Battle of Bannockburn

Over two days, 23 and 24 June 1314, the Scottish king Robert the Bruce defeated a much larger invading army under Edward II of England beside the Bannock Burn, a stream just south of Stirling. The English had come to relieve the besieged Stirling Castle; instead their army was routed and the king barely escaped. The victory was the turning point of the First War of Scottish Independence and remains one of the most celebrated events in Scottish history.

The wars between England and Scotland began in 1296, when Edward I invaded and the Scottish king John Balliol was soon removed from his throne. The Scots won at Stirling Bridge in 1297 but lost at Falkirk the next year, and by 1304 Scotland had been conquered. In 1306 Robert the Bruce seized the throne and reopened the war. Edward I died in 1307, and his son Edward II proved a far less capable leader. By 1313 Bruce was strong enough to demand that remaining Balliol supporters accept him as king or lose their lands. His brother Edward Bruce besieged Stirling Castle, a key fortress commanding the route into the Highlands, and its English commander agreed to surrender if no relief arrived by midsummer 1314.

Edward II could not ignore the challenge. He called for 2,000 heavy cavalry and 13,000 foot soldiers from England, Wales and Ireland. Perhaps only half the infantry came, but it was still the largest English army ever to invade Scotland. The Scots probably had around 7,000 men, with no more than 500 horsemen, and modern estimates suggest the English outnumbered them by between one and a half and three times. Bruce's foot soldiers fought in schiltrons, dense formations of pikemen, and he placed them in the woodland of the New Park, where heavy cavalry would struggle.

On 23 June two bodies of English cavalry advanced. As the first approached the woods, the English knight Henry de Bohun saw Bruce, lightly armed and riding a small horse, and charged at him with his lance. As they passed each other, Bruce killed him with a blow of his axe. The Scots then drove that English force back across the burn. A second English detachment trying to reach the castle was beaten by Thomas Randolph, Earl of Moray, and his spearmen. The English spent the night on marshy ground near the Forth, tired and discouraged. A Scottish knight serving Edward, Alexander Seton, crossed to Bruce and told him English morale was low.

At dawn on 24 June the Scots advanced out of the woods and attacked. The Earl of Gloucester, stung by the king's charge of cowardice after he urged delay, rode ahead with few men and was killed. Hemmed in against the burn, the English cavalry could not manoeuvre. Their archers were told to stop shooting for fear of hitting their own men, and those sent round the flank were scattered by the Scottish horsemen under Sir Robert Keith. As the English formations broke, Edward's companions led him from the field.

Turned away from Stirling Castle, Edward fled to Dunbar and took ship for Berwick. Many of his soldiers were killed as they fled south towards the border. One modern historian doubts whether more than a third of the English infantry got home, and an English chronicler put the dead men-at-arms at 700, with 500 more held for ransom. Scottish losses seem to have been light.

Stirling Castle surrendered, and Bruce had it pulled down. Captured English nobles were exchanged for his wife, daughter and sisters, held in England for eight years. The victory opened northern England to Scottish raids and made possible a Scottish invasion of Ireland. In 1328 the Treaty of Edinburgh–Northampton recognised Scotland's independence and Bruce as its king. The battle lives on in Robert Burns's "Scots Wha Hae" and in the song "Flower of Scotland".

Our 1300 map shows the Kingdom of Scotland and the Kingdom of England during the wars of independence. For the region today, see the United Kingdom.