Читать книгу Men Who Have Made the Empire онлайн

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It would have been bitter and bloody work, as the work of empire-making is apt to be, but the end might have justified the means. Certainly some centuries of bloodshed and bitterness would have been saved. The high ideal of a United Kingdom would have been realised nearly five hundred years earlier, and the progress of both realms in civilisation, wealth, and power might have been quickened immeasurably.

And after all, neither side in the long struggle would have lost anything worthy of being weighed against the greatness of the gain to both. There would have been no Stirling Bridge, but then there would have been no Falkirk; no Bannockburn, but also no Flodden Field. All this, as it happens, however, was not written in the Book of Destiny, and so it does not concern us here, since we have to consider how much of the work of empire-making Edward did, not what he failed to do or left undone.

The surrender of Stirling in 1305 apparently completed the conquest of Scotland, and Edward was for the time being the actual and undisputed sovereign of the whole country from the Pentland Firth to the English Channel, and it is probable that the conquest would have been a permanent one but for the entrance of another power into the field, and this was nothing less than the English Baronage itself. It was as though the chiefs of his own army had turned against him, and, in the fatal dispute which followed, Robert the Bruce saw his opportunity, and in the end re-won for Scotland that independence which has cost her so much and which, however precious as a matter of sentiment, was destined to prove of so little value to her.