Страница 25 из 87
In February 1307, Bruce and his followers returned to Scotland in two groups. Robert and his brother Edward landed at Turnberry Castle and began a guerrilla war in the southwest of Scotland. Two other brothers landed farther south at Loch Ryan, but they were soon in English hands and executed. In April 1307, Bruce and his men made a military breakthrough, slaughtering a small English cavalry force at Glentrool in Dumfries-shire. On 10 May, he won another victory at Loudon Hill, where he defeated Aymer de Valence, the 2nd Earl of Pembroke. Revenge is sweet!
To Bruce’s great fortune, Edward I died after an attack of dysentery at Lanercost Priory near Solway on 7 July 1307. The new king, Edward II, was not as interested in holding Scotland as his father had been. Bruce took advantage of this situation, and gradually reduced the English presence in Scotland. He captured castles and destroyed them so that the English couldn’t use them again. By the summer of 1309, Banff and Dundee were the only strongholds in English hands north of the River Tay. Comyn’s old supporters, the earls of Buchan and Ross, attempted to hinder Bruce’s progress, and they were systematically destroyed. By 1309, Bruce was sufficiently confident that he controlled enough of Scotland to hold his first parliament at St Andrews.
Two years later, he had finally pushed the English out of Galloway and Lothian. In 1313, Perth, Roxburgh and Edinburgh were taken; Bruce was now acknowledged king of northern Scotland and the southwest. He even made forays into England, capturing the Isle of Man in June 1313. He held parliaments, issued charters and, through loyal bishops, opened diplomatic contacts with Europe.
Only Stirling Castle, the most strategic of all, as the gateway to the north and south, held out against Bruce. As he besieged the castle, Edward II, with an army of 20,000 men and 3,000 cavalry, moved north. The English army included Bruce’s old enemy Aymer de Valence, Sir John Comyn of Badenoch (looking to avenge his father’s murder), the earl of Angus and several MacDougalls.
The Battle of Ba
Robert’s brother Edward had secured an agreement with Sir Philip Mowbray, English commander of the castle, that if Edward II’s army did not show themselves by midsummer 1314, Mowbray would surrender. The English king arrived at Falkirk on 23 June, but the conditions were such that cavalry got bogged down and the English archers were dispersed by Scottish light cavalry. Even though the English force was three times the size of the Scottish one, the English were badly defeated at Ba
Edward II fled the field and made for Dunbar where his fleet lay at anchor. Of the 16,000 English foot soldiers who had made the journey north, only 5,000 returned. Among the dead were John Comyn, the would-be avenger, and the earl of Gloucester. David had slain Goliath. The Scots army was drawn from all ranks across Scotland; the nation had acted as one.
John Barbour, in his epic poem, ‘The Bruce’, gave a clue as to why the Scots had prevailed over such a superior force:
We for our lyvis [lives],
And for our children and our wifis [wives]
And for the freedom of our land
Ar strenyeit [forced] in battle for to stand
Perhaps the outcome was in some ways predictable after Bruce’s personal combat with Henry de Bohun, nephew of the earl of Hereford. Bohun charged at Bruce with his lance just prior to the battle, only to be killed by a blow to the head from Bruce’s battleaxe. It was a sign of things to come. Chided by his commanders for the huge risk he had taken, the king only expressed regret that he had broken the shaft of his axe!
After Ba
Bruce may have won the battle, but the war was not over. Buoyed by his military successes, Robert I launched repeated raids against northern England, reaching as far as Yorkshire and Lancashire. Under the pretext of freeing the Irish from English domination, and at the invitation of the king of Tyrone, he invaded Ireland in 1315. More cynically, this action was designed to weaken the position of Edward II even further and, at the same time, protect the southwest of Scotland from invasion from the English army in Ireland.
Bruce used his notion of ‘Pan-Gaelic Greater Scotia’ to further justify his incursion into Irish territory. As a king descended from a line of Scottish and Irish Gaelic monarchs (or so he claimed), Robert I saw himself ruling as king of both Ireland and Scotland. Indeed, his brother Edward was crowned as high king of Ireland in 1316. But the truth was, Robert had little support in Ireland outside of the power base of his father-in-law in Ulster.
The Irish saw little difference in Scottish rule, particularly as it coincided with a large-scale famine; Scottish troops were fed at the expense of locals. It became an army of occupation so loathed by the Irish that the people of Dublin burnt the town down rather than allow the Scots to take it over. The occupation came to an end with the defeat and death of Edward Bruce at the Battle of Faughart, near Dundalk, on 14 October 1318. His head was cut off, packed in salt and sent as a gift to Edward II.
The Declaration of Arbroath
Robert I’s military adventure produced nothing tangible. The idea of a Pan-Gaelic kingdom was in shreds, but his forays into diplomacy proved to be more successful. What he needed was not only complete control of Scotland, free from English interference, but recognition of his position as the rightful monarch of an independent realm. The Declaration of Arbroath of 1320 launched a diplomatic offensive aimed at achieving this goal.
The declaration was written in Latin by a cleric on behalf of the Scottish nobility. It was intended to justify Scotland’s and Robert I’s fight for independence to Pope John XXII in the hope that the pope might lift the excommunication order on the Scottish king.
The declaration contained the lines that have proved enduring in the ongoing struggle for independence from England:
For as long as one hundred men remain alive, we shall never under any conditions submit to the domination of the English. It is not for glory or riches or honours that we fight, but only for liberty, which no good man will consent to lose but with his life.
The declaration succeeded in wi
The war continued and on the day of the coronation of Edward III in February 1327, the Scots launched an attacked on Norham, the first site of Edward I’s hearings on the Great Cause in 1291. The following year, the English retaliated with an invasion, but this time it ended in farce. A Scottish raid on the English camp in Weardale nearly led to the capture of the English king, a boy of 15, who apparently burst into tears.
A peace treaty was signed between the two sides in May 1328, recognising Scottish independence and Robert I’s kingly status. To set the seal on it, David II was married to Edward III’s sister, Joan of the Tower, at Berwick on Tweed on 17 July 1328.
A year later, the king was dead from unknown causes. His heart was famously extracted and placed in a silver casket to be taken by Sir James Douglas on Crusade to the Holy Land. The casket never reached its destination and ended up in Spain with Douglas at Grenada, fighting with the king of Spain against the Moors. Douglas lost his life at the Battle of Teba in 1330, but the casket was recovered and returned to Scotland were it was interred at Melrose Abbey. Robert I’s body was buried at Dunfermline Abbey. He was succeeded by his 5-year-old son, David II, who was crowned with his queen at Scone in 1331.
The Second War of Independence (1332–1357)
The Northampton/Edinburgh Treaty created a breathing space, and hostilities resumed soon after the signing. The English became obsessed by the threat that the renewed Scottish/French alliance of 1327 posed to its national security. This fear was used to justify a final settlement of the Scottish situation. The plan was to place Edward, son of John Balliol, on the throne as king of a truncated Scotland. The English king would control the southern counties; the Scottish king, the northern.
The choice of Balliol’s son was a shrewd one – there were still people in Scotland who thought of Robert I as a murderer and not the rightful king. Plus, a number of unhappy campers were among the disinherited nobility who were only too keen to reclaim their estates on both sides of the border. With the not-too-secret approval of Edward III, Balliol’s army landed in Fife in July 1332 and defeated a much larger Scottish army, led by the guardian of the realm, the earl of Mar, at Dupplin Moor near Perth on 10 and 11August. Mar was killed in battle only ten days after his appointment, as was Lord Robert Bruce, illegitimate son of Robert I. Balliol was crowned king at Scone on 24 September; two months later, he paid homage to the English king as his overlord at Roxburgh.
Balliol was feeling secure, so he dismissed his English troops and retired to rule from his stronghold in Galloway. He arrogantly issued two letters for general circulation in Scotland. The first letter thanked the English king for helping him reclaim his throne; the second letter claimed Scotland had always been a fief of England and he would remain loyal all his reign to Edward III.
Writing these letters was a very bad idea. In December at A
The Scottish resistance
Balliol had genuine support in his Galloway heartland, as well as in Fife and Lothian. But in other parts of Scotland, he was seen as the English puppet king, and his authority was ignored. The new guardian, Sir Andrew Moray of Bothwell, whose father fought at Stirling Bridge with Wallace, led the resistance, but he was captured in April 1333 while attacking Balliol’s supporters at Roxburgh. Moray was replaced as guardian by Sir Archibald Douglas, but he died along with other nobles loyal to the Bruce cause at the Battle of Halidon Hill, near Berwick, on 19 July as English archers decimated the Scottish army. Thousands were killed, while the English lost only 14 soldiers. Ba