Scots wars of independence

Scots wars of independence (1296-c.1357). Despite previous close relations between Scotland and England, the dynastic crisis following the death of Alexander III of Scotland in 1286 allowed Edward I to push strongly defined claims of English overlordship on the new King John Balliol. In 1295, the Scots negotiated a mutually defensive treaty with Edward's enemy, King Philip of France, as a prelude to regaining independence by force.

The first engagements were profoundly traditional, resulting in a Scots capitulation following their defeat at Dunbar in April 1296. However, fear of English ‘big government’ soon provoked spontaneous revolts throughout Scotland. Co-ordination was subsequently provided by Andrew Murray and William Wallace, who led a Scots infantry army to victory against an overconfident English force at Stirling in September 1297, exposing shortcomings in the English cavalry.

The Scots then employed guerrilla tactics to drive out English garrisons and provoke terror across the border until Wallace was defeated by Edward himself at Falkirk in July 1298. The deadly effect of longbowmen warned the Scots off traditional set-piece battles. Falkirk was no Dunbar and the war became one of attrition: the English campaigned to capture castles and extend their effective control beyond south-eastern Scotland; the Scots harassed English armies and garrisons. The Scots wearied first, submitting in 1304, although England was also exhausted. However, two years later Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick, seized the throne and reopened hostilities.

Initially, the Bruce failed against the combined might of England and Scots outrage at his violent usurpation of kingship. A pleasing legend describes him sheltered in a cave, while he watched a spider triumph over repeated failure to climb to the roof: the indomitable spider was his inspiration and he kept his cause alive until the death of Edward I provided political relief. English political divisions in the early years of Edward II's reign allowed the Bruce to deal with his enemies in Scotland by all possible means, including the ‘fiery cross’.

The following years were spent reducing enemy castles by employing all kinds of trickery, often involving local communities in a piecemeal, though co-ordinated, popular form of warfare. Most of the forts were then razed. Bannockburn crowned this success but did not win the war. Attempts to force Edward II to accept Scots sovereignty subsequently centred on the systematic raiding of the north of England and the opening of a second front in Ireland. Neither strategy worked directly, but may have contributed to the circumstances leading to Edward's deposition and murder in 1326.

The ensuing political turmoil brought a peace treaty from the regency government, but a few years after the Bruce's death in 1329 the claims of those who had lost out relaunched the war, ostensibly under the leadership of Edward Balliol, son of the King John ousted by the Bruce. Edward III gave covert, and then overt, support to the so-called ‘disinherited’ but ultimately the Hundred Years War drew his attention away from Scotland. The wars left an enduring legacy of enmity between the two kingdoms; they also proved that guerrilla tactics, good leadership, and luck could combine successfully against even the English war machine, which also learned sufficient from its Scots experience to cut a swathe through the knighthood of France.

Bibliography

• Barrow, Geoffrey W. S., Robert Bruce and the Community of the Realm of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1992).
• Prestwich, Michael C., The Three Edwards: War and State in England 1272-1377 (London, 1990)

— Fiona Watson