ville, their leader,
slain, with many others, and the whole dispersed and scattered.
Sir Robert Manton, who was the king's treasurer, had had a quarrel
with Fraser, when the latter was in Edward's service, regarding
his pay; and Fraser is said by some historians to have now revenged
himself by slaying his prisoner. Other accounts, however, represent
Manton as having escaped.

The slaughter of the prisoners appears, although cruel, to have
been unavoidable; as the Scots, having before them a well appointed
force fully equal to their own in number, could not have risked
engaging, with so large a body of prisoners in their rear. None of
the knights or other leaders were slain, these being subsequently
exchanged or ransomed, as we afterwards find them fighting in the
English ranks.

Seeing by this defeat that a vast effort was necessary to conquer
Scotland, King Edward advanced in the spring of 1303 with an army
of such numbers that the historians of the time content themselves
with saying that "it was great beyond measure." It consisted of
English, Welsh, Irish, Gascons, and Savoyards. One division, under
the Prince of Wales, advanced by the west coast; that of the king,
by the east; and the two united at the Forth. Without meeting any
serious resistance the great host marched north through Perth and
Dundee to Brechin, where the castle, under the charge of Sir Thomas
Maille, resisted for twenty days; and it was only after the death
of the governor that it surrendered.

The English then marched north through Aberdeen, Banff, and Moray
into Caithness, carrying utter destruction everywhere; towns and
hamlets, villages and farmhouses were alike destroyed; crops were
burned, forests and orchards cut down. Thus was the whole of Scotland
wasted; and even the rich abbeys of Abberbredok and Dunfermline,
the richest and most famous in Scotland, were destroyed, and the
whole levelled to the ground. The very fields were as far as possible
injured--the intention of Edward being, as Fordun says, to blot
out the people, and to reduce the land to a condition of irrecoverable
devastation, and thus to stamp out for ever any further resistance
in Scotland.

During the three years which had elapsed since the departure
of Wallace, Archie had for the most part remained quietly in his
castle, occupying himself with the comfort and wellbeing of his
vassals. He had, each time the English entered Scotland, taken the
field with a portion of