Robert The Bruce..page 4

The deadline was Midsummer's day, June 24th 1314.
Armies prepared on both sides they made there way to the battlefield near Stirling Castle. The English had a massive army of around fifteen thousand men, most likely the largest English army ever to invade Scotland. Bruce had somewhere around six thousand men, but his advantage was the knowledge of the ground they were to fight on. The English were about to face much the same problem that Edward 1 had when fighting Wallace.

Bruce chose an area in the valley of the Bannock burn (burn in Scotland is a small river or stream).
To his east lay the Carse of Balquiderock and flat area triangular area where the Bannock and Pelstream burns met and joined as they made their way eastward to the River Forth diverging into numerous little streams and causing the land to be water logged and marshy.

To his west was the forest of Torwood extending into the forest of the New Park. This made it very difficult for the English to approach from any other direction but the south. Having such a huge army, Edward 11 would have found it impossible to approach without being very easily seen. .........

Bruce observed their arrival as they neared the battlefield on June 22nd 1314.
Edward 11 like his father thought he only had to appear with his huge army and the Scots would give up the fight.
By noon of the 23rd they were ready to fight. Confident in his belief that the Scots would not fight back, the English advanced. Consignments of around 600 men were sent round to the back of the Scottish army to block of any chance of retreat, while the main vanguard advanced to face the Scots.
They saw them across the valley and still thinking the Scots were retreating, rode their horses through the Bannock burn.
Leading this section was, Sir Henry de Bohun. In the midst of all the fighting he spotted the small gold circlet Bruce wore on top his battle dress and rightly assumed this was Bruce.

His chance for fame faced him, to kill the King of Scots. Bohun spurred his warhorse into a charge. Bruce saw him and chose not to retreat behind his defensive forces but instead faced Bohun head on. Bohun thought he had his prize, riding directly at Bruce with his lance at the ready for the kill. Bruce stood his ground until the last possible second; then veered to the right, stood high in his stirrups and brought his battle-axe down, killing Bohun with one hit.

Witnessed by his Scottish army, the actions of Bruce gave them some much needed moral boosting, they now charged to meet the English vanguard as it approached, the results of that plus the man made pits and boggy ground threw the English into a state of confusion as a fierce fight began.
The other section of English that had been sent to block off the retreat for the Scots were spotted and they also found themselves in battle. Neither of the English groups could make any impression on this small Scottish army and so they retreated to reconsider their next move.

The decision was made to take their main army to the flat ground of the Carse and wait on daylight before mounting a huge advance against the Scots. These armies seemed to be totally unconvinced that Scotland would fight despite the fact that they had defeated the English twice that day.

Because of the small size of his army Bruce had being doing much as Wallace had done, fighting a defensive battle. That was about to change.
Bruce on realising that the English had put themselves into a bad position with little or no room to manoeuvre decided he would attack.

On the morning of Midsummer's day, June 24th 1314 the dawn came early at 4 am.
The darkness and respite from battle was over. Bruce had split his forces so that his brother Edward led the main division, behind him and over to the left came another division led by Sir Thomas Randolph, behind him and again to the left, a third division led by Sir John Douglas (The Black Douglas).
Bruce and his division stayed in reserve on the slopes of the hill, his reason for this will soon be seen.
The three divisions on the move were all foot soldiers arranged in the typical schiltrons moving forward like huge hedgehogs.
The English King sounded his battle horn and ordered the advance of his army. His cavalry charged forward only to find themselves or their horses impaled on the long spears on the schiltrons. This huge English army had no where to go, forward yes, but they made no impression on the Scottish army, to go back at this point was impossible as the English rear troops not seeing what was going on were continuing to surge forward.

For a while total chaos reigned until eventually Edward 11 got his archers into position to do what had been done to Wallace, fire over and into the schiltrons until the gaps were enough for the rest of the English army to advance. Bruce sitting on the slopes of the hill with his division was waiting for this, saw it begin to take shape and then sent the small amount of cavalry he had to deal with the archers. They were soon dispatched and retreated back to the main body of the English army.

Now Bruce committed all his forces to the battle either to do or die.
This addition in numbers was the turning point, the English retreated still further and as Bruce saw Edward 11 being taken off the battlefield he knew the English were defeated. They could not risk their King being captured by the Scots so with a huge bodyguard of around 500 men he retreated from the battle to try to reach the safety of Stirling Castle, except once he got there he found it was no longer in English control so he made haste to reach the English border.

The English army left on the battlefield went into full retreat, some escaped, some were captured, some were killed and others died in the retreat crushed by their own army.

The once peaceful burn at Bannock now ran red with the blood of battle.

Robert the Bruce had done what no one thought possible; he defeated the huge army of Edward 11. He had won the battle but had he won the war, sadly not.
Neither Edward 11 of England nor the Vatican would recognise Scotland as an independent nation or Bruce as her King.

Up until 1320 Bruce continued to invade England in an attempt to force Edward 11 to accept Scotland as independent. Edward 11 tried to get the help of the Pope on the grounds that Bruce and Scotland should still be excommunicated after Bruce having murdered Comyn in a sacred place.

The response from Scotland was a very carefully worded document known as the Declaration of Arbroath, written in Latin setting out the history of the Scots, their previous wars with England and the success of Robert the Bruce in freeing Scotland from English rule, stating that they, the people of Scotland accepted Bruce as the rightful king of Scotland. In this document they also made the promise to join a crusade to the Holy Land.

The most well known part of this document is this.

For as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, we shall never on any condition be subjected to English rule.
It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we fight, but for freedom alone, which no honest man gives up
except with his life.

This document convinced the Pope to encourage the English to begin peace talks with the Scots. Short and not so sweet, the declaration was dated 6th April 1320 but the peace talks had broken down by April 1321.

By now Edward 11 was running into troubles at home, his Queen who knew of his preference for the male sex took their eldest son Edward to France to meet with her brother the newly crowned King Charles 1V of France.
While there she fell in love with Lord Roger Mortimer of Wigmore and refused to return to England. Mortimer was a long time enemy of Edward 11 and with his help Queen Isabella managed to gain enough support to return to England to try to oust her husband. They succeeded; Edward 11 was captured in Wales and deposed.
On February 1st 1327 her son was crowned Edward 111 of England.

After a failed attempt by Isabella and her lover to obtain funds to invade Scotland, Edward 111 at last decided to re open the peace talks.
By 17th March 1327 the Wars of Independence were over with the signing of the Treaty of Edinburgh/Northampton.
In it's simplest form it agreed with the declaration of Arbroath with some additions regarding the succession to the Scottish throne.

Robert The Bruce and those who went before him had, at last, gained the independence of Scotland.

Sadly Robert The Bruce did not live long enough to enjoy his success. By 1328 he was becoming more ill and at the age of 55 years he died, in 1329 of natural causes at his estate at Cardross.

His dying wish was for the Black Douglas to take his heart with him when he went in crusade and thereafter to bury it at Melrose Abbey.

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