made a successful night attack upon the English, captured St. John, and destroyed all his war-train and baggage.  The darkness of the night and the shelter of the neighbouring woods alone saved the English army from total destruction.  “After this,” boasted William of Nangis, “no Englishman or Gascon dared to go out to battle against the Count of Artois and the French.”  At Easter, 1297, a truce was concluded which left nearly all Gascony in French hands.

Soon after the departure of his brother for Gascony, Edward went to war against the Scots, regarding the non-appearance of King John on March 1 at Berwick as a declaration of hostility.  The lord of Wark offered to betray his castle to the Scots, and Edward’s successful effort to save it first brought him to the Tweed.  Meanwhile the men of Annandale under their new lord, the Earl of Buchan, engaged in a raid on Carlisle, but failed to capture the city, and speedily returned home.  On March 28, the day on which his brother attacked Bordeaux, Edward crossed the Tweed at Coldstream, and marched down its left bank towards Berwick.  On March 30 Berwick was captured.  The townsmen fought badly, and the heroes of the resistance were thirty Flemish merchants, who held their factory, called the Red Hall, until the building was fired, and the defenders perished in the flames.  The garrison of the castle, commanded by Sir William Douglas, laid down their arms at once.

Edward spent a month in Berwick, strengthening the fortifications of the town, and preparing for an invasion of Scotland.  Early in April, King John renounced his homage and, immediately afterwards, the Scots lords who had attacked Carlisle devastated Tynedale and Redesdale, penetrating as far as Hexham.  Edward’s command of the sea made it impossible for the raiders to cut off his communications with his base, and they quickly returned to their own land, where they threw themselves into Dunbar.  Though the lord of Dunbar, Patrick, Earl of March, was serving with the English king, his countess, who was at Dunbar, invited them into the fortress.  Dunbar blocked the road into Scotland, and Edward sent forward Earl Warenne with a portion of the army in the hope of recapturing the position.  Warenne laid siege to Dunbar, but on the third day, April 27, the main Scots army came to its relief.  Leaving some of the young nobles to continue the siege, Warenne drew up his army in battle array.  The Scots thought that the English were preparing for flight, and rushed upon them with loud cries and blowing of horns.  Discovering too late that the enemy was ready for battle, they fell back in confusion as far as Selkirk Forest.  Next day Edward came up from Berwick and received the surrender of Dunbar.  Henceforth his advance was but a military promenade.