centre; Douglas and the Steward the left; Bruce the reserve, the
Islesmen. His strength lay in his spearmen's "dark impenetrable wood";
his archers were ill-trained; of horse he had but a handful under Keith,
the Marischal. But the heavy English cavalry could not break the squares
of spears; Keith cut up the archers of England; the main body could not
deploy, and the slow, relentless advance of the whole Scottish line
covered the plain with the dying and the flying. A panic arose, caused
by the sight of an approaching cloud of camp-followers on the Gillie's
hill; Edward fled, and hundreds of noble prisoners, with all the waggons
and supplies of England, fell into the hands of the Scots. In eight
strenuous years the generalship of Bruce and his war-leaders, the
resolution of the people, hardened by the cruelties of Edward, the
sermons of the clergy, and the utter incompetence of Edward II., had
redeemed a desperate chance. From a fief of England, Scotland had become
an indomitable nation.



LATER DAYS OF BRUCE.


Bruce continued to prosper, despite an ill-advised attempt to win
Ireland, in which Edward Bruce fell (1318.) This left the succession, if
Bruce had no male issue, to the children of his daughter, Marjory, and
her husband, the Steward. In 1318 Scotland recovered Berwick, in 1319
routed the English at Mytton-on-Swale. In a Parliament at Aberbrothock
(April 6, 1320) the Scots announced to the Pope, who had been
interfering, that, while a hundred of them survive, they will never yield
to England. In October 1322 Bruce utterly routed the English at Byland
Abbey, in the heart of Yorkshire, and chased Edward II. into York. In