The Flowers of the Forest
The Battle of Flodden on 9 September 1513 was Scotland's darkest hour — the worst military disaster in the nation's history. King James IV, honouring the Auld Alliance with France, invaded England while Henry VIII was campaigning across the Channel. The Scottish army, numbering perhaps 30,000, was the largest Scotland had ever fielded. It crossed the River Tweed and took up a strong defensive position on Branxton Hill in Northumberland.
James IV was Scotland's Renaissance king — cultured, multilingual, ambitious, and personally brave to the point of recklessness. He had built Scotland's navy, founded universities, and modernised his kingdom. But at Flodden he made a fateful decision: instead of holding the high ground and forcing the English to attack uphill, he abandoned his position and led his men downhill into the English lines.
The Scottish pikemen, advancing down the muddy slope, lost their formation. The English billmen — wielding shorter, more manoeuvrable weapons — cut them apart at close quarters. The Scottish flanks collapsed, but the centre, led by the king himself, fought on with desperate courage. James IV was killed within a spear's length of the English commander, the Earl of Surrey. He was the last British monarch to die in battle.
The dead included the king, his illegitimate son the Archbishop of St Andrews, nine earls, thirteen barons, five heirs to earldoms, and an estimated 10,000 soldiers. There was scarcely a family in Scotland that did not lose someone. The ballad "The Flowers of the Forest" was written to mourn Flodden's dead, and its haunting melody is still played at Scottish funerals and remembrance ceremonies. The flower-strewn fields of Branxton remain one of the most sombre places on the Anglo-Scottish border.