Years' War. The presence of these heavily armed troopers in his ranks
gave him a strength in defence, and an impetuosity in attack, which
made it a simple matter to break up the undisciplined squadrons opposed
to him. Bannockburn rang the death-knell of the tactics which since
Hastings had been regarded as the perfection of military art. The
political lessons of the victory were of not less importance. It is
almost too much to say that Bannockburn won for Scotland its
independence, for Scottish independence had already been vindicated.
But the easy victory brought home to men's minds the full measure of
the Scottish triumph. It was already clear that so long as Edward
lived, England would never make the continued effort which, as Edward
I.'s wars both in Wales and Scotland had shown, could alone
systematically conquer a nation. Bruce's difficulties were not so much
with the English as with the Scots. It was no small task to unite the
English of the Lothians, the Welsh of the south-west, the Norsemen of
the extreme north, and the Celts of the hills into a single Scottish
nation. He had against him the separatist local feeling which Scottish
history and ethnology made inevitable, and it took time for him to
obtain that prestige, which should hedge a king, and raise him above
the crowd of feudal earls and clan chieftains, who thought themselves
as good as the sometime Earl of Carrick. Such dignity and distinction
Bannockburn supplied, and such measure of national unity and strong
monarchical authority as Scotland ever enjoyed, came from the triumph
of him who became, even more than Wallace, the hero of the new nation.
For the next few years the Scots took the aggressive. They induced the
French kings to renew the alliance which Philip IV. had made with them
in the early years of the contest. They obtained papal recognition for
their king and the withdrawal of the ban of the Church on Comyn's
murderer; they plundered northern England from end to end, and broke
down Anglo-Norman rule in Ireland; they plotted for the resurrection of