24th June 1314 - the Battle of Bannockburn takes place between Scotland and England. It was a rare victory for the Scots and regained Scottish independence.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bruce inspects his troops, painted 1902.
The Battle of Bannockburn (June 23, 1314 – June 24, 1314) was a significant Scottish victory in the Wars of Scottish Independence.
Prelude
In 1313 Edward Bruce, brother of the Scottish king, began the siege of Stirling Castle, commanded by a Scot, Sir Philip Mowbray. Unable to make any headway he agreed to a pact with Mowbray. The governor was to be allowed to hold the castle unmolested for a year. If no relief came by midsummer 1314 he agreed to surrender. By this rash treaty Edward Bruce undermined the strategy and tactics his brother had been diligently pursuing for the past six years. He may have believed that he had bought a cheap victory; for it was now two years since an English army had come to Scotland, and Edward II had so recently been on the verge of war with his barons after the murder of Piers Gaveston in the summer of 1312. Yet this was a challenge that could not be ignored in the same way that the bleeding of northern England had. Stirling was of vital strategic importance and its loss would be a serious embarrassment. The time allowed in the Bruce-Mowbray pact was ample for Edward to gather a powerful army. King Robert Bruce rebuked the folly of his brother, but felt bound to honour the terms of the Stirling agreement. Mowbray had a breathing space and looked forward to the summer of 1314. In England Edward and his barons reached an uneasy peace and made ready.
Edward Comes North
Edward came to Scotland in the high summer of 1314 with the notional aim of relieving Stirling Castle: the real purpose, of course, was to find and destroy the Scottish army in the field, and thus end the war. England, for once, was largely united in this ambition, although some of Edward's greatest magnates and former enemies, headed by his cousin, Thomas of Lancaster, did not attend in person, sending the minimum number of troops they were required to by feudal law. Even so, the force that left Berwick-upon-Tweed on 17 June 1314 was impressive: it comprised between two and three thousand horse and seventeen thousand foot, at least two or three times the size of the army Bruce had been able to gather. Edward was accompanied by many of the seasoned campaigners of the Scottish wars, headed by the Earl of Pembroke, and vetrans like Henry Beaumont, Robert Clifford and Marmaduke Tweng. The most irreconcilable of Bruce's Scottish enemies also came: Ingram de Umfraville, a former Guardian, and his kinsman the Earl of Angus, as well as others of the MacDoualls, MacCanns and Comyns. Most poignant of all came Sir John Comyn of Badenoch, the only son of the Red Comyn, who had grown up in England and was now returning to Scotland to avenge his father. This was a grand feudal army, one of the last of its kind to leave England in the Middle Ages. King Robert awaited its arrival just south of Stirling near the Bannock Burn.
Preparations
The English army marched rapidly towards Stirling to be there before Mowbray's agreement expired on 24 June. Edinburgh was reached on the 19th and by the 22nd it was at Falkirk, only 15 miles short of its objective. Edward's host followed the line of the old Roman road, which ran through an ancient forest known as the Tor Wood, over the Bannock Burn and into the New Park, a hunting preserve enclosed at the time of Alexander III. Bruce's army had been assembling in the Tor Wood, an area providing good natural cover, from the middle of May. On Saturday 22 June, with his troops now organised into their respective commands, Bruce moved his army slightly to the north to the New Park, a more heavily wooded area, where his movements could be concealed and which, if the occasion demanded, would provide cover for a withdrawal.
Bruce's army, like William Wallace's before him, was chiefly composed of infantry armed with long spears. It was divided into four battalions or schiltrons. Thomas Randolph, Earl of Moray, commanded the vanguard, which was stationed about a mile to the south of Stirling, near the church of St. Ninians, while the king commanded the rearguard at the entrance to the New Park. His brother, Edward, led the third division. By hereditary right the fourth was headed by Walter Stewart, the son and heir of James, the High Stewart; but owing to his youth the real command was in the hands of his cousin, James, the Black Douglas. Bruce also had a light cavalry force of some 500 horse under Sir Robert Keith, which was to play a small but crucial role in the coming battle. The army numbered about 9000 men in all, gathered from the whole of Scotland: knights and nobles, freemen and tenants, town dwellers and traders, all hand-picked and trained for their task.
Since he landed in Ayrshire in 1307 King Robert had demonstrated time and again that he was willing to take risks; but these were always measured and calculated. He had no intention of chancing all on the outcome of a day, as William Wallace had at the Battle of Falkirk. Almost to the last minute he was prepared to withdraw. He was persuaded to remain by news of the poor state of morale in the English army. But undoubtedly the most important factor in convincing him to make a stand was the ground which lay before him.
The Bannock Burn, over which the English army had to cross on the way to Stirling, and its sister streams flowed over the Carse of Stirling, a flat area of soft peaty earth, before joining the River Forth to the north-east. The area was so criss-crossed by small waterways that it was known at the time as 'The Pows' or 'Les Polles' from an old Gaelic word pol, meaning an area of muddy streams. With the trees of the New Park covering Bruce's army to the west, the only approach apart from the Pows to the east was directly over the old road from Falkirk. If this route, virtually the only solid ground on which heavy cavalry could deploy freely, were to be denied to the English, they would have no choice but to wheel right to the north-east, on to the boggy ground of the Carse. To force Edward to take this route Bruce adopted similar tactics to those he had used at the Battle of Loudon Hill: both sides of the road were peppered with small pits or 'pots', each three feet deep and covered with brush, which would force the enemy to bunch towards the centre of a dangerously constricted front. Once on the Carse the English army would be caught in a kind of natural vise, as the main action on 24 June was to show, with waterways and marshes to the north, east and south. Such natural advantages were not easily obtained, and were unlikely to occur again.
The Battle-Day One
It was on the old road that the preliminary actions of the Battle of Bannockburn took place on Sunday 23 June. For the English things started to go wrong before the first blow had been struck. Sir Philip Mowbray, the commander of Stirling Castle, who had observed Bruce's preparations on the road, appeared in Edward's camp early in the morning, and warned of the dangers of approaching the Scots directly through the New Park. Mowbray also pointed out that there was no need to force a battle, as Edward was now close enough to the castle to constitute a technical relief in terms of the agreement with Edward Bruce. But even if the king was disposed to act on Mowbray's advice it was already too late; for he was showing signs of losing control of his formidable but unwieldy host.
The vanguard under the earls of Gloucester and Hereford, appointed to joint command by Edward after a quarrel about who would take the lead, a compromise that satisfied no-one, were already closing in on the Scots from the south, advancing in the same reckless manner that had almost brought disaster at Falkirk. Following the line of the Roman road, they crossed the ford over the Bannock Burn towards King Robert's division at the opening of the New Park. There now occured one of the most memorable episodes in Scottish history. Sir Henry de Bohun, nephew of the Earl of Hereford, was riding ahead of his companions when he caught sight of the Scottish king himself. De Bohun lowered his lance and began a charge that carried him out of history and into legend. King Robert was mounted on a light horse and armed only with a battle-axe. As de Bohun's great war-horse thundered towards him he stood his ground, watched with mounting anxiety by his own army. With the Englishman only feet away Bruce turned aside, stood in his stirrups and hit the knight so hard with his axe that he split his helmet and head in two. This small incident became in a larger sense a symbol of the war itself: the one side heavily armed but lacking agility; the other highly mobile and open to opportunity. Rebuked by his commanders for the enormous risk he had taken the king only expressed regret that he had broken the shaft of his axe. Cheered by this heroic encounter Bruce's division rushed forward to engage the main enemy force. For the English, so says the author of the Vita Edwardi Secundi, this was the beginning of their troubles. After some fierce fighting, in which the Earl of Gloucester was knocked off his horse, the knights of the vanguard were forced to retreat back to the Tor Wood. The Scots, eager to pursue, were held back by the command of the king.
In the meantime, another English cavalry force under Robert Clifford and Henry Beaumont skirted the Scottish position to the east and rode towards Stirling, advancing as far as St. Ninians. Bruce spotted the manoeuvre and ordered Randolph's schiltron to intercept. Randolph's action was to be a sampler of the main contest the following day: unsupported by archers the horsemen were unable to make any impression on the Scots spearmen, precisely what happened in the opening stages of Falkirk. But the difference now was that the schiltrons had learnt mobility and how to keep formation at the same time. The English squadron was broken, some seeking refuge in the nearby castle, others fleeing back to the army. The captives included Sir Thomas Gray, whose son and namesake was later to base his account of the Battle of Bannockburn in his book, the Scalacronica, on his father's memories.
The Battle-Day Two
News of the day's defeats soon spread, causing considerable unease in the main body of the English army, still approaching Stirling from the south. The experience of the vanguard confirmed the intelligence brought to Edward by Mowbray: Bruce's preparations had made the direct approach to Stirling too hazardous. It was now late in the day. The army needed to rest and the horses had to be watered. Having failed in a frontal attack Edward made the worst decision of all: after consulting with his commanders he ordered the army to abandon the highway and cross the Bannock Burn to the east of the Scots in the New Park, onto the firm but restricted ground betweeen the Bannock and Pelstream burns, an area known as the Carse of Balquhiderock, where he made ready to spend the night of 23/24 June. It was a prelude to disaster.
After knocking down houses to obtain material for rudimentary bridges to help them across the streams of the Carse, the knights and at least part of the infantry took up position north of the Bannock Burn. With the marshy ground close to the waterways churned up under the hoofs of the horses, and fearful of a sudden Scottish attack, the army spent an uncomfortable and sleepless night preparing for the following day. Sir Thomas Gray describes the scene thus: The King's army...debouched upon a plain near the water of Forth beyond Bannockburn, an evil, deep wet marsh, where the said army unhorsed and remained all night, having sadly lost confidence and being much dissafected by the events of the day. The general mood was so bad that King Edward ordered heralds to travel the camp, explaining that the vanguard had only been involved in some unimportant skirmishing, and that victory was assured.
News of the despondency in Edward's camp was brought to Bruce by Sir Alexander Seaton, a Scots knight defecting from the English. Bruce had been heartened by the day's successes, but he was still on the verge of ordering a withdrawal westwards into the Lennox, where the terrain was too difficult for the English knights to follow, rather than take the risk of confronting the main enemy force, humbled but still immensely powerful. Seton's report helped him change his mind. The king now made the most important decision in his life. He had defended his position well and learned much from Randolph's attack. He would neither withdraw nor would he wait for the enemy; when dawn came he would take the offensive.
Not long after daybreak on 24 June the Scots spearmen began to move towards the English, cramped in the narrow neck of land between the Forth to the north and the Bannock to the south and east. The English soldiers were well accustomed to Scots guerilla warfare, and while they had feared a sudden night attack, the last thing they expected was to see the enemy take the offensive in broad daylight. Edward was most surprised of all to see Robert's army emerge from the cover of the woods; And when the King of England saw the Scots thus take on hand to take the hard field so openly and upon foot he had wonder and said What! Will yon Scots fight? As Bruce's army drew nearer they paused and knelt in prayer. Edward was even more amazed; They kneel and ask for mercy., the chronicler John Barbour reports him as saying. To this Ingram de Umfraville responded; They ask for mercy but not from you. To God they pray. For them it's death or victory.
Perceiving the danger of the English position both Umfraville and Gilbert de la Clare, earl of Gloucester, urged the king to delay giving battle. Edward promptly turned on Gloucester and accused him of cowardice. Angered by this taunt Gloucester mounted his horse and led the vanguard on a ruinous charge against the leading Scots schiltron, commanded by Edward Bruce. Gloucester, the last of the de Clares, was killed in the forest of Scottish spears. He died in the company of John Comyn, Sir Robert Clifford and many other prominent knights. King Robert ordered Randolph and Douglas forward in support of his brother, while he held his own schiltron in reserve. The remaining English battalions were now so tightly confined that they had to bunch together in a single mass, with the infantry impotently trapped behind the archers. The very size and strength of the great army was beginning to work against it. If Edward had been a bad king he was now showing himself a worse general. He must have heard his father talk of his triumph at Falkirk, but the archers who had enabled the cavalry to penetrate Wallace's schiltrons were now confined with the rest of the infantry. With casualties high and mounting Edward at last managed to deploy a company to the north of the Scots; but unsupported by cavalry or spearmen they were quickly driven off by the charge of Sir Robert Keith and the Scottish light horse, which had been held back for just such an eventuality.
Bruce now committed his own division to an inexorable bloody push into the disorganised English mass. All the reserves were now committed: the whole Scots army was fighting side by side across a single front. A small force of archers added to the misery in Edward's army, which was now so tightly packed that if a man fell he was immediately crushed underfoot. The knights began to give ground as the rear ranks did their best to escape back across the Bannock Burn. With the English formations beginning to break a great shout went up from the Scots; Lay on! Lay on! Lay on! They fail. This cry was heard by Bruce's camp followers, the poor folk of Scotland, who had been to the rear with the baggage on Coxet Hill. They prompltly gathered weapons and banners and charged forward. To the English army, close to exhaustion, this appeared like a fresh reserve and they lost all hope. The end had come and Edward, whose personal courage in battle had done nothing to make up for his fatal mistakes, was forcibly taken from the field by the earl of Pembroke and his personal bodyguard.
Edward's enforced flight ended the remaining order in the army; panic spread and defeat turned into a rout. In trying to recross the Bannock Burn the English suffered their greatest casualties. The Lanercost Chronicle says; Many nobles and others fell into it with their horses in the crush, while others escaped with much difficulty, and many men were never able to extricate themselves from the ditch.
Just to the north the king and his bodyguard arrived at the gates of Stirling Castle seeking refuge, only to be refused entry by Sir Philip Mowbray, who was now compelled to surrender by his agreement with Edward Bruce. Edward managed to circle round the victorious Scots to the west, escaping south and then east with James Douglas in close pursuit. He arrived eventually at Dunbar Castle, where he was admitted by his ally, Earl Patrick. From here he took ship to England.
From the carnage of Bannockburn the rest of the army escaped as best they could. The earl of Pembroke, acting with considerable coolness, managed to take charge of a large body of frightened Welsh infantry, leading them across the border to safety. Many others were attacked and killed by the country people as they fled south. Scotland had won the greatest triumph in her history; England had experienced one of her worst defeats. The author of the Vita Edwardi Secundi laments; O famous race unconquered through the ages, why do you who used to conquer knights, flee from mere footmen? At Berwick, Dunbar and Falkirk you carried off the victory, and now you flee from the infantry of the Scots...the hand of the Lord was not with you.
Bannockburn had joined the earlier Battle of the Golden Spurs at Courtrai as a milestone towards a new age in warfare. Their example was to be followed in the next year when the Swiss defeated the Austrians at the Battle of Morgarten. In his History of the English Speaking Peoples, Sir Winston Churchill says of the Battle of Bannockburn; No more grevious slaughter of English chivalry ever took place in a single day. Even Towton in the Wars of the Roses was less destructive. The Scots...feat in virtually destroying an army of cavalry and archers by the agency of spearmen must...be deamed a prodigy of war.
The long day of feudal cavalry was over. Thirty years later the English took this lesson to France in the Hundred Years' War.
Legacy
The Scottish victory was complete and, although full English recognition of Scottish independence was not achieved until more than ten years later, Robert Bruce's position as king was greatly strengthened by the events at Bannockburn.
The modern Bannockburn monument
A modern, abstract monument stands in a field above the battle site, where the warring parties are believed to have camped on the night before the battle. The monument consists of two hemicircular walls depicting the opposing parties. Nearby stands the 1960s statue of Bruce by Pilkington Jackson. The monument, and the associated visitor centre, is one of the most popular tourist attractions in the area.
In 1932 the Bannockburn Preservation Committee, under Edward Bruce, 10th Earl of Elgin and Kincardine, presented lands to the National Trust for Scotland. Further lands were purchased in 1960 and 1965 to facilitate visitor access.
"Bannockburn" is also the title of a patriotic poem by Robert Burns.
wikipedia.org
Also on this day -
1497 John Cabot claims eastern Canada for England
1509 - Henry VIII is crowned King of England
