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    James deployed his troops on the forward slope of Branxton Hill in four densely packed formations or ‘battles’, positioned two hundred feet (61 m.) apart, their movement hidden by dense clouds of acrid white smoke from burning piles of stinking, soiled bedding straw. His army had substantially shrunk through desertion over the previous few days, and he probably mustered 29,000 men for the fight.
    Lord Thomas Howard, riding ahead of the English vanguard, suddenly saw his enemy, like black forests of pikes, as the smoke cleared, not 440 yards (0.4 km.) away: ‘The Lord Admiral was confronted by the four great battles of the Scots, all on foot, with long spears like moorish pikes, which [warlike] Scots bent [lowered] them forward’ ready to charge.
    It must have been a dreadful shock. Howard snatched the medallion bearing the Agnus Dei - the Lamb of God - from around his neck and sent it off by mounted messenger to his father, urging him ‘in all haste to join battle’, while he hurriedly formed up his men out of sight, in the boggy Pallinsburn valley.
    The English forces ran up and deployed themselves into five battles, each commanded by Surrey, Lord Howard, Sir Edmund Howard (the thirty-five-year-old third son of the earl), Sir Edward Stanley and Thomas, Lord Dacre.
    The Battle of Flodden 61 opened shortly after four o’clock with an hour-long exchange of artillery fire in pouring rain and high winds. The heavy Scottish siege guns fired downhill but their gunners found it difficult to depress the barrels sufficiently to bring effective fire on the English. Their cannon balls either ploughed into the soft earth, or flew overhead, doing little damage to Surrey’s troops, drawn up in ‘dead’ ground in the valley. For their part, the English, armed with lighter cannon, fired more rapidly and bounced their two-pound (0·91 kg.) stone shots at their targets. They first fired at the Scottish artillery, and, after neutralising their threat by killing their gunners, switched their aim to the enemy’s massed battles of roughly 9,000 men apiece, causing terrible carnage as the shots scythed through the ranks. 62 As the Scots pikemen fell like ninepins, James ordered his host to attack down the slope. He dismounted from his horse, was handed a pike, and went to the front of his own square of pikemen and led them on towards the English lines.
    As the Scots, their pikes levelled, reached three hundred paces down the hill, they came within range of the English archers, armed with the much-feared longbow that had created such deadly havoc among their ancestors in Anglo-Scottish battles down the centuries. That day, however, the weapon proved ineffective: the drenching rain had soaked the bowstrings, reducing the pull of the bow, and the strong winds disrupted the volleys. The Scots were also well armoured and the front ranks carried pavises , or tall wooden shields, for protection, so few were initially killed by arrow.
    The 8,000-strong Scottish vanguard was made up of Gordon clans-men, armed with axes and mighty two-handed claymore swords, led by Alexander Gordon, third Earl of Huntly, and a deep phalanx of pikemen from the borders, commanded by Alexander, third Lord Home. The nimble Gordons cleaved their way through the front ranks of Edmund Howard’s division on the right of the English line, leaving gaps where the pikemen, by weight of numbers, crumpled resistance.
    Edmund Howard and his captains tried to rally their 3,000 troops, but many fled, panic-stricken, abandoning their leaders to their fate. As the Scots skewered many an English soldier on the end of their sixteen-foot (4.88 m.) pikes, the nobles were left isolated in penny packets of resistance, fighting for their lives. Howard’s personal standard-bearer was cut into pieces and his banner lost. Two of his servants were killed. He was beaten to the ground three times before Dacre swept across with Surrey’s reserve of 2,000 border reiver cavalry and