Sensible that it was not the number of the dead, but the terror of the living, which gives the finishing stroke to conquest, De Warenne saw the effects of this panic, in the total disregard of his orders; and dreadful would have been the carnage of his troops had he not sounded a parley.
The bugle of Wallace instantly answered it.

De Warenne sent forward his herald.

He offered to lay down his arms, provided he might be exempted from relinquishing the royal standard, and that he and his men might be permitted to return without delay to England.
Wallace accepted the first article; granted the second; but with regard to the third, it must be on condition that he, the Lord de Warenne, and the officers taken in his army, or in other engagements lately fought in Scotland, should be immediately exchanged for the like number of noble Scots Wallace should name, who were prisoners in England; and that the common men of the army, now about to surrender their arms, should take an oath never to serve again against Scotland.
These preliminaries being agreed to (their very boldness arguing the conscious advantage which seemed to compel the assent), the lord warden advanced at the head of his thirty thousand troops; and first laying down his sword, which Wallace immediately returned to him, the officers and soldiers marched by with their heads uncovered, throwing down their weapons as they approached their conqueror.

Wallace extended his line while the procession moved, for he had too much policy to show his enemies that thirty thousand men had yielded, almost without a blow, to scarce five thousand.

The oath was afterward administered to each regiment by heralds, sent for that purpose into the strath of Monteith, whither Wallace had directed the captured legions to assemble and refresh themselves, previous to their departure next morning for England.