Chapter II · SUMMARY. (continued 2)

The chiefs of the King’s feudal muster openly murmured against their royal master for his neglect of his military duties; they, however, took the opportunity, headed by the Queen’s friend, Angus, of urging him to retreat back into Scotland with the credit of the mischief he had already done to the English enemy, which more than redeemed the romantic pledge he had given to the Queen of France. James, however, was intoxicated with his first successes, or else loth to restore the Lady Heron to her rightful owner. He declared “he would fight the English if they were a hundred thousand more in numbers; and as for old Bell-the-Cat, he might go back if he were afraid. For himself, when he had fought the English he would retire, and not till then.”[161]

Surrey had dispatched a herald to King James requesting “that he would appoint a day for battle,” a request with which the Scottish King, in the spirit of knight-errantry (disdaining all thoughts of advantage to be gained by military strategy), very naïvely complied, following the laws of the tournament rather than the rules of warlike science.

The battle of Flodden was lost before it was begun, by the unseasonable courtesy of King James, who prevented his able gunner, Borthwick, from demolishing the English army, as it defiled within range of his “seven sister cannon, Thraw-mouthed Meg,” and other instruments of destruction. Surrey must have calculated to a nicety on the punctilios of the crowned chevalier, before he put his army in such remarkable jeopardy. Indeed, without some previous knowledge of the personal intimacy between James and the astute English veteran on the occasion of Margaret’s marriage, many passages are unaccountable in the conduct of the latter on the memorable morning of September 9th, 1513. But he knew his man; he had probably received some chivalric pledge from James during their former intimacy, of which he now took advantage, with cunning reliance on the inviolability of his knightly word. King James followed up his first imprudence by leaving his impregnable situation on Flodden heights, and descending into the lower ground, that he might engage Lord Surrey in a fair field.

The disastrous result is universally known. No one can improve on the battle-scene in Marmion, which adds the faithfulness of history to its peculiar charm of true poetry. The recital of battles from a woman’s pen is almost as impertinent and out of place as disquisitions on theology; both have been sedulously avoided in these regal biographies.[162]

James IV. must therefore be left to his doubtful fate, while the narrative returns to his Queen, The following stanzas were written by a cotemporary English poet.[163] The lines he has supposed to be spoken by the brave and unfortunate King of Scotland.