This outburst of lawless baronial vengeance removed Edward's favourite, but did the realm no other good. The king was compelled to pardon Gaveston's murderers, but he could not be forced to forget what they had done, and even his slow and craven heart conceived projects of revenge. But these had to be postponed for a time to the pressing needs of the Scotch war. Bruce had taken Perth in 1312, Edinburgh and Roxburgh fell to him in the following year, and he was besieging Stirling, the last important stronghold still in English hands. Even Edward was stirred: he bade all England arm, and vowed to march to the relief of Stirling in the next spring. A great host mustered under the royal banner, but Thomas of Lancaster factiously refused to appear, on the plea that the ordinances of 1311 forbade the king to go out to war without the consent of Parliament. This act alone is a sufficient proof that Thomas was a mere self-seeking politician, and not the patriot that he would fain have appeared. [Illustration: BATTLE OF BANNOCKBURN June 24{TH} 1314.] [Sidenote: =Battle of Bannockburn.=] King Edward, with an army that is rated at nearly 100,000 men by the chronicler, pushed on to relieve Stirling, and met no opposition till he reached the burn of Bannock, two miles south of that town. There he found Bruce and his host of 40,000 men posted on a rising ground, with the brook and a broad bog in his front. On their flanks the Scots had protected themselves by digging many pits lightly covered with earth and brushwood, so as to break the charge of the English horse. Edward displayed all the marks of a bad general: instead of endeavouring to use his superior numbers to turn or surround the enemy, he flung them recklessly on the Scottish front. When his archers, who by themselves might have settled the battle, had been driven away by the Scots horse, he pushed his great array of mailed knights against the solid masses of Bruce's infantry. After struggling through brook and bog, the English came to a standstill before the steady line of spears. Charge after charge was made, but the knights could not break through the sturdy pikemen, and at last recoiled in disorder. At this moment a mass of Scottish camp-followers came rushing over the hill on the left, and were taken by the exhausted English for a new army. Edward's great host broke up and fled, the king himself outstripping his followers, and never halting till he reached Dunbar. The Earl of Gloucester, six other barons, two hundred knights, and many thousand men of lower rank were left upon the field. The Earls of Hereford and Angus, and seventy knights were taken prisoners.