Dan Snow's History Hit - The Battle of Bannockburn

Episode Date: September 4, 2025

Scotland’s struggle for independence was marked by rebellion, betrayal, and remarkable victories. In this episode, we trace the story from William Wallace’s uprising against English rule, through the rise of Robert the Bruce, to the decisive Scottish triumph at Bannockburn in 1314.We're joined by Helen Carr, author of 'Sceptred Isle', to explain the century that changed the course of English-Scottish history.Produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal Patmore.Join Dan and the team for a special LIVE recording of Dan Snow's History Hit on Friday, 12th September 2025! To celebrate 10 years of the podcast, Dan is putting on a special show of signature storytelling, never-before-heard anecdotes from his often stranger-than-fiction career, as well as answering the burning questions you've always wanted to ask!Get tickets here, before they sell out: https://www.kingsplace.co.uk/whats-on/words/dan-snows-history-hit/.We'd love to hear your feedback - you can take part in our podcast survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on.You can also email the podcast directly at [e-mail]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello folks, Dan Snow here. I am throwing a party to celebrate 10 years of Dan Snow's history hit. I'd love for you to be there. Join me for a very special live recording of the podcast in London, in England on the 12th of September to celebrate the 10 years. You can find out more about it and get tickets with the link in the show notes. Look forward to seeing you there. Hi everyone and welcome to Dan Snow's history here. Today I'm afraid I'm going now. I'm touching the third rail of British history. I'm talking about the eternally thorny subject of England and Scotland.

Now, for listeners that are not from the UK, you might think that England and Scotland are separate. And they are. Sort of. But on the macro level, they are one. They're part of the United Kingdom. They are bound by the Union of 1707. You have Scottish MPs and peers that sit in the UK houses of Parliament in the UK capital, London. Scotland used the same currency, the interest rates controlled by the UK Central Bank,

which confusingly and helpfully is called the Bank of England. People move back and forward over the border. They have the same representation at the UN. They have the same Olympic team. Team G.B., which does not include people from Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom. Anyway, never mind. But you might be forgiven for thinking they are separate because they have strong, separate identities, they have slightly different legal systems.

They do have different football teams, rugby teams. And that all reflects the fact that before 1707, they were two different kingdoms. And like all neighbours, these two have had an intense relationship. Sometimes they've been friends. They've nearly always been competitors. And they've often been outright enemies. and their borderlands from time to time have been wasted war zones. English armies of March North and Scottish armies have returned the favour.

It's a troubled history, it's marked by constant attempts at conquest or domination by the English, fierce resistance by the Scots. And this really reached the climax. The really important period is the early 14th century, and things at that point could have gone either way. Talk about those decisive years we're joined by Helen Carr, I'm very pleased to say. She'd been on the pod many times. She's an award-nominated historian. She's specialised in medieval history.

She's presented many history hit TV documentaries. Make sure you go and check them out. And she's just written a book called Sceptred Isle, a new history of the 14th century. It's all about this period. So here we go, folks. Enjoy. T-minus 10. The Thomas bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

God save the king. No black white unity till there is first than black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And lift-off, and the subtle has cleared the power. Helen, good to see you. Good to see you. Thank you for having me. It's a great pleasure. So we've got England at the end of the 1200s. They've just conquered Wales. So England and Wales, as we know it, sort of brought under, roughly speaking, one king, King Edward. What's going on in the north? Is it just a full independent separate country?

So by the end of the 13th century, the middle to the end of the 13th century, things are kind of okay between England and Scotland. The king on the throne in Scotland is Alexander III. And he is, a relatively successful king. He's a popular king. He's managed to pacify the clans. There's less clan warfare than there used to be. But then there is this catastrophe that changes everything for the future of Scotland. Until this point, Alexander has been, he's been friends with Edward I. They're on good terms. They're allies, their political allies. But there is a sense that Edward is still this sort of feudal overlord, though it's more in sense rather than actual name. There's a wonderful manuscript image of Edward presiding over Parliament

and to one side he's got Luella Napgrufford from Wales as the Prince of Wales and then he's also got Alexander III of Scotland on his other side but Edward is front and centre. It's interesting about this period that people seemed a little bit chill with the idea of sort of I'll pay homage to you, I'm pretty relaxed, let's keep that relationship ambiguous but on the ground Edward doesn't really rule Scotland, does he? No, he doesn't rule Scotland. Alexander is king of Scotland. He is the nominal king of Scotland. He's the accepted king of Scotland. He was crowned at Schoon like former kings. But the problem is for him, he hasn't got an heir. And in 1286, there is a catastrophe for the future of Scotland because Alexander, who has just become married, he's got a new young wife. He's a bit drunk. He leaves Edinburgh on a stormy night and he's riding out to try and have sort of a knight of passion with his new queen. And we don't know exactly what happened. but he seems to have taken a tumble off his horse

and he is found sort of down a ravine with a broken neck the following day. And this plunges Scotland into a bit of a succession crisis because the only air that he has is Margaret the maid of Norway. But what happens next is Margaret is sent over from Norway to come and effectively rules Scotland. She's a young woman. She's a young girl.

She's not even a woman yet. And at this point, Edward I first is in England. He's thinking, well, maybe I can betroth my son, Edward's the future Edward the second, to this maid of Norway, as she was known. And obviously that never really manifests. But she's on her way over to Scotland and then she dies, which means that Scotland is plunged enough to a full-on succession crisis because there is no one else to ascend the throne. And this becomes known as the Great Cause. Can we just talk to a little bit about medieval Scotland? I'm so interested in this, the

ambiguous relationship with England, because when the Normans arrive in England, sort of Norman ideas and some Norman nobles have spread north into Scotland. And there is a link between the two kingdoms, isn't there? I mean, the Scottish nobles, do they speak English, they speak French, they speak Scottish Gaelic? Like, what's their identity? Yeah, that's a really interesting question, because actually we think of the vernacular being maybe a bit different, we think of dialect being different, but actually it was quite similar. It was more dependent on the region of which you were existing within. So if you were in the far north of Scotland, you probably would have more of a Gaelic language and dialect. But if you were on

the borders, you'd be sharing the same sort of language as the English. And the dialect would be very similar whether you were on the English side of the border, you know, in the north or whether you were on the sort of southern side of Scotland. So it was very difficult to tell who belonged to where. It's interesting that you mentioned the conquest because I think what you got in Scotland around the Middle Ages, the high Middle Ages, is this sense of what you had in England before the conquest. So it's not quite followed the same pattern as after all of these Norman lords came in and sort of took over pockets of England and were given land by William the Conqueror. A few of them did go into Scotland, but you still get more of a sense

of what England was like before that. So the clans still had a lot of power and they were feudal overlords over various regions. But in England, before the conquest, you had that sort of sense of Mercia and Wessex, I think it was quite similar. But under a king like Alexander III, you still had a hierarchy, so you still had the king at the top and then these clans kind of underneath him. If you're a Scottish aristocrat, you might go down to London, you might get a Norman wife, you might import some castle building techniques. So there's a sort of, there's a cultural exchange going on. Absolutely. This is a very permeable border. It's not a firm border. It's not a political border yet. It's what you call a porous border. There's a lot of

exchange going on. Communities are coexisting. It's not a sense that you've got Scotland here and England there and that you stay in your lane, so to speak. It's very much a case that people are moving within each other's lands. You had a lot of Scottish nobility holding land in England. It It was far more political. It was all allegiance-based rather than necessarily about land and sort of tenure. So it's quite hard for us to understand in a world of hard borders and passports and sovereign states, isn't it? Exactly. So if you'd asked the kings of England, they would have said, yeah, we're kind of overlords of Scotland, but realistically, they've never tried to sort of go in with an army and really, really prove that, have they? No, they hadn't at this

point. And I don't think it was in Edward's favour to do that either, because he's at the time, You know, before the Anglo-S Scottish Wars of Independence, so they were later called. He was conquering Wales. He was focusing on the Welsh. He also had problems in France with Gascany. He didn't want to start making enemies with Scotland. And there was no real reason at that point for them to be enemies. Scotland were in allegiance with the English.

He wanted Scots to help him with the wars in France. He needed those men. So the King of Scotland has gone. Nature abhors a vacuum. Who is going to rule Scotland? Hmm. That's the big question at this point. In the late 13th century, the Great Cause is a real problem. And Edward I first comes, is invited to arbitrate. He's invited to arbitrate. He's invited to arbitrate. He doesn't sort of wade in. He is actually asked to come and resolve this. So reflecting the fact that he's a powerful neighbouring guy with a sort of little bit of an overview of Scotland. He's got swag. Whatever Edward generally says goes. So there are two major rivals for the throne at this point. There's the Ballioles and the Brewses. So there's John Balliol and Robert Bruce. And this isn't Robert Bruce that we're going to talk about. This is his grandfather. Okay, so this is going a little bit back from Banachburn. And to cut a long

story short, John Balliol is chosen. Edward I chooses him and says, you are going to be the rightful successor to the Scottish throne. So he's crowned. Has Balliol made a bit of a deal? Is it agreed to be a bit of a puppet? It's kind of like the ultimate IOU. So Edward has chosen him. And as a result, this means Balliol is his puppet. He's in his pocket. He needs to do as Edward wishes him to do. And Edward starts sort of flexing his muscles a bit from this point. He wants to reclaim lands in Gascony. He's having real troubles with the French king

and he starts trying to get a lot of the Scottish nobility to come and fight his wars. And they're not really happy with this. And Balliol's not happy with this. And he starts to push back against Edward's authority. And that's where the real problem starts to occur when you get the rise of the wars. Edward's beginning to treat Scotland as if it really is part of his kingdom.

Yeah. He considers himself by this point a true feudal overlord of Scotland. So Balliol is king in Scotland by name, but Edward is the ultimate authority in the aisles. Right. And when does the fighting break out? So Balliol does the worst thing in Edward's mind is that he goes and into an alliance with the French. And it's called the old alliance, spelled A-U-L-D, the old alliance. And you couldn't do anything worse in the eyes of Edward I.

And Edward I has this real reputation. He is a formidable king. He's a warrior. He's a very angry man. That sort of plantagenet fury is definitely present in Edward I's personality. And it's this act that Edward responds to so dramatically. It's not so much that Balliol shows any sort of sense of independence. It's not the fact that the Scots don't necessarily want to come and fight his wars in France. It's the fact that Balliol goes behind his back that makes Edward so furious. And I don't think up until this, this point he had considered taking over Scotland and a conquest as he had done in Wales. I think he was quite happy with the arrangement, but he's so furious. One of the first things he does is he marches his army up to Berwick and he takes Berwick on Tweed. And he has all of the men of the city who put up with the defence of this formidable garrison on the border. He has them all killed. So it is the start of this incredibly bloody war in 1296. And eventually Balliol is captured and he is richly humiliated by Edward before being taken down south and put in prison in the Tower of London.

And Edward has this clothing made for him, this tabard made exactly for this occasion for Balliol to be taken out in front of the public. It was a great spectacle. He was ripped of his tabard and he was called tomb tabard that's without clothes. So it's this display of sort of ignominy. He is richly humiliated. And that's what Edward wants. He wants to make sure that he is seen as the most powerful person, the most powerful lord within the aisles.

And he takes the stone of destiny. He does. He goes up and he's like, you're not having that anymore. He takes it and he has this special throne. This is the stone, Stone of Schoon, which is the stone on which Scottish kings are crowned. Every Scottish king has been crowned, and Edward has it taken down to Westminster.

And he has the correlation chair, the Westminster chair, made to fit around the stone. And Edward never sits on this. mostly made for future kings. So for the coronation of future kings, particularly his son, Edward II, going forward. But this is a full-scale invasion of Scotland there. So in 2026, Edward's done something that English kings have been dreaming about since Saffles. He's actually conquered the whole of Britain. He said, did he conquer Scotland? That's the big question. So, no, he tries to conquer Scotland. And then he's successful. It's a bit of a sort of push-pull.

And it's a case of, it's a bit like a whack-a-mole. He sort of feels like he's done something. everything's under control and then another rebel pops up again. So he's got the big stronghold, big castles are under his control. Yeah, yeah. So what he does is he starts taking Scottish garrisons, cast by castle. He installs English officials in them. He makes sure he's got a military presence in Scotland. He creates Berwick as this centre of administration.

He ensures that Berwick is well fortified. It's incredibly strong. It's a garrison. It's a centre of politics. It's the hub of England within, is it England or Scotland? and that's the question. Depends who holds it. But it is the hub of Englishness on the border, and that is where all of the armies marching through into Scotland will go through.

They'll go through Barrick. They'll often muster at Berwick, and they'll go north. And then a lot of the action also happens around Sterling, because that Stirling Castle is really the gateway to the north of Scotland. If you want to go from what we call the Central Belt, Glasgow Edinburgh today, if you want to go north, you've kind of got to go via Sterling. Yeah, exactly.

And that was the same then. So mega castle, on a very imposing feature. Okay. But he's got Sterling. He's got all these castles. So at this stage, briefly, it does look like the English, having they conquered the Welsh, they have brought places like Cornwall under their control. It does look like Edwards on the way to creating a British state across the whole of the island of Britain.

Yeah, there's a few years where the Scottish are pacified. There's small rebellions that are happening, but it's nothing particularly large. Is Edward King of Scotland at this point? Did he put up another puppet, or is he's the King of Scotland? He considers himself to be King of Scotland, but it's still the case that there's not really, really a king of Scotland. Well, Balliol is technically still king of Scotland because he's alive. But Edward would consider himself to be the feudal overlord,

the great lord of Scotland as well as England. So you mentioned a few rebellions, and one rebellion comes along more serious than the others. Tell me about that one. So this one's famously under William Wallace. He's the most famous person, but I feel like his friend, an ally, Andrew Morey, doesn't really get much for looking to Hollywood.

But it was the two of them together that created this movement against the English. And there were some things that the famous movie, Braveheart, which is 30 years old, I think, this year, is it this year, maybe 30 years old this year? It did get right. It said that Wallace was spurred interaction after the murder of his fiancée. And this is all taken from a 15th century chronicle. It's like a kind of romantic poem about Wallace's actions. Do we know if it was a girlfriend situation?

We're not really sure. This is based on this chronicle account. It could have been a romanticisation of it all, like trying to make him seem a bit more. human life. But for some reason, he goes on the tear. And talk about his background. Where's he, where's he from? Is he a sort of member of the elite? There's not a lot that we really know about him early on. He's a minor nobleman. He's not sort of one of these great clan leaders, the son of the minor nobleman. He's a second son, so there's not really a lot going for him. It's not like he's going to inherit his father's mantle. Really second sons have a life of war, battle and fighting,

or a life in the church. And he goes for the former, clearly. But he really comes to fame at the Battle of Stirling Bridge, which is with Andrew Moray, and Andrew Moray is a more elevated nobleman. What's the first action? When does the English state in Scotland realise they've got a problem? Sterling Bridge, I think. So some of these battles are organised, but some of them are just, they just happen as a consequence of two armies meeting each other. And I think that Wallace is stirring up discontent across Scotland. They're starting to get rumblings of discontent. You're starting to get Scott rallying and joining behind him. So he must be a charismatic figure. He's a charismatic figure for sure, definitely.

He's also a patriot. He's dogmatic in his cause. He's very passionate, and that's something that you do get a sense of, whereas I think someone like Moray is probably more of the military leader and the pragmatist. But Wallace is the passion. He's the verve. He's the one who's never going to bend the knee to Edward I. And so he's got this army that's growing behind him,

and then he meets the English at the Battle of Stirling Bridge, which isn't on a battlefield. It is actually over this quite narrow bridge across You can still go see it today. The river's right there. The English screw up badly. Yeah, the English screw up badly. And what's interesting about these bridges, and I think this is a bit of trope in medieval military history, isn't it? There's a lot of battles over bridges. There's a battle of Borough Bridge. There's a battle of Stamford Bridge. It's a case that you've got one army on one side, an army on the other. Someone's got to come over and how they're going to do that. And when you've got these narrow bridges, you can really only get maybe two to three horses abreast crossing the bridge at a time.

So how are they going to deal with that? when you've got the English whose major strength is archers or their heavy cavalry, a bridge is not really the most effective means and space to have a battle because you've got nowhere for your cavalry to draw back and really do their ultimate damage. And so the English really screw up because this is the first case of Scottish warfare where the Shiltrons are applied, which work very well. Tell me what Shiltron is. A Shiltron is like a combined body of soldiers who create a sort of armadilly,

or hedgehog effect with their spears. So quite an imposing, terrifying situation to be faced with if you're an English soldier. And it's a mass of spears. And you've got the Scottish soldiers on foot hiding behind their shields with their spears pointing up. And they stay together. And it's quite similar, I suppose, to some of the more ancient techniques of military warfare. You'll know. Macedonians.

Yeah, it's the Macedonians. Exactly. It's that. So is it a phalanx? Yeah. Yeah, it's a phalanx effect where it's a defensive mechanism and it means that nobody can really get to the person underneath the shield because they're faced with this wall of sharp, pointy things.

And it's also something horses don't like to go anywhere near. So when you've got heavy horses sort of hurtling up towards this wall of spears, they're not going to want to leap straight into them. Funnily enough, they do have an instinct to say absolutely not. And the English army finds itself trying to cross the river and just caught Yeah, exactly. And so the English army are just pushed into the river. So you've got these horses being pushed into the river as the Scottish Schiltrons put up the most formidable defence. And so in the end, it ends up being quite a lucky victory for the Scots. And it is a one-off victory for William Wallace. But it is one that solidifies his reputation and mythology going forward. And afterwards he becomes a guardian of Scotland. You know, in the absence of a king, they appoint these great lords as guardians. But it's not. not so good for Andrew Murray because he actually is injured at the matter of Stirling and dies of his wounds, which is probably why he's not so memorialised. Is the myth true that William Wallace turned the English commander into a piece of clothing?

Hugh de Creshingham, yeah, okay, so there is this wonderful anecdote that Wallace was this vicious butcher and he got hold of the treasurer of England, Hugh de Cresingham, who had caused all sorts of financial problems for the Scots over the years. years, the legend has it that he created his sword belt out of Cresingham's skin. So is this true? I would say unlikely, because at the same time in England, there's other propaganda that is coming out about William Wallace. There is this wonderful document called the Lutteral Salter, and it's made for a lord he fought for Edward I, during the Scottish Wars of Independence. And on one of the margins of this Salter is a lot of Scots painted in Blue Wode a la Braveheart, butchering babies and doing all sorts of terrible things. And the claim is this is William Wallace, who's come over the border on one of his raids and he's massacring

innocence. And really, it's a sort of mimetic story. It's very much like Herod and the massacre of the innocence. They're trying to get a sense of this is a villain. We've all got to be behind Edward and his wars because there's this great villain who's rising up in Scotland and isn't he terrible? After the Battle of Stirling Bridge, does William Wallace ravage Northern England? Does he defeat some of these British garrisons? Is this a level five crisis for the English state? It begins to be a level five crisis. And Edward's over in France at this time and there's not a lot he can do, but he's pretty quick to act when he does realise it's becoming a major problem. So yes, Wallace does come over into the border and he starts raiding. He's quite

slow in his raids. So he goes in, he takes a while he's there up to a week, sort of moving through the north of England. He comes quite far south. And one of the most famous accounts is when he allegedly has a group of schoolboys murdered inside a church in Corbridge and he has them shut up in a church and the church set a light. But, you know, there are two sides to every story. Edward does very similar things in Scotland on the other side of the border. It's not a case that Wallace is this sort of evil-doer. The atrocities are happening on both sides, as in the same case with every evidence of border warfare. So Edward marches north? Yeah, Edward marches north. He's cross. He's really peeved. He wants to do some damage. And there's

happens and takes place at Falkirk where everything goes wrong for William Wallace and he loses the battle at Falkirk. And Edward is victorious? Edward's victorious, yep. Is William Wallace? After that, he goes overseas so he effectively runs away and then eventually he is captured. Well, he's handed in by his own men. The nobility eventually realise that they need Edward on side and his prize is William Wallace and they hand him in to Edward and he is taken, a prisoner. And after a show trial, I say a show trial, because it was only ever going to go one way. He is butchered, I think it's the best way to describe it. He's butchered. He's hanged, drawn and quartered at Smithfield in 1295, and it doesn't go very well for him.

I love the way he says, I could never be a traitor to Edward Fly. I was never his subject. Exactly. Isn't that a great quote? It is a great quote. And did he impregnant Edward II's wife, and is thus the father of Edward the third? Oh, well, yeah. I mean, obviously, he's obviously the father read with a third. No, Isabella of France, even though that is such a wonderful storyline to try and pull together because she is obviously this formidable queen, the She-Wolf of France, as she's called later on. Who ended up in a very unhappy marriage with the second? Yeah, unhappy marriage. And she has her own lover, Roger Mortimer later on. So of course, you know, it's Hollywood being, you know, they're taking some licence, but it's kind of there.

Let's just to blur the lines like, no, Isabella was a toddler at the time of Wallace's death. So that's certainly not the case. That's certainly inappropriate. Right. So we're now in, what, the early 1300s. Yep, turn of the century. Turn of the century. William Wallace gone.

Scottish nobles collaborating game with Edwards. Edward's sort of back in charge of Scotland. He's back in charge in Scotland. Things are looking okay. But then this, as I said, it's like whackamol. This new rebel pops up. Robert the first, or later Robert the first, known as Robert the Bruce, but most accurately Robert Bruce.

And careful listeners will notice that we'll notice that we mentioned the Bruce family at the beginning, they were up against the Ballioles for the throne of Scotland. So they're a grand family. They're a grand family, yep. They're a noble family. Yes, Bruce certainly has ambitions. Robert Bruce is a very ambitious, charismatic, but very pragmatic leader.

And why does he rebel? He rebels because it's this same discontent, this idea that Edward is this feudal overlord. He doesn't want Scots having to go and fight for Edward in his wars in France, which is what Edward is increasingly trying to get them to do. and he sees a vacancy on the throne he sees an opportunity. He manages to see off his greatest rival, which is a whole other story, John Common.

There's this story that he has him murdered or he may be murders him himself in Greyfires Church. And then he goes off and takes the throne despite being excommunicated for this terrible action of murdering stabbing common. You listen to Dan Snow's history at there's more coming up. So he sets himself up as the true king of Scotland. Yep, yep. He's crowned at Schoon, despite the stone not being there. He's crowned at Schoon.

And importantly, it is Isabella McDuff. She's of Clan Macduff. She places the crown on Bruce's head, and it's something she gets in a lot of trouble for thereafter. Okay. another, I mean, complete provocation for Edward I first, but they choose their timing quite well, because Edward's an old man. Yeah, he is an old man. He's a determined man, but he's an old man, and he says

I'm going to go up to Scotland, I'm going to take on Bruce. This is going to be a serious campaign, and he starts marching his army north. And Edward, this time, he's not only old, he's in his late 60s, he's quite infirm, he's having to have his legs bound in these tight leather leggings

because they're so sore and difficult, and it's painful for him to ride, and he has to pause for a long period of time than the far north in Lannacost Priory and it's so cold up over the winter that his chance for repay for glass panes to be put into the windows to keep the icy wind from the old man's bones and of course he never actually quite makes it to Scotland it said that he's carrying the banner of the dragon he's sort of unleashed the dragon banner he and his son are taking that north and he never makes it he goes across to Burron Sands which is where he dies and this is an interesting point about Edward is to why does he do that? Why does he suddenly go to Berron Sands on the coast? Why does

he make that decision? And it's this idea that maybe this old king who has a real love of Arthurian legend and has a real belief in Arthur. This is a king who had Arthur's remains exhumed at Glastonbury earlier on. It's possible that he believed that Berron Sands was actually Avalon and he wanted to die at Avalon. But his dream of replicating Arthur's conquest of the whole of Britain would not come to pass. No, it would not, no. The Scots were lucky when Edward the first,

one of the great warlords of medieval, well, really Western Europe. They really were, yeah. And tell me about his son. Edward II. He was not like his father at all. Classic plantagenets.

No. You get a good and then you get a bad one. I know. It's like a plantagenet sandwich, isn't it? It's like what filler are you going to get? For hundreds of years. Yeah.

There's a great one and then a rubbish one. It's totally true. And Edward was, to be fair, a pretty rubbish king, but he wasn't this sort of fop and aesthetas people think that he was. He wasn't this very effeminate character. He was very masculine.

He loved things like ditch digging and he like rustic. Classic masculine activity. Classic masculinity. If in doubt, go and get a spade and help out the locals digging their ditches. No, he loved sport. He was very active. He liked fighting. He was interested in the art of war.

But he just wasn't a politician. He wasn't a great king. He wasn't a great military leader. And that is what his father was. He was very much in the shadow of his father, which was a real problem for him. going forward. And he did go to north straight away as soon as his father died. But instead of going north to fight the Scots, his first action was to promote his best mate, Piers Gaveston,

to the earldom of Cornwall. So fresh to the role of King that he had to use his father's seal. And so he's busy rewarding his mates and having good time. He doesn't just go and try and seek and destroy Robert the Bruce. No, he doesn't. And Robert Bruce, at this time he has gone into hiding. His family have been captured at Kill Drummond Castle. Isabella McDuff, who I mentioned earlier, as well as his wife, Elizabeth DeBurr, and also his daughter and his sisters are all taken from Kilrammy. His brother, Neil, is murdered brutally. And they're taken to Berwick, particularly his sister and his Bella Macduff, at Berwick, are suspended in cages by Edward I before he dies. He orders that they are suspended. And one of the chroniclers

explains that they're hanging from the castle to the mercy of the heaven. So you can imagine these women trapped inside these cages with the full force of the elements hammering down at them. And so on like Isabella, appallingly, was kept there for about seven years. She didn't live for much longer after she was finally released. Wow. Just quick to talk about Robert Bruce. He's a really interesting character that reflects lots of this history because he's got English Anglo-Norman blood, but he's also got sort of wild Gallic heritage as well.

So he's a cross-cultural figure. Yeah, he's super cross-cultural. And he has, it's important to say he's fought for, Edward. before. He's fought against Scotland for Edward before. He went against Balliol when our Balliol went against Edward. And he held land in England. It's not like he was always this Scottish patriot that someone like Wallace was. Did fight for Edward. He bent the knee to the English king. Perhaps more than once. He changed sides a couple of times. As I said, this was political. It's not necessarily nationalistic at this point. He was very interesting.

So he is hiding out at this point. He's an outlaw. He's sort of waging a insurgency. Has he got many followers? He's starting to grow followers and some of these major clan leaders are following him, namely James Douglas or otherwise known as Black Douglas and he's one of my favourite characters in Scottish history

because he really is, by every account, just utterly fierce. And he's just such a wonderful character. Everyone's afraid of Black Douglas. And what happens after the death of Edward I, despite the popular account from Jean Fossar, the chronicler, of the period saying that Edward wanted his bones

to be boiled, and taken to Scotland on the next campaign to conquer the Scots. So he was there in that moment. That never ended up happening. And Edward II was far more occupied with the politics of Westminster and emerging civil war with his nobility, which allowed Robert Bruce to build his forces. It allowed him to start recapturing these castles,

which were left as English garrisons, but they weren't continually bolstered. It was not like Edward was investing in the north in the way that his father was. And Bruce began to take back these castles and he began to conduct a series of raids into the north of England. So punishing England across the border. And it got so bad in the lead up to Bannockburn and particularly after the Battle of Bannockburn. The north was effectively annexed from the rest of England.

Edward just couldn't control what was going on. So Scotland is almost launching as a counter-invasion of England this point. Yeah. Let's get to the climax of the story. So 10 years sort of goes by. why does Edward the second try and bring it all to a head in 1314? So there's been a few attempts to go back up to Scotland and recapture Berwick. It's never really worked out.

Edward's never got very far and the border is increasingly fragile. But the real climax is that Robert Bruce interestingly creates this sense of national prerogative. He creates a sense of identity between Englishness and Scottishness. He creates this sense that you either for Scotland or you are. for England. And he says that any Englishman who has lands in Scotland, but do not follow Robert Bruce or any Scott who has lands in Scotland, but is not allied to Robert Bruce, will forfeit their lands after a certain point. And he says, if you haven't allied yourself with me, you will forfeit your lands. And really, he's able to follow this through because of his success at

Bannockburn and his victory. So that means if you are not for Robert Bruce and for Scotland, you will lose all of your lands in Scotland. He will disinherit you and you will be forced into effectively into exile, into England. And that is interestingly really what creates more of this firm border than what was there before

which was this poorest border of cross-border landholding which it didn't exist anymore after this point. So he really starts to carve out Scotland as a very distinct entity. And Edward knows that this is going to happen and so he also knows

that Robert Bruce is starting to lay siege to this wonderful bastion of English defence Stirling Castle and if he takes Stirling it's a real problem and that means Bruce is reclaiming Scotland very successfully and for Edward he knows he needs to march

he needs an army up in Scotland he needs to counter Robert Bruce's capture of Stirling Castle so Bruce sends his brother Edward Bruce to lay siege to Stirling Castle which is being protected by the custodian there John Mowbray and Mowbray sends a letter to Edward

says you've got to come because I can't hold out, I'm going to have to do something at some point. So Edward knows that his time's up, he's got to get an army north. The mythology is that Edward Bruce makes an agreement with John Mowbray at Sterling. He says, by midsummer's day, if the castle has not been liberated by the English army, which means the army is on the march, I will hand the castle over to you. This is the mythology, whether that's accurate or not, it's unlikely. But Edward does march his army and they've got this deadline of midsummer's day. And of course, as we know, the Battle of Bannock Burn takes place around

Midsummer's Day in 24th of June. The Battle of Bannockburn, so you've got this big old English army against the Scottish Army of Robert the Bruce. Great opening. Yeah. Great first chapter. Great prelude to the battle. Just talk me through that. Yeah, so what is wonderful and what we managed to do when

filming the documentary for the Battle of Bannock Burn on History Hit, which is available to go and watch and it was very fun making it, see the burn, see the Bannick Burn, which is for everyone listening abroad is a Scottish for small stream. It is Scottish for small stream. At the battle itself there were two streams, but it's become famously known as the Banach-Burn. But actually at the time, contemporaneously, it was known as Sterling. So any accounts that came out after the battle,

it was known as the Battle of Sterling. But I guess that's confusing because of the former Battle Stirling Bridge that we've talked about. So what happens is you've got this English army snaking up the road towards Sterling and the vanguard of the army. So that's the front of the army. They're usually led by the flower of chivalry, you know, these young buccaneering knights of the time, they're leading the vanguard, they're sort of moving up the front. So one of them is Humphrey de Bowen. He's leading the vanguard, and he rides up the hill ahead of the rest of the arm. He crosses the burn, his horse splashes through the water and rides up the hill. And at the crest of the hill, he looks down, and he can see sort of the front of the

wood, the front of the new park where Robert Bruce has been training his men. And he sees this man on a palfrey, which is a small pony, and he's wearing a gold circlet. So he identifies him. This must be Bruce. This is Robert the first, self-titled king of Scotland. And so he thinks, I'm obviously going to go for gold. This is my moment of glory. And so he hurtles down the hill on his much bigger horse right towards Robert Bruce, and he's got his line of men at the edge of the wood. And Bruce sees him coming. And instead of retreating, he turns around, he spins his horse around and he charges back at him. And Bruce encounters De Boone. And in this moment, he stands up in his stirrups and he brings his axe down

incredibly hard on De Boone's head. So crushing him through his helmet. And the axe goes through his helmet, pierces his skull, and Boone is instantly killed. He is then dragged across the field by his horses. He topples onto the earth. And for Bruce and his men, I mean, this is an incredible moment. I mean, how much are his men buoyed up by seeing this? You know, if they're worried about a battle beforehand and then they see their king take down one of the greatest knights in Edward II's army in one fell swoop, they're going to feel pretty spurred on.

And so for Bruce, this is brilliant, but for the morale of the English, not so good. Now the rest of the vanguard come in, there's a bit of a skirmish, and then they retreat and the English try and find somewhere to rest their army the night before battle takes place and they choose a pretty rubbish sight.

So, and the following day, It's one of the bigger battles that the English and Scottish will ever fight. Yeah. And the English outnumber the Scots? Yeah, I mean, there's lots of different ideas of how many English there were compared to how many Scots. I mean, if you read the Scottish account, it's going to be a real David and Goliath thing. Again, when it comes to accounts of medieval warfare, there's a real trope of, oh, they had loads of men. We have so few.

But we just, aren't we brave? You know, there's a lot of that. It's unlikely that there was much of a disparity, as some of the chronicles like to say. but I think there was certainly more English. I mean, around between 15 to 20,000 English, and I'd say between 10 to 15,000 Scots. Robert makes a bold decision, doesn't he, the morning that second day? Yeah, yeah, he does.

So Scots aren't fighting on horseback. This is one of the decisions that Bruce makes. He is a military tactician. He's been training his men incredibly effectively for months. You know, they've been forming these Shiltron formations, and when they get it wrong, he sort of do it again, do it again. he has streamlined exactly how he is going to conduct this battle, this incoming fight. And even men who want to join up at the last minute, he sends them away.

He's like, no, I need my army to know what they're doing. I can't have any new recruits. They know what they're doing. They are the ones who have been training. Go away, come back another day. And so they're ready to fight. And they move through towards the battlefield overnight. They encamp in the woods above the field.

And then in the morning, they move down the hill and they emerge on the ground. the battlefield, on the in-between two streams. You've got the Bannockburn to one side and the Pell stream to the other side. And the English, their backs are where the confluence of the two streams come together. So they're sort of penned in. They've chosen this terrible ground. It's cast land, so it's kind of boggy, but it's very flat. And the Scots, the woods to their back. And it's this very romantic scene where there is allegedly mist sort of rising from the ground as the sun comes up. And Edward watches as the Scots kneel. He sees them in the distance and the mist of kneeling, and he says, ah, you know, they know that they have been defeated by my formidable army.

And one of his men, I think, Ingram to Unfulville, turned to him and says, no, my lord, they're not kneeling for you. They're kneeling in prayer. And so it's this iconic image of the Scots of, you know, pious kneeling before their battle. And from the outset, they get into these, these Shiltron formations. And it's the classic wave of the English archers begin, but they, you know, they get somewhere, but they don't get particularly far. and then the English cavalry move in. But the problem is where they've chosen for the battle to take place. The ground, the English have chosen, is the cavalry can't draw back.

They're quite squeezed together because they've got the water on either side. For cavalry, you need space. You need straight steel to draw back and then hurtle forward. And they can't do that. And because they can't do that, they're squeezed in, they're sort of nudging against each other. And this is where Bruce's greatest device comes into play. because Chiltrons, under anyone else before, have always been defensive. But Bruce makes them offensive.

So he trains them to move forward. And so you have got these series of about 300 men for Chiltron, this incredible sort of armadillo of spikes and spears, and they're coming towards you rather than just staying still and you're expected to go towards them. And so the horses are bulking and they're moving further and further and further back and they're going more and more squashed in. And even though the Scots have fewer men,

and the English significantly outnumber them. They are squeezed in and they can't do their best. The archers can't even come forward to then rain arrows on the incoming Chiltrons. And what follows is a bloodbath. The Earl of Gloucester, Edward's nephew, charges into the fray quite bravely to try and break apart these Chiltrons and instead he's completely massacred on the spears of the Scots. And that happens to so many of the nobility. Bannockburn has been compared to the Battle of Cautry.

it wiped out the flower of chivalry, the knightly class of the English. So that's why it was such a disaster. Edward, to be fair, he did fight. He was in the fray. He was in the thick of the fighting and had to be dragged away when they knew that the battle was lost. And he basically ran hell for leather with Black Douglas on his heels and he fled to Dumbar to take a boat down to Berwick.

That's one of those rare things. I mean, it really is a decisive battle. Yeah. Edward II, there's not much coming back after that. No, and what's so amusing is Edward II really does think he's going to win this battle. He even employs cleric called William Baston to come and write an epic poem about his victory. So there's this sort of bewildered cleric in the retinue of Edward II. He's having to watch this battle unfold going, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. He gets

captured by Bruce and as punishment Bruce says, you're going to write it for me. And it is a victory that he's keen to celebrate because this really is Scottish independence. It's his crown. Oh, he manages to take everything. The English leave their entire baggage train. I mean, even the Great Seal is captured by Robert Bruce. And it's the victory at Bannockburn that enables Bruce to barter his prisoners. He's got some of these great noble prisoners. He's able to make exchanges with his family, these women who have been captured and imprisoned. So he gets his wife back. He gets his daughter back because of his victory at Bannockburn. You listen to Dan Snow's history hit. The best is yet to come.

Is that the last real attempt by the English Plantagenet kings to conquer Scotland? No, I think Edward III, you know. He's a good hammer of the Scots, yeah, he has a really good go. So the second after Banach-Burn, he does not rule for much longer, does he? He doesn't rule for much longer. I mean, there is argument to be had that Banach-Burn was the real catalyst for his downfall because it enabled all of the bickering nobles to really. get at him afterwards and say, see, see, we told you, now you have to sort of sit under our

thumbs for a while and then everything goes terribly awry for him. His kingdom is invaded by his wife. It is, I know. It's always such a tough one that. And he is killed somehow. Now, his son, Ebert III, is like his grandpa. We talked about that plantagenet sandwiching. Very, very able warrior king.

Yeah. So he makes a serious time to conquer Scotland? Yeah, he does. I mean, he leads against Scotland in a very similar way to his grandfather did. So he's never sort of the king, but he'd. does try to control Scotland. He's the feudal overlord of Scotland. He does manage that. And he even tries to plant one of his sons. John of Gaunt, there is talk of John of Gaunt, becoming king of Scotland under David II, who's Bruce's son. So Robert Bruce's son, David, is on the throne. But he's

forced to acknowledge Edward the third as a sort of, again, one of these kind of hazy, medieval overlords. Yeah, he tries to fight against Edward. There's the Battle of Neville's Cross in 1346, and again, the English win that battle. Battle of Hallad and Hill in the 1330s, which Edward is incredibly successful. He manages to recapture Berwick on Tweed. It is not then taken by the Scots again in Edward's reign. And he is successful, more successful, really, than his grandfather in taking Scotland and pacifying Scotland. There are always problems with Scotland, though. I mean, his son, particularly John of Gaunt, is constantly in negotiations on these March days. He has to go up to Scotland. He has to stay around Berwick and have negotiations with the Scottish Lords as to secure

pieces, constant treaties and pieces and pieces and negotiations to stop raiding or attacks on the north of England. It is just a constant period of border warfare. But is Edward the third accept that Scotland's a separate kingdom at this point, or is he still thinking he might do what his grandpa did and just absorb it into England? He sees himself as a feudal overlord. I don't think he sort of sees it as a kingdom that is exclusively his, but I think he sees him as somebody who oversees it. He's the ultimate lord of the aisles rather than being the king of the arts. And sometimes Scots are prepared to sort of play footsy with him

as long as they can, on the ground, they maintain their own sort of... Yeah, they fear him. They fear him in the same way as Edward I was feared, but what they lack during the reign of Edward the third is a leader like Bruce. They don't have somebody who is as formidable as pragmatic as Robert Bruce

to be able to counter such a successful king as Edward. There are instances where they do try to reconnect with the French, reignite the old alliance. But the French don't really like fighting with the Scots. They don't like going to Scotland. They get a bit fed up. They don't like the weather. They don't like the food. So it never really is that successful. What then explains Scottish real independence going forward from the 14th into the 15th centuries. Is it the fact that Edward III also launches England the Hundred Years' War and everyone gets a bit distracted? Yeah, it is a combination of that. Everyone gets distracted with the Battle of Cressee, the success of his war in France,

or lack of success. That's a whole other idea, isn't it? Before Edward III takes the throne, there is negotiation with Bruce and Isabella of France, who has overthrown her husband as king and planted her son on the throne. And there is a truce between England and Scotland where Isabella does acknowledge Robert as king of Scotland. And so you could see that as the moment where Scots achieved independence in the Middle Ages. But there is border warfare and there's continuing aggression up until the act of union. Right. So Edward III is trying to project English influence into Scotland all the way through the rest. This truce between England and Scotland and Isabella and Mortimer's acknowledgement of Bruce as King of Scotland is not popular in England.

It's not a popular thing. The Earl of Lancaster is absolutely furious about it. The nobles in England are furious about it. They see it as a stain on everything that Edward I tried to achieve. So it's not a popular truce. Warrior kings in this period conquest makes you a good king, not necessarily peace and treaties and truces. But it seems like in the medieval period that people are more. comfortable with ambiguity than we are now. Now it's like, okay, you're an independent country,

you've got your own representation at the UN or something, but back then, Edward III can kind of think one thing, Scottish nobles can think of something else, and you can sort of muddle along in that situation for generations. Yeah, I think it is true. I think people were more comfortable with ambiguity. Their borders were an emerging thing in the Middle Ages. They were continually being created. The whole idea of borders in this period is a fascinating one. It's like, are they porous, all sorts of communities and identities existed around these regions. They were different to the sort of central locations that a lot of this administrative and action and diplomacy were happening.

So they are their own communities, they're their own entities. And you see a lot of cultural change in these spaces as well. I suppose that's true. There are long periods of English distraction when there are English civil wars, of course, like the wars of under Henry IV or Henry VI. But people at Henry the 8th are always marching up to Scotland and trying to impose English policies. Yeah, yeah, but I suppose there's a time

when there is, they do try to create some sort of alliance as they had under the age of Alexander III because Margaret Henry's younger sister is married to the King of Scotland and then, but then it all goes wrong. There's obviously the Battle of Flodden later on. So there is this constant... It's never... It's never simple.

And then the 17th century, English Scots fight each other all the time and Cromwell invade Scotland. So really, it's not until... the Act of Union that you mentioned, 1707, when the two countries formally join that this situation is properly resolved? Formally join, I mean, possibly under James, the first of England, James 6 of Scotland. There's also this idea of sharing that one king. It's for that's the first time that Scotland and England really do have the same king and everything but name. But that comes with its own complexities for James as a monarch, I think. He's got a very

different kingship in Scotland as he does in England. So yes, really it's within this act of union. But then arguably, even into the modern day, are they the same nation? Are they? We're dealing with the big questions here. Yeah, exactly. So that's a big thought that the Scottish Wars of Independence, that's seeing a little bit too black and white. I've always thought Banat Byrne was this absolutely vast watershed in British history. Do you think it really matters as a battle?

Yeah, I think it really matters. I think it changed the course of Scottish history, national identity, mythology. Going forward, Bruce is this canonical figure in Scottish. history in Banachburn is this is this canonical battle. It was a great military victory, one that the Scots hadn't really achieved on the same level. I mean, every nation likes to have their own big success. I mean, we sort of blab on about Agincourt or Cressy, the Scots have Bannockburn. It's part of your cultural fabric, isn't it? Part of national identity. In the 14th century was a period where nationhood and nationalism, national identity started

to kind of emerge. Well, Helen Carr, thank you for that. Exhaustive rampage through English and Scottish rivalry, collaboration, attempts to conquest. Helen Carr, thank you so much coming on this one. See you next time. Thanks so much for listening, folks. We really hope that this has helped you better understand what's going on, give me a bit of context. And if you think your friends, family, colleagues would enjoy that, then please, please do share with them. Whatever your podcast player, whatever you're listening on, it will let you share this as a link or even a WhatsApp message. That's sharing's the lifeblood of this podcast

to what keeps us going. So thank you for listening and thanks for sharing. Join us next time for another episode of Dan Snow's Historyhead.