But it
was governed by a coward, and Ormsby fled to Dundee at the first sight
of the Scottish army. His flight might have warranted the garrison to
surrender without a blow, but a braver man being his lieutenant, sharp
was the conflict before Wallace could compel that officer to abandon
the ramparts and to sue for the very terms he had at first rejected.
After the fall of Perth, the young regent made a rapid progress through
that part of the country; driving the southron garrisons out of Scone,
and all the embattled towns; expelling them from the castles of
Kincain, Elcho, Kinfauns, and Doune; and then proceeding to the marine
fortresses (those avenues by which the ships of England had poured its
legions on the eastern coast), he compelled Dundee, Cupar, Glamis,
Montrose, and Aberdeen, all to acknowledge the power of his arms. He
seized most of the English ships in those ports, and manning them with
Scots, soon cleared the seas of the vessels which had escaped, taking
some, and putting others to flight; and one of the latter was the
fugitive Ormsby.
This enterprise achieved, Wallace, with a host of prisoners, turned his
steps toward the Forth; but ere he left the banks of the Tay and Dee,
he detached three thousand men under the command of Lord Ruthven,
giving him a commission to range the country from the Carse of Gowrie
to remotest Sutherland, and in all that tract reduce every town and
castle which had admitted a Southron garrison.
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