Flodden monument |
A cold winter's day
for a walk around a bleak windswept hillside is not the most
enjoyable of outings but it seemed fitting for a visit to the
site of the bleakest day in Scottish history.
Branxton
Moor...Flodden field...the defeat inflicted on the armies of James IV
by the English forces of Catherine of Aragon acting on behalf of her
husband Henry VIII who was fighting in France defending Italy and the Pope from
the French. The Scottish war wasn't even the main campaign.
Scotland had been in
a "golden age" under the cultured, clever young king. The
Highlands had been brought under control and diplomatic relations had established an uneasy peace with England and support for the "Auld
Alliance " with France. The arts and science flourished, seats
of learning were established and enhanced. All was to be lost in the
greatest blunder in the long list of blunders in Scottish governance.
James for all his
attributes was not a good commander being brave but, at times,
foolhardy and impetuous. In a chivalrous but unnecessary letter, he
gave warning of his decision to invade. His progress was slow giving
his opponents time a-plenty to prepare.
The superior force
of the Scottish army was ranged on the top of Branxton Hill armed
with fifteen foot long pikes which were used like a giant hedgehog
allowing the schiltron to advance against an enemy which couldn't
engage them behind their jagged exterior.
Looking up the slope of Branxton Hill |
Looking down from the position of the Scots army.The dip between the two slopes is discernible. |
After the battle had
commenced, troops commanded by Lord Home on the flank had success against
the English with this tactic and, encouraged by this, the main body moved down
from the hill to engage the centre.
Unfortunately, they
didn't know that at the foot of the slope just before the ground rose
again was boggy morass into which they plunged knee-deep unable to
make progress while the rest came crowding in from behind. Their wall
of pikes was a now hindrance and they were slaughtered by the
billhooks of the enemy.
James bravely
rushed into the fray and became the last British monarch to die in
battle. With him died the flower of the Scottish nobility, the
clergy, the legislature, clan chiefs and nobles as well as
thousands of his loyal subjects.
This left the
country with an infant for king and a near collapse of the
administration. A country that didn't really recover from the
disaster of Flodden until James's grandson, James VI, united the
warring kingdoms ninety years later.
James's body was
never properly identified though Lord Dacre took what he believed to
be it to London where it was embalmed but later lost during the
Reformation.
The Kings Stone |
There is a Neolithic
or Bronze Age standing stone called the King's Stone near the A697
road to Branxton where James is said to have died but it is quite a
distance from the battlefield and the brave James is almost certain
to have died on Branxton Moor among his troops.
Some of the dead were buried around Branxton church
13th C chancel in Branxton church |
As I walked around
the battlefield, the place still a desolate emptiness about it that
couldn't be entirely due to wind chill.
The drainage ditch |
The line of the ditch marks the marshy killing ground of the battle |
Taking the trail to
the top of the hill I passed over a muddy, reedy ditch. The ditch
that now drains the marshy ground between the two slopes, the ground
were thousands of young men struggled to pull their feet from the
clinging mud while their compatriots on the wet slope behind
slithered and slid into their backs all the time wrestling with the
now useless pikes. A ditch that marks the spot where they were
butchered. How ironic that the Flo'ors o' the Forest were a' wede
away because in 1513 there was no ditch to drain the bog
A nation devastated
for want of a ditch.
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