The victory of the English over the Scots at Neville Cross is mainly attributable to the spirited demeanour of Philippa, wife of Edward the third. At her father's court in Hainault, she had witnessed war in its splendid image, the tournament; and now, in a perilous moment, when the king her husband was far away, and the fate of England was in her hands, she showed that she was not unworthy of her race or her alliance. She rode among the battles or divisions of her host, exhorting them to perform their _devoir_, to defend the honour of her lord the king of England, and in the name of God she implored every man to bear a good heart and courage, promising them that she would reward them better than if her lord the king were personally in the field. She then quitted the ranks, recommending her soldiers to the protection of God, and of St. George, that special defender of the realm of England. This exhortation of the queen nerved the hearts of the English yeomen, and they shot their arrows so fiercely and so wholly together, that the Scottish battle-axe failed of its wonted might.[262] [Sidenote: The countess of March.] For the heroism of women, the page of Scottish history furnishes a remarkable instance. In the beginning of the year 1338, William de Montague, Earl of Salisbury, by command of the Earl of Arundel, the leader of the army of Edward III., laid siege to the castle of Dunbar, the chief post which the Scots possessed on the eastern coast of their country. The castle stood upon a reef of rocks which were almost girdled by the sea, and such parts of it as could be attacked were fortified with great skill. The Earl of March, its lord, was absent when Salisbury commenced the siege, but the defence lacked not his presence. His wife was there, and while to the vulgar spirits of the time, she was known, from the unwonted darkness of her eyes and hair, as Black Agnes, the chivalric sons of Scotland joyfully beheld a leader in the person of the high-spirited daughter of the illustrious Thomas Ranulph, Earl of Moray. The Countess of March performed all the duties of a skilful and vigilant commander. She animated her little band by her exhortations and munificence; she roused the brave into heroism, and shamed the timid into courage by the firmness of her bearing. When the warlike engines of the besiegers hurled stones against the battlements, she, as in scorn, ordered one of her female attendants to wipe off the dust with a handkerchief, and when the Earl of Salisbury commanded the enormous machine called the sow, to be advanced to the foot of the walls, she scoffingly cried out, 'Beware, Montague, thy sow is about to farrow,' and instantly by her command a huge fragment of rock was discharged from the battlements, and it dashed the engine to pieces. Many of the men who were about it were killed, and those who crawled from the ruin on their hands and knees were deridingly called by the Scots, Montague's pigs.