At Flodden Field in Northumberland, an English army under the Earl of Surrey crushed an invading Scottish force, killing King James IV—the last British monarch to die in battle—along with an estimated 10,000 Scots including much of the country's aristocracy. The disaster reshaped Scottish politics for a generation, leaving an infant, James V, on the throne.
James IV invaded England in support of his ally France, which was under attack by Henry VIII's forces on the continent under the terms of the Auld Alliance. He led one of the largest Scottish armies ever assembled—perhaps 30,000 men—equipped with modern artillery, across the border into Northumberland.
The Earl of Surrey, commanding English forces while Henry VIII campaigned in France, maneuvered his army into position and forced the Scots to fight on unfavorable ground near Branxton Hill. Scottish pikemen, arranged in dense continental-style formations, floundered on the wet, uneven slope; English bill-hooks proved devastatingly effective at close quarters against the unwieldy pikes.
The battle turned into a massacre. James IV himself charged into the melee and was killed near the English lines, the last monarch from the British Isles to die in combat. Alongside him fell an archbishop, nine earls, fourteen lords, and thousands of common soldiers—a catastrophic loss of leadership that left Scotland's government in the hands of regents for the infant James V. The Scots still commemorate the defeat in the haunting lament 'Flowers of the Forest,' mourning a generation of young men cut down in a single September afternoon.