oming with extraordinary dramatic effect into the always
graphic and picturesque narrative, over the heads of the flying,
discomfited crowd which was struggling among the horses' hoofs at the
narrow gate, and the Frenchmen straggling behind, up all the narrow
passages into the Canongate, snatching a piece of plunder where they
could find it, "one a kietill, ane other ane pettycoat, the third a pote
or a pan." "Je pense que vous l'avez achete sans argent," the Queen is
reported to have said with a laugh as the pursuers came back to Leith
with their not very important booty. "This was the great and motherlie
care she took for the truth of the poor subjects of this realm," says
Knox bitterly; and yet it was very natural that she should have been
overjoyed, after all these controversies, to feel herself the stronger,
if not in argument at least in actual fight.

This defeat told greatly upon the spirits of the Congregation which had
hitherto been kept together by success, and which was in fact a mere
horde of men hastily collected, untrained in actual warfare, and in no
position for taking the offensive though strong in defence of their
rights. And money had failed. It was determined that each gentleman
should give his plate to be made into coin to supply the needs of the
Congregation, as they had the Mint in their hands: but the officials
stole away with the "irons" and this was made impracticable. They then
sent for a supply to the English envoys who were anxiously watching the
progress of events at Berwick: but the sum sent to them in answer to
their application was intercepted by the Earl of Bothwell--his first
appearance in history, on which he was to leave thereafter such traces
of disaster. And other encounters with the Frenchmen took the heart
entirely out of the Congregation; the party began to dissolve, stealing
away on every side. "Our soldiers" (mercenaries it is to be supposed in
distinction from the retainers of the lords and gentlemen) "could
skarslie be dang out of the town" to meet a sally from Leith. In
Edinburgh itself the rasckall multitude, which had been so ready to
destroy and ravage, began to throw stones at the Reformers and call them
traitors and heretics. Finally with hearts penetrated by disappointment
and the misery of defeat the Congregation abandoned Edinburgh altogether
and marched to Stirling with drooping arms and hearts.

"The said day at nine in the night," says a contemporary authority,