ABSTRACT
Different as were the results of King Edward’s attempts to conquer Wales and to conquer Scotland, the two enterprises had a superficial resemblance to an unintelligent contemporary observer. Both were fought out in hilly and thinly-peopled countries, where roads were few and provisions hard to find, and against a foe whose reliance lay on his infantry. But there were crucial points of difference. The most obvious, and the one that struck the minds of the men of that day, was the difference in the moods of the two hostile races. The fiery but unstable Welsh loved rapid, headlong attacks in passes or ravines, and seldom or never fought in the open of their own free will. The Scots’ array had more of the nature of a regular army—they had a proportion of men-at-arms (though it was usually small) as well as of archery. They relied on the power of steady resistance, and several times accepted a pitched battle. The Welsh, as Giraldus Cambrensis had observed a hundred years before, risked everything on the result of one tempestuous charge, 1 —in five minutes they were either victorious, or routed and in full flight for their hilltops. The Scot came on less wildly to the fray, or even waited to be attacked, but he grew sterner and harder as the day wore on, and was capable of any amount of dogged resistance. Between these two nations of spearmen there lay all the difference between the Celtic and the Teutonic temperament—for the Scottish war was mainly waged by the Lowlanders, not by the Gael from beyond the Grampians, who took small part in the struggle.
