Hallowed ground

April 7, 2023--Flodden Monument

There is a monument there, on Piper's Hill at Flodden Field.  As far as monuments go, it looks like many others commemorating this or that battle; here a turning point; there a decisive victory.  The landscape of Britain is littered with such monuments, too many to name.  And so it goes.  For every victor, there is a vanquished...its corollary.  

"Woe to the land, sedition, wreck and ruin," to borrow from The ghost that danced at Jethart in Scottish fairy and folk tales by Sir George Douglas, 1901.  Sir Douglas recounts the story of ghostly apparitions that are said to have presaged the death of Scotland's Alexander III (September 4, 1241-March 19 1286), in an earlier time back when the tree of Scotland's nobility was still green.  

 

Despite the pleadings of his retinue about traveling in a storm at night, the story has it, Alexander III died in a fall from his mount.  With all his children having predeceased him, Scotland would descend into an interregnum six year period that was ostensibly governed by the Guardians of Scotland.  But it was King Edward I of England who called the shots.

April 7, 2023--Branxton bog; Scots coming downhill

John Balliol (derisively called Toom Tabard, meaning "Empty Coat") was inaugurated on November 30, 1292.  He was then routinely humiliated as if he were a vassal by Edward I.  Eventually, Scottish nobility deposed him and chose a Council of 12 to govern Scotland.  It was this council who originally signed the "Auld Alliance" with France.  In retaliation, Edward I invaded Scotland.  And so, the wars began anew...centuries more of war.

April 7, 2023--the bog were ten thousand Scots died

The Auld Alliance, of course, is what got James IV involved in an invasion of England in 1513...his excuse at any rate.  For more see: https://whitleyworldtravel.blogspot.com/2023/12/ye-olde-diversionary-amorous-attentions.html

Still, in its shear magnitude, the Flodden Field memorial is in a class all its own.  It marks the end of a kingdom; the end of the medieval age.  September 9, 1513, was a fell day indeed. Ultimately, the memorial at Branxton Moor (or, following Sir Walter Scot, Flodden Field) marks the final chapters of Scotland as an independent sovereign nation.  After Flodden Field, it was a dead man walking so to speak.

April 7, 2023--at Flodden it was difficult enough with drainage

The monument is simple, yet poignant.  It memorializes the dead of both nations.  But really, mostly Scotland's.  In the form of a tapered tall Celtic Cross, it occupies an elevated position on the battlefield, standing on the edge of hallowed ground purchased by the lives of many thousands of Scots who were slaughtered at Branxton Moor literally in as little as three or four hours.  [In terms of troop numbers, Flodden Field would be the largest pitched battle ever fought between the Kingdom of Scotland and the Kingdom of England.]

April 7, 2023--Flodden mud

Executed in polished gray Aberdeen granite, it is highly visible above the landscape.  With raised roll-molded edges, it stands upon a tapered base of roughly dressed stone within a square enclosure marked by boulder posts on the corners and centers of each side.  

Set into the north side is a bronze plaque with raised sans-serif letters reading:  Battle of Flodden 1513.  To the brave of both nations.  Erected 1910.  

April 7, 2023--Flodden Field monument

First proposed by the Berwickshire Naturalists Club in 1907, it was argued that it was time to erect a commemorative memorial, and show that the old enmities no longer mattered.  (Although the modern day Scottish National Party may have a thing or two to say about that.)  

Whatever was to be erected, must be the work of both English and Scots.  A public subscription was started, and eventually £350 was raised (with a large contribution from the Duke of Norfolk whose ancestor was the Earl of Surrey, the victor of the battle).  

April 7, 2023--St. Paul's served as temporary battlefield morgue

With a thousand people present, the memorial was unveiled on September 27, 1910 by Sir George Douglas of Kelso, the same who authored Scottish fairy and folk tales.  

The Battle of Flodden Field was a devastating defeat of Scotland.  It resulted in the death of its king, and horrible carnage done to its nobility, to say nothing of blood shed by commoners.  Not less than 10,000 gallant, but dead, Scotsmen.  Some put the numbers at 14,000.  Seldom do monuments have such reach.  The end of an age.

 

April 7, 2023--Branxton Village

[Note:  As for Sir George Douglas, he never married.  Following a successful career publishing books and histories, and as Lecturer in Literature at University of Glasgow, in 1935 when he died, the Douglas estate at Springwood Park passed as an inheritance to his great-nephew who then succeeded in frittering it away--gambling, horse and car racing, yachts.  He never resided at the estate, and the house fell into disrepair.  The contents of Springwood were put up for auction in 1947 to cover his debts, and eventually the estate was divided up and sold, with the house demolished in 1954.] 

April 7, 2023--Nun's Walk at Coldstream; recovered bodies of soldiers at Flodden Field