Battle of Bannockburn (1314): Robert the Bruce Defeats England

The Battle of Bannockburn, fought on 23–24 June 1314 just south of Stirling in central Scotland, was the greatest victory of the Scottish Wars of Independence. King Robert the Bruce’s outnumbered army routed Edward II of England, who had marched north to relieve the besieged English garrison of Stirling Castle. The battle confirmed Bruce as the undisputed king of Scots and became one of the central symbols of Scottish national identity.

Background: the Wars of Scottish Independence

The conflict began in 1296, when Edward I of England invaded Scotland, deposed King John Balliol and took the government of the kingdom into his own hands. Resistance followed almost at once. William Wallace and Andrew Murray defeated an English army at the Battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297, but Edward I returned in force and by 1304 most Scottish leaders had submitted.

Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick, revived the war in dramatic fashion. In February 1306 he killed his rival John Comyn in the church of the Greyfriars at Dumfries, and on 25 March 1306 he was crowned king at Scone. The killing in a church led to his excommunication by the pope, and his early campaign went badly: he was defeated at Methven in June 1306, several of his brothers were executed, and his wife, daughter and sisters were captured by the English.

Bruce survived as a fugitive and rebuilt his cause through guerrilla warfare. Edward I died on 7 July 1307 while marching north again, and his son Edward II was far less committed to the Scottish war. Over the next seven years Bruce defeated his Scottish enemies, especially the Comyns and their allies, and captured English-held castles one by one, usually demolishing them so they could not be used against him again.

The Stirling Castle agreement

By 1313 Stirling Castle was one of the last major strongholds in English hands. It controlled the lowest crossing of the River Forth and was the gateway between southern and northern Scotland. Edward Bruce, the king’s brother, besieged it and made an agreement with its commander, Sir Philip Mowbray: if no English army came within three leagues of the castle by midsummer, 24 June 1314, Mowbray would surrender it.

The deal forced Edward II to act. A king who abandoned a royal garrison would lose face, and Edward also needed a success after years of political conflict with his own barons over his favourite Piers Gaveston, who had been killed by a group of magnates in 1312. In the spring of 1314 Edward gathered one of the largest armies England had sent into Scotland.

The armies

No reliable muster rolls survive for either side, so numbers are estimates. Most modern historians put the English army at about 15,000–20,000 men, including around 2,000 heavily armoured cavalry, with a large force of infantry and archers from England and Wales. Some English nobles, notably the Earl of Lancaster, refused to take part because of their quarrel with the king.

The Scottish army was much smaller, probably about 5,000–9,000 men. Its core was infantry armed with long spears and formed into tight blocks called schiltroms, which could resist cavalry charges if they held together. Bruce also had a small force of light horsemen. His army was divided into divisions commanded by himself, his brother Edward Bruce, his nephew Thomas Randolph, Earl of Moray, and James Douglas with the young Walter Stewart.

The first day: 23 June 1314

Bruce placed his army in the New Park, a wooded royal hunting ground beside the road from Falkirk to Stirling. The woodland restricted cavalry, and the Scots dug small concealed pits along the approaches to break up a charge.

As the English vanguard approached on the afternoon of 23 June, a young knight, Sir Henry de Bohun, spotted Bruce riding in front of his lines and charged him. Bruce, on a smaller horse, moved aside and killed de Bohun with a single stroke of his battle-axe, breaking its shaft. The episode, told by the poet John Barbour, gave the Scots an enormous boost in morale.

At the same time a second English cavalry force under Sir Robert Clifford and Sir Henry Beaumont tried to ride round towards Stirling Castle. Near St Ninians it was blocked by Randolph’s schiltrom, which held firm against repeated charges until the English horsemen withdrew. By evening the English had lost both clashes.

The second day: 24 June 1314

Edward II’s army spent the night on low, wet ground east of the road, the carse between the Bannock Burn and a smaller stream, the Pelstream. The site gave them water and grazing but little room to manoeuvre. According to the Scalacronica of the English chronicler Sir Thomas Gray, a Scottish knight in English service, Sir Alexander Seton, deserted to Bruce that night and told him the English were demoralised.

Early on 24 June the Scots did something the English did not expect: instead of waiting on the defensive, their schiltroms advanced across open ground to attack. The Earl of Gloucester, Gilbert de Clare, led a hasty charge against them and was killed. The English cavalry then crashed into the advancing spear blocks and was forced back into its own infantry, packed between the two streams.

English and Welsh archers began to cause losses among the Scots from a flank, but Bruce’s light cavalry under Sir Robert Keith rode them down. Pressed together, the English could not bring their numbers to bear. When the line broke, many men drowned trying to cross the Bannock Burn or the Forth.

Edward II was led from the field by his household knights. Sir Giles d’Argentan, one of the most famous knights of the age, escorted him away and then turned back to die in the fighting. Mowbray refused to admit the king to Stirling Castle, which was bound to surrender, so Edward rode to Dunbar and escaped by boat to Berwick.

Key people

Robert the Bruce (1274–1329) was the victor and the battle’s central figure. His decision to accept battle, after years of avoiding open fighting, and then to attack on the second day, are usually seen as the keys to the victory.

Edward II (1284–1327) lost his reputation as a war leader at Bannockburn. His army was large and well equipped, but its command was divided and it was badly positioned.

Thomas Randolph, Earl of Moray, and James Douglas were Bruce’s most trusted captains. Both went on to lead destructive raids into northern England in the years after the battle.

Consequences

Stirling Castle surrendered as agreed and was slighted, meaning its defences were deliberately damaged. Many English nobles were killed or captured. The Earl of Hereford, taken prisoner at Bothwell Castle, was exchanged for Bruce’s wife Elizabeth de Burgh, his daughter Marjorie and other Scottish captives, ending their eight years of imprisonment.

The ransoms and captured baggage enriched the Scottish crown. More importantly, Bruce’s domestic enemies could no longer challenge him, and his kingship was secure inside Scotland. In 1320 the Scottish nobles set out their case for independence to the pope in the Declaration of Arbroath.

The war, however, went on. Scottish forces raided deep into northern England, and Edward Bruce invaded Ireland in 1315. England did not give up its claim until after Edward II’s downfall: in 1328 the regime of Queen Isabella and Roger Mortimer, which had overthrown him in the deposition of Edward II, agreed the Treaty of Edinburgh–Northampton, recognising Scotland as an independent kingdom under Robert I.

Myths and facts

Myth: Bannockburn was won by William Wallace, as films sometimes suggest. Fact: Wallace was executed in London in 1305, nine years before the battle. The film Braveheart (1995) ends with a stylised version of Bannockburn but is about Wallace’s earlier career.

Myth: Knights Templar rode to Bruce’s rescue. Fact: this popular modern story has no support in any contemporary source and is rejected by historians.

Myth: Bruce learned perseverance from watching a spider. Fact: the spider story is a later legend, popularised by Sir Walter Scott in the nineteenth century, and is not part of the medieval record.

Myth: the battle was won by the “small folk” alone. Fact: Barbour describes camp followers appearing late in the battle, which may have helped panic the English, but the victory was won by Bruce’s trained spearmen and cavalry.

Timeline

• 1296, March: Edward I of England invades Scotland, beginning the Wars of Independence.
• 1306, 25 March: Robert the Bruce is crowned king of Scots at Scone.
• 1307, 7 July: Edward I dies; Edward II becomes king.
• 1313: Edward Bruce agrees with Sir Philip Mowbray that Stirling Castle will surrender if not relieved by midsummer 1314.
• 1314, 23 June: Bruce kills Sir Henry de Bohun; Randolph’s schiltrom repels English cavalry near St Ninians.
• 1314, 24 June: The main battle; the English army is routed and Edward II flees.
• 1314, autumn: Bruce’s wife and daughter are exchanged for the captured Earl of Hereford.
• 1320, 6 April: The Declaration of Arbroath is sent to Pope John XXII.
• 1328, March–May: The Treaty of Edinburgh–Northampton recognises Scottish independence.

Legacy

Bannockburn has a central place in Scottish memory. Robert Burns’s poem “Scots Wha Hae” (1793) imagines Bruce’s address before the battle, and the song “Flower of Scotland”, written in the 1960s and now sung as an unofficial anthem at sporting events, recalls the defeat of “proud Edward’s army”.

The battlefield memorial, with its rotunda and the equestrian statue of Bruce by Charles d’Orville Pilkington Jackson, was unveiled in 1964 for the 650th anniversary. A new visitor centre, run by the National Trust for Scotland, opened for the 700th anniversary in 2014. Archaeologists and historians still debate exactly where the main fighting on 24 June took place.

Why it matters

Bannockburn turned Robert the Bruce from a contested usurper into Scotland’s secure king and ended any realistic English hope of conquering Scotland by force under Edward II. It also showed that disciplined infantry could defeat armoured knights, a lesson repeated across fourteenth-century Europe, and it remains a lasting symbol of Scottish independence.