Particulars of this expedition
Against this great host, admirable in its discipline and equipment, the Scots had to oppose a very inferior force. It consisted of three thousand knights and squires, armed cap-a-pie, and mounted on strong good horses, and twenty thousand light-armed cavalry, excellently adapted for skirmishing, owing to their having along with them no impediments of luggage, or carts and wagons, and their being mounted on hardy little hackneys, which were able to go through their work in the most barren country, where other horses would die of want. "These Scottishmen, says Froissart, "are exceeding hardy, through their constant wearing of arms, and experience in wan When they enter England, they will, in a single day and night, march four-and-twenty miles, taking with them neither bread nor wine; for such is their sobriety, that they are well content with flesh half sodden, and for their drink with the river water. To them pots and pans are superfluities. They are sure to find cattle enough in the countries they break into, and they can boil or seeth them in their own skins; so that a little bag of oatmeal, trussed behind their saddle, and an iron plate, or girdle, on which they bake their crakenel, or biscuit, and which is fixed between the saddle and the crupper, is their whole purveyance for the field.'" It requires little discernment to see, that a force of this description was admirably adapted for warfare in mountainous and desert countries; and that a regular army, however excellently equipped, being impeded by luggage, wagons, and camp-followers, could have little chance against it. So accordingly the event soon showed.
Advancing from York, the English army learnt no tidings of the Scots until they entered Northumberland, when the smoke that rose from the villages and hamlets, which they had burnt in their progress, too plainly indicated their wasting line of march.