Let them come and attack us; we are ready to
meet them beard to beard."
On hearing this answer, the English shouted to be led against the bold
rebel; but the more prudent leaders thought it folly to attempt to cross
the bridge, exposed as it, was to the enemy, but that a chosen body
should cross a ford, attack them in the flank, and clear the way.
Cressingham thought this policy timid. "Why," said he to Warrenne,
"should we protract the war, and spend the King's money? Let us pass on,
and do our duty!"
Warrenne weakly gave way, and the English troops began to cross the
bridge, the Scots retaining their post on the high ground until Sir
Marmaduke Twenge, an English knight, impetuously spurred up the hill,
when about half the army had crossed, and charged the Scottish ranks. In
the meantime, Wallace had sent a chosen force to march down the side of
the hill and cut off the troops who had crossed from the foot of
the bridge, and he himself, rushing down on the advancing horsemen,
entirely, broke them, and made a fearful slaughter of all on that side
of the river, seizing on the bridge, so that there was no escape. One of
the knights proposed to swim their horses across the river. "What!" said
Sir Marmaduke Twenge, "drown myself, when I can cut my way through the
midst of them by the bridge? Never let such foul slander fall on me!"
He then set spurs to his horse, and, with his nephew and armor-bearer,
forced his way back to his friends, across the bridge, by weight of
man and horse, through the far more slightly-armed Scots.
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