Authors: Thomas B. Costain
BATTLE OF BANNOCKBURN 1314
The constable of Stirling was an English nobleman named Mowbray. After a long period of feints and attacks, the two leaders got together and made a compact. Mowbray agreed to lay down his arms and surrender if he were not relieved by the English king before midsummer of 1314.
Robert the Bruce was not pleased with his reckless brother when he heard of the agreement. He thought the situation over and gave his head a dubious shake.
“That was unwisly doyn, perfay,” he is reported to have said, the curious turn of phrase being the work of one of the bards who have handed down accounts of the incident.
The king went on to say that now there must be a truce around Stirling while Edward of England had a year in which to gather a mighty army for the relief of the castle.
But his brother was convinced of the wisdom of what he had done. Was there any possibility of carrying the great stone pile during the time allowed in the truce? He doubted it, having already striven desperately and unsuccessfully to crack this hardest of nuts. If the English king did not march north to the relief, then the castle fell into their hands without another blow being struck. If, on the other hand, Edward did come, they had a double opportunity: to defeat the English army and have Stirling turned over to them. And, he added, must they not fight the son of the dread old king sooner or later? Why not now?
Robert Bruce had been right. The English king considered the situation at Stirling Castle a national challenge. The stronghold must not be allowed to fall. The test of strength which had been pending since the death of Edward I could no longer be postponed. It was decided that the strength of England must be mustered for an attack in force.
Edward, who had become more dynastic-minded since the birth of his
son, sent the Earl of Pembroke to take charge of the defense of the northern counties until such time as the royal army moved up to the attack. A writ was dispatched to no fewer than ninety-three barons to meet the king at Newcastle with all their men-at-arms and feudal retainers. At the same time he commanded Edward de Burgh, the Earl of Ulster, to cross the water with an Irish force numbering four thousand, including archers, the Gascons to come out in force, and a supply fleet under the command of John of Argyll to operate along the east coast.
The first summons was not successful and Edward sent out a second and more urgent demand. This time he was more specific, asking twenty-one thousand foot soldiers from the northern counties and Wales. Believing now that his preparations would prove adequate, the king traveled to Berwick to take command. Here he suffered a very great disappointment. Four of the powerful earls did not put in an appearance—Cousin Lancaster, Warenne, Warwick, and Arundel—although they sent troops. Edward found it necessary, therefore, to issue a third writ, in which he said, “You are to exasperate, and hurry up, and compel your men to come.”
The upshot was the assembling, finally, of an imposing army. Never before had such a well-equipped force of such size marched to the north to try conclusions with the Scots. The chronicles of the day, which tend to exaggerate everything, fixed the English strength at one hundred thousand, but more recent calculations reduce this figure to something between twenty and forty thousand. Twenty-five thousand is probably close to the actual figure, and this would include the cavalry and the archers from Ireland and Wales. A larger force could not have operated on the narrow front beyond the Burn of Bannock, where Robert the Bruce waited with his army. This much may be set down as true, however: the army was splendidly equipped and caused a wave of awe and fear to spread through the Lowlands as it progressed northward. The train of carts following the army was twenty miles long!
The earliest reports estimated the Scottish army at thirty thousand, but this is absurdly high. Modern calculators have reduced the figure to something in the neighborhood of seven thousand, including a body of five hundred horse. The horse troops were light compared with the English cavalry, which consisted of knights armed to the teeth on huge Flemish chargers and numbered two thousand. One fact is clear: that the disparity was great, and that Scotland’s only hope lay in the spirit of her sons and the skill of her king in selecting where he would stand and fight.
There was a moment when even the stout heart of the Scottish king almost failed him. It was early on the morning of Sunday, June 23, 1314. The Scot pipers and drums had roused the army early and mass had been celebrated. A light ration of bread and water was issued, for it was the
vigil of St. John. Two of the Scottish leaders, the Black Douglas and Sir Robert Keith, who was the marshal of Scotland and had charge of the scanty cavalry, had ridden out before dawn to catch a first glimpse of the English. These two stout campaigners gazed with awe when the mist rose and the early sun shone on the burnished arms of the invaders. It was their lot to see first the approach of “proud Edward’s power, chains and slavery.” The cavalry was in the van; and two thousand mounted men with polished shields and helmets, with pennons flying and trumpets sounding, can look as formidable as the army which someday will ride to Armageddon. Behind the horsemen came files of foot soldiers stretching back as far as the eye could see, marching steadily with swaying of shields.
The Black Douglas looked black indeed when he returned with Keith to tell what they had seen. Robert the Bruce was seated on a pony, because it was more sure-footed on such rough and marshy ground, and he was wearing a gold crown over his helmet, to identify him to his men. It would identify him also to the enemy and so can be classed as jactance, an open flouting of the foe, as though he said, I am Robert the Bruce, crowned at Scone, and if I fall the flag of Scotland will fall; and make what ye may of it, bold knights of the Sassenach!
He listened to their story of the overwhelming might of Edward while he studied the thin ranks of his own men and their nondescript weapons. After sober reflection he advised them to say little, to let it be accepted that the English, while numerous, were disorganized, a plausible story after the rapid march of the invaders by the inland route through Lauderdale.
When a general has a defensive action on his hands he knows moments of serious doubt while watching the enemy advance. Has he overlooked any possibilities? Has he forgotten anything? Are his troop dispositions sound? The Bruce remained where he was for some time, gazing about him with anxious eyes. He studied the ground sloping away in front of him, up which the English must fight their way. It was narrow, with the junction of the Burn of Bannock at the Forth on his left and the heavily wooded Gillies Hill and Coxet Hill on his right; much too narrow for the operations of a large army. The only stretch of open ground was the Carse, which lay between the river and the burn, and even this was studded with stunted trees and underbrush and the yellow of the sod was interspersed like shot silk with the green of the swampy mosses. In front of his permanent line, which faced the Carse, he had dug a row of pits and filled them with pointed stakes and iron rods known as calthrops. His position, in fact, was stronger than the one Wallace had chosen at Falkirk. But what of the archers who had won at Falkirk for the English? Douglas and Keith had said nothing of them, having seen only the chivalry of the
Sassenach in their steel harness and the foot soldiers with shields and spears. Had the English forgotten the lesson of Falkirk?
The Scottish army lay hidden back of the lines, but two corps were out in front, one covering St. Ninian’s Church and village in the center, the other at the point where the burn turned sharply northward to empty into the Forth. Even the camp followers had been thought of; they had a place of concealment on Gillies Hill from which they could make their escape if the battle went ill; a thoughtful move, for an army in the exultation of victory will wipe out the fleeing camp followers as a playful gesture.
Had he left anything undone? He did not think so.
The English arrived at Bannockburn late in the afternoon following a twenty-mile tramp over heavy roads. They were tired and hungry, but Edward, basing his course on the precepts of his father, who always struck early and hard, decided to attack the two Scottish divisions which were in sight. A regiment of cavalry was sent forward to advance by the Carse Road. At first Scot commander Randolph did not see the approaching army, earning the reproof from his king, “a rose from your chaplet has fallen,” but he started briskly to work then and routed the Englishmen.
The English vanguard, commanded by the earls of Gloucester and Hereford, made an urgent advance in the hope of seizing the entry to the flat lands of the Carse, a strategic necessity. They found themselves opposed by a strong corps commanded by a knight on a gray pony and with a high crown fitted over his helmet.
“The king!” ran the word through the English ranks.
Perceiving that what they had thought was no more than a scouting party was in reality a formidable force led by the great Bruce himself, the English hesitated. Before they could retire, however, there happened one of the incidents which are told and retold in the annals of chivalry. One of the English knights, Sir Henry de Bohun, rode out into the open with his lance at rest and shouted a challenge to the Scottish king. Robert the Bruce lacked a lance but he seemed content with the battle-ax he was carrying, and so accepted the challenge by advancing from his own ranks. Bohun charged furiously, but almost at the point of contact the king’s knee drew the pony to one side and the iron-clad challenger thundered past. Rising in his stirrups, Bruce had a second’s time in which to deal a blow with his battle-ax. It landed squarely on the head of the charging knight and almost split his skull in two.
Returning to his party, the Scottish king was upbraided for having risked his life in this way. Bruce made no direct response but looked ruefully at the shaft of his ax.
“I have broken it,” he said.
The shadows of night were falling by the time the English vanguard,
very much chagrined by the defeat and death of their champion, had galloped back in a disorderly retreat.
At the break of dawn, in the far-distant region where the great spirits reside, St. Magnus must have been at work burnishing his spiritual armor; for, according to the word that later spread over all of Scotland, he had work to do that day.
The Scots had spent the night in prayer. The Abbot of Inchaffray had said mass and the foot soldiers were still on their knees when King Edward, arrayed in shining chain mail and jeweled tabard, and full of confidence in an easy victory, rode along his lines.
“They kneel,” he remarked to those about him.
“Ay, Sir King,” said Sir Reginald de Umfraville, who had been fighting Scots for ten grim years, “but to God. Not to us.”
The English attack had been badly conceived. Because of the narrow front on which they must operate, the army had been divided into three main “battles,” each of three lines. The first, made up of cavalry in the lead and foot soldiers behind, went across the Carse and up the sloping ground, behind the crest of which the Scots had been assembled in a dense adaptation of Wallace’s
schiltrons
. The existence of the pits had not been suspected, and a toll of the horsemen was taken before the first of the attack came into contact with the hedge of Scottish spears. Their efforts to break through the clustering pike points was of no avail. In the meantime the second “battle” had followed up the hill. They could not get close enough to take a hand in the fighting and could do no more than halt and wait, conscious of the fact that the third “battle” had been ordered forward on their heels and would soon be on the hillside also. The attack, in fact, had been so clumsily contrived that the arrows of the English archers, massed on their right, were falling as thick on the attacking lines as among the Scots.
There was worse to follow. The lesson of Falkirk had been so faultily remembered that the archery division had not been provided with any form of protection. Robert Bruce, who was in personal command of the reserves behind the lines, saw at once the great opportunity which had thus been thrown his way. He ordered Keith to take his handful of cavalry around the left of the line and attack the English bowmen.
It was not an easy task, but Keith and his gallant five hundred accomplished it. They made their way around Milton Bog and came out against the flank of the archery corps. Great battles have often been won by a charge of cavalry in small numbers, delivered at exactly the right time
and the right place. This was one, for in a matter of minutes Keith’s horsemen, shouting a keening battle cry of “
On them!
” had thrown the bowmen into utter confusion and had slain large numbers.
Bruce, seeing victory in his grasp, led his reserves, who had been chafing for a share in the fighting, through the gaps between the
schiltrons
and fell on the fatigued first “battle” with claymore and pike. The first English line fell back on the second and forced a retreat into the laboring ranks of the third. It was utter confusion then on the slopes, which were already slippery with blood. Nothing much was left now of the bowmen who might have won the day for the English if the knights had been assigned to protect them up the slope to the point where they could riddle the Scottish ranks with steel-tipped death. Perhaps the gallant knights had refused to play pap-nurse to greasy varlets; this had been known to happen. Whatever the reason, the bowmen had no chance to display their worth on this tragic field.
The whole English line began to waver. Thousands of men who had not yet struck a blow fell into a panic and tried to break through the ranks of fresh troops coming to their aid.
And then the miracle happened which might be termed the Coup of the Camp Followers. The men and women of menial role who had been relegated to a place of safety back of Gillies Hill had been able to watch the course of the battle below them. It was clear to them now that the day was going very well indeed. Some unidentified and mute but not inglorious Wallace conceived a way to have a part in victory. The command was given and all of them—drivers, cooks, nurses, knaves—began to strip the leaves from branches. They used broken pike handles and broomsticks and even crutches and attached to them old clouts and the petticoats of the women and the tails of their plaid cloaks. Waving these improvised flags, they went charging through the underbrush, shouting at the tops of their voices.