In June 1314 a great army rumbled forwards, parallel to the river Forth, following the old Roman road that led north across the war-ravaged Anglo-Scottish border. The king of England, Edward II, rode at the head of an army of around 18,000 infantry and 2,000 heavy cavalry horses. A baggage train allegedly 20 miles long groaned under the weight of arms, plate, food and wine and the administrative paraphernalia associated with the management of the crown, including England's Great Seal. The army was marching to relieve Stirling Castle, an English-held bastion 40 miles north-west of Edinburgh that was under siege by Edward Bruce, brother of the self-proclaimed king of the Scots, Robert.
Edward II was a king in a hurry. Should the Scots capture Stirling, he would lose access to the north of Scotland and with it, his grip on the land his father, Edward I, the self-styled 'Hammer of the Scots', had conquered at the outbreak of war in 1296. And so he had mustered an army in Berwickon-Tweed, the English administrative centre in the north, and marched in haste. The knight Sir Thomas Gray rode towards Stirling that day and 40 years later his son (also Sir Thomas Gray) would record his father's account of the battle in his book Scalacronica.
As the English marched north, Robert the Bruce prepared for combat. He allocated commanding roles to loyal soldiers such as James Douglas, otherwise known as Black Douglas (possibly for his black hair but most likely for the fact that he'd raided, torched and pillaged his way across the northern frontier). Together they trained 5,000-6,000 infantry to use spears as offensive weapons in 'schiltrons' - hedgehog formations of razor-sharp steel that would push forward into attack against oncoming cavalry. These became the greatest weapon of the Wars of Scottish Independence, a fighting machine that could destroy a cavalry army.
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Denne historien er fra September 2023-utgaven av BBC History UK.
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The Long Road Back - The Election Was Tough for the Conservatives but the Past Holds Clues on How Parties Can Return From the Brink
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From Magna Carta to parliament, taxation to the law courts, the 13th and 14th centuries laid the foundations for the modern British state
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Æthelstan is one of the greatest of all Anglo-Saxon monarchs. So why, asks Michael Wood, does the first king of the English remain so fiendishly elusive?
