Battle of Bannockburn 1314        from History of Scotland John Hill Burton Historiographer-Royal for Scotland Vol II pages 261-271

A crisis came at last which roused the Government of England to a great effort. After the fortresses had fallen one by one, Stirling Castle still held out. It was besieged by Edward Bruce before the end of the year 1313. Mowbray, the governor, stipulated that he would surrender if not relieved before the Feast of St John the Baptist in the following year, or the 24th of June. The taking of this fortress was an achievement of which King Edward was prouder than of anything else he had done in the invasion of Scotland. He made it of far more moment than even his victory over Wallace at Falkirk. Its possession was a significant symbol that there was still a hold on Scotland, for it commanded the gate, as it were, by which the two great divisions of the country could hold intercourse with each other. That the crowning acquisition of their mighty king should thus be allowed to pass away, and stamp emphatically the utter loss of the great conquest he had made for the English crown, was a consummation too humiliating for the chivalry of England to endure without an effort. Stirling Castle must be relieved before St John's Day, and the relieving of Stirling Castle meant a thorough invasion and resubjection of Scotland. The great barons, who had been at discord with the king about his favorite, Pierce Gaveston, and other things, now set to work in the great cause, and the lazy king was thus the nominal director of a military drain upon the country more thorough than his determined and untiring father had ever accomplished. Besides the feudal force of England, dragged out by all forms of summons and array, the king demanded the attendance of his Welsh subjects. After the example of his father, he issued personal requisitions to the kings or chiefs of "The Irishry." Against the kind of enemy they were to meet, neither of these two elements could be of much benefit to the army, and they were probably rather a hindrance than a help.

Perhaps there never was a battle of which the conditions as to both armies were so distinctly preadjusted and so inevitable, as that which was to come. The time and the place were fixed by an obdurate necessity. The English were to relieve Stirling Castle; the Scots must prevent them. If they attempted to meet the invaders at any distance from this point, they ran two risks. If the enemy were not met and fought, these might outflank the Scots and reach the castle. If the Scots did meet and fight, it might be on bad ground, and that would be fatal. The battle, therefore, must be under the walls of the castle. Certain writs issued in England so early as the 27th of May set forth, for the purpose of exciting the warlike spirit of the country, that the Scots intend to assemble in great numbers on certain strongholds and morasses inaccessible to cavalry, in order that they may prevent the Castle of Stirling from being relieved before the Feast of the Nativity of St John; and if the relief be not effected the Constable must surrender the castle, according to conditions between him and the enemy. That any force Bruce could gather should meet so mighty an army as England was collecting, otherwise than on strong selected ground, was out of the question. It was the fortune of the Scots that the ground provided for them was nearly as good-perhaps quite as good-as any they could have selected; and there was this further advantage, that however strongly they were posted, the English must attack them there, and could not evade the battle.

Stirling Castle stands on a trap rock rising out of a basin, and one does not pass far from it before beginning to ascend. To the south, and partly to the east and west, the ascent is on the Campsie Fells, a chain of hills neither very lofty nor very precipitous, but affording ground capable of being made very defensible. Here the Scots army were to meet the enemy; indeed nowhere else could they do so; and Bruce occupied himself in fortifying the position. To the right it was well protected by the brawling rivulet the Bannock Burn, which gave a name to the contest. Had they only to choose the strongest post and meet an attack, it had been a simple affair; but there was a tract of flat ground through which an army might pass to the gate of Stirling Castle, and that must be seen to. This tract was therefore honeycombed with pits, and the pits were covered with branches strewn with the common growth of the neighborhood. This was done, not with the childish expectation of catching the English troops in a trap, but to destroy the ground for cavalry purposes.

On the 23d of June the two armies were visible to each other. If the Scots had, as it was said, between thirty and forty thousand men, it was a great force for the country at that time to furnish. Looking at the urgency of the measures taken to draw out the feudal array of England, to the presence of the Welsh and Irish, and to a large body of Gascons and other foreigners, it is easy to be believed that the army carried into Scotland might be, as it was said to be, a hundred thousand in all. The efficient force, however, was in the mounted men, and these were supposed to be about equal in number to the whole Scots army. This great host was appareled with unusual magnificence. Had it been assembled for some object of courtly display, it would have been a memorable exhibition of feudal splendor. The countless banners of all colors and devices, and the burnished steel coats of the many thousand horsemen glittering in the summer sun, left impressions of awe and admiration 'which passed on from generation to generation.

There are efforts, not always successful, to describe the exact division and disposal of the Scots army. It seems more important to keep in view the general tactic on which its leader was prepared with confidence to meet so unequal a force. It was the same that Wallace had practically taught, and it had just recently helped the Flemings to their victory of Courtrai. Its leading feature was the receiving charges of cavalry by clumps- square or circular of spear men; and simple as it was, it was revolutionizing the military creed of Europe by sapping the universal faith in the invincibility of mounted men-at-arms by any other kind of troops. Bruce had a small body of mounted men, but he was not to waste them in any attempt to cope with the English cavalry; they were reserved for any special service or emergency.

For the hopes of Scotland the great point was that the compact clumps of spear men should be attacked upon their own ground. But there was a serious danger to be met beforehand. Holding the approaches to the castle from the east was far more difficult than holding the ground of the main army. If any body, however small, of the English army could force this passage, and could reach the castle gate or the sloping parts of the rock, the primary object of the invasion would be accomplished. The castle would be relieved, and the English army, no longer bound to attack the Scots on their own strong ground, could go where it pleased; and in fact this movement, so dangerous to the Scots, had been well-nigh accomplished. It was the duty of King Robert's nephew, Randolph, with a party told off for the purpose, to guard the passage. The king observed that a party of eight hundred horse under Clifford were making a circuit, evidently with the purpose of reaching the passage, and that no preparations were made to receive them. He pointed this out to Randolph with a severe rebuke for his negligence. Burning to redeem his honor, he ran on with a body of spear men, who planted themselves in the way of the English horsemen, forming a clump with spears pointing forth all over it like the prickles of a hedgehog. The horse attacked them furiously in front without breaking them, then wheeled round and round them, vainly assailing them from all points. From a distance the little party seemed doomed, and Douglas hastened with a following to their rescue, but as he approached the aspect was more cheering. It was not so certain that they were to be beaten, and chivalry forbade him to give unnecessary aid. The assailants had suffered heavy loss. Sir William d'Eyncourt, an illustrious English knight, was counted among the dead; and the horsemen, breaking up into confusion, had to retreat to the main army. This was followed by a short and memorable passage at arms. King Robert was riding along the front of his line on a small horse or hackney, conspicuous by a little gold circlet round his head to mark his rank. An English knight, Henry de Bohun, rode forward into the space between the two armies, after the fashion of a challenger to one of the single combats which at that time gave liveliness to the intervals between the serious business of battle. Bruce accepted the challenge. He warded off his enemy's charge, and, wheeling round, cleft his skull with a small battle-axe, the handle of which went to pieces.

His followers blamed him for so rashly risking the safety of the army in his own, and he had nothing to say in his defense. Yet the act was not so flagrant as it might be if the like were done in our days. One so thoroughly trained to personal warfare as Bruce must have known the extent of his own resources, and might be able to calculate on the next to certainty of killing his man and on the inspiring influence of such an act.'

We can easily believe what is said of this incident shooting a feeling of despondency and apprehension through the English host.

It was nothing in itself, but it was an evil portent. It was at daybreak on the 24th of June that the English army advanced to the charge. There was a preparatory movement very perilous to the Scots. The English army contained a large body of archers, whose motions on foot and in thin lines were not impeded by the difficulties of the ground. A detachment of these wheeled round and took up a position where they could rake the compact clumps of Scots spear men. The bowmen were a force becoming every year more formidable. It was destined to be the strongest arm of the English army, and on many memorable occasions it inflicted heavy punishment on the Scots. It is difficult to realize the power and precision with which the masters of the art could send a cloth-yard shaft. They could pick out one by one the chinks an joints in the finest suit of Milan mail. To spear men on foot it was hopeless to contend with them-only cavalry could drive them off. Here then was a use for Bruce's small reserve of cavalry. It charged the archers and dispersed them, and now the clumps of spear men had to resist the onset of the English cavalry.

These soon found how judiciously the ground bad been prepared for them. They were parceled out in ten battles or battalions, but there was not room to move these separately on the narrow ground available for cavalry, and the whole seemed to their enemy thrown into one organized mass, or " scheltum " as they called it. The spear men stood against the charges of the horsemen firm as a rock. It was one of the formidable features in their method of resistance that a great proportion of the wounds fell to the poor horses, who rushed hither and thither in their agony, or, as Barbour has it, the horses "that were sticked rushed and reeled right rudely."

In the front anything like combined movement or even ordinary discipline was speedily gone. There they were a mass of brave men well mounted for battle, and many desperate but useless onsets they made as single combatants on their compact enemy. Confusion was getting worse and worse, and only one result could be. It is said to have been hastened by the appearance of a set of camp-followers on the sky-line of a neighboring hill, who were mistaken for a fresh army of the Scots. The end was rout, confused and hopeless. The pitted field added to the disasters; for though they avoided it in their advance, many horsemen were pressed into it in the retreat, and floundered among the pitfalls. Through all the history of her great wars before and since, never did England suffer a humiliation deep enough to approach even comparison with this.

Besides the inferiority of the victorious army, Bannockburn is exceptional among battles by the utter helplessness of the defeated. There seems to have been no rallying-point anywhere. There was enough of material to have made two or three armies capable, in strong positions, of making a troublesome stand, and, at all events, of making good terms. But none of the parts of that mighty host could keep together, and the very chaos among the multitudes around seems to have perplexed the orderly army of the Scots. The foot-soldiers of the English army seem simply to have dispersed at all points, and the little said of them is painfully suggestive of the poor wanderers having to face the two alternatives-starvation in the wilds, or death at the hands of the peasantry. The cavalry fled right out towards England: why men with English manhood should have done so is a mystery. It was like the Scripture saying that the wicked flee when no man pursueth, for the little band of Scots mounted men was far too small for pursuit, and could not be let loose by any prudent commander among the vast mass of cavalry breaking away.

Perhaps this helplessness in flight, as also many other incidents of disaster, may be attributed to one cause-to the command being taken by the king himself, with his utter incapacity for the task. The only little gathering out of the dispersal of that huge army seems to have been a body of 500 knights who rallied round the king, but it was only to attend him in his headlong flight. To the Lothian peasant the mighty King of England galloping past like a criminal fleeing from justice must have been a sight not to be presently forgotten. The king reached Dunbar, a fortress still in his own hands, and took shipping for Berwick.

The camp apparel left behind by the fugitives made a booty so extensive and so costly as to astound its captors. Scotland, as we have seen, was not an abjectly poor country at the commencement of the war. There evidently was a considerable body living in comfort; but the splendor then coming into vogue in such courts as those of France, Burgundy, and England, seems hardly to have been known in the land. We have seen what poor pickings King Edward took away with him from the royal treasures, yet he certainly did not leave much behind. The costly stuffs and valuables of many kinds found in the English camp became long a tradition in Scotland indeed the articles themselves turn up centuries afterwards as remarkable possessions. We have a parallel to the affair in the rich booty which Charles the Bold of Burgundy provided for the Swiss peasantry; but why an English army took with it that heap of finery is not easily to be understood. There is reason to believe that a great part of the rich fabrics found their way to the cathedrals and religious houses, where they served for the adornment of the altars, for ecclesiastical robes, and the like.

Still more valuable than this inanimate merchandise was the living spoil-the crowd of noble captives who had to be ransomed. In this very lucrative kind of booty Bannockburn was peculiarly rich, from the nature of a conflict in which so much was gained by the disabling of the horses rather than of the riders. The ransoming of captives taken in war was then becoming a great trade throughout Europe, and was casting an ugly mercenary stain on the repute of chivalry. Instances were known ,where lives were taken among the comrades contending for the possession of the captive tenderly preserved from mischief, while in others he had suffered death in the very contention among those who each desired to keep him alive.

In dealing with this business, King Robert resolved to pursue a policy of moderation. He could well afford it. In his troubles and his triumphs, too, he remembered that he was still a Norman knight, and grand beyond any that ever fell to the lot of man was his opportunity for showing magnanimity to his old companions in arms. There are pleasant stories of his gracious dealing with them: among others, how Marmaduke de Twenge, the same who had made a gallant effort to redeem the day for England in the battle of Stirling Bridge, fell a poor fugitive in the king's way, and, yielding himself up as captive, was treated with a courtesy worthy of his high fame as a knight of prowess. If among his followers there was any tendency towards rapacity in the matter of the ransoms, the king seems to have appeased them by making over to them from the fund arising out of this source a portion properly belonging to himself. In the treatment of the dead, many of them the heads of the most distinguished houses in England, he also gained golden opinions. Much care was taken in their decorous interment with Church rites; and in some instances, where application was made for such a concession, the body was removed to England with all decorous ceremonials, that it might be laid where the illustrious family of the slain man desired that his ashes should rest.

Among the prisoners was one whose story furnished the Scots with a merry jest to grace their triumph. He was a certain Carmelite friar, named Baston; and it was said of him, whether truly or not, that he had been taken to see the battle in order that be might the better be able to perform a certain function assigned him, which was the celebration of the triumph of the English king as be returned victorious-an expectation which Bower characterizes as proud presumption and presumptuous pride. He was told that, as the price of his ransom, he must celebrate the triumph of the real victors, and that without ambiguity. The result is preserved, and, whatever other merits it may have, shows a laboriously earnest effort to accomplish his task to the satisfaction of his instructors.

Stirling Castle was delivered up in terms of the stipulation. Edward Bruce was blamed for having made it, and given such dangerous terms to England; but the result was fortunate.