Scotland's greatest victory

The image of plucky warriors sending a cocksure English army into flight has secured Bannockburn's status in the annals of Scottish history. Helen Carr chronicles the 1314 clash that transformed the balance of power between two warring nations

- Helen Carr

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.