard was beaten down and its bearer unhorsed; the cannon--the Great Lion--and all the ensigns were taken, and when the sun of that long summer flay was sinking behind the Grampians, and the shadows of the Torwood were deepening on the plain, the king's troops, overborne by numbers, after a long and gallant conflict, gave way, and a total and irreparable rout ensued.

"God help your majesty," said the young Lord Lindesay, as, pale, excited, without a helmet, and with his face streaked by blood, he took the king's horse by the bridle; "the day is lost, yet all is not lost with it while your sacred life is safe. No horse in the field can overtake this grey I gave you. Ride--ride north, and swiftly--the admiral's boats await you at the Craigward--farewell!"

"Ay, farewell, Lindesay--a long farewell to Scotland and to thee--for France or Holland now must be my home."

Thus urged, and knowing that alone and unattended he might escape more easily and unnoticed, than if followed by a train, James turned his grey horse's head towards the north, and gladly left behind that bloody and corpse-encumbered plain.

Thousands of arrows, with their feathers uppermost, planted all the turf around him; here the earth was torn by hoofs, and there it was furrowed up by cannon-shot. Men and horses, dead or wounded, or writhing and dying, lay singly or in piles and heaps together, among a vast _débris_ of broken helmets, torn standards, and bloody pennons, splintered spears, swords, scarfs, and bucklers, near the Sauchieburn, which yet gurgled placidly along under its pale green willows, as the King leaped his fiery and unwearied horse over it, and with a breaking heart rode towards the banks of the Forth, while night and sorrow descended together on that disastrous field. On, on he rode with a breaking heart, as he hoped, unnoticed and unknown--but hoped in vain; for close behind, and tracking him like blood-hounds, as history tells us, were Sir Patrick of Kyneff, Sir James of Sauchie, Stirling of Keir, and Borthwick, the apostate monk of Dunblane.