Nigel Tranter - The Steps to the Empty Throne

It was cleverly done, the vigorous lead of a practical soldier.

Many cheered it. Yet it gave Comyn what he desired, while seeming to go along with Lamberton’s suggestion. De Umfraville was a valiant and influential knight, cousin to the Earl of Angus and a kinsman of both Baliol and Comyn. He was firmly of the Comyn faction. Bruce, having word that Umfraville’s name was to be put forward, had nominated Sir John de Soulis, an equally renowned warrior, Lord of Liddesdale and one of his own supporters. On a vote, with the churchmen supporting Bruce, de Soulis might have won. Now, in order to have Bruce merely retain the name of Guardian, Lamberton was seemingly bartering away the effective power. Bruce doubted the wisdom of it-although he was only too well aware of the advantages to himself of keeping equal rank with Comyn.

The thing was accepted, since most were prepared to trust Lamberton’s judgement. Sir Ingram de Umfraville was appointed Guardian, and came up to the chancel to sit in Bruce’s vacated chair. The other remained standing, a little way off.

Comyn was not long in showing his hand. After some formal business, he

announced that the internal strife in Galloway must be put down, since

it endangered the security of the realm and invited English aggression

there. Stirling Castle being now in his hands, and his forces freed

from that important task, he would now personally lead a campaign of

pacification in Galloway. With de Umfraville, of course. And added, as a cynical afterthought.

“… where my lord Constable has already preceded me, on a reconnaissance.”

That explained the absence of the Earl of Buchan from the parliament.

Bruce stood silent. Comyn intended to take over the South West, that was clear. Galloway had always been in the Bruce sphere of influence—although Buchan did own land there, the barony of Cruggleton The man was utterly unscrupulous, ruthless, unrelenting. And cunning. It was not beyond him to have engineered the Galloway disturbances himself, for this very purpose.

He implied that Bruce should have put down the trouble himself—when he knew only too well that Bruce’s forces were spread right along the eighty miles of the borderline, watching England. And had been for six weeks.

William Lamberton looked understandingly, sympathetically, over towards the younger man, but shook a warning head.

How much could a man take?

The parliament broke up. Men had come to it fearing civil war. That it had not come to this, as yet, was to Bruce’s credit.

But Comyn was in the ascendant now, for all to see.

Sick at heart Bruce rode south again to rejoin his brothers commanding the long slender line that watched the Border.

Chapter Fourteen

The campaign of 1300 was all fought in Galloway and the SouthWest. That it reached no further was the measure of the Scots success; but it left that great area in ruins once more. The English invaded from Carlisle, on Midsummer’s Day, after a delay which almost certainly was partly accounted for by the Pope’s remonstrances on the rejection of the Scots truce offer, reinforced by Wallace’s representations at Rome. But Edward’s fears of excommunication were at length overborne by his consuming hatred of the Scots, and when he marched, he did so with a magnificent army of over 60,000. Bruce had 8,000, but they were strung along the borderline; Comyn had 15,000 in Galloway, where he had been hanging men by the score, mostly Bruce’s adherents; and Scrymgeour had the absent Wallace’s people’s army of some 13,000 more waiting in reserve on the north side of Forth.

Edward stormed through lower Annandale for Dumfries. Once again that fair vale became a blackened wilderness, while Bruce dared do no more than harass the English flanks and rear. Then with the early fall of Dumfries and Caerlaverock Castles, the Plantagenet turned west across Nith and entered Galloway. It seemed that he was intent on defeating the Scots in the field rather than on merely gaining territory.

In the past Comyn had talked boldly about the need to confront Edward with the chivalry of Scotland, to gain any lasting success; just as he had talked slightingly of Wallace’s guerilla warfare and Bruce’s caution about pitched battle, and his scorched earth strategy. But now, faced with four times his own numbers, and the huge preponderance of bowmen, he pursued similar tactics himself, and played them skilfully. He fell back deeper and deeper into Galloway, a difficult country for campaigning, cut up with great estuaries, rivers and hill ranges, extending Edward’s lines of communication even further without committing himself to battle. These lines of communication Bruce made it his business to assail.

Once again the strategy paid off, although at terrible cost to the countryside involved. The proud Plantagenet, with his vast and splendid array of armoured and bannered chivalry, and corps of archers unequalled in all the world, found all food and forage burned before him, and his supply lines constantly cut behind him.

He ground to a halt at Kirkcudbright. He had, out of past experience, arranged for a shadowing supply fleet to keep his army serviced from the sea; but he had not understood how shelving and shallow were the estuaries of the wide Solway Firth, and at how few points might shipping approach land.

That Edward actually agreed to parley with Comyn and Buchan, at this stage, was indication of his supply embarrassments.

But the Scots proposals—the restoration of King John to his throne, a mutual non-aggression treaty, and the right of the Scots-Norman nobles to redeem their English estates from those to whom Edward had granted them-the Plantagenet brusquely brushed aside. He promised mercy, but demanded unconditional surrender.

Comyn, Buchan and Umfraville withdrew, angrily, and against the advice of many, decided to make a stand at the River Cree, near Creetown.

Disaster followed, in the first pitched battle since Falkirk. Although Comyn had chosen the mud-flats of the Cree estuary as battlefield, where Edward’s heavy cavalry were at a disadvantage—indeed most knights fought on foot—the terrible host of long bowmen decimated the Scots from afar before ever a single blow was struck. It was the cloth yard-shaft once more which won the day, rather than the knightly lance and sword. Themselves horseless, the Scots leaders fled across the quaking tidelands, to escape into the hills—such as did not remain lying in Cree mud.

Edward turned back to deal with Bruce. It was mid-August.

Bruce had no intention of emulating Comyn’s recent folly. He drew in his harassing forces and retired before the returning English, laying waste the land as he went—very soon his own land, again. Northwards he turned, from Dumfries, up Nithsdale and through the hill passes to Carrick and the plain of Ayr, Edward pressing hard after him—a most trying retreat, but keeping at arm’s length from the enemy advance-guard, burning rather than fighting. And though, at length, Edward’s ships were able to supply him at the port of Irvine, it was now late in September and the English army was in a state bordering on mutiny, magnificent no longer. The road back to England lay a smoking menace behind it. Moreover, Scrymgeour had now brought a large guerilla contingent to aid Bruce, and the Church army was standing at Stirling, with Comyn, to hold the vital waist of Scotland.

Edward made a virtue of a necessity. He sent offer to Bruce of a six months’ truce. This to enable him to withdraw unmolested over the burned-out terrain to England again, without serious loss from guerilla attack. Lamberton advised acceptance. It had little practical value to the Scots; but it did concede to them the status of combatants with whom the King could deal, instead of the rebels he named them. By the end of October his forces were back in their own land, save for the garrisons in such castles as Lochmaben and Roxburgh. But he swore a great oath, as he crossed the Border, that he would return and lay waste the whole of Scotland from sea to sea, and force its rebellious people into submission or death.