If Providence is always on the side of the heaviest battalion, as Napoleon was wont to affirm, then the Scots on this occasion are in imminent danger of having "short shrift." But it has been found that the fortunes of war depend on a variety of circumstances that are frequently of more importance than the number of troops, either on the one side or the other. Discipline and valour, when combined with patriotism and pride-of-arms, have accomplished feats which the heaviest battalions are sometimes impotent to achieve. We by no means wish to imply that the English were deficient in these desirable qualities; far from it. They were splendidly led, and in the encounter displayed the most heroic qualities; but they were matched by a small body of men, of the most dauntless courage and invincible determination who were thoroughly inured to battle, and ever ready at the call of duty, to encounter the most powerful foes. The Scots were taken by surprise. Some were at supper, and others had gone to rest when the alarm was given that the English were approaching. But up then spake a little page, Before the peep of dawn-- "O waken ye, waken ye, my good lord, For Percy's hard at hand." "Ye lie, ye lie, ye liar loud! Sae loud I hear ye lie; For Percy had not men yestreen, To dight my men and me. "But I have dream'd a dreary dream, Beyond the Isle of Sky; I saw a dead man win a fight, And I think that man was I." He belted on his guid braid sword, And to the field he ran; But he forgot the helmit good, That should have kept his brain. The battle now raged in earnest. A bright warm day had been followed by a clear still moonlight night. "The fight," says Godscroft, "was continued very hard as among noble men on both sides, who did esteem more of glory than life. Percy strove to repair the foil he got at Newcastle, and the Earl Douglas did as much labour to keep the honour he had won. So in unequal numbers, but both eager in mind, they continued fighting a great part of the night. At last a cloud covering the face of the moon, not being able to discern friend from foe, they took some respite for a while; but so soon as the cloud was gone, the English gave so hard a charge, that the Scots were put back in such sort, that the Douglas standard was in great peril to have been lost. This did so irritate him, that he himself in the one wing, and the two Hepburns (father and son) in the other, pressing through the ranks of their own men, and advancing to the place where the greatest peril appeared, renewed a hard conflict, and by giving and receiving many wounds, they restored their men into the place from whence they had been beaten, and continued the fight till the next day at noon."[9] Foremost, in the thick of the fray, was the dauntless Douglas, laying about him on every side with a mace of iron, which two ordinary men were not able to lift, "and making a lane round about wheresoever he went."