The Battle of Bannockburn (1314): How Robert the Bruce Defeated a Much Larger Army and Took a Giant Stride Towards Scottish Independence
By Princess Charlotte (Medieval Battle Expert)
This is the fifth instalment in my medieval battle series. So far we have covered the battles of Hastings, Crecy, Agincourt and Bosworth but I have yet to cover anything beyond England's northern border and up into Scotland. It was rather busy up there. Here is my account about one of the most important battles that took place during the Wars of Scottish Independence (1296-1328) - Bannockburn.
In June 1314, Robert the Bruce faced an English army considerably larger than his own (please take note...for any medieval battle to be important one army seems to always need to be considerably smaller than the other). The English had more cavalry, more men and the resources of one of the most powerful kingdoms in Europe behind them.
Robert the Bruce had something else. He had selected exactly where he wanted to fight the battle - Bannockburn, located just a few miles south of Stirling and the formidable Stirling Castle.
Scotland before Bannockburn
The Battle of Bannockburn cannot really be understood without knowing what had happened to Scotland during the previous twenty years. In 1296, Edward I of England invaded Scotland and deposed King John Balliol. The Scottish Wars of Independence followed, with resistance led at different times by figures including William Wallace and Robert the Bruce.
Edward I was determined to bring Scotland under English control. He took the Stone of Scone to Westminster in 1296 and pursued the Scottish resistance with considerable force. William Wallace was captured and executed in 1305.
Two years later, Robert the Bruce was crowned King of Scots. He wasn't exactly successful at the start of his reign...
Bruce was defeated by English forces on six separate occasions and forced into hiding. Some of his family were captured. His supporters were hunted. His position looked extremely uncertain and the English looked like they'd enjoy a rather massive victory, but then Edward I died in July 1307 while campaigning against the Scots and was replaced by his rather less effective son Edward II.
Bruce saw that spider fail six times to spin a web, matching his own six defeats, but on the seventh try it completed its web. Inspired by the spider, Bruce had an opportunity to strike back. And he took it at his seventh battle against the English at Bannockburn.
The years before the battle
Between 1307 and 1314, Bruce gradually took control of more and more of Scotland. He defeated Scottish opponents who refused to accept his rule, attacked English-held castles and recovered territory.
He also developed a particularly effective policy towards castles. Rather than simply capturing them and leaving them standing, Bruce often ordered their defences to be destroyed so that the English could not easily return and use them. Stirling Castle was different. It was too important to leave in English hands, it was the strategic gateway between the Highlands and the Lowlands.
Bruce's brother Edward was besieging the castle in 1314 when the castle's governor, Sir Philip Mowbray, agreed that it would surrender if an English army did not arrive to relieve it by midsummer. That gave Edward II a problem. If Stirling fell, one of the most important English positions in Scotland would be lost.
So, Edward gathered a very large army and marched north. The exact numbers are uncertain, but Historic Environment Scotland estimates that Bruce had roughly 6,000-7,000 spearmen and around 500 cavalry. The English army may have included around 3,000 heavy cavalry and approximately 16,000 infantry, including archers. That's up to 25,500 men at Edward II's disposal and surely a relatively straight forward victory for the English was on the cards? Let's find out...
The English considerably outnumbered the Scots, who had somewhere between 6,000-8,000 men in total. Bruce therefore had no sensible reason to fight them on ground that suited the English. So he chose ground that suited him.
Bruce chooses the battlefield
The area around Bannockburn was not an obvious place for a large medieval army to fight. There were streams, marshy ground and areas of difficult terrain. That was exactly what Bruce wanted.
English knights were most dangerous when they had room to manoeuvre and could build up the speed of a cavalry charge. Bruce's army was largely made up of infantry armed with spears and they would have been butchered in open ground.
His solution was simple. Do not give the cavalry the space they need. To achieve this the Scottish army formed their infantry into schiltrons, tightly packed formations of spearmen with their weapons pointing outwards. Bruce had also prepared parts of the battlefield with pits intended to disrupt cavalry movements (although these battlefield bits have never been conclusively identified by archaeologists).
It was careful preparation rather than heroic improvisation.
23 June1314: The first day...
The English army reached Bannockburn on 23 June 1314. The first day's fighting was not the enormous clash that people generally imagine when they hear the word Bannockburn. It consisted of several engagements around the Scottish positions.
One of the most famous involved Robert the Bruce himself. According to the contemporary tradition recorded later by the Scottish poet John Barbour, an English knight named Henry de Bohun saw Bruce riding ahead of the Scottish army.
De Bohun lowered his lance and charged. Bruce was riding a smaller horse, but rather than turn away he waited until the last moment, moved aside and killed de Bohun with his axe. The story is recorded by Barbour, who wrote several decades later, but the incident is also referred to in other sources, making it one of the more credible famous stories from the battle.
Bruce's commanders were apparently less impressed with the unnecessary danger than his soldiers were. I can understand why. There is a difference between being brave and standing in front of a charging knight when you have a perfectly good army behind you!
Bruce appears to have been rather fond of the former and occasionally confused it with the latter.
The fighting continued. An English force of mounted men attempted to move around the Scottish position, but was intercepted by the Earl of Moray's schiltron.
The English cavalry could not break through the formation. When another Scottish schiltron appeared, the English force withdrew. The first day's fighting had not gone according to the English plan and the main battle was still to come.
24 June 1314: The battle
The decisive fighting took place on 24 June. The English army had spent the night on low-lying ground and at 9am the Scots advanced to meet them. The English army certainly had the numbers, but the Scots had the terrain.
The Scottish schiltrons began moving forward. It turned out that these were extremely effective as a defensive formation, but moving a dense mass of spearmen towards an enemy required considerable discipline. If the formation broke, cavalry could get inside it. Bruce's army did not break.
The English cavalry attacked but struggled to make effective use of the ground. The streams and boggy areas restricted movement. The English army was also packed into a relatively confined area, making it difficult to bring its numerical superiority fully into play. Historic Environment Scotland notes that the English cavalry and infantry became increasingly restricted by the terrain as the Scottish formations advanced.
The English archers, normally one of the great strengths of English armies, also failed to have the impact that might have been expected. Now, exactly what happened is uncertain it is believed that he archers began to disrupt the Scottish formations before Sir Robert Keith led Scottish cavalry against them and drove them from the field.
Historic Environment Scotland notes that this account is not independently supported and that there is uncertainty over how much the English archers actually contributed to the battle. What is clear is that the English did not make effective use of them like they had at Crecy or Agincourt and it proved disastrous (unless, of course, you were a Scot).
The English army begins to collapse
The Scottish schiltrons continued to advance. English cavalry charges failed to break them. The English infantry had difficulty getting into the fighting because the army was increasingly compressed between its own troops and the difficult ground around it. The situation became increasingly chaotic.
The English army had started the battle with a huge numerical advantage, but the Scottish tactics made that largely redundant - since an army cannot use men who cannot get into the fight.
The Scottish formations continued forward. The English line became compressed and then it began to break. Once the retreat started, the situation became catastrophic. Some English soldiers fled towards Stirling Castle, others tried to cross the River Forth, but in the confusion drowned in large numbers.
Up to 15,000 people lost their lives at Bannockburn. The English army had been defeated. Edward II fled. At first he headed towards Stirling Castle, but the castle's governor refused him entry because the castle was about to fall to the Scots. Edward eventually reached Dunbar and escaped by sea.
Stirling Castle surrendered and Bruce had won one of the most important battles of the Scottish Wars of Independence and gained control of the greatest strategic gateway between the Scottish Highlands and Lowlands. The historic maxim "he who holds Stirling, holds Scotland" proved correct. It was a huge loss for the English and they never really recovered.
Did Bannockburn win Scottish independence?
Not immediately. The Wars of Independence continued for years after Bannockburn. Bruce used his victory to go on the offensive, including campaigns and raids into northern England. The political situation gradually began to shift.
In 1320, the Scottish nobles sent the Declaration of Arbroath to Pope John XXII, setting out their case for the independence of the Scottish kingdom and their support for Robert Bruce. Eight years later, in 1328, the Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton formally recognised Scottish independence and Robert Bruce as King of Scots.
So Bannockburn did not, by itself, create an independent Scotland, but it created the momentum that did. It made the idea of conquering Scotland look considerably less achievable and gave the Scots the belief that the English could be beaten.
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Princess Charlotte is a regular contributor to the Shield Wall blog. She believes historical accuracy is important, that Robert the Bruce probably did not learn perseverance from a spider, and that Jack should stop asking her whether the spider could have beaten a dragon in single combat.
Join the Shield Wall at thegoodknightbook.com/shield-wall for medieval history, battle stories, dad reading tips and the occasional argument about whether a spider belongs in a history lesson.
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