9

FALKIRK

He was an ogre of unspeakable depravity who skinned his prisoners alive, burned babies and forced the nuns to dance naked for him.

ECCLESIASTICAL PROPAGANDA AGAINST WALLACE IN THE SUMMER OF 1298,

IN FLORES HISTORIARUM, II, 578

OPINIONS differ as to the size and composition of the English army which now turned northwards to engage the Scots in what was hoped would be the final showdown. The traditional view, based on contemporary chronicles, places Edward at the head of 87,500 men. Hemingburgh’s estimate of seven thousand horse of all kinds is probably not far out, while Wallace could barely muster a thousand horse, and probably much less. Sir Charles Oman (1898) considered, however, that the size of the infantry had been greatly exaggerated and put their total at little more than the horsemen. This reduced figure was based on the assumption that the infantry was composed almost entirely of Irish and Welsh volunteers, attracted by the prospect of plunder, and that Edward had not considered the expedition important enough to call out the levies from the English counties. This view is strangely at variance with the figures reported by historians writing close to the event itself, not to mention the documentary evidence of writs summoning those very levies. Bishop Bek took the field with a force of at least fifteen hundred men, many of them well mounted. In addition, both Hemingburgh and the anonymous writer of the Harleian manuscript make specific mention of an additional contingent from Edward’s French fief of Gascony. This contingent, almost all on horseback, was well armed and battle-hardened, and was considered a valuable addition to the task-force. The various figures were confined to fighting men and took no account of the vast throng of camp-followers, sutlers and smiths, baggage-masters and mule-drivers which accompanied the host. In Edward’s wake trailed an immense baggage-train bringing everything imaginable, from the latest siege-engines and heavy artillery, devices for bridging rivers and scaling walls, endless wagons bearing arms and ammunition and an abundance of war materials of all kinds.

The one thing which seems to have been in short supply that summer was food. Either Edward’s planners had misjudged the quantities required to feed such a large army, or they had miscalculated the ability of this army to live off the land. As they penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of Scotland they found to their dismay scarcely a blade of grass to feed the horses, far less anything to sustain the troops. More and more, therefore, Edward had to depend on his supply ships and these, from bad weather and Scottish privateers, were few and far between. When Bishop Bek and his troops caught up with the main army at Kirkliston they found the soldiery desperately short of food and beginning to suffer as a consequence. When a few ships succeeded in entering the Firth of Forth it was found that they had brought only a small quantity of food, but two hundred casks of wine. In a desperate bid to boost the morale of his troops Edward ordered that the wine be distributed among the men. The Welshmen, imbibing on empty stomachs, got roaring drunk and went on the rampage during the night. There was no love lost between the Welsh and the English and a violent brawl ensued. When the corps of chaplains tried to separate the combatants no fewer than eighteen priests paid with their lives. The English men-at-arms avenged the clerics by attacking the Welshmen with such ferocity that eighty of the latter were killed and the rest of the contingent driven out of the encampment. In the cold light of dawn the whole camp clamoured against the drunken Taffies, and Edward was informed that the mutinous Welsh were about to desert to the Scots.

‘What do I care if my enemies join my enemies?’ asked the King contemptuously. ‘Let them go where they like; with God’s help I shall be revenged on both of them in one day.’

The Welshmen did not desert, but their loyalty was sorely tried and the English treated them with suspicion thereafter. There was no doubt that, if there was a repeat of Stirling Bridge, the Welsh would desert to a man. This ugly incident did nothing for the morale of the army as a whole. Gloom settled over it and there was angry muttering in the ranks. Such an experienced warrior as Edward no doubt sensed the mood of his men and now even he had doubts about the venture. For the first time in his long military career he began to lose heart, and in this depressed state he ordered a withdrawal to Edinburgh until stores could be replenished.

Things looked bad for the English. They had had a long and fatiguing march from the Borders through a ruined countryside, they were starving and baffled by the non-appearance of the Scottish army which seemed to melt away before the advance. As the process of demoralisation intensified, time was clearly on the side of the Scots. All that Wallace had to do, it seemed, was to wait. The further the English were drawn into the centre of Scotland, the longer would become their supply lines. Eventually they would be starved into retreating, and then the Scots could fall upon them, picking off the stragglers at will. It was the tactic for which Wallace was best suited. He was well aware of the parlous state of the enemy; if he bided his time, famine and the collapse of morale would defeat the English for him.

At dawn on 21 July a scout, sent out by the Earl of March, returned to report that Wallace’s army was only eighteen miles away, in the Forest of Selkirk and making ready to attack the English as soon as they showed the first sign of retreating. This was the first positive sighting of the elusive Scots and it filled Edward with elation. ‘God be praised!’ he cried, ‘who has brought me out of every strait! They shall have no need to follow me, for I shall go to meet them, and on this very day.’¹ The troops were ordered to buckle on their equipment and strike camp immediately. Edward mounted his destrier and personally exhorted the men. By nine o’clock that morning the entire army was on the move in the direction of Falkirk. The destination was kept secret from the rank and file and there was a great deal of conjecture as to the King’s intentions. The army moved slowly, for the infantrymen, proceeding at less than three miles an hour, set the pace. Night was falling as they approached Linlithgow and bivouacked in the fields some way south of that town, remaining in combat readiness with their arms at their sides and using their shields as pillows. The horses were not picketed in lines as was the normal practice, but each was tethered by its master and, as fodder was lacking, ‘tasted nothing but hard iron’ in Hemingburgh’s colourful words, alluding to the bits.

Edward’s page fell asleep and therefore failed to control his master’s great war-horse which, restless from lack of fodder, trampled on the sleeping monarch. This is the generally accepted story, although the chronicler Walsingham says that a false alarm that the Scots were mounting a night attack panicked the King’s horse as he was trying to mount it, and a hefty kick broke two of his ribs. Hemingburgh, on the other hand, states that the alarm was raised by the King’s cries of pain, and spread by the rumour that Edward had been seriously injured. Both chroniclers agree that the tumult was only quelled when King Edward courageously mounted the high-backed saddle and gave immediate orders for the advance to continue, although it was still dark. He appreciated that positive action was the only way to relieve the tension.

The army skirted Linlithgow before dawn broke and then continued on about six or seven miles. A brief glimpse of spears glinting in the early morning sun betrayed the presence of a Scottish cavalry patrol on a far-off ridge, but by the time the lightly armed skirmishers reached the spot the Scots had vanished. Edward deduced that the Scottish army could not be far away, and called a halt to give his troops a chance to catch their breath. It was the Feast of St Mary Magdalene and Edward, who was always great on the outward show of piety, had a portable altar set up so that the Bishop of Durham could celebrate mass. By the time this drum-head service was concluded the sun was well up, and now it became clear that the Scottish army was deployed in battle order, on the lower slope of a hillside about a mile ahead.

Why, oh why, when his guerrilla tactics had worked so well until now, did Wallace stand and offer pitched battle to such a large and well-armed army? It seems clear that this was never Wallace’s intention, but his plans were gravely upset by the night advance of the English. Whether, in spite of this, the Scots might still have withdrawn as the English advanced, is a matter for speculation. In the more open country around Falkirk, however, the opportunity to make an orderly withdrawal was very limited. The retreat in good order of the Scottish army, composed largely of foot soldiers, would have been exceedingly difficult in the immediate presence of a greatly superior force, with powerful cavalry which might easily have pursued and run them down. This probability would have occurred to Wallace and for this reason he reluctantly gave orders to deploy his troops in battle formation. Although this decision had to be taken hurriedly, the ground was well chosen and, in the circumstances, surprisingly well prepared for the expected onslaught.

If the precise location of the Battle of Stirling Bridge has been the subject of some debate, then the site of Falkirk has been much more controversial. Despite the name by which it is commonly known, the battle was some distance from the town. The majority of chroniclers speak of a battle at or near Falkirk: ‘a field called Fawkirke’ or ‘on one side of Fawkirke’.² Only Matthew of Westminster placed it specifically ‘on the plain which is called Falkirk’,³ but even this has been variously interpreted by more recent historians. The featureless carse around the town contained none of the prominent landmarks which pinpointed the battles of Stirling Bridge and Bannockburn. Some speak rather vaguely of a site between Linlithgow and Falkirk, but the traditional view was that the location was north of the medieval town. The compiler of the Falkirk section in the first Statistical Account, for example, says that the battle took place ‘somewhat more than half a mile north from Falkirk’, adding that the moss which covered the Scottish front was now drained by the Forth and Clyde Canal. Sir Charles Oman, however, put it about two miles south of Falkirk, with Darnrig Moss as the marshy ground protecting the Scottish front. This supposition was based on Blind Harry’s statement that the English camp on the night before the battle was on Slamannan Muir, ‘south from Falkirk, a little above the toun’.

The ridge on which the Scottish horsemen rode when the English army first saw them was traditionally supposed to be at Redding, about three miles south-east of Falkirk, where a large rock was known locally as Wallace’s Stone. Similarly, the land on the north side of the town, between the railway station and the Forth and Clyde Canal, was known for centuries as Campfield and Graemesmuir, the former in allusion to the battlefield and the latter in tribute to Sir John Graham who fell in the battle. Today this district is known as Grahamstown in his memory. Before this area was extensively developed in the middle of the nineteenth century the ground was very marshy, and therefore accorded with the morass or bog that protected the Scottish front. Similarly Bainsford, another part of the modern town, is said to have derived its name from the English knight Sir Brian de Jay who, in one version of the battle, was killed when he tried to traverse the extreme right of this morass. Inevitably, old inhabitants could point to a couple of ancient yew trees on the east side of Graham Street which, according to hallowed tradition, marked the very spot where the good Sir John was slain. This was apparently confirmed by the English chronicles which stated that many of the Scots were drowned in a river as they fled from the battlefield, and the River Carron does, indeed, flow not far to the north. From all this circumstantial evidence and scraps of tradition it was generally concluded that the battle had been fought over what is now Grahamstown.

This tradition was more or less accepted until the late 1930s, when it was challenged by James Fergusson who conjectured that the battle took place about four miles south of Falkirk, on the River Avon, at a point midway between the modern villages of Slamannan and Avonbridge, the likeliest spot seemingly just below the house of Glenellrig.⁴ This conjecture was based on Hemingburgh, who derived his account of the battle from eyewitnesses. Hemingburgh states that the Scots were drawn up in campo duro, et in latere uno cuiusdam montiscilii juxta Fawkirke (on hard ground and on one side of a hillock near Falkirk). In itself, this is too vague, but taken in conjunction with other evidence the location becomes clearer. When Edward hesitated before attacking, the barons objected on the ground that it was unsafe, there being ‘nothing between the two armies but a very small stream’ (non est nisi torrens permodicus). When the knights charged they found what they had not noticed before, that the ground along the waterside was boggy and impassable — Hemingburgh’s pithy expression was lacus bituminosus. They therefore wheeled off to the flank to find a way round, the first line to the west and the second to the east. Fergusson was the first historian to take these details into account. They proved that in front of the Scots as they stood in battle array were, first hard sloping ground, then a small river, running east and west, with a deep moss on its southward bank (and perhaps on both banks), with good ground for cavalry beyond, on which the English arrayed themselves before their attack. The Scots therefore faced south, and the English army’s advance was roughly northwards.

As the phrase near Falkirk could mean anything from one to ten miles from the town, Fergusson deduced that the Avon, rather than the Carron, was the river which separated the two armies. The Avon runs west to east about four miles south of Falkirk, but after it passes Avonbridge it turns to the north-east and then runs almost due north to reach the Forth between Grangemouth and Bo’ness. As it does not flow eastwards after a point about a mile below Avonbridge, Hemingburgh’s description is accurate. For this reason Fergusson concluded that the west-to-east stretch of the Avon had to include the battle-site. By examining the actual terrain, moreover, he narrowed down the battlefield to the area just north of Glenellrig where the ground perfectly fitted Hemingburgh’s description. Here, he argued, were Wallace’s schiltroms. From a distance, the Avon, meandering between fields, does not seem much of a defence, but when one descends the gradual slope towards the stream on the south side the marshy nature of the water meadows becomes readily apparent. It is still prone to become waterlogged, but in earlier times it must have been very swampy indeed, before the area was substantially drained in the eighteenth century.

The only objection to this theory is that it would have entailed a very considerable southward diversion from Linlithgow. Here again, however, many historians supposed that the English advanced through that town whereas Hemingburgh states quite unequivocally that ‘night overtook them on this side of Linlithgow, and at dawn the next day they passed the town’. If they had actually entered the town, the starving, half-mutinous troops would have broken ranks in search of food and plunder, or there would have been some mention of its having been laid waste by the Scots or otherwise offering no temptation to the English. Fergusson’s view that the line of advance was more to the south, close to Torphichen, is confirmed by Blind Harry who has the English march to Slamannan Muir begin from Torphichen. If we bear in mind that the English intelligence was that Wallace was ‘near Falkirk in the Forest of Selkirk’ or ‘in the forest of Falkirk’, Edward could not have had any precise notion of where his enemy was encamped.

The controversy over the site of the battle, however, is as nothing compared with the arguments that continue to rage over whether Wallace should have fought it at all. Poor Wallace has often been blamed for risking everything on a pitched battle; it is always easy to find fault in a lost battle, and if nothing succeeds like success, then equally no credit is allowed for failure. The only accurate account of what happened was written by Hemingburgh who naturally gives us an English view of events. The Scottish accounts are very brief, mainly written long after the event, and sidetracked by the need to pin the blame on some factor such as Sir John Comyn’s supposed treachery or cowardice, or even some entirely imaginary assistance given to the enemy by Robert Bruce. The latter theory is easily rebutted, for Bruce was in Ayr Castle at the time, more than fifty miles away. And the conduct of Sir John Comyn would not only have been out of character but can also be explained quite rationally.

Furthermore some critics, notably Evan Barron, have argued that the tactics which lost Falkirk were the direct antithesis of the tactics which won Stirling Bridge. This argument is put forward with the implication that success at Stirling was due to Andrew de Moray, and that without his genius as a strategist Wallace was bound to lose Falkirk. This is a specious argument not supported by the facts. Apart from anything else, no general would use the same tactics in two battles fought on quite different ground and against quite different opponents. Yet there were similarities in these battles. In both, Wallace relied heavily on infantry armed with spears against a foe whose strength lay in his heavy cavalry. At Stirling the spearmen were used offensively, to seize the bridgehead; at Falkirk they were employed defensively, on well-chosen ground sloping against a cavalry charge, the front defended by such natural obstacles as a small river and an extensive marsh, with a forest (the Torwood) not far off into which, if the worst came to the worst, infantry could withdraw and cavalry would be hampered in pursuit. In each case the ground was chosen with great skill. There is also the evidence of one chronicler (the compiler of the Cottonian manuscript) that the Scottish front was protected by an open palisade of long, sharp stakes driven into the ground at an angle, and laced with stout ropes.⁵ Such an elaborate defence work gives the lie to the canard that Wallace was taken by surprise.

According to Hemingburgh the Scottish infantry was drawn up in four close masses or clumps called schiltroms, circular in form and each consisting of a double rank of men facing outwards. The front rank crouched or sat on the ground with their twelve-foot spears slanting upwards, while the rear rank stood with their weapons inclined over their comrades’ heads. ‘Their spears point over point, so sair and so thick, and fast together joint; to see it was marvellous,’ commented Robert de Brunne poetically. The spaces between the schiltroms were occupied by the Border bowmen commanded by Sir John Stewart. To the rear were the cavalry, ready to give chase when the enemy broke ranks.

This strategy has often been criticised, although Fergusson shrewdly points out that it was exactly the strategy used by the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo when the French cavalry broke on the British squares. The main difference between these two great battles, half a millennium apart, is that the French artillery of 1815 was not as accurate or deadly as the English archery of 1298. As it happens, Waterloo was ‘a damned close-run thing’ and the round-shot and grape of the French cannons did far more damage than the successive charges of Napoleon’s cavalry. In 1298 it was not the heavily armoured destriers that broke Wallace’s schiltroms, but the Welshmen and Lancastrians armed with the longbow. This was a relatively new weapon, so deadly and capable of upsetting the tenets of medieval chivalry that it was at first condemned as illegal and regarded with the horror reserved, in a later age, for poison gas. Had it not been for the deadly accuracy of the longbowmen Edward would have been foiled by those forests of spears and forced to retreat, a retreat which Wallace would have turned into a headlong rout. Then Wallace would have been hailed as the greatest general of the age, and not be unfairly relegated to the role of a guerrilla leader whose ability to handle troops in a pitched battle was debatable.

As the English host deployed in battle order on the far side of the stream Wallace cried out to his men those immortal words: ‘I have brought you to the ring; dance the best you can.’⁶ By now the enemy had not eaten for almost twenty-four hours. When Edward saw the Scots arrayed before him he decided that his men should have a square meal before engaging in battle, reckoning that what supplies were left might as well be used up. This was a commonsense approach; but his staff officers were anxious to avoid delay, fearing that the Scots might attack while they breakfasted. This folly was compounded by the fact that, for once, the English army had failed to send scouts to spy out the land. For this reason the barons thought that they had a plain field in front of them at last and could therefore deploy the cavalry to best advantage. This cardinal error might well have cost them the battle.

For once Edward allowed himself to be swayed against his better judgment. In mitigation, he was now fifty-eight years of age, quite elderly in medieval terms, and we must suppose that the shock and pain of his broken ribs were taking their toll. With a pious invocation to the Holy Trinity he gave way to his barons, although instead of ordering the cavalry to charge he sent the unreliable Welshmen forward first. The Welsh, still resentful over their rough handling less than forty-eight hours earlier, flatly refused to be treated as spear fodder. All the threats and promises in the world would not budge the sullen archers. There was nothing for it, therefore, but to send in the cavalry after all. The first wave, commanded by the Earl Marshal and the earls of Hereford and Lincoln, charged with considerable panache — straight into the marsh which had hitherto been undetected. The lush greenery of the meadow concealed a viscous swamp which brought the clattering knights to an unseemly halt. In a state of confusion bordering on farce, which must have given some grim amusement to the Scottish schiltroms on the opposing slope, the heavy cavalry extricated itself from the bog and wheeled off westwards to the left to seek a way round.

The second line was a glittering spectacle in which the banners of thirty-six barons and the pennons and guidons of innumerable knights provided a blaze of colour. It advanced at a wary trot, commanded by Bishop Bek who, having perceived the mess the first line had got itself into, led his horsemen diagonally towards the eastern side of the moss with the intention of striking the Scots on their left flank. This tactic worked, and Bek’s cavalry crossed the stream in good order, then halted to wait for the third line to get into position. The third echelon was commanded by King Edward himself and he, no doubt suffering from his broken ribs, was having considerable difficulty in remaining upright in the saddle. Consequently, the third wave was much slower in deployment. Meanwhile some of the barons in Bek’s regiment were becoming increasingly irritable at the delay. When Bek tried to calm them down, Sir Ralph Basset told the bishop to go and sing mass and leave the fighting to them. With that, Basset, followed by most of the other knights, swept Bek aside and flung themselves at the schiltrom on the extreme left of the Scottish line. Shortly afterwards the Earl Marshal’s ragged line, having finally got around the other side of the moss, launched a similarly impetuous but disorderly attack on the Scottish right.

Now Wallace’s incessant and wearisome drilling of his men paid off handsomely. The schiltroms stood firm. The spearmen showed a courage and resolution which did them credit; against those wicked steel points all the gallantry and dash of English chivalry came to grief. Not one infantryman wavered as the huge war-horses with their heavily armoured riders bore down on them. Sadly, the same could not be said for the Scottish cavalry under the Red Comyn. Although the horsemen were held in reserve at the rear of the schiltroms, they wavered as the English charged the schiltroms, then wheeled about and galloped off the field without striking a single blow. Fordun says that the Scottish horse deserted Wallace treacherously ‘on account of ill-will, begotten of the spring of envy’. The story was embroidered at great length by Blind Harry who imputed to Comyn sinister motives. Comyn’s sister was the wife of the Earl of Dunbar, one of Wallace’s arch enemies, but such ties of kinship seem to have counted for very little in the thirteenth century. According to Harry, Comyn tried to foment a quarrel between Wallace and Sir John Stewart on the grounds that the latter, by birth and social status, had the right to command the Scottish army.⁷ There is, however, absolutely no evidence to support this contention.

It is more likely that, in the heat of the moment, Comyn was swept along by the stampede of his men, or he may have galloped after them in a vain attempt to rally them and check their flight. At worst, the case against Comyn is not proven; but in default of any hard evidence to the contrary he cannot be charged with treachery. The argument that he took fright at the sight of the heavily armoured English cavalry hardly merits examination, for Comyn had fought fearlessly, almost recklessly, at Dunbar only two years earlier, and nothing before or since Falkirk should lead us to suppose that he had lost his nerve since that battle.

Only a handful of horsemen, including Wallace and his immediate staff, remained, riding up and down beside the schiltroms exhorting the spearmen to stand firm. Sir John Stewart’s archers, armed with the Scottish shortbow, did not have the skilled marksmanship of their English counterparts. The latter, moreover, had a far superior weapon, whose range and velocity easily outmanœuvred the Scots. The English cavalry, having failed to make much impression on the spearmen, turned their attention on the archers and rode them down. When Sir John Stewart tried to rally them, he was thrown from his horse and slain, according to John Major, though both Wyntoun and the Scalacronica say that he had already dismounted, the better to fight on foot among the common soldiers at his command. His archers closed ranks around his fallen body and sold their lives dearly — ‘men of handsome form and tall stature’ says Hemingburgh admiringly, echoing the Flowers of the Forest of a later, and even more tragic, encounter. The same chronicler, describing the schiltroms, likened them to a thick wood. A hundred and eleven English horses perished on that deadly and impenetrable hedge,⁸ and the field became a chaotic welter of baffled knights swirling around and between the implacable masses of spearmen.

Despite the headlong flight of the Scottish cavalry, the battle could still have gone either way; but now Edward committed the main body of his infantry to the attack. This force appears to have consisted almost entirely of English levies and Irish volunteers, for two of the English accounts are emphatic that the Welshmen continued to stand back until they saw that the Scots were beaten.⁹ There was, however, a considerable body of Lancastrian longbowmen among the infantry and it was their deadly hail of arrows which succeeded where the armoured cavalry had failed. This onslaught was backed up by the shower of missiles thrown by the foot soldiers as they advanced over ground littered with stones and rocks. At this crucial point, even a squadron of well-trained cavalry could have worked wonders, just as they did at Bannockburn sixteen years later, but the assault of the English infantry was unchecked on this occasion. As the hail of arrows and stones decimated their ranks, the schiltroms wavered and finally broke, enabling the cavalry at last to charge in and despatch the spearmen as they turned and ran. At close quarters twelve-foot spears were useless, while swords and dirks had little effect on the armour of the knights and their great chargers. The coup de grâce was administered by Bishop Bek, whose cavalry had worked its way round to the rear and now charged downhill to slaughter the spearmen as they tried to escape. Before defeat turned to utter rout, the Welshmen at long last joined in the butchery.

Wallace, with the battered remnants of his army, withdrew to the north. The open rolling countryside of the present day was, in fact, densely wooded in the late thirteenth century, so that pursuit by the English cavalry was severely handicapped. Nevertheless, the slaughter of fleeing foot soldiers was cruel and relentless. Those who managed to escape the vengeful lances of the cavalry had to get across the River Carron and no doubt many of them drowned in its treacherous tidal waters. The more impetuous English knights pursued the fleeing Scots as far as Falkirk itself. Among them was Sir Brian de Jay, Master of the English Templars, who rashly pursued Wallace into the wood of Callendar where his horse became bogged down and he himself was killed, perhaps even by Wallace himself.¹⁰ By a strange coincidence, the only other man of note who fell on the English side was Sir Brian’s colleague, the Master of the Scottish Templars.

The Scottish infantry was virtually annihilated that day, the most conservative estimate of the slain being put at ten thousand. Among them were Sir John Stewart, Sir John Graham and Macduff of Fife. Graham and Stewart were subsequently interred in the churchyard of Falkirk where their tombs may be seen to this day. Graham’s is marked with two epitaphs, the earlier in Latin and the other, of much later vintage, in the vernacular which was twice restored in the eighteenth century when the stone weathered badly:

Heir lyes Sir John the Grame, baith wight and wise,

Ane of the chiefs who rescewit Scotland thrise.

Ane better knight not to the world was lent,

Nor was gude Grame of truth and hardiment.

His memory was perpetuated by one of the most moving passages in Blind Harry’s epic, the verses being rendered in the form of a panegyric by Wallace lamenting his fallen comrade.

The Battle of Falkirk was a much more devastating blow than Dunbar. The loss of men was far greater and there must have been few families in southern Scotland which did not suffer as a consequence. More importantly, this defeat brought to an end the three hundred days of Wallace’s government, and with it the hopes of ridding Scotland of the foreign yoke. Wallace’s career declined from that day; he left on that battlefield not only the flower of his army but his reputation as a leader. A quarter of his life yet lay before him, but never again was he to exercise any meaningful influence on the course of affairs.