KING JAMES SURPRIZED.

19

At first

them, make a forced march of some fifteen19 miles in all. they go from north-east to north-west, and recross the Till by Twizell bridge. All this time they have kept behind the screen of hills; but now they advance rapidly southward, and at three o'clock in the afternoon King James, who has imagined them to be all the time somewhere in the neighbourhood of Wooler, sees them advancing from the north upon the little village of Branxton in the valley below him. All the advantage of his strong position, 'more like a fortress than a camp,' is taken from him: the English enemy are between him and his own country: they can cry 'check' to his queen and castle of Edinburgh, and he may have to fight on this fatal Friday, to which his knightly honour is pledged, not where he wills, but where Surrey wills.

The march, as I have said, was a forced one. Fifteen miles for foot soldiers, over bad and miry roads, was a good stretch to accomplish before two or three in the afternoon, and what heightens our admiration of the brave and patient English plough-boys who made it, is that they are said to have been absolutely fasting. Surrey's commissariat was evidently inferior to that of James, and while the Scots had their fine beer laid up in store on Flodden hill, the English soldiers for two days had only water to drink. But perhaps someone will say that this was the reason of their victory.

Now, with reference to the march of this vanguard of the army, I think it is clear that it was a complete surprize to the Scottish king, and that it was not till they were within two or three miles of him, at least as near as Cornhill, that he discovered what they were doing. The beautiful lines therefore in which Scott describes the march of the English over Twizell bridge, as seen by the Scots, the shifting of the Scottish lines, observing the movements of the admiral and themselves, observed by the practised eye of Marmion, must, however graphic and vivid the narrative, be struck out of the page of

19 By the map it is eight miles, as the crow flies,' from Barmoor to Twizell and five by road from Twizell to Branxton. We seem to want further information as to the road by which the army would march from Barmoor. The best road (though a somewhat circuitous one) now available, leads by way of Ford and Etal and the valley of the Till; but this road, as I understand the matter, would not be taken by the admiral, because he would lose the advantage of the intervening screen of hills. Probably, therefore, he took the more northern route by Duddo, though this may have been little better than a bye-road.