Before Edward III. could come to Balliol's assistance his vassal had been ignominiously driven out of Scotland, but he led a large army to the siege of Berwick-on-Tweed, which had been recovered by Bruce in 1318. The Scots suffered a crushing defeat at Halidon Hill, near Berwick (July 19, 1333), and the town fell into English hands. Edward then modified his consent to the re vival of the vassal kingdom by extorting from Balliol a cession of most of the south of Scotland (including the counties of Linlith gow, Edinburgh, Haddington, Berwick, Selkirk, Peebles and Rox burgh). This district passed under the administration of English officials, but Balliol, in spite of successive invasions of Scotland by his overlord in the years 1334-37, never established himself as a vassal king. Then there occurred another change in the political situation, involving effects similar to those which had followed the death of Edward I., 3o years earlier. In the autumn of 1337, Edward III. put forward his claim to the throne of France, and he at once lost interest in Edward Balliol's feeble pretensions and even in the defence of the ceded territory. The Scottish re gents were left, as Robert Bruce had been left, to suppress Scot tish traitors and expel English garrisons, and by 1341, Perth, Stirling and Edinburgh were in Scottish hands, the English had been driven out of a large area in southern Scotland, and the young David II. was brought back from France, whither he and his English queen had been sent for safety in Scotland and France.—The diversion of English ambition from Scotland to France really marks the close of the War of Independence, but it also inaugurated a new series of hostile relations between England and Scotland. Although John Balliol had made his original defiance of Edward I. in the assurance of support from Philip IV. of France, the help given by the French in the earlier stage of the struggle for independence had been negligible. In 1298, Philip agreed to a truce, and again in 1303, the darkest hour in Scottish history, he had concluded a per manent peace with England. When the struggle began again, how ever, the French, under Philip VI., had given refuge to the young David II., and French support of Scotland was one of the reasons for the English attack upon France. When that attack began in earnest, in 1346, Edward III. offered to restore the portions of Scotland which were still in English hands on condition of Scottish neutrality in the Anglo-French war. The Scots made a decision which, as time went on, they declined, on several occasions, to revoke. The explanation of their persistent ad herence to a Franco-Scottish alliance lies in their conviction that no peace with England could possibly be permanent. If the English became the masters of France, they were not likely long to acquiesce in the existence of a small independent kingdom on their northern borders. If they failed to establish English do minion in France, they were equally sure to seek such compensa tion as a conquest of Scotland would afford, and the Scots, if they deserted France in her hour of need, could expect no help in their own. The Franco-Scottish alliance, as a factor in European his
tory, began in 1346, when David II., invading the north of Eng land in the interests of France, was defeated and captured at the battle of Neville's cross, fought near Durham on Oct. 17, about two months after Crecy. The English at once re-occupied a large area of southern Scotland and thus provided an unanswerable reason for the maintenance of Franco-Scottish friendship. While England held portions of France and of Scotland, an alliance of her two victims was inevitable. There was, indeed, no other bond of union between French and Scots, and the political alliance was by no means always a happy or cordial arrangement, although France took, in the development of Scottish civilization, the place which had been held by England before the War of Independence, and profoundly influenced Scottish law and institutions as well as manners and customs.