Battle of Flodden Field        1513        from History of Scotland John Hill Burton Historiographer-Royal for Scotland Vol III pages 73-79

James IV

King James issued summonses to the feudal force all over the land to gather at the Boroughmuir of Edinburgh-the ground now covered by the suburb called Morningside. It is hardly possible to believe what the chroniclers tell us, that a hundred thousand men in fighting condition assembled there, knowing, as we do, that the cause in which they met was not popular. All contemporary testimonies to the passing events enlarge eloquently on the persuasives and influence borne in upon the king to turn him from his unhappy purpose, but all in vain. Stories were afterwards remembered of portents and prophecies-stories which perhaps took their color from the gloomy events which they professed to have foreshadowed. A visionary seer appeared before him, while he was at his devotions in the church of Linlithgow, who, after a solemn warning to him to desist from his purpose and abjure the counsel of women, vanished into the world of spirits, whence he had come.

At the Mercat Cross of Edinburgh, at dead of night, a herald from the other world, after the form and fashion in which the assemblages of the kings host were proclaimed, summoned by name a muster-roll of the Scots gentry to appear before his master in the other world; and it was afterwards said that the names so called over were all names of persons who fell in the battle that followed, save one who heard the proclamation, and refused on the spot to give obedience to it.

The army entered England in August 1513, and encamped in the neighborhood of the Till and Tweed. The opportunity was taken to pass an Act for dispensing with the usual feudal taxes on succession in favor of the heirs of those who might be slain in the war-it was common to pass such measures after, but not before a great battle. The Castle of Norham was attacked and easily taken, strong as it was, by such a force, plentifully supported with artillery - and the small Castle of Werk followed.

These were poor achievements for a great army; but the next, which was the siege of the castle or fortified house of Ford, was followed by heavy charges against the king. It is said that, fascinated by the attractions of the Lady Ford, he forgot the heavy responsibilities of the leader of a large army, and wasted several days in dalliance. The Scots chronicles describe the character and conduct of the lady with a blunt coarseness that leaves nothing to imagination or suspicion; and if what they thus say be true, it is easy to believe the further charge that she carried to Surrey, the English commander, all the information she gathered through the spell she cast over her new admirer.

Meanwhile provisions began to run short. Such an army carried no regular commissariat with it. The feudal array, as they were obliged to attend the host for a given period, had also to find their own provisions. The region they were in was barren, and the hostile army gathering on English ground would have defeated the old resource of sending plundering parties southwards. The Scots thus scattered in multitudes to fetch provisions from their own distant homes. Many of them did not return. Thus the great host decreased, but it is reported to have still numbered some fifty thousand. With these the king took up a strong position on the crest of Flodden, a gentle rising ground strengthened by the river Till, a deep stream with high broken banks. With Surrey challenge and acceptance had been exchanged, after the fashion rather of the arrangement of a passage at arms, where all advantages are abandoned, than the preparation for a battle. Surrey sent a herald to remonstrate against the position taken up, as being "more like a fortress or camp" than the "indifferent ground " on which a fair battle could be waged- The herald who brought this got no access to the king, so that Surrey had to take his place and tempt the king to leave his advantage. Descending by the right bank of the Till he reached Twisel Bridge, and there, by a tedious process, brought over his army in a narrow file -a portion, it is said, getting over by an adjoining ford.

The standing reproach against King James is that, as a general, he did not bring his army down by the left bank of the river, and attack the English before they had all crossed and formed on his own side.

He would then have repeated-and probably with like success-the tactic of Wallace at Stirling Bridge; but the objects of the two commanders were quite different. Wallace's was to save his country by destroying an invading army; King James, wanted a stand-up fight, that he might display his prowess: the one was in eamest-the other, it may be said, in sport. Hence he flung back with scorn the advice of Angus and the other veterans, whose aim had ever been in the old wars to make the most of the opportunity. It is said that Borthwick, the commander of the artillery, besought leave to cannonade the bridge while the English passed, but only got a peremptory refusal. Here, however, it must be remembered that Twisel Bridge is in a straight line at least four miles distant, and probably by any practicable road was six miles distant from the eminence of Flodden; and if the army did not move down in force it might not have been easy to protect artillery within range of the English army,

Surrey formed his order of battle on the plain called Brankstone, and the Scots descended to meet him there; whence in the English dispatches the battle of Flodden, as it came afterwards to be named, is called the battle of Brankstone. The English are described as ranged in two battles or squadrons, subdivided so as to make virtually four, while the Scots were divided into five.

The fighting began at four o'clock in the afternoon of the 9th of September. There was in this battle no one conspicuous false tactic giving emphasis to the result, like the rash charge of the cavalry at Bannockburn, or the array of -archers at Halidon. It was sheer hard fighting on both sides, with a general equality; but there were circumstances which made it in the end tell heavily against the Scots. For the first time, at least in later warfare, a Highland force fought along with a Lowland, and probably was not handled according to the right method of dealing with such a force, the action of which is not steady, like that of the Lowland spear men and axe men, but the rapid rush, and immediate retreat if this is ineffective. The rush was beaten back by the heavy columns of the English, and in its retreat brought confusion among the Scots. King James had with him a fine park of artillery, with some guns of caliber unprecedented; but they seem to have been too heavy to be worked by the engineering skill o@ the day, leaving the English bow as the deadlier weapon. The commander of the Scots artillery, indeed, was killed at the beginning of the battle. The great misfortune, however, was that the Scots were led by a champion bent on feats of personal prowess rather than by a general. The king was in front fighting with his own hand, thus signally justifying what the Spanish ambassador had said of him. With the true spirit of the soldier, the flower of the army gathered round him and took their share in the result of his lamentable blunder. Thus the chief gentry of Scotland were gathered into a cluster for slaughter. Leaders were drawn from their posts, and their followers,. left to themselves, were broken and dispersed. Ten thousand of the Scots were reported to the English Court as ' killed. The king himself fell close to the English commander, to whom he seems to have been fighting his way in the hope of a personal combat. His body was conveyed to Berwick, and thence to London.

From other battles Scotland has suffered more unhappy political results, but this was the most disastrous of all in immediate loss. As a calamity rather than a disgrace, it has ever been spoken of with a mournful pride for the unavailing devotedness which it called out. The soldier has ever one alternative for the protection of his honor amidst the direst disaster,-death on the field; and this alternative was cheerfully chosen. It was reported to the Court of England that of the Scots army but one man of note-the Lord Home-remained alive; and long afterwards it was said that you could not point to a worshipful family in Scotland that did not own a grave on Brankstone Moor.