and Aymer of Pembroke and 2,000 men-at-arms.  An enormous baggage train enabled the knights and barons to appear in the field in great magnificence, though it destroyed the mobility of the force.  “The multitude of waggons,” wrote the monk of Malmesbury, “if they had been extended in a single line would have occupied the space of twenty leagues.”  The splendour and number of the army inspired the king and his friends with the utmost confidence.  Though the host started from Berwick less than a week before the appointed day, the king moved, says the Malmesbury monk, not as if he were about to lead an army to battle, but rather as if he were going on a pilgrimage to Compostella.  “There was but short delay for sleep, and a shorter delay for taking food.  Hence horses, horsemen, and infantry were worn out with fatigue and hunger.”  There was no order or method in the proceedings of the host.  The presence of the king meant that there was no effective general, and Hereford and Gloucester quarrelled for the second place.

It was not until Sunday, June 23, that Edward at last took up his quarters a few miles south of Stirling, with a worn-out and dispirited army.  Yet, if Stirling were to be saved, immediate action was necessary.  Gloucester and Hereford made a vigorous but unsuccessful effort to penetrate at once into the castle, and Bruce came down just in time to throw himself between them and the walls.  Henry Bohun, who had forced his way forward at the head of a force of Welsh infantry, was slain, and his troops dispersed.  Gloucester was unhorsed, and thereupon the English retreated to their camp.  Fearing an attack under cover of darkness, they had little sleep that night, and many of the watchers consoled themselves with revelry and drunkenness.  When St. John’s day dawned, they were too weary to fight effectively.  Bruce advanced from the woods and stationed his troops on the low ridge bounding the northern slope of the little brook, called the Bannockburn, which runs about two miles south of Stirling on its course towards the Forth.  Of the three divisions, or battles, into which the Scots were divided, two stood on the same front, side by side, while King Robert commanded the rear battle, which was to serve as a reserve.  He marshalled his forces much in the same way that Wallace had adopted at Falkirk.  There was the same close array of infantry, protected by a wall of shields and a thick hedge of pikes.  Each man wore light but adequate armour, and, besides the pike, bore an axe at his side for work at close quarters.  Pits were dug before the Scots lines, and covered over with hurdles so light that they would not bear the weight of a mail-clad warrior and his horse.  Save for a small cavalry force kept in reserve in the rear, the men-at-arms were ordered to dismount and take their place in the dense array, lest, like their comrades at Falkirk, they should ride off in alarm when they saw the preponderance of the enemy’s horse.  The Scots were less numerous than the English, but they were an army and not a mob; their commander was a man of rare military insight, and their tactics were those which, twelve years before, had defeated the chivalry of France at Courtrai.