Historically High - The History of Scotland Part 1

Episode Date: July 3, 2024

There's something about Scotland that holds a special place in our hearts here at the Institute of Higher Learning. The Highlands, the moors, the lochs, the rolling hills, the accent, scotch whiskey, the people who date back more than 8,000 yrs before Britain's recorded history. A land constantly trying to fight for its independence against pretty much one enemy to the south (England). Scotland's history is so vast and rich we need two episodes to attempt to do it justice. Support the show Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

All right, lads and lasses. Get ready for some classes. Ooh, I did not even know I was going to do that. Yeah, you did. No, I didn't. All right. That gentleman over there trying to make me feel good about a bad joke. The guy's smoother than Billy Conley.

He's got more class than you and McGregor. And he's less controversial than Sean Connery, which, have you seen some of the Sean Connery stuff that's come out for, like, interviews where he talks about? he's like sometimes you got to hit a woman. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think that's a Scottish thing. I think it's a Sean Connery thing. The guy actually like was

his best known role as a spy that literally just banged everything and killed everything. And that worked for the enemy. Worked for England. Yeah. This week we are taking a trip to

where our families are from. Like where our heritage really kind of started, which it's Scotland. I'm part Scottish. You are probably like, I don't know,

half? No. Just a little bit? No, there's, it's a ways back. But yeah, that or it can also come from another nationality. We haven't done 23 and me. There's something weird about sending in your blood.

No. Because what if I want to commit a crime later on, I don't want to give my head start on me. That's true. But yeah, there are clans that do match up with their lineages and don't know why it took us so long to get to this one, but I think I'm in. I mean,

I don't think I needed 23 in me. I think it's fairly obvious that there's Scots running through these veins. Scotland, when you see it, it is literally, if, like, seeing, like, Hawaii or something like that would be, like, a tropical paradise. Yeah. Seeing what Scotland

just like looks like is almost like you're in like a fantasy world. There's something about the mist between the hills that really sets that off. The moors and the locks and the like the rock formations and the highlands and the lowlands and everything like that. It literally looks like

something that had to have just been invented for like fantasy lore. Well and they do everything with it. I mean we have the Highland Games where guys just toss telephone poles that they call something a caber or something like that. I mean it's like shit that was developed

in the highlands of Scotland that we figured out how to adapt into like competitions yeah everything that gets taken from Scotland there's always sort of a question is this Scottish or Irish but I think that this cleared up a lot of like

granted similar people they shared as they both grew you can't be that close geographically without having some type of shared languages regardless of how far back it was it yeah it's it's going to happen. Maybe that's also where some of the animosity comes through. It's like, well, we were

this side and we were this side. It's true. You were that island, we were this island. We had those Fox England right below us that we had to deal with. Yeah. All right guys, well, we're not going to go ahead and keep you waiting. Remember, rate, five stars. They're really helping the podcast. Thank you so much to everybody. The last couple weeks, we've actually been, I think, top 50 for Spotify listens, and that's in the U.S. and Australia. So, per the previous, podcast when Adam and I might have called out the U.S. people. Thanks you. Thank you guys.

You guys stepped up huge and we'll keep doing this for you. Talk shit early. I mean, I would say if you've listened to this podcast more than once, we usually will end up talking out of our asses every once in a while and turns out that we had just done it and then the next day. This is what happens when you record like four weeks in advance. Yeah.

And then shit comes light and you're just like, ugh. Yeah. If you're a new listener, um, Welcome. The listeners that we've had kind of throughout this growth that we've had and have stuck with us from the beginning. It's a growing number that is really kind of surprising every day to see that this many people tune in to listen to us and get some sort of enjoyment the way that we get an enjoyment out of it. And it just makes it even more fun to know that we're speaking to more people on a weekly basis. Speaking of that, if anybody is listening from Scotland or from the Scottish Board of Tourism or anything like that, we are going to do our best to go ahead and do honor to this because this is some really cool shit.

Also, at the same time, we may not get everything correct. So the best way that you could teach us this would be to bring us out there, give us a tour of the country of our lineage, and help us help the fine people that listen to this podcast. Show us what we did wrong. Exactly. All right, guys. Well, we're getting into Scotland. All right. So as this is the history of Scotland, we're going to go as far back as we can with how essentially the island got settled, how it was founded and who it was founded by.

I'm so excited that I get to try to fix my World War II Scotland blunder. Mm-hmm. I get to do some justice after saying something that, has been repeatedly called out for weeks. I'm not saying it's bad. I'm reaching out to the Board of Tourism. Please teach my co-host here. And I will also accompany him to make sure he learns his lesson.

Just the most ignorant American Scotsman that there's ever been. Yeah, that's, that's me. So Scotland, land of Scots. It's had several names essentially throughout its history. And we'll get to essentially how it has its name today. The island itself was inhabited at least eight. 5,500 years before British recorded history

So British recorded history goes back You know pretty far because they can also track it back to the Romans when the Romans were there prior to What was Edward? William the Conqueror coming over So they can track it back quite a fucking ways 8,500 years before British recorded history You get people in what is today currently Scotland pre-ice age

they found pre-ice age axes on Orkney Island and the mainland and Orkney Island is the first set of islands to like the north of Scotland So even of that high Pre-ice age I was kind of thinking about this

Just like The inhabitants would have had to have come from Like an island up there They wouldn't have gone from the south to the north, right? It would have had to have been somebody that was already occupying more like mainland Europe and then coming over. Yeah, and at that point, you don't know kind of what the ice bridges and stuff like that and how far out they went because if you look at the English channel and again at certain point, like, and it was of course many years before like humans came

into the picture because it takes a long time for continents to shift, but that could have been slightly closer or the temperature is colder. So that channel could have frozen over or had some type of like way of crossing. And we also don't give enough credit to the fact that when the ice age was going on, there was just so much more land. Yeah. There was everything was so much. Scotland was fucking,

or I guess the island of the United Kingdom was huge. And it might have been, I'm sure that there's definitely, there was water between Ireland and Scotland, but it was probably a much easier swim just because there was so much more land in between them. Well, I don't know if you're going to want that temperature. Probably not. probably cold, but I'm assuming that it had to have been a fairly warm climate.

The early settlement on the actual island was close to current day Edinburgh, and that dates back to around 8,500 BCE. So even beyond the Orkneys, the islands that are, excuse me, to the direct northern coast of Scotland, you have this move onto the actual big island, which, I mean, to just not stop at that island, you have to be traveling by boat. Yeah, they said the original people around Scotland were, how they found this out,

I don't know, but like, I'm guessing when you get into the nitty-gritty, like, of how the land used to be. They said they were a mobile boat using people, which is insane to think about, like, really early humans, like carving and creating boats and everything and, like, traveling with their tribes or whatever by boat,

just down the rivers. of these areas, like through the highlands and everything. Like most countries, they went ahead and moved on to more of a, like, you know, settlement type society where they were able to start farming. So over the years, it's becoming more habitable to where the, you know, temperatures are enough to where they can start actually growing some stuff. And when we're talking about later on in the years, the settlements that they found on the Orkneys off the northern coast, like I was talking about,

9,500 years old. Edinburgh, the one that was by Edinburgh, 8,500 years old. So, still so far back. And then they started to do some things that we kind of saw in Egypt. Because they started building

different structures, something called the Mays Howe. And the Mays Howe was actually, they say that it was a burial structure. To me, it looks like a root cellar to try to keep food and shit, but maybe that's why, they're scientists and historians,

and I'm just a guy that looks at pictures. At the same time, when you look at something, you're like, why would that be a necessity? And instead of being like, would they make this big opulent, well, if I guess if it was like a royal person, they'd make these big opulent chambers, but not everyone is going to choose between, hey, do you guys want to eat and not have to be in the fucking death cellar?

Let's make this thing into like a food storage. Well, yeah, also at the same time, you have to have a hierarchy of people to build something that would be a burial chamber for somebody that would be that elite in the society. to be taken care of that way. There's also something called the Kalinish Stones. The Kalinish Stones, to me, look like maybe Stonehenge had seen the Kalinish Stones first

and sort of ripped them off because they're just these flagstone pieces of rock that are sticking straight up out of the ground in a circular pattern. And it's absolutely incredible to know that they were building those kind of structures during this Neolithic period to where, I mean, everything that they were doing had a purpose to whatever their lifestyle was. So it moves on to essentially stone houses

around 3,500 BC. So we're still at BC here at this point. They had these things called chambered Carnes. And basically what it was is to be able to do that. Just think of it like, always think of like the Flintstones House. It's two rocks.

They were able to position standing up, but then you, have the technology to be able to move a flatter rock, then onto it and balance it. There's something about that, I guess, that that's like a marker of evolution or like a jump in, like, development or technology. Because you have to be able to balance the rocks. They have to stay in a position where the top one then can stay secured. So you have to have some type of like mathematical knowledge or something like that. Well, not to mention, you have to get the rocks to the structure.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. You can design, you're designing something to move that too. So I guess it would suggest that like pulley system, something like that. That has been some type of like jump in like technology. Well, in this maze how chamber, I mean, it's mound top, so there's grass and everything on top. It's a 115 feet in diameter, 35 meters. It reaches a height of 24 feet or 7.3 meters. And it has a 45 foot 14 meter ditch that's or wide ditch that surrounds.

rounds the mound. And this mound is filled with these massive pieces of flagstone that weighed up to like 30 tons. That's what it's built out of, right? Yeah. So it's really thin stuff. So it takes even more to actually build it up like that. Well, they're set on their sides to stand. Oh, okay.

A 30 ton piece of stone, how the fuck are you moving a 30 ton piece of stone? Being able to have the wheel because you're rolling it on logs and stuff like that. Oh, I guess they could use logs. But still, you've got to get it up onto the log somehow. Yeah. I guess you sort of push it until it gets onto one. You still have to be able to get that and, I don't know. Totally.

Just learning about the maze, it screamed Egypt to me all over again, trying to figure out how they're moving these stones. Countries kind of like develop in a similar, there's just something about that's just how you have to survive, and that's just what you're, I guess, engineered to do. They enter the Bronze Age about 2000 BC. It's weird. I kind of text you about this.

When countries enter different age, they entered them at different times so bronze age for Scotland wasn't the same as it for China and then you could kind of make the connection being like okay it was in China a hundred years after it was in like Greece and Italy and you're like that's because it

probably took a long time not a hundred years but that's how long it would take for traders to bring back enough to where they could learn the formula and learn how to mine it and develop it and everything and then they entered their bronze age and I think definitely gonna get

this wrong with bronze. You have to know kind of the metallurgy to be able to go to these different ages. I'm not positive and so I'm going to back off on what bronze is made out of, but like copper you're mixing tin and other

things to get copper. Because the iron age is next. Yeah. So it was essentially you had the bronze age because there was something very simple about making bronze but it was more malleable and like softer so it lost its edge. And then iron was when it really came into knowing what the

metallurgy of the mixing of the oars and everything was. So you had to be like a specialist to get it done. Like you say, word of mouth traveling between traders and in between kingdoms in Greece to China to Scotland. Eventually it all gets there. But it takes a long ass time. Think of like the king seeing this and be like, I got to have this. Who made this? They're like, well,

it's this guy back in this country. And he's like, go find him and tell him I'll pay whatever he wants to come here and show us how to do this. Yeah. I wonder if there was a lot of that. I wonder if there was trading of like skills, tradesmen between different... There had to be some type of, yeah. Just like a lend and learn program or you just take over that town and take

all of the dirt. Like an indeed. Fiber to make bronze tools. Neolithic indeed. They develop into go ahead and start making like hill forts. This suggests that they started to be kind of more of a settled people and then injured the Iron Age

in the 7th century, which I had to look this up because I always mix up my centuries. if they're the one forward or the one backwards. I didn't know if it made the same in BC. So it's 700 to 601 BC is what the 7th century was. And then in 200 BC, they get these things called, were they the Baroque towers? Broke.

Yeah, I think that's... Okay, these are the ones I was thinking of when I was talking about the flagstones being placed in. So they were essentially these circular towers that they started creating and would like create them as like, some would use them as home. homes, but they were kind of more like ceremonial.

And they kind of are like a, I guess, like, less stable looking version of like the towers you would see in a castle. So even if they didn't bring over the castle, like, you know, the Normans and everything like that, there was still something about the development that it was like, oh, we're moving on from like, what to, oh, stone is more reliable to do this. And then we have the technology to map out this building to where it's going to stand up. Some of them are still standing today, which is a testament to how good these things were built,

because they are built of a shit ton of stones. If you pull up a picture of them, basically what they look like is... Do you spell it? B-R-O-C-H towers. So it's, and they're pretty large. It's just a ton of... I don't know if they had to have quarried these stones,

but just placed in a large circle, but these things are almost like flagstones, it looks like. So there takes even more to fucking build up these huge towers. Well, you just kind of used what you had in the area. When you get to places like Edinburgh and like the big island where you have trees, you're going to use wood for as much as you can. When you're on the Orkneys or something like that and there's no trees and all you can do is build shit out of stone, you just got to build shit out of stone.

That's true. And it just depends on what your resources are around you to be able to make things. And this is at a time I don't, I don't believe horses were introduced to Scotland until maybe the Romans. Yeah, I'm trying to think because they did have cavalry, but I'm trying to think if they were able to, that was the Romans where they're long enough to try to like breed horses and steal horses and shit like that. So I'm not sure.

But still at the same time, like that's still, you still have to do something with the materials once you get them and be able to put them in their correct positions. Absolutely. the first kind of I don't know the tough part about going back with history this far is none of this is written by the Scots so everything is going to be up until a certain point

everything is going to be different people visiting that are that have a written history different sources and references and everything and so and the reason that like why are you guys still talking about like ancient fucking Scotland at this point get to the good stuff this basically leads us up to explaining what's going to happen next and kind of what their technological level is.

So you can understand kind of from a standpoint of like might, I guess. Yeah. Why the Romans are able to just kind of march in here. What they were also up against. And that's what it was was the Romans landing towards like them trying to move up to the north to the Scots was so much more of like landing seemed like it was fairly easy. But then as soon as they started moving more north and they were asking who the inhabitants were up there, the people in the South were like, those guys are fucking crazy. Yeah.

They're naked. They paint themselves and they fight dirty. And so immediately... They're looking in the fucking mountains where no one else can live. Well, like I was saying, there might have been a Greek reference that somebody who had circumvented the entire island that the United Kingdom sits on. They might have referenced Scotland as Britain's orcas. So, and that was like around 320 BCE. So we're talking a very, very long time ago.

I have a hard time believing that there was a Greek guy that mapped all this out. And it took the Romans until 43 C.E. To land in Britannia. Well, we're talking. His name was Pithaeus of Masalia. So put a little respect on the guy's name. So, yeah, I mean, he claimed to have sailed around the island. So that would include both Ireland.

and essentially the island of Great Britain, what it is now today. So let's also kind of explain this because this is good to know. The countries that actually make up Great Britain, then the United, okay, so you have Great Britain, which is Scotland and England, because they're on the same piece of land. Also there is Wales attached kind of at the western, lower, southwestern portion of it. And then also there's a fourth country there, and it's Northern Ireland, Ireland. and it's like a section just up north of Ireland that's part of the United Kingdom. So those are the four that are in the United Kingdom.

Literally the only section left that was willing to put up, well, I guess maybe not willing because they're still fighting pretty fucking hard. But it was like the only section that England could keep a hold of. The reason I'm saying that is because throughout this podcast, I'm going to use interchangeably Britain, United Kingdom, England,

all kinds of stuff. And I'm just trying to, I mean just that general area. Yeah, that's all the same for me. There's a little bit of, and maybe it's good nervousness, because I kind of felt this way doing the Australia one that we did. We know that we have listeners there, so it's shit that we don't want to screw up. Yeah.

And so to lay this out the way that we kind of see it, I think, is a good idea. I know that England and Scotland are separate because we're focusing on Scotland on this one. So we get the Roman invasion. Pliny the Elder, which is a name that pops up, a shit ton in Greek and like Roman, fucking research.

During his time, 79 AD, they had known about the Hebrides, which are the islands off the west coast of Scotland. So you have the... There's two of them, two groups of them.

Of the Hebrides? Yeah, so there's the Hebrides of the islands, but then also all the little, like, outlets of the islands that kind of hang off. I'm trying to remember how they differentiate... Isle of Man? I'll keep going on. Look it up.

Look up. the which one they referred to the Hippides as. And they had actually named the people and the country, so they had named the country Caledonia. Because they were probably thought that they were the first ones to find it, yada, yada, yada. And then the people that lived there would be

the Caledani. Caledani. Something like that. So the actual Roman invasion and, you know, it probably took them a long time because first of all, Pythias was in Greece, I believe. So

Maybe the Romans didn't really get a ton of that information. I know they, but I'm just saying maybe it wasn't a big party because they were expanding their empire to places they could actually reach at the time. It doesn't necessarily mean that they were like knocking on the door and they had France all locked up at that point. They could have still been growing their empire and fighting in Germania and stuff like that. Yeah. And then after they took over that entire area where they were up into Germany and France, that's when they decide to hop over the channel in 43 AD. And they established what's, what was known as Bertania in the south. So it was essentially a Roman stronghold city, whatever you want to call it, colony.

Yeah, the Hebrides, there's the inner and outer groups. Okay, that's what it was, inner and outer Hebrides. And this is, we've made this jump. We've made the jump past zero. So all of these dates are going to start moving up instead of down. Yay. So, like you say, 43 C.E. was kind of right around the time they landed in Britannia and got into the Hebrides and all that kind of stuff.

The first move was towards the Scots and 79 CE. And again, as they're talking to the people that they've landed next to in Britannia, and they're like, well, what's up there? Like, those guys are bad news. Those guys, they fight hard, they fight dirty. A lot of them go into battle naked. they paint themselves up, which will come into play a little bit later on. It was actually, well, okay, so I'm not sure, like, because there were a ton of different incursions into there. I had it that, so 71, this Roman governor named Quintus, Cyrillius, I think his name was.

Sorrelius. And I need to pronounce this. Sierra-less, there we go, invades what is now known as Scotland. He had some incursions, but essentially hadn't, like, taken over the area. and then in 78 there was this new guy his name was he was the new governor Neus Julius Arecolo

And he basically came in And was like okay we're gonna re redo this Scottish thing And ended up launching some new incursions And then by I think they said 84 That's when they had actually reached northern Scotland And to get there There was this battle called the Battle of Mon's

Grupus, Grupus, uh, in 83 C.E. And again, we only have Roman sources at this point. Supposedly, this was just a route.

There were between 17 and 30,000, um, Roman soldiers against like 1,500 to 3,000, um, or 15,000 supposedly, uh, Scots, what,

Caledonians, basically is what they were known by. The numbers that came back were, There were only 360 Romans dead to 10,000 Caledonians dead, which seems pretty odd that it would be that much of a route. Because, yes, technologically, you're going to be better, but there's no way that you're only losing 360 to 10,000. Well, it could be a combination of having cavalry.

You have fighting formations. You have armor. You have shields. You have catapults. You have ballista. You have all this. Remember this scene in Gladys, or the beginning scene

where they're fighting in Germany. Yeah. And basically, those guys have like bows and arrows. And they have the entire Roman army there that's like launching like fucking catapults full of flaming clay pots and fucking ballista and all this kind of shit.

They have cavalry. The other guys don't. They get decimated. I do think that especially when there's no, no other side that their history is going to keep at that point, it's very easy to just report back these numbers, especially to your superior. and be like, yeah, we only lost

360, and then along the way, be like, and then we lost 3,000 to cold and starvation when you actually lost them in the battle. That way, these guys were always trying to go ahead and be in favor so they could get back to fucking Rome and get away from Britannia. Yeah. And so, of course, they're going to try to make this stuff seem more,

you know, seem inflated. Well, also the number that you killed. Clearly that number, you can at least double to make yourself look better when you send back to Rome because they don't know how many people are up. I was going to verify. Also, the simple fact that there's 17 to 30,000 of these Roman soldiers. That's nuts, man. To ship that many fucking like to take over a con. Like that. Just like, yep, you're getting stationed up to fucking Britannia. Like, fuck, really? I don't know. Do you think there wasn't

like a sense of adventure when that happened? I think for some. But at the same time, if you're from Rome and you're joining the Roman Legion or what would it be the Roman Legion? Yeah. And you're getting something. Maybe there is something about that. You're leaving home, but how many of these guys were guys that were from Roman territories that had been defeated or were being forced in to do this shit? Yeah, I would assume their expeditionary force probably had to be guys that were pretty elite, just because they wouldn't want to send a crap expeditionary force in case they ran into something bad. But yeah, and we're still talking, again, if we're talking 83-C-E for this man's Gropas Betel, that's like middle of the Roman Empire.

So there's been a lot of fighting beforehand. There's going to be a lot of fighting afterwards. And very interesting story. Did you really think about the Ninth Legion? Uh-uh. So in 108 CE, the Ninth Legion, which was a Legion of the Roman Empire that I believe came out of Spain, because they were the Ninth Hispanic Legion or whatever. Okay.

they travel north into Caledonia and by 120 CE they're just completely forgotten and not written about. They marched up into Northern Scotland and were just never found. Hold on. You got to reverse that I think because you're counting up in CE.

Yeah, Common Era. Oh, gotcha. Okay. Yeah, so it took them 12 years to where they just stopped writing about this. They never returned home. their bodies were never found what they think happened as far as like maybe this could have

been what happened was they ended up getting attacked most of them got killed and the rest of them got sold into slavery that could have happened or they could have gone up there and then established you know a colony of their own and then just been like this is much better

than having to serve in the Roman Legion yeah I mean to never come back yeah I don't think that that's what happened yeah I think they were probably all killed before that even I guess before 120 CE 117 C.E the Romans had lost a lot of ground

they were going backwards and they ended up at a stopping point that they started to build something under the new emperor his name was Hadrian and they built Hadrian's wall So when they went up there and they ended up beating them in like 83, 84 what they did at that point is kind of all of their territory

that they had they were just like hey we defeated you now we're going to go ahead and just go back to, you know, the south of Brittany or whatever. It was like, okay, now we're setting up forts. This is our shit now. So at that point, like where they had the stopping point of

where they had defeated them, they set up a whole bunch of forts. So basically they had like moved their territory. The Romans had moved their territory up to this. And at this point, the guys that came after Naus, now this is after his life because this is taking place over multiple, multiple

years. With history like this, where, you know, Romans invading, you're getting battles that maybe happened once, maybe twice a year. This isn't like... Oh, very infrequent. Yeah, because, you know, moving around, getting your soldiers in position, even finding where the enemy was, resupplying the seasons,

all that kind of shit, you could have, like, you could be the governor for eight years and only have like three battles happen, but they could be pivotal battles. So there's a few guys after Neas that pretty much are like, eh, we're not worried about, you know, the Scots or the people that were up there prior to. They basically

just like keep the forts where they're at we're not worried about pushing any further and then by 100 they had to start retreating back further south because their forts started taken by the fucking locals that were like oh we built our numbers back up and these guys really haven't been doing shit they're kind of

getting lazy we could probably just push back and take our lot we don't even know if they're really down there anymore it was kind of like guerrilla style warfare at that point too because it was not big raids but little raids of stealing all of the essentials there were going to be some skirt and shirmishes and shit like that, but to the point to where the Romans's like, no, no, no, no.

We wanted a life of leisure up here. We're not looking to... You're also being able to go ahead and take, like you said, horses to develop your own cavalry to start breeding horses and everything. So you're adding, you know, a new ace in the hole for that. By, I think, you know, the Romans, like you said, they came back. They ended up building Hadron's wall. And then by 141, Rome decides to give it another go in Scotland. and at that point

Oh, great, now I lost my place. They moved up further and they were like, well, you know what's been keeping them out at this point? It's Hadron's wall. So the guy that was in charge at that point was named, I think, Antonine? Antonine. Antenine.

They were like, he was Antonius. They called the Antonine Wall. And he's like, just build my wall up further north. And then my wall will be keeping them all out. So there's actually two walls. There's Hadron's wall, which is still like you can see parts of it in England. It's actually parts of it are really well preserved,

but none of them reach the actual original height. Yeah. And then going into Scotland, there's actually remnants of this Antoniton Hymwall. The differences between the walls, there's one reason why I don't think that Hadrian's wall, and I heard it a couple different places, so it's not an original thought.

I don't think Hadrian's wall was to keep people out. I think it was to tax people coming through because there were actual doors like I think it was like every 500 feet there was a door in the wall for passage through to the south Yeah, because they had barracks So they would send expeditions In the same way that they're moving up to go through

And build Antonine's wall They had to send there were people stationed at the wall And what they would do is they would go out And make sure that like None of the enemy was getting too close to the wall They would go out to like cut down trees to make sure they could see visibility and everything. And then when they wanted to move armies through, they had to have a lot of these doors to get these larger armies through and get them through wherever they needed to along the wall. So they couldn't be like, we're going to have a door every couple miles.

They needed to have them accessible at all times because there were manned barracks. Like part of the wall actually just like went into like barracks and like watch towers and posts. Yeah, I do think that there was still a fair amount of trade. it's just like our southern border or our northern border. There's always ports of entry to get in and out because there still has to be trade that happens in between those two lands. I actually think there were some people from Rome that actually lived like north of Hadron's Wall

but had their own protection detail and everything that were supposed to be like the governors over certain areas. Well, that is kind of a major difference between Hadrian's wall and between the Antonine Wall. The Antonine Wall was an earthen wall. So it was basically like they just built it up with dirt and everything else. Whereas the, or Hadrian's wall, was actually a stone wall.

So they'd put way more effort into it, which makes a ton of sense because Hadrian's wall, this thing's fucking huge. It ran from a place called WalSend on the river Tine to Bonus on Saloy, Solway, 73 miles, 117 kilometers long.

It was started in 117 C.E and it was completed in 138. So it took a long fucking time to build that wall, whereas the Antonine wall had started in 142, and it was just to defend the advances from the Highlanders that were coming down. It was probably just to slow them down enough to get over. They had some watchposts there, so watch towers.

It probably had, you know, because it's only an earthen mount today, it probably was like one of those wooden fences, like made out of all the logs and everything. And if there was enough of an incursion and they were getting beat back, all they had to do was they'd send the runner back to Hatrens. I'd be like, let's make sure we get everyone mobilized. We'll come out and meet these guys halfway. this wall served its purpose

and it bought time. Well, the fact that it only took them, they say between six and 12 years to build the Antonine wall compared to what they put into Hadrian. They were also probably like, have you heard the drums coming out of the fucking bagpipes and shit coming down on the trees?

You're all watching your back. At night. They're like, just fucking dig the fucking ditch and like make them out higher and let's get the fuck out of here, man. And they abandon it. The trees are fucking talking. Yeah. They abandon it like around 160. to run back behind Hadrian's wall.

So clearly it was definitely, like, they just understood this isn't a wall that's going to protect us like you're talking about. We can't build it up enough. We've got to retreat back. It was between Firth of Clyde and Firth of Fourth. I fucking, I love some of these names. Some of them are absolutely ridiculous to me,

but some of them are just so much fun to talk about. I don't think you got peanut better in your mouth. Yeah. And it just, it was such a fight with the Romans to, the Romans wanted the area. The Romans had settled Southern Britannia and that was their area

but they just kept wanting more which I mean the Roman Empire just did that everywhere. Yeah and at this point it's not like once they push the Romans back it's like okay you guys are never coming back right they're like yeah we're never coming back yeah we're gonna hide behind our wall we're gonna have Rome send us a whole shit ton more guys and then we're gonna come out with more guys

and be able to crush you and so that's kind of what happened is Rome keeps making attempts to you know keep pushing these people back up to the north and then essentially kind of snuff him out to make sure or subjugate him to where they wouldn't have to worry about this kind of stuff. In 209, Emperor Septimus Severus himself

actually, and when I say himself, leading a major force, it means he was on continent, basically like the way you would think of again referencing the movie Gladiator, whereas the place where the emperor would be staying would be 10 miles back from the front.

So this just means he was there when this was occurring. So he leads, and I'm doing the quotes here, a major force north. 40,000 Roman soldiers, which again is fucking nuts. That's that you're making 40,000 people march up in this place where you just want to have it. What are you going to do with this? Like, this is harsh fucking land and these people are, you've seen these people, they're fucking crazy and they have to be to live here. They're fucking awesome and they're going to, they know this land. Like, what are you hoping to do here? Well, he ends up moving to the Antonine wall, and the Caledonians basically kind of like bait them in to keep following them. They never let them, like, engage them fully or really see them. They'll let them be seen, and they were even leaving out, like, fucking sheep and cattle.

So the Romans could, like, it kept them coming. They were just like, they're just leaving us all their food. and basically let the terrain do the work because they had probably, you know, didn't know the area. They were going through bogs and swamps, this rocky terrain. It was fucking killing guys. You're moving tens of thousands of people from these trains. It's like baggage trains and wagons.

You're used to moving equipment and being able to do that. And so they're not even fighting. They're just letting the train do the work. Well, eventually you are going to go ahead and run out of area you are going to get enough of these Romans coming through. So in 210, so a year later, the Calatonians pretty much sue for peace. After some skirmishes, they realized that the terrain could only do so much work. The Romans were going to keep coming.

They'd beat him in a few battles. And in an effort to survive, basically they were like, we'll give up what's called the Central Lowlands. So with Scotland in the north, and please correct me if I'm wrong on this, in the north you have basically what you see in like images of like the mountains of Scotland. like the beautiful grassy peaks and rock and all that kind of shit. Then you have the central lowlands, which is basically exactly what it sounds like.

It's in the center. And it's not quite the low lowlands at that point, but it's kind of like a transition going down, correct? Yeah, so you'll have the highlanders that live up north. And then you'll have the lowlanders. I'm trying to remember, excuse me, some of the names that they called each other, but they had like kind of a type.

Like the Highlanders were always going to be a little bit bulkier and hardier Because they have to live in tougher conditions But they were also just like Complete Like you wouldn't find a manor in the highlands anywhere There wouldn't be anybody nice It's gonna be also where like the majority of like you get your settlements and cities and things like that And when Scotland first starts to develop cities

This is where they're gonna be is in the is it gonna be in the lowlands because you're able to go ahead and farm a little bit easier the train is more forgiving. Everything's easier to do. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, and so they're pushing north, but all the people that they're running into at this point are all these fucking hard-ass mountain folk who are like, nope. So they end up giving up to Central Lowlands.

And later that same year, so this was kind of early 210 that they sued for peace. Later in the year, they're like, yeah, we don't like what happened. So they end up revolting. And Severus basically at that point was like, Nope, we're getting rid of them. No more Scott or no more precursors to the Scots and everything. And plans on exterminating the people.

So the campaign ends and Scots are still around, obviously. Severus gets a little bit of a illness and dies back in York, which was another established colony in Britannia of Britain for the Romans. didn't even make it off the island. So it came up to try to finish off the Scots and didn't make it off the island. Play with fire, you're going to get burned. He had a son, and his son was like,

don't worry, Dad, I'll get him. And basically his son tries to continue, you know, his legacy, gets his ass beat, and basically the Romans are back to Hadron's Wall again. Hadron's wall was a, that was their last kind of form. It was, and if you're thinking about it, Hadron's wall is not at the current Scotland, England border right now. It's a little bit further down.

It's, you know, kind of in northern England, but it's there. So basically the Scots are like, oh, no, now we're taking some of your shit. That's not to pay the piper. Kind of laying out the region, and we will get to how it all flows here in a little bit. Just different areas were kind of inhabited by these different forms. forms, these different, I don't want to say clans because they were much bigger than clans. Tribes, I think is what they're, yeah. So, along the western side, you're going to get something called the Gaelic Scots.

The Gaelic Scots were people that had come from Ireland up the west side and had kind of formed in there in this beautiful harmony of redheadedness. Also, no idea. I had no idea that Ireland and Scotland were that close together. It's so, so close. I know. And so it makes perfect sense because I feel like. when you see a picture of you know England and Ireland and everything

you just notice how far like Wales and England are from Scotland and you don't notice up how much those islands and everything curve over to Scotland so yeah there's definitely going to be some type of like shared lineage there then you're going to have the Caledonians which will

then become the Picks the Picks region is kind of right next to the Gaelic Scots at this point in time and the reason that they're called Pix is because it's short for a, I forgot what the actual word was, but it's pictures in Roman,

or like paintings, and the picks were known for this because they actually would paint themselves up for war. So the whole idea be, oh, this is what we got to get to first and foremost. Elephant, get, fucking get that elephant. Yeah. Braveheart, dog shit. Braveheart was all, it was a, it wasn't,

a complete lie, but William Wallace painting his face blue. They weren't still painting their face blue by the time William Wallace was around. That was something that was taken from this Pictish time frame and then used in Hollywood to make it look like cooler. Also,

the love interest in Braveheart when William Wallace was like just coming to prom, and she was like two years old. And by the time that they would have met in the movie, like he would have been like 40 and she would have been like barely 18.

So while being very entertaining in a pretty great movie overall, Braveheart was just a mishmash of all of Scottish history. Not historically accurate. Yeah, not at all. So then in the south, basically that was the

what was considered the British kingdom of, and this is in Scotland. So that would be what's considered like the British kingdom of what's called the Strathclide. Did you already say Strathclyde earlier? It was another Clyde, right? There's a lot of clides in there. Yeah, sorry.

And then in the southeast are basically the English, which are, or the Angels, which are going to be where you get Anglo from, in the kingdom of Bernicia. Bernicia. So all these places are still sort of warring amongst themselves while trying to beat back the Romans. But when we get up to the fourth century,

we have the Gaelic Scots and the Picks basically coming together to overthrow Roman rule They're like we've kind of had this shit go on for long enough We're going to go ahead and just try to exterminate these guys as far as possible It was known as a great conspiracy because it was like this collusion between The Gaelic Scots who were fairly friendly with the Romans And had kind of adapted to them a little bit To where they were okay

But then they're like well we're going to help the picks because we just want to Roman invasion out of here. I think the picks kind of took them over a little bit, but they end up merging the Pictish and the Gaelic crowns, and that's what ended up creating the kingdom of all that, correct? Yeah, we'll get to that when we talk about the four kingdoms.

Okay. But by the fifth century, Rome's like, have it, take it. We got enough problems back at home. We have the split between the eastern and western Rome. The Byzantine Empire's popping off. We don't want to deal with this shit anymore.

We need to bring our resources back. and as soon as that happened, the Saxons move up from Germany and start to occupy that area, just like you were talking about with the Anglo part, this is where we get the Saxony region people moving in and we get Anglo-Saxons,

which I don't know why those two things confuse me. I think Saxony really throws me off, but it's Germany. It's Germania, basically. I don't know why we have to have so many words for the same area. But a lot of this, I mean,

I guess we have Scotland, Caledonian Alpa. So it does the same thing. So the Saxons create what's called the Kingdom of Wessex. And then you have essentially what will be the kingdom of Alba, which is like the largest kingdom in Scotland. So the four kingdoms of Scotland, walk me through the four kingdoms of Scotland. Kind of what we just talked about. You have the Pictland, which was northeastern area of Scotland. You have the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria.

which is like kind of a buffer zone, I would say, between, uh, it becomes a buffer zone between England and Scotland during this whole entire thing. Um, sorry. No, you're good. I know that I mentioned previously, like there was the kingdom of, all the kingdom of Wessex, stuff like that. We're talking and when we're jumping ahead like this, we're talking about these kingdoms that rise that are then going to be important when we

start, you know, continue with the next day. So there are these separate kingdoms that get formed and then they fall. So what we were kind of talking about here is almost like a 200 or 300 year period of the development of these kingdoms. And these are kind of the major ones to rise, right? Yeah, and it was just they kept to themselves. Like, there were still wars that went along, but it's almost like they kept to their regions. These skirmishes or something, like little disputes. They weren't trying to take over everybody else's land.

They had enough to where they could live and were just fine with it. They knew what had happened. They knew that the fucking Romans were in there. They're like, this is pretty fucking good. Maybe we just got rid of these assholes. We don't start fight each other. We kicked all those fucking noses out of our country. let's try to stick around here a little bit longer.

You have the Scottsgales that we were just talking about on the West Coast. I believe their kingdom is called Delriata. Then you have the Britons, which were Britannic, I mean southwest. You're talking about just right into Britain. So Northumbria is going to be on the southeast side, I believe, and the Britons were on the southwest. and that would be the Anglo-Saxon kingdom, Northumbria, would probably be the southeast side. Roman incursion and Gaelic-speaking missionaries

that just flooded the area, kind of spread Christianity across the kingdom. And so... It fucking ruins everything. Yeah, these were more than likely pagan people. I would say that that's probably without a doubt. Nature gods and all that cool shit. All the gods that weren't really...

in favor of killing people in their name, I don't think. I mean, I think most gods are like that way, but then we get, shockingly enough, couldn't imagine that we would even go back this far to find this. 565 is actually the first spotting of Nessie and Loch Ness by a guy named St. Columba. How crazy is that, that they were having Nessie spottings, and the story behind it's incredible.

Now, keep in mind, this was a story that was told in the 7th century by somebody writing kind of like a biography of St. Columba, 200 years after this had happened almost. But the story goes that St. Columba was walking down by Loch Ness. Lockness is, I believe, the... Didn't St. Columba get kicked out of Ireland? He might have. He was the dude that got kicked out of Ireland for something around.

He's like, I guess I'll go to Scotland. Lo and behold, he happens to see Nessie. So, Columbus is walking across the shores of Lock, Nuss. I believe Lachness holds the most water of any lock in Scotland. So there's almost like a waterway that almost goes across kind of from like, I guess you would say like southwest Scotland to like northeast. And it's a water channel that almost goes all the way through. And at the widest part for the majority, that's what Lachnest is. It's huge. Yeah. And that's why I'm pro.

Nessie. Yeah. Listen, I'd like to believe that Nessie's out there and why it can make sense because this thing is so enormous how a plesiosaurus or whatever Nessie happens to be

can definitely hide there, right? There's got to be a chance. No matter how many times they send the boats out and do the sonar and they can't find shit or they can't find any sort of... The whole damn lake. She moves.

Yeah. She's so fast. She knows their fucking tricks. She's been at this shit from fucking 565. Just for forever. So Columbo Walking across Loch Nass Walking across the shores

And he sees a bunch of guys Down there burying a body And he's like Oh what happened The guy's like Ooh shit Who are you He's like I'm a saint

Like okay well we can't really tell you what happened here I'm assuming they probably killed the guy And we're burying him But they're like oh no Our friend was just swimming across the lock And this big monster Came up out of the water And killed him

so instead of taking him back to the city, we're just going to bury him out there right next to the lock. Well, he doesn't have any marks on him. Yeah, just like gently grabbed him and drowned him, much as, you know, the same way that we could very easily take him down to the shore and drown him. Did Nessie have hands? Why are there strangle marks on his neck? Yeah.

It bends. So, Columbo wanted to test his theory out. And instead of his dumb ass getting in the water and swimming across the log, he goes and finds a willing idiot that he wants to test his theory out on. and he goes, hey, start swimming across the channel. I want to see what happens. There might be a monster in there. Supposedly, this guy starts swimming out across the lock,

and all of a sudden, Nessie comes out, and it's starting to come towards this guy that he had tricked into swimming across the lock, and all of a sudden he throws up the sign of the cross. He's out there, like he's in the goddamn exorcist, and there is something he says along the lines of the power of Christ compels you. Yeah, be gone, demon. Yeah, be gone demon, demon lizard, like, lake creature or something,

and a beam of light shoots out, Ark of the Ark of the Covenant style, and Zaps Nessie back in the lake. Yeah, so Nessie ends up running away from this super saint. I can't really question the veracity of this claim because it was so long ago, but I want to call bullshit on it. It feels like this is a crazy story,

but the fact that it's led to what it is. No, I feel like what this is, is you're looking at it the wrong way. This is some guy trying to get Rich off Nessie's back. Nessie was always there. This guy's just trying to... The people of the area probably had an understanding.

Like, she's the magical water lizard. She brings good fortune. We're all ruling ourselves at this point. This guy comes in and he's like, did you tell someone about the fucking water lizard? It's a wonderful story to just... I don't know if there's enough to do like a full-blown Nessie episode

because it just seems like it would be maybe 45 minutes. That might have to be like a patron or like a lumped in with like a couple different, like... non-US myths or something like that, like that kind of shit. And maybe there is more that meets the eye. I feel like if we can go to lock mass and kind of see for ourselves, we could definitely turn that into a longer episode. So just saying, if we won't see the museum,

there's no doubt that we can do a full-blown episode. So if you want to hear it, just invite us on over. Well, something that isn't, if he, is the Viking raids that started in the 8th century on the Northwest Islands and down the West Coast, which I know my geography here. Wouldn't it be easier to just attack the East Coast? You got to go over land though. And the Vikings were excellent in ships.

So if you can go take over these islands and then you can start making incursions onto the mainland, it feels like it's going to be easier. And you also have the roots that boats are traveling as they're going out into Iceland and Greenland in areas like that. So you're going to be more familiar with that sort of area, I believe. Yeah, I mean, but these guys are coming from like, you know, Scandinavia, Norway, Sweden, that area.

Denmark, yeah. And it just seems weird. I mean, maybe they're just like these people have better shit and the people that we originally land on the east side of it with. But they're having to go like all the way around the island to land at these spots. It just seems like a weird place to land. I think it would make sense to me just on the basis of like being able to circle some of these islands and see how big they are and just knowing that the inhabitants. that the inhabitants could only be so many people. Also knowing the fact that they won't expect you to go around to the opposite side,

and they're probably pretty fucking smart because they've been doing this for a long time. Go back and listen to the Vikings episode. And maybe quite possibly it was because they were the people that had inhabited those islands and built all of the shit on those islands before that they had myths and legends about it. Like who I'm sure there would be something that would pop up, but who really knows at that point. But they don't really, I mean, they make incursions onto, mainland United Kingdom and kind of come into Scotland. But a lot of their base was around the Orkneys, around the islands that we were talking about earlier.

The Hebrides? Yeah, the Hebrides. And it makes sense, too, because, like, the Orkneys are, and there's also, so there's the Orkneys, and then what's the set that's a little bit higher up? And these are groups of islands, because I want to say that Scotland has some. something. Shetland Islands are up there. Isle of Man is up there. Fun fact, Shetland ponies

from Shetland. But apparently they were a lot bigger back then because they found bones knowing that they were a larger species of horse that is somehow just shrunk over time. Really? Yeah. That's nuts. But once the Vikings get in there, it kind of,

well, it's just different than the way that the Romans were because the Romans were of a classier brook. um vikings raids were brutal not to say that the romans weren't brutal but viking raids were just kind of a different based vikings were coming to take your shit run off with it romans were like we'd rather not kill you because we want your money and we want you to be able to work the land and then give us a bunch of shit um Vikings were playing the short game the romans were playing the long game this is the number that i thought was insane and i had to

like check multiple sources the scotland like has over like seven 150 islands. Isn't it technically like an archipelago? Yeah, like 94 of them are being recorded as inhabited, but at the same time, 790 islands, it's nuts. A lot of places to hide, too. Yeah. If you have food and resources there in fresh water,

you can make that work for a week or two before you keep moving on. I think of something like that in the Caribbean. If there was something like that, that would have been like fucking pirates would have been crazy. That would have been like so many little pirate islands. It was just so cold, so then it was just so cold. So then it was just like, it was Viking Islands at this point. Yeah.

We start to see a move towards Alba. This gentleman named Kenneth McAlpin, who is known as the kind of the first king of Alba, the first king of Scotland. This is the guy that Scottish kings still try to justify their royal lineage through to this guy. He was, there's questions as to whether he was a Gail or a Pictish guy. I think he was more of a gale, but he was able to weasel his way into the Pictish kingdom and basically take them over. There's a story, probably not true, that he invited the Pictish king and his guard, basically like all of the army, I think, to a big gathering and a meal. And they had an area that was like a false floor. And once they loaded everybody up into the mess hall and ate, then they pulled the false floor.

and all of a sudden as the army was marching out, they all fell into a pit, and that's like how Kenneth McAlpin was able to take over the picks. Again, I think it's just kind of a story as to how this happened. He put the picks in a pit? Yeah. It didn't even put the, yeah, that seems very, very odd. But he did unite the picks and the gales together, and again, if you're in four different kingdoms and you're able to align two,

it's only a matter of time before you started asserting your influence on the Britons and upon the Northumbrians. So the Anglos are going to be next. The Britons are going to be next. Kind of fun that this is how it all comes about was this guy who Kenneth McAlpin

has to be the most Scottish name that you could think of, right? Scotty McSotishton is very close. But it just sounds so Scottish. You just see this guy with a red beard and a big-ass kilt. You do, but. but how many names do you think get like even the name Kenneth or anything like that?

How many people do you think name their kids or have some type of like name association with them? Because again, this is a time when people get to join clans and things like that. They take surnames. Clans, I believe, were kind of more of a Highlander thing. But again, could be wrong about that. I think that that's kind of where I saw. But yeah, they start to break down into these little more familial units, but still like villages. Okay.

And please, again, any of our scholarship. listeners, please correct me if I'm wrong on this because I tried to look into a couple different sources and they kind of were a little bit different. So the clan system was not so much a feudal system where you had like people under you like serfs and stuff like that. What it basically was is you would still have prominent families. There was still like Scottish royalty. So don't think of it like as a bunch of like yeah, there were like tribal, more tribal people and stuff like that. But there was also because of like the Romans coming in because of all these different cultures developing, you did have people that were considered like the royalty in these areas.

And so they were like, you know, more well-to-do and things like that. And so these people would essentially be kind of the formation of these clans. And that's where you would see like the name origination, like, you know, Clan McLeod and stuff like that. And so the people that were essentially in the area or that were essentially loyal to this clan would be kind of made part of the clan. They would fight on their behalf and things like that. So these clans and some of these people would take their name as their surname. So that's where you see kind of like a lot of people being able to track themselves back to a clan. Because instead of tracking themselves back to one family.

So there's a lot more people that can trace their lineage back that because it's not just one family. It can be a whole ton of families that are all loyal to kind of this one family. So goddamn cool. I know. I love living in the United States and the cultural melting pot and having everybody else together. But I think there really is something about some of these places, like, where if you live in Scotland, you have a certain surname and you can just trace your lineage all the way back to a plan. I don't know how many times we talk about this, but, like, we have no history here. No.

Like, we have to trace our history back to stuff like this to even make our history interesting. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, but to live in a place where, like, there's record history and you know that this happened all within the confines of your country and you have these, like, folk heroes and like warriors and things like that like that's fucking cool uh-huh people like william wallace that lived forever ago that you're still looking at you can't visit him we'll talk about why you can't visit his grave later but we have guys that looks so much more like us and we're so much more like us and washington's and lincoln's because it was only like 200 years ago yeah exactly so there's just so much of a gap between being able to see countries with a

establish history in what the United States is. And like I say, it's not a bash against the United States. It's a great place to be and a great place to live most of the time or some of the time. But you just don't really feel the connection as much to the land because you don't have roots that have been able to settle for decade or for millennia. And all the cool roots, you fucking pulled up all the cool roots that we could trace our heritage is back to. He also brought something that a guy named Fergus King of the Scots,

don't know how he got that name. He's probably giving it to him in post after he died. Fergus again, awesome name. He found something called the Stone of Destiny. And the Stone of Destiny was a stone that every king going forward up until a gentleman that we're going to talk about earlier that we've actually talked about in the other episodes, Robert Bruce, all of the kings have been crowned upon the Stone of Destiny. So you have this spot that is so important that he's going to swing by, he's going to take that from the picks, and he's going to set it down where his new kingdom of Alpa has started.

So a pretty interesting guy, and the fact that this is the number one thing that kings and royal families try to trace their lineage back to, pretty important to understand that this is like not necessarily Jesus, but you want to be related to this. this guy because if you are you're going to be something important well and here's kind of the funny thing so initially this came as kind of the picks taking over more of kind of like the the gaelic peoples well essentially the Pictish lands and name pretty much disappear by 900 because new kings go the other way and kind of all embrace like the the gaelic culture well and that's where i kind of think that there was more of an agreement between the picks and the scott gales because it just like the gaelic seemed like they could really be a good friend. They just slowly

kind of inch their way in until you're so in love with their culture, what they're bringing to the table that you just start speaking Gaelic. You start speaking their language. It just becomes easier. And it also could have been that those were in higher ranking positions within the government. So a lot of the government speak

was in Gaelic probably. And then it just kind of worked its way down into the people. The Gales and the Vikings actually got along to. Again, this is more to the point of just how popular and fun these Gaelics must have been hang out with. They started settlements together down in Southwest Alba, or Alpa, where they were like intermarrying. So they were sharing their cultures together and were forming like these groups of super soldiers,

these Norse gales that were just... Just during Viking raids and everything, every so often a guy would just be like, you know, I think I'm going to hang back. Now I'm good here. Yeah. You got nothing home for me. And a couple guys were like, yeah, that sounds good. We'll just hang out here.

eventually you just get an entire billload and be like oh my god they're here for it's like actually do you mind if we like come and chill and hang out with you guys like yeah come on over into that kind of 900's time frame just to kind of lay the land the Vikings occupied most of the northern and western islands with the Britons still continuing their control

of the southwest the gales controlled basically all of the northeast and kind of the central lands and then the English Anglo Kingdom of Northumbria was still down in the southeast. So there's still kind of this separation, even though this idea of Alpa is spreading further and further out. The 10th and 11th centuries were when Gale culture just spread everywhere. It was down in Northumbria. It was in the Britain region.

The Latin term was called Scotia, which it starts appearing in texts around that time. and then the English referred to the island as Scotland. So this is where we see this transition from Alpa to it becoming what it is. And, I mean, once you finally land on a name, I feel like you get the full identity that you know about today. At that point, though, did they think the name was going to stick? Yeah, maybe not. Before and everything, they're like, all right, what's it going to be in 100 years?

Yeah, it absolutely could. Again, we have these incursions of now this new Scottish breed, this Alpa turns into Scotland. You see Scott victories against the Britons, which allowed them something called Strathclyde. And once they take Strathclyde, in 1018, they emerged victorious in Northumbria at this thing called the Battle of Cartham. So now we start to see the dominance of Scotland taking in these kind of last regions. and not to say that there aren't still like the Galloways that are going to be up north in different areas that kind of fall under different influences, but Scotland is kind of starting to come together as a whole. Like it's one nation now as opposed to like varying kingdoms.

And once you start to get that kind of, I don't know, what you would call togetherness, we get shaken up again. Well, I mean, that's the nice way of put it. like most places throughout history, to come together as one, a lot of people are going to have to die. And so there's, you know, these countries that are just stronger like Alpa come down and are going to take over the weaker ones and pull everybody under the control. But in doing so, you can't have essentially what you have now without shitty stuff. Every country has shitty stuff happening. Like there was no instance in history where all these tribes were together and just been like, you guys just like want to be one tribe. And they're like, yes, we were waiting for you to ask.

We didn't want to be the ones. Yeah, we didn't want to be the first ones. Invitation. Yeah, I mean, it all kind of starts to come together. And then all of a sudden you get the seismic shift in 1066, the Norman Conquest of England that we talked about in the English Royal Family episode, where you get William the Bastard, William the Conqueror, invading and taking over, this area of England.

And you get this Norman influence that's coming from the mainland kind of out to the island. And then William the bastard, after, I mean, he's called the bastard for a reason. After he takes England and takes over that area, he starts sending raids up north into Scotland.

And he forces the king to submit to his rule. And once he does that, it's kind of on where raids start coming down from Scotland into England. England's incurring up into Scotland, even though they still have to, you know, pay homage to King William, there still are these bands of these guerrilla fighters that are just like, no, man, fuck you. Just because

our government of Scotland is cool with you doesn't mean that we're still fine with you guys coming and asserting your influence on us. And that's not to say essentially that like Scotland just pretty much rolled over and everything. There were certain like military advances that the Normans had. I want to say the long bow was a huge thing because essentially it would be able to dominate at range before you even had to be fighting anybody. And they really didn't have because this is the first time they're seeing this kind of stuff. They don't have defenses for it. You're like, well, can't they just figure out, you know, within a couple of battles how to beat the bow narrow? No, when you've been fighting and training to fight a certain way and someone introduces something

on new onto the battlefield, it's not just an instant, you know, adaptation to it. And so they're able to really kind of have their way with the Scots because of this. And again, because essentially the Normans had been down in France, you know, fighting amongst each other and everything. Whereas maybe the Scots weren't doing that as much after they'd kind of been united under this one banner. Yeah. It's going to kind of roll up until eventually the Scottish King, Malcolm III, and his oldest son, Edward were both killed in something called the Battle of Allenwick in 1093. surprisingly enough, it was at the hands of a guy named Robert DeMolbray, and he was actually the Earl of Northumbria. So you have a former Scottish area of Northumbria where DeMobre is like,

we want to be more a part of England, so we're just going to go ahead and kill the Scottish king. Once that happens, you know, it's just kind of a different ballgame because this is the first, not necessarily like Scotland being ruled by somebody else because they're still going to fight back and the Vikings never fully took them over the Romans never fully took them over it's just sort of like

now England is going to be able to assert all of their kind of culture into the area well they basically are putting people in their kind of as like puppet rulers they're like no no you guys have your own ruler and everything but they're pretty much just putting whoever they want in charge

and even if it's not someone that they really, really wanted in charge, they're probably able to either, you know, apply that person through threat, stuff like that, to be like, no, you're going to give us, you know, this kind of trade agreement, you're going to pay this much taxes, you're going to behoving to us and have to serve. If we go to war, you're going to have to provide troops and everything.

Well, and in order to keep kind of that Scottish threat down after they've been taken over, William Rufus, before mentioned again in the monarchy episode, kind of started to get involved in the Scottish succession to where he was pushing some of Malcolm's children to fight for the throne when Malcolm's brothers were the ones that were the claimants.

So instead of like the down lineage of children taking over for their father, they were still so young that Malcolm's brothers were then trying to take the crown. Well, William Riff was like, no, no, no, you're the air because you're, Malcolm's child. So you need to go up and fight. All of a sudden, one of them kills their uncle. Then that child takes over. Then that child is killed in a war or from unscrupulous means from other members. And so this succession crisis that they're having just over time is only benefiting England because of Scotland's fighting themselves, there's no, they're going to be able to fight England too. Well, we end up getting this guy. Did we talk about Edgar yet? Which one?

the first one I think so he was the dude that ended up signing and giving the western aisles over to Norway which why are you giving the Western islands to Norway when they're on the other side like is it for trade purpose I don't know it just seems like basically this guy was a British plant and so he was just doing whatever you know the Kingdom of England wanted to to be done yeah and just along that kind of line this sort of commingling of the royals where you start to get these relationships where the Scottish family is being taken in kind of by marrying English princesses to Scottish princes. And there were circumstances where people that could be in the line succession were down in

like Norman France and everything basically being groomed into this way of thinking and this is the way things. So when it happened to be if they came into the line to be the next King of Scotland, you had someone who was basically the English king of Scotland. A half English ruler. The one that had been raised in the English way or the Norman way their entire life. Yeah. And it kind of becomes this Europeanization of Scotland where since the Normans were from Norman, France, that came up and took England, you still have this connection like you're talking about with this French culture. And Scotland ends up pushing a lot of gales out of the royal courts because,

they're bringing in these French people that they've grown fond of and immediately that pushes all these gales that were the originators of this land into servitude. So you kind of start to see where these uprisings are clicking back and forth because the gals like, no, the French people didn't live here. The French people didn't have to fight the Vikings and the fucking Romans. This is us. Yeah, no shit. This is our land.

Well, basically this guy named David I first. So these are pretty much just like all English plants when we're talking about these guys here for the next few minutes. Basically, like I was saying, he englandized Scotland. One of the, you know, trying to talk about the benefits of this that actually came out of it

because there were some and talking about all of the negative shit would not be fun. Basically, it serves to actually start creating cities. That's where you get some of the cities popping up. You get the boroughs of Eden, stuff like that, which becomes Edinburgh. You also get economic development

when they start to actually use like coinage and Scotland begins to have its own type of currency. So cool. Which really thinking about it like before that, even leading up to this point it was all like a barter and trade system still at this point. Well they were using, it was just

they minted their own coinage. They were still using like Roman coins and Viking coins and other things too but this was like the first time where they're like no this is ours. It was a universal currency throughout that king. Yeah it was still like silver and that kind of thing that were just printed and minted as far as like Viking and Roman coinage.

Well, we end up getting to this point. Did you have anything before Alexander III? Oh, yeah. Oh, go ahead. Way, way, way more. This is where stuff kind of starts to get battled around, and it's pretty interesting how, I guess it's not interesting because they're just neighbors.

But this king called William the Lion became close with the French. They signed a treaty of alliance at 1168, and this was the first treaty that was. signed between Scotland and France. He helped the revolt on Henry II, 1173, and was captured by the English. So as this French revolt being pushed by the kings of France to overthrow Henry the second along with his kids, the Scots were like, yeah, shit, we'll throw in on this. We'll help you out.

We're an alliance, so we're going to go ahead and take care of it. And William the Lion ends up getting arrested. and during that time he's taken back to England as a punishment Henry sent troops into Scotland for kind of the occupation and leverage and to release

William or to release William the Lion and regain his kingdom they had to acknowledge Henry as their feudal superior so this idea of feudalism goes all the way up to kings where it's like yeah you're the king of England or you're the king of Scotland but you still have to

pay homage to me And if I need you and your people to fight for me And whatever wars I do so to choose You guys are going to be fighting for me Yeah You had to pay a tax of 40,000 marks Which was a tremendous amount of money To just basically pay for the English

Or English, yeah, occupation in the lands This was called the Treaty of Falsy And it started all sorts of revolts In Scotland that lasted all the way up into the 13th century The treaty continued until 1189 Which is funny that it It launched it all the way into the 13th century as far as the revolts go, and we'll talk about why independence and revolts go hand in hand here coming up.

But in 1189, English king, Richard the Lionheart. You remember talking about Richard Lionheart, the guy that... Richard liked a crusade. Yes, he did. And Richard needed money to go on crusade. So what does Richard do? He goes to Scotland. What do we have we can sell?

What do we have we can hawk? I got to go down and fight for Jerusalem. What do we have? Richard goes ahead and agrees to basically terminate this deal, giving Scotland their freedom back for the grand total price of 10,000 total marks. So if you guys could speed up the payments, give us 10,000 right now, we'll clear out the debt and you guys can have your shit back. Yeah, so I don't know what you had paid on the 40,000 now,

but we'll cut it down to 10,000, you guys get your shit back. I also find it very interesting that we have King William the Lion working with King Richard the Lionheart. Lions, obviously, royalty very big, but just the fact that both of these guys with a very similar nickname are the ones that are trading back and forth. Not native to the land of Great Britain or the United Kingdom.

No. So Scotland is back in William the Lion's hands. He then tried to purchase Northumbria back from Richard as well for 15,000 marks. But the reason that Richard Lionheart squashed on the deal was because he didn't like the idea that he couldn't still own all the castles that they had built up in the areas of Scotland.

Because during this time, just like we talked about during the monarchy episode, castles were a thing that came from France somehow. You would think that Scotland and England's castles would have been so much older than France's castles, but Scotland brought all this architecture to these areas. I think one of the things too, or France brought it to these areas. I think France maybe moved away from castles a little bit sooner and would like maybe convert their castles or tear them down and use the materials. to build like palaces and stuff like that

because that became like the in vogue thing. Yeah, could be. Just like an architectural evolution. Then we roll right into my favorite king personally. King John, the biggest idiot that England, well, maybe not now, but produced back then. He was going into Scotland and kind of flexing on William because William was getting older.

He started squeezing him more. to get these familial marriages to where he could kind of get his seed hooks into the Scottish king. His brother had gotten rid of it. And it wasn't long because you have like John takes over for Richard. Yeah. And so as soon as they have their, you know, their kingdom back and everything, John is already trying to be like, no, I want that money. It's coming out of your guys' and I want those materials that are coming out of your guys's area.

so I'm going to try to go ahead and get my seat up in there so that way we can be doing the same thing that we've been doing before and put these puppets on the throne. Yeah, you can squeeze a lot more money out of him too because an aging king who's supposed to be leading his troops into battle is always going to be a lot more reluctant to fight because he's just too old to do it. We go back to the Western seaboard.

The Battle of Largs in 1263 took place where the Scandinavians were going to make an incursion onto land to kind of bolster their claim over the area and as they were coming on to land they were just beat to shit by all the storms in between

coming off of the islands to getting on to land and by the time they showed up the Scottish were like this isn't even a fight man like you guys got nothing left and they're getting pinch from both sides too because they got assholes down they got clowns to the south of me

jokas to my west but yeah they're having to fight kind of like a two front battle. That's where luckily the Vikings were so worn down that they ended up signing the Treaty of Perth and it gave Scotland back power over their entire Western seaboard and kind of secure the majority of Scotland back. Did he give them the Hiberties back too?

I believe so. That might have been a little bit later, but as far as like control of the area, I think they did get back. Well, they have them back now. Yeah. March 19th. 1286, this is where we get to King Alexander III. King Alexander the Third.

Dyes falling off of his horse as he was trying to get to his wife, his new wife, to get a little bit of ass. Because there was a succession crisis on his hands because all of Alexander III's children had basically died. And so he didn't have a whole lot left. he had one child, I believe, that was, she's going to be coming up here very soon. I believe her name was Margaret, the maid of Norway. And she was only three right around the time of the succession crisis and Alexander III dying.

And basically Alexander III had just remarried. He was trying to get to his wife to try to create another heir. And the issue with Margaret being the heir was that the Scottish, weren't really keen on getting a woman queen, which that was just their time. I'm not judging them for it. So after he ends up dying on the way, they have a succession crisis because he had actually gotten one in his new wife and she was supposedly pregnant. So they were going to try to ride out the pregnancy.

And if they could ride out the pregnancy and get like a baby king, then they could use the court and around the baby king. king to grow him up. Ends up not happening. Baby doesn't come out or doesn't make it. It's the craziest fucking concept, too. Just like, the fact that it was just like, please, let us have this baby king. We will make sure that we raise him to be true and just and not corrupt at all because

having complete control from the moment that you're able to open your eyes is not corrupting in any way, shape, or form. But yeah, all hell the baby king. Well, and their plan was that they needed this board of regents around to kind of watch over the kingdom until either the baby was born, which didn't happen, or tell Margaret made it over from Norway because, again, she's three years old, which is just very, very young to be putting it on. So we get the English coming back in with a gentleman named Edward Longshanks. Edward Longshanks. I guess Longshanks means long legs. He had very long legs in a very short torso and body. He was Edward the first, right? Yep.

Okay. He had some other malformations, which after centuries and centuries of inbreeding and families, you've got to expect to get some wild cards in the mix. And Edward was brought in, or Edward was brought in to advise the picking of this board of Regents. Excuse me. The king. Yeah. He was brought in to actually help them consult on who they should select and kind of settle the dispute because there were multiple 14.

actually there were 14 people. This was just to choose the Board of Regents. Okay. We're coming up on that. So at the age of seven, this Board of Regents is put in place, and at the age of seven, Margaret is going to make her trip across to Scotland. Part of the reason that Longshanks decided that he wanted to be a part of this was on the condition that he would be considered, I guess, like, the old.

overseer of Scotland out of this and that Margaret would marry his son. So he was trying to get the king of England. It was still, it was the, it was the thing that they went back to with Henry to basically he was going to be their feudal superior. Yeah. And at the same time, if he could get Margaret's hand in marriage for his son,

then she would be the queen of England, or the queen of Scotland, he would be the king of Scotland. They would immediately try to recognize a king of Scotland, even though he was a little outside of their, bloodlines. Well, in that point, was that his only son too? Because then he would have also been King of England and King of Scotland.

They do the thing where sometimes if they have multiple children, they'll keep their air close. Yeah. So they have them there. And then the other children, they'll marry off for political ties. So I can't remember if that was his only son. I think he had a few more. They might have been daughters, do. Well, we know that he had more sons because that's where we get over the second and the rest of the goofiness that comes along with him.

Unfortunately, at the age of seven, Margaret dies. on this trip back to her homeland, and she died of, like, it was like extreme sea sickness or something like that, was the cause. I don't know how you get extreme sea sickness. It'll kill you, but I guess if you're seven. Dysentery, you're dehydrated.

That could be, yeah. You're weakened by that. You're seven years old also. Yeah. And this triggered something called the Great Cause. And the Great Cause immediately gets arbitrated again by Longshanks. And this was the idea that they needed, to choose this new line because the original line died with Margaret.

So you still need that blood that was coming from Kenneth McAlpin in the system, and you get two kind of people that present themselves a man named John Ballio and a man named Robert Bruce. Robert Bruce is going to show up in a grandson form later on that will be Robert DeBruce. But this was Robert Bruce, the grandfather. John Ballio was another candidate, like we said. And just to kind of make this process a lot tougher, Longshanks brings in 11 other people to try to choose from for this king of Scotland role.

I think they were like, yeah, 13 or 14 total. So the one that had essentially the best claim, and when they're doing these claims is essentially tracking essentially the bloodline to see who was the most closely related to, you know, that line. Yeah. So the first closest was going to be John Balliol. and with that, like I said, part of this was basically with the understanding that Scotland would be in a lower feudal position to the crown. So John Balliol ends up getting the crown at this point.

Robert Bruce, who was the fifth lord of Anandale, was the next strongest claimant and kind of reluctantly has to accept what's going on. but yeah over the next few years basically John undermines Edward Edward undermines John oh yeah sorry Edward undermines John

his authority and basically independence of Scotland pretty much at every opportunity he gets well Edward was sticking his nose where it didn't belong there were already rulings that the Scottish government had made that Edward was coming in and reversing he was just

completely trying to change the game and the fact that Bailey was, had sworn his allegiance he had paid his homage to this guy that's coming in in trying to take over the country. Bailey all gets a really, really bad look at this point. People are really,

they call them like empty jacket or something like that because he was just like a hollow core that was the king that Edward was just running everything through. He was just like, yeah, he was a puppet. Edward is the best. Mm-hmm. So basically

that happens for the next few years and John eventually ends up listening to his chief advisors and is like, hey, we need to knock this shit off. We probably do need some help if we're going to try to resist the English rule. And so gets him to partner up with France and what was called the Ald Alliance. So not the Old Alliance, A-U-L-D, the Alld Alliance. I think it's still the same thing. It's just how they pronounced it.

Part of the reason why they needed that Alld-D-Lyance was because in 1296, Bailey, I was like, hey, man, that homage I paid you, it's gone. I renounce that homage. We're not going to continue this deal where you run over our country. Go over to France. They signed this treaty, which is huge because what's going on between England and France? War. So France sees this as an advantageous position because it kind of...

Scotland can draw troops away from France if they're battling. Not only that. Either way. You have a place to get French troops on the actual mainland to third. threatened England, whereas the English channel is essentially their greatest defense at this point. And this was in 1295 that John finally listens to an advisor's partners up and gives Edward the finger. But in 1296, Edward's like, nope, not going to happen.

It invades and is able to depose John. Now, after this, the people of Scotland have kind of finally had enough. And so we're going to get to what's going to be referred to as the first war. of Scottish independence when a few guys decide to take up arms and fight back against the English and we're going to get to that after bathroom break. Well, hey there, all you sexy high historians, how are you guys doing? It is time for socials. Where can they find us on Instagram?

If they want to follow us, they can find us at historically high pod on Instagram. That goes the same for Threat. as well. You can also find us on Twitter. Tell them about Twitter. Historically high. That's historically H.I. on Twitter. And if you want to email any of your comments or suggestions, where can they find us at, Adam? Historically High Podcast at gmail.com. Gmail. All right. And back to the show. Okay. So we come to the first War of Scotch Independence. And

basically at the point when John's like, no, we signed the treaty with France. Edward responds by attacking and sacking this place, Berwick upon tweed. So fucking sweet. Gotta be where tweed coats come from, right? I would hope so. Yeah.

Oh, speaking of that, Tartan. Might as well explain Tartan. So Tartan essentially is when they weave together the different materials in the crossing pattern and that's where you get like the plaid pattern from because it's different colors sometimes going in. Yeah. opposite directions.

So the whole kind of idea behind this is you could weave different colors to make patterns in this, in this tartan, and they would weave colors for different clans. And this is also where we kind of get the advent of kilts, because not only would they wear scarfs with their clans and everything like that colors made, they would also have their kilts in this tartan for the different colors of the clans that they were representing. And back then they were much different.

than what we've seen kind of like that. I think it was like late 19th century when the kilt kind of came back into high fashion for like Highlander style looks. But these tartans that they wore before were literally like everything. Like if you had to camp that night, you had to have a long enough turtent

or tartan to be able to lay on and use as a blanket. If you're in colder regions, you're going to have to have that more to cover your body to keep you away from any sort of freeze or anything like that. Basically wearing a blanket. You're having to wear something you could use as like camping coverage,

all that kind of stuff, but they're not carrying packs or anything like that with them. So they're just wearing them. Yeah, you have to, everything that you're going to be wearing, you just have to wear out there. It's all multifunctional. Yeah. Supposedly, there is kind of some evidence

that bagpipes were invented sort of around this time. Because originally they were made out of like a pig or sheep bladder. Yeah. And I didn't know this, but with bagpipes, so you can, you know, you have the reed that you're blowing into. And that's not actually like with a regular, like, brass instrument where you're actually playing the notes as you're blowing the air through it. You're first filling the bag.

The bladder, yeah. The bladder. And then you're periodically breathing in there to go ahead and keep filling the air that you're using. As you're constricting it with your arm to force it then through the reeds at the top. Yep. Well, actually, so the reeds out the top. are all a consistent bass tone of different reeds. That's why when they first start playing bagpipes,

you hear that, that's all of the pitch that comes out of the three top reads. It's three different pitches that make that, like, under bass tone that's with all Scottish bagpipe music. All of the different variations then come out of almost the flute or woodwind type thing that they're actually playing down with their hands, and that's where you get the different pitches. It's wild.

Who thinks of that instrument? Think of having that. Like, they're just sitting around the fucking fire and someone's just like, I made something. They're like, what is? He's like, check this shit out. I was just like, the fuck kind of sorcery is this, man. You can see how it would be used in Scottish battle hymns and shit like that just because it's a noise that is so unique to itself. It's like nothing in nature makes that noise.

No. No, it definitely doesn't. You can see that getting some Scots fired up for some war. Like I say, I don't think it's, I mean, there's some truth. to it. It could have come a little bit later on and we just kind of take it back to this area because it sounds cooler in time. But yeah,

Edward's pissed. Edward sacks Berwick upon Tweed. The only reason that they pulled back, this was a two-day sacking. And back then, wars didn't usually last two days. Like it was, there would be a battle that would last maybe a few hours, maybe a day.

But to go into a second day was going to be some shit. So the fact that this was a two-day sacking of this town. Yeah, but it makes sense because you're not fighting against anybody. But for two days you're killing? Well, I mean, you're going in

and you're pulling all of like the resources and you're going house to house like pulling any valuables and stuff like that. Yeah. The only reason that Edward pulled off of Berwick was because, and again, this is just history and what was said, Edward witnessed one of his soldiers

killing a pregnant lady as she was giving birth and he's like, oh, maybe we've gone too far here. Maybe we've run out of people to kill that we're starting to kill these kind of people. Maybe let's pull back. So, they pull back, and the Scots are defeated at something called the Battle of Dunbar in April 1296,

and right after this is where John Balliol is taken into custody, he abdicates the throne in July, and Edward then requires all of the nobles that are in Scotland to pay homage to him, because now that he has their king, he needs, like, the next line in the hierarchy to do this. So, Bailey all is taken away. He's locked up in the Tower of London.

Edward starts to get this homage from the nobles saying, hey, you know. Basically getting their field, he being like, we all know regardless of who's going to be put on the throne here in Scotland, you all need to know who's really in charge, and I need you to acknowledge that. And these nobles in the government, go ahead and pay that homage. But at the same time, Scottish people still aren't very happy about what's going on because they're getting real sick of England coming in and just taking whatever they want when they want.

You have the 30 or so nobles, yeah, telling you that everything's okay. What do you do about the 100,000s or however many people they had there in Scotland at the time, people that are like, yeah, these guys don't speak for us. Yeah, they're in power because they're the power. They're not in power because they have our good intentions at heart. So England finally squeezes a little bit too hard

in Scotland pretty much just erupts in revolt. Andrew DeMore was the de facto Scottish military leader in the north, and basically he was a bailiol supporter and kind of continued the fight at that point. He ends up partnering up with a guy named William Wallace, and he rose to fame after killing this English sheriff, William Hayesling, not the sheriff of Nottingham. So did you hear the legend behind William Wallace? No, please legend me up. William Wallace's father was a knight and his brother was a knight. Yeah, you did have Scottish knights. That was the thing. You got knighted. And as two knights, they went to battle against England and were both killed in battle against the English.

So one day, William Wallace is out fishing and is he's out trying to catch fish. And again, there's a million of these different variations of this story. This is just my favorite one. It ends up being like 200 years before the story of William Wallace is told by an author. So all this stuff is looking at in hindsight With just kind of oral tradition Keeping the story alive With the polish of time Yeah And I think you'll kind of understand

Once we get into it But he's fishing Pulls out a few fish There are English soldiers That are walking by One of the English soldiers stops him He's like hey man give me the fish William Wallace is like no

I got to eat I got a wife to feed I got to eat And the Englishman pulls his sword out William Wallace disarms him cuts off his head kills two of the other soldiers that are with him and then the other two run off.

Well, that was William Wallace's big mistake because the other two go back tell the area leader what happened and William Wallace kind of has to go into hiding for a while because he has to be able to get away and not get caught because he's definitely going to be killed for killing these English soldiers. So, a little bit of time passes.

He is in a different town and all of a sudden he gets recognized by an English soldier that is walk or as he's walking into his own house the English soldiers come back for him and he has to escape the house by running back

through it out the back door as one does when they're trying to run from anybody and you've got to go through a house his wife ends up closing the door and barring it to keep the English soldiers from getting through as he escapes out the back and takes off and as he

escapes out the back the soldiers break down the door, they ask his wife where he went, she's, is a G, so she's like, I don't know, I have no idea, I didn't even see him, I don't know who you're talking about, who is William Wallace, they go ahead and put her through a little mock trial out in front of the house and cut her head off. And it's believed that the man that he killed, the sheriff William Hasserling, may have put the order out to find and kill William Wallace and then ordered the death of his wife. So we have an origin story of badass William Wallace then having an axe to grind

because they killed his father and brother in battle and then they may have killed his wife. I mean, that's a pretty good origin story for a superhero, right? A Scottish superhero. Yeah, there aren't really many of those are there. Okay, so did he

kill the sheriff after? After his wife was killed, yeah. Okay, gotcha. So it was a revenge killing, a crime of passion. Yep. And as soon as that crime of passion hits and it gets out to the people, the people start to flock around William Wallace. They've heard that he's stood up to the English

and they want to be on his side. So he kind of starts building this little militia behind him. And when he's asking around about, hey, you know, what are our defenses? What do we have against England? They're like, well, there's this guy up in the north. His name's Andrew Nemore. Let's go find him.

He's going to have some troops. And he's kind of the one that's still pushing some of these revolts and these guerrilla attacks. And that's when Wallace and DeMore run into each other. And it's a pretty good partnership. There's a lot of stuff that Wallace gets attributed just to him that was kind of like these were DeMore's plans to. He was the military leader. Yeah.

That's the whole point. Yeah. It was kind of like William Wallace was his, DeMore's champion. Yes. In a way. He was the front man. Yeah. But, you know, it's like, you know, the who did they always say used to write the songs is like Paul McCartney used to write all the Beatles?

songs, but like John Lennon was the frontman. Or John Lennon used to write him, but like Paul McCartney was the front man. I don't know. I don't know about the Beatles either to say that. It was something like that. So yeah, after a Wallace Moray hook up and kind of start building up more of an uprising and kind of getting everyone organized, Edward actually reaches out and sends Robert Bruce, that guy that was spurned essentially for Balliol to be put into power to go

up and talk some sense into walls and kind of quell the uprisings. Well, what does Robert do when he gets there? Is this where Wallace hits him with the line? Or is that before the battle when he did Liberty Freedom Freedom Line that they adapt out of it? I think it happens before Sterling Bridge. What happens here? I can't remember. That's when doesn't Bruce end up like going up there and then just being like, eh, no,

I'm going to go for Scotland. He ends up defecting right back to Scotland. Yeah. So Bruce has pledged. allegiance, that's right. He pledges his allegiance to England and as they're riding up there and Bruce is like, well, these are my people that we're fighting against and they're trying to fight for the freedom that I was hoping to get when I became king, I probably need to go back and start fighting for Scotland again. So he just peels off. Just basically in the middle of the night

leaves the other English that we're going up to speak with Wallace and goes over and starts working with kind of like the Scottish government. He also has to understand that if he's ever going to be put into a position where he would have a claim to the crown or to the throne, if he essentially is the guy that turned on Scotland and helped Edward quell this and then tries to put him on the, he's going to get, he's seen what happens with these revolts. They happen a year later.

He's not going to stay on it. I think he finally realized at this point that if he wants this throne, he has to do it and have the backing of all the Scottish people behind him. Well, ultimately, yeah, he doesn't want Edward to be in charge of Scotland. He just wants to be the king. He wants to see a free Scotland. Exactly. So we end up coming to this really pivotal battle called the Battle of Sterling Bridge.

And Sterling was a castle and then the bridge was, you know, a little distance so that went across a river. and Sterling had kind of been known as like the key to Scotland. It was one of those kind of linchpin areas where it had crossings of this river that kind of divided these areas. And if you could control that, you could really control a lot of the area. Well, when the English ended up arriving here, I believe they were over on the side of the Sterling Castle. They were in Sterling Castle. They were in Sterling Castle.

Well, there's this area that is across the river called the Abbey Craig. and basically it's this little like hill that like juts out and it's kind of steep and has like complete advantage looking over the their entire side of the river. So that's actually where Wallace and Moray set up because they know the territory and they know exactly where they need to essentially beat this more superior force. And when it comes to the actual day of the battle, there's this guy that was actually a Scottish knight that was actually fighting on the side and had defected over to the English and comes up and. And basically it's like, hey, what we should do here, this bridge that we're trying to cross, you could only cross it like two. It was just wide enough for two guys riding horses side by side to actually cross. And this knight looks at it and he's like, yeah, what I can do is we can go two miles up river and I can take like 60 of our cavalry cross and then hit these guys. And while I'm hitting these guys, then you guys can have a clear crossing to try to get people across the river.

well the guy that was kind of against him was John's I guess like or sorry Edward's like treasure in Scotland and I think Edward was up here at the time wasn't he he wasn't at um he wasn't at Sterling Castle but he basically the treasurer convinced him to just do a direct attack like go over the bridge and just basically take care of these guys and basically what William and more I do is they only allow,

they don't just try to hold them at the bridge. They allow enough English guys to come across that they feel like they can beat. It's so fucking sweet. Just before you get into that, to point all this shit out, this battle that happens, and these are all numbers

that were just kind of thrown around. But the Scottish were outnumbered at least two to one. I believe it was, So in Sterling Castle, the kind of head nut that was there, his name was the Earl of Surrey, his name was John DeWorn. And they had about 9,000 soldiers. There was about 5,000 Scottish soldiers standing on the other side. So if you're outnumbered almost two to one, you have to be able to take on a number that your soldiers can fight, right?

Yeah, so I think they said the Scottish had like between 5,000 and 6,000 men. The British had, or what is the British? the English had 9,000, but the discrepancy was in like what the usefulness of these troops were because the Scots only had 300 Calvary versus 2,000 from the English. And if you're thinking about it from a standpoint of like

any of the episodes we've talked about about like ancient wars, we talked about it with Hannibal, Calvary is like the fucking, that's the winning hand. Because not only are they so much faster and can flank and outmaneuver, fucking charging someone on a horse, the horses themselves are fucking weapons

that can just bowl through people. And so the comparison, they had to nullify that. So they were only going to allow who they could over the time. So you can't just send all your cavalry over at once because then they're not, you know, they're defenseless

and they're just going to get picked off. Well, that and it's impossible because they're going over a tight, narrow bridge. Exactly. But you can't just send them like in a line going over because they're going to allow 100 of those guys to get over and then kill them all. Then you're down 100 cavalry

because there's no infantry there for them to hide against her support. So they have to send over kind of a mix of them. And basically as soon as William and Moray are like, yeah, that's enough. They have kind of an ambush set up to where these guys come in and kind of cut off and close off the bridge and end up fucking, I think the English end up losing $5,000 out of their $9,000. Dude, so many of them.

The Scottish numbers haven't been confirmed. I don't even really want to speculate on it. But the fact that they took out more than half of the English is saying something. Well, a big part of that was once they got over and the English was like, oh shit, these guys have a plan. We can't get any more of our guys over here.

They can't just swim across this Stirling River to get over. What do we do? Like, we've got to blow the bridge. So they end up cutting off the bridge to try to save themselves as they all go back and try to stand in defense inside of the castle. What's the equivalent of blowing the bridge at that point? you send guys out with like hammers and you're like destroy that and it literally takes them

three hours to knock off all the blocks and everything and then there's only a gap of like eight feet yeah it's unusable at this time yeah we can't jump the eight feet nobody can do that no but you can't like rebuild it because it's the river like how do you you know structure that yeah um so that was really the only reason that it was just that many of those soldiers that were killed uh du warn ends up getting away and escapes on horseback He said that he rode so far continuously on his horse that when he got to wherever he was going, the horse just collapsed and died because he was trying to get away from there so fast. And the rest of the English that were trapped inside a Stirling Castle ended up surrendering.

Oh, and just for reference, so the guy that was in command of the English forces was the Earl of Surrey, John DeWarn. So that's who I was talking about. He said Warren. So a massive victory for the Scots. unfortunately, one of the very few Scots that were wounded this time was DeMore. And that really plays a factor because DeMoree ends up dying from the wounds that he had in Sterling Castle. So to say that him and Wallace were a power couple is certainly accurate, but we'll kind of see coming up. DeMoree may have had the ideas while, like we say.

I think that's what it was. I think Wallace was the style and Murray was the substance. Yeah. But how romanticizes that just to say he took an arrow at this battle that they ended up winning and he died versus like the ceremony of William Wallace getting captured and tortured and all that kind of stuff? Like you can see why one is probably a little more well known. But within Scotland itself, maybe they look at that and they say, well, DeMore is actually here. It's actually kind of on par. Yeah, I see that now.

Wallace ends up ruling Scotland as a guardian of the realm. And he's knighted. So he becomes Sir William Wallace. And is basically serving as kind of like, what you would think in like Game of Thrones, like Hand of the King or like a proxy ruler, basically ruling in the name of John Balliol because he's still alive and they still have some hope to get him back actually.

So as William is ruling here, in 1298, Edward decides to come north in person this time. And this ends up leading us to what's called the Battle of Falkirk. And Battle of Falkirk doesn't go necessarily well. No, is this the one where Edward is... Yeah, it has to be. So the night before the battle,

King Edward was very concerned. that the Scots were going to come over and start the war at night. So he told all of his troops that what they had to do was sleep next to their horses. So that way, if there was any sort of attack or insurgents or anything like that, they were right next to their horses with their weapons and they could go on the attack. That included King Edward himself, who was sleeping next to his horse, when his horse got riled up and accidentally stepped on him in the middle of the night. And they were actually worried that Edward was so injured that they couldn't go into battle

And the Scots would just sweep in and take everybody out Because they didn't have a leader because their king had just got stepped on by his horse that night After he gave the rule to do it Bad news for the Scots King William was fine and was able to load up onto his horse Huh? Edward Yeah, King Edward Sorry

Was able to load up onto his horse the next day And it is absolutely disgusting disgusting what happened. So there's 15,000 English, 6,000 Scots. And this is actually where we see the first, I can't believe that it took this long, but maybe, I mean, this is the first that I had heard from a couple different sources. The first time that the longbow had ever been used in a battle. Okay, so go back to what I said roughly probably like close to an hour ago. They didn't have the longbow, I guess, when they first invaded to push back the Scots, but they still had, I think, steel and they'd develop plate armor and stuff like that.

Yeah, well, they still had bows, but it was like close combat bows. Like, you're shooting from 10 to 15 feet away. Oh, okay. Whereas you get the big mass of long bows where you can fire from 70, 80 yards away. That's right. Okay. To where you can just basically lob shots. So edit, my edit.

Yeah, no, you were right. This is also where we see the invention of something that Wallace, I think, kind of took credit for. It was given credit for, but it was a demure idea called Sheltrons. and Sheltrons were basically like... Is it like a Voltron? Like they assembled into a giant Scottish robot. Yeah. A little bit, except for instead of a robot,

it looked like a hedgehog. Like it was guys that had... Like pikes? Yeah. Pikes and spears. And they would stop into an area. And once the advance would come on, they would jam their spikes into the ground.

They would hold their shields up for as long as they could in front and as everybody, or as the cavalry and everybody would advance on them, they would then impale themselves on the spears and they couldn't get to it. That's where they get like it had to be twice as big as a man. Uh-huh. Twice as long as a man if they were going to use these.

Yeah, that's where you get like when you're holding, you would have like the guys holding like the giant like lodge pole, sharpened ones and like putting their foot down on the ground and like holding it forward to like counter cavalry charges and stuff like that. Which is a great idea if you're not fighting a bunch of longbowers. Yeah, no shit. It works well if horses are

charging you, but when it comes to fucking death arrows raining from the sky, yeah, those fucking sharpened sticks really aren't going to do anything. And so 2,000 Scots are killed during this. And yeah, it's pretty much a resounding victory for Edward and the English. You would think after just massive defeat by that, William Wallace would go back to the drawing board. Now, William Wallace leaves the country. William Wallace leaves Scotland.

William Wallace goes on kind of like a little tour they say that it was mostly in France but there were some reports about him going down into Italy and being in Rome and meeting with the Pope and that kind of a thing this to me almost makes sense

because you would think if you're trying to get because again all this is related around Christianity and Catholicism at this point so the Pope is the one that's calling the shots as far as suggesting not to go after somebody or or to maybe make peace, anything like that.

So William Wallace maybe going and trying to do the diplomatic thing of going and talking to the poem and being like, hey, maybe tell it we're to lighten up on Scotland. We're trying our best, but at the same time, we're having a tough transition period. So tell him to maybe give us a little bit. Also, if you could tell him to like, you know, that I shouldn't be killed when I get back into the country

because I was only fighting for my country's freedom, that would be, you know, that would be greatly appreciated. Yeah, it all kind of makes sense. except for while he's away Edward is just back on the hunt and Edward has the fuck what is his nickname the hammer of the Scots

oh I think it was the hammer of the Scots because he yeah he was just absolutely obliterating these different areas of Scotland because he was so angry and partially because they were looking for William Wallace

they didn't know that William had absconded from justice so Bruce again pays homage to Edward and hey for real this time because you already did that before yeah Edward the first of England former King of England I guess known as the Hammer of the Scots because he just absolutely

obliterated them on many different occasions yeah but Robert Bruce does it or Robert Bruce does this to kind of get back in good with Edward because we are now talking about Robert DeBruce, which is the grandson of Robert Bruce that had defected earlier on. And in the absence of William,

Edward gets to go ahead and name these Guardians of Scotland. And he goes ahead and names Robert Bruce grandson, Robert DeBruce, and a guy named John Common as the kind of claimants to the Scottish throne as the Guardians of Scotland. Yes. There was another third that was added later on that we'll talk about. But we have these two guys who are going to be going back to fighting for the crown. What was the third guy's name?

It ends up being a guy named William Lamberton. William Lamberton. He's like a priest or something like that. Yeah, just another guy who may have had a stake to the claim. Edward and Robert and John Coleman did not get along. They were not fans of each other. enough to where Robert Bruce ends up renouncing his guardianship

of Scotland because he just cannot work with him. He also thinks at the same time because there's some type of vindication that John Balliol might be getting out and getting released. And so at that point the only reason that Robert Bruce is serving there and he's

a John Balliol supporter, the only reason he's there is to go ahead and carry this mantle until John Balliol is able to go ahead and take up the crown again. So when he hears that John is going to be possibly getting out. He's like, I'm not going to be needed anymore. And so he resigns his position as Guardian.

Because of that, they end up plugging in another guy who is kind of more on the same side of like Common and Lamberton and Bruce were actually pretty close to them. They were boys. But now you have it to the point where you have John Common and this other guy and you really only have Lambertin now within the Guardians that is kind of a Balliol supporter. Yeah, and that's tough. because you've got to make a move at that point.

And a move Robert did make. Well, what ends up happening to, before we get to that, Robert making the move, what ends up happening when Edwards ends up coming up, you know, after he ends up beating Wallace, he does pretty much try to crush Scotland. And like you said, that's when Bruce again pays homage to Edward. And the Pope ends up telling Edward to go home at some point, right? Yeah, probably because Wallace was there talking to him. and being like, hey, man, tell them to lighten up on us a little bit.

They're Christians, we're Christians. Hey, quit killing everybody. So there's actually a truce signed at that point. And I think it was October, 1300 is when the truce was signed. Yep. And then literally in true fashion, like a year later, it starts kicking off again with like Scottish attacks. Yeah, just almost immediately in 1301, these guerrilla attacks come back. And it's just so funny that no matter how hard the government tries to do.

Who's really signing this truce? Like, who on the Scottish side is signing the truce? Nobody that's doing the attacking in wars anymore, just the guys that want the war to end. And the guys that are signing the truths probably don't have the ability to enforce the truth. No, not in the slightest. Well, in 1304, there's kind of a final battle to capture Scotland. And then unrelated to that actual battle, which I believe it is England that comes victorious in that battle. Yep.

A year later in 19, or sorry, not 19, Jesus. 1305 William Wallace is finally captured. Boy, oh boy. This was something I was going to ask you about. How deep do we need to go on to what happened to poor William? As far as what happened once he was captured? Yeah. Probably not too deep.

Is it? Okay. So basically, his ending comes as where he was captured, I believe, was 18 days walk back to England. and they made him walk all 18 days all the way back to the capital of England. And once he got back there, he got put on trial for just all these different. It was like 148 different charges. They had him on trial for treason, which made no sense because you would have to be English to be tried for treason.

And he wasn't English. He was Scottish and he never claimed or any type of like, I guess, like, fealty to England. So, yeah, you could, they were going to kill him for one thing or another. So, yeah. So, once he gets found guilty, I'll try to make this as quickly and easy as possible. And I think I just got to read it because they're not going to be as bad as ours. He was taken through the Scottish countryside. His legs were bound beneath the horse towards London.

Then he was taken to this show trial. And in the traditional manner of a traitor, because they actually charged, him as a common man instead of a royal or a knight. Yeah. So basically fucked him there. He was drugged through the streets. They tied him to the back of a horse on a board, and they drug him through the streets of England, whatever the capital was at that point.

And people got to throw fruit and rocks and shit at him. After that, they end up hanging him until he passes out. Then they wake him back up. and then after that he is they cut his bowels pull his bows out light him on fire they cut off his twig and berries right in front of him and he's alive when they're doing this yeah uh we want to talk about okay pulled out his heart they showed his beating heart pretty bad um then he was drawn and quartered and it was like the four parts of him were taken to like four different regions there was one that got sent back to Scotland. There was another three parts that were kind of traveled around England. And then his head was put on a pike on, I believe, the Tower of London? Maybe somewhere around there.

Probably. But, oh, no, on the London Bridge. So anybody they crossed over the bridge, that was Scottish, got to see that. I'm sure that was pretty fun. Yeah, the English government displayed his limbs separately in Newcastle, Berwick, Sterling, and Perth. So pretty tough ending. There's also a rumor that I saw.

on a site that may not have been super legitimate that says that his skull was then taken and enshrined in the royal family's court, and it's still sitting in the royal court today somewhere. In England? Yeah. So, kind of nuts. Some skull of bones type of shit.

Yeah. I think also I forgot to mention along these lines. Yeah. It could have been at this point in time. Um, that stone of destiny that we were talking about, the one that all of the kings before this time had been sworn in and that's where they've been given the crown was swooped up by Edward and brought back to London. And in London, he actually had a new, um, like throne installed where they actually put the stone of destiny underneath the English throne is kind of like a hey, we're sitting on top of you. And I believe it took them... Like a big permanent fuck you.

Yeah. It took them all the way until I think it was 1996 for the English to return the stone. Really? Yeah. So these things run a lot deeper. Like I say, if William Wallace's skull is still in the royal court and then they had this... You can either have the stone or the skull. Yeah. Yeah, that was definitely a choice that had to be made.

So... Getting back to Robert Bruce. Yeah. Yeah, we got to go back to Robert Bruce and John Common. After this whole claimant issue, Common and Bruce decide that they need to meet at a church that was called the Greyfriars Church on February 10th, 1306. There were questions because Edward was getting a little bit older and going on in years as to how they were going to try to figure out this whole Scottish throne deal.

If Edward is to die, what's their next move? That's the biggest thing is any of these transitions of power, that's an opportunity to try to go ahead. And if you're looking for your independence, as soon as that happens, and you're getting a younger ruler in there, one that maybe isn't, because we've seen this before, even going back in this episode, some of these guys just aren't interested in doing this. You get these kings that are really just interested in doing other shit

or not interested in doing anything at all, and that's a golden opportunity for someone who's trying to gain their independence to step in. Like you were saying, Robert Bruce and John Common Mead to kind of discuss what actions they're going to take once Edward does go ahead and kick the bucket and doesn't go, I think, is quite how John imagines it's going to go when he ends up meeting Robert. No, I don't think it did either. Kind of an interesting conversation that you and I were having during research time was Bruce is kind of the ultimate flip. The Bruce family is kind of like the ultimate flip-floppers when it comes to where their loyalties lie.

They're super opportunistic. Mm-hmm. and I think the older Robert, Grandpa Robert, kind of had his idea in mind that since he was a wealthy landowner, in order to keep those things,

he probably needed to swear allegiance to Edward. And it was important for that to happen. But there was still kind of the flip-flopping back and forth on like, is it worth it? Is it worth it to not be in it for Scotland, being in it for England? When you get down to grandson Bruce, there comes a time when he's still sworn his oath of loyalty and paid homage to Edward,

but now the door is kind of open to instead of having to worry about keeping his land and everything that he has in England and Scotland to just taking over the whole of Scotland. Do you know where my land is? My land is in Scotland, and if I rule Scotland, I don't lose my land because it's in Scotland. Well, yeah, I don't need the lands that I was given in England because I paid homage to you because now I have all of Scotland. Exactly. And I also think there's probably something to be said about the fact that his grandfather was the second, you know, person that should have been there. And because of everything that went down with John Balliol, there's got to be some type of look back on that and said, well, if my grandfather would have been in this position, we would still be independent at this time. I'm, oh, this is maybe my birthright. And so when Robert Bruce meets with John Common at this, what was it like a church? February 10th, 1306.

I don't know if he directly, did he directly kill John? There's questions as to whether he directly killed him or he killed him and then walked out and was talking to someone else and they went in and kind of gave the final death blow. Yeah. There's a little bit of a Caesar vibe here with probably less guys. Could have been, very much so.

I like your theory better. I like the claimant to the throne and the freedom better than just trying to keep the lands that I was thinking. I think it's a combination of both. I think he saw an opportunity to do all of them, and he was going to go and take it. So the thing that I was kind of talking to Adam about last night

is you technically have this family that flip-flops and everything, but because within the course of the scheming and the flip-flopping, all of the positives that happened after all that, it's easy to just go ahead and forget everything that happened before. And so literally right after this, Robert ends up heading straight to Glasgow to be absolved of these sins. Yeah. And the big deal was the fact that this murder took place inside of a church.

And the guy who he was friends with before that was a part of the... Lamberton? Yeah. Dan already kind of talked through this plan of maybe if something goes wrong, what do we do? What are the odds? Lamberton just happens to be like a priest has a position in the church that can perhaps absolve him of this horrible. horrible deed. Well, in Lambertin goes and talks to the Church of Scotland,

he's like, hey, if this happens, we might need a pardon, but not just because it's like a God thing, but if Robert goes ahead and kills Common and becomes the King of Scotland, then all of a sudden we have a guy in position that can maybe

take over for an ailing Edward Longshanks and we can get our country back. So the church is like, okay. So after he ends up killing him, he goes to the Church of Scotland because he knows that he has to beat the news that's heading back to Rome. Yeah. And to the Pope.

And so he goes over to the church really quick and he's like, hey, I did this. This is why I did this and lays out a bullshit story. And the Scottish church is just like, you're absolved. Go say 10 Hail Marys. Go eat a couple chips. We'll see what goes on. You're good with us, though. The church is cool with you.

Well, it was so good in fact that he was actually crowned the king of Scotland at this place called, was it, Scone Abbey? Yep. on March 25th, 1306. So literally, like, seven weeks after he ends up killing this dude, he's crowned as king. I don't even know if the news had enough time to get back to Rome by then. And then any type of response getting back, he's like, oh. And when they get back, they're like, wait a second, you're, and he's like, yeah, I'm king now.

Like, well, we, okay. He's like, you came here for something? They're like, well, I mean, you killed again. He's like, yeah, but we cleared that up all here. I'm king now. Well, you know what happened with the repercussions, right? So the repercussions of all this happening Was that the Pope not only excommunicated Robert de Bruce

The Pope excommunicated every person in Scotland The church Oh Jesus Christ He excommunicated the entire country of Scotland Because Robert de Bruce pulled this shit And so that was another thing where everybody that was in Scotland was like What the fuck man Isn't that a crazy thought

Yeah Like you really think that one person somehow has the authority to sever your ties to your religion that just because this one guy is like nope you don't get to be this anymore you're just like no like I don't need you to do this like what it's fucking silly to even think

that was the thing well it's like you're punishing I'm not fired you know what I'm not fired I quit you're punishing the church of Scotland by punishing all of the Scottish people that lived there like there's no way that anybody else knew that DeBruce

was going to pull this shit but I'm sure it was also tactical and being like, well, we need to try to quell this guy that's the king now. So if we turn all of the people in Scotland against him by excommunicating them to, maybe they'll run them out of town. They weren't planning on it to be a long-term thing because you've got to understand like they're going to be missing out on like finances and like money that's coming from Scotland. Yeah. And that's a very important thing of kind of the entire reason behind religion is you need people for crusade. You need money. You need all these things.

and it's sort of what kind of brings it all back together. So, yeah, like you say, he was crowned king of Scotland. And his first big battle out was something called the Battle of Methven. And they were beaten real quick. And as soon as that happens, DeBrews is like, out. I'm going to head off to this island. I'm going to try to regroup. I'm going to run away because they're going to try to kill me now.

And as he leaves, Edward Longshanks goes through DeBrews. his family, it is killing so many of his... He's fucking cleaning house. Yeah. Everybody is... Never again. Yeah.

Everybody's dealing with what DeBruce started. Fool me once. Shame on you. Fool me twice. It won't happen again. Supposedly, another beautiful Scottish tale

is that DeBruce is hiding in this cave on this island that I forgot the name of. And there's a spider that crawls up the wall and starts making a web next to him and he's not a big fan of spiders so he goes ahead and slaps the spider off the wall and sees him hit the ground of the cave and the rains that were happening outside start to

sweep the spider away but then before long the spider's back and he ends up climbing up he tries six or seven different times to make this web and then he ends up making this web and this whole story is spun and this beautiful tale is spun and this is actually where we get the turn of phrase if at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again. Really? Yeah, because of this story that supposedly to Bruce came from and then the term was coined off of the story that was told later on. So kind of cool.

I mean, definitely didn't happen. So he ends up coming back to Scotland. He's like, I got a spider story for you guys. Rally the troops. Guys, call me Spider-Man. How about that? Well, lucky for them. Edward the first ends up dying in July 1307, and Edward the second is a huge failure. So Edward the second, yeah, if you guys may have forgotten, was the king that couldn't keep his hands off of his friends.

Oh, that's right, yeah. And kept appointing them to different positions and everything, and then they forced him to, like, they tried to send his friend out of the country. ends up running off Queen Isabella all the way back to France where she ends up hooking up with a guy Italy or like something like that. Roger Mortimer. That's right. In France, who was also kicked out of the kingdom by Edward II and that begins this weird succession crisis that we'll get to.

But yeah, as Edward II just sucks at his job. Back in Scotland. So you know what? Transition, Edward II is weak. Let's go ahead and get that independent. So we get the Battle of Bannockburg on July. It was between July 23rd and the 24th in 1314. So again, stuff is, you know, just kind of laying low for years at a time

while they kind of build their forces back up. And they're sick of getting beat too. So you've got to probably imagine that they're like, we're not going in to any more battles unless we're fully supplied and fully prepared. And this ends up paying off big time because it was a huge. victory for Bruce who had kind of assembled all these people again. They were using these. He goes back to the Shiltrons, except this time they're mobile.

Yeah. This is a fun war or fun battle because it starts off with a story that I feel like is sort of like you won it before it even started. So Bruce gets spotted across a little bit of land and he's on his horse and it's by this guy on this big war horse, he screams out the king is mine and starts charging towards him. Bruce on a smaller horse who's much quicker, waits for this guy to draw in. The guy pulls out his, um, what are the things that are, you're on the horses and you run at each other and joust.

Like a javelin, basically. Yeah. Yeah. Sticks his javelin out. As soon as this guy gets close, DeBruce goes ahead and kicks his horse in the side to scoot him out of the line of this this guy who's coming at him on the war horse. This guy who's used to only

going at another guy coming at the same trajectory across from him. Yep. DeBruce goes ahead and yanks on his reins. His horse rises up on its back two feet. And DeBruce was a big fan of the battle axe over the sword. So he pulls out his battle axe and this guy misses him with his javelin.

DeBruce goes ahead and buries his battle axe and this guy's skull. They said to the point in some of the like written history, history about it, that it went all the way down into his chest. That's how far it went. And that was how this war started. That was the first, like, opening salvo of this war. And it scared the English enough to the nights between the 23rd and the 24th. There was actually infighting in camp. And they said that there may have been upwards of like a hundred soldiers and cavalry that were killed that night

in their own camp because of all the fighting that was going on because everybody wanted to go back to England after they just saw what DeBruce just did. Yeah. And so this second day shows up, and there's a defector from the English that was Scottish that goes back. And he talks to Debrose, he's like, hey, attack him in the morning. If you attack him in the morning, this thing's going to be over real quick. And so Debrose is like, well, he's coming back. He's like, my loyalties with Scotland.

My loyalty's always been with Scotland. He's like, I'll behead you later. Thanks for the information. So, I mean, they're at a huge disadvantage, too, the Scots are. I think they had between 5,000 to 8,000 men versus like 20 to 25,000 men on the English side. And the way this ends up going is the advice ends up paying off because they just steamroll the English. English end up losing again, kind of the trend. About half their guys, so about 12,000 plus casualties.

And how many did the Scots lose? It was like 100. I mean, that number can't be true, too. There's no way it was only 100. No, unless they completely, like, ambush them. And by morning, he meant, like, before anyone's even awake. So, well, their big change from the war that they ended up losing before with William Wallace, these mobile shiltrons were big, but they knew that the long bowmen were going to be the key to what this had.

So what cavalry they had, they had, they had set up to where, the bowmen were going to try to take position to fire on. They just went ahead and out flank them and ended up killing all of the long bowmen first, which left a lot of cavalry to try to come after these mobile shiltrons that now have the ability to move closer towards the battle lines and attack. But as they're getting trounced on by the horses and everybody's coming towards them, they can stop and just like you talked about, they can stab their spear into the ground, they can put their foot in their knee against it and they can hold against these.

battle lines. Well, and like archers and everything, if you've ever seen any movies, I mean, it's pretty accurate when they have very, very lightly armored archers. Like, they're literally just wearing like fucking tunics, maybe like a helmet, but it's about mobility. They're not supposed to be on the front lines. They're also on foot.

So they're behind the infantry. They're behind the cavalry. And because these guys sweep and take it out, they've completely cut off there. Pretty much what they figure is going to win this battle because it's won every battle that they've won up to this point. And when you take away this, they're like, oh, shit, now we have to actually fight fight.

Yeah. And at this point, the Scots are like, yeah, we're fight-fighting. And our Shiltrons can move now. So you're in trouble.

So they end up just spanking the fucking English all the way back. And in 13, you know, it takes a little bit after this because, of course,

so many fucking people died, there's still some skirmishes and everything. But in 1320, there's what's called the declaration. Is it Arbroth? Arbroth,

I think. And it's signed by Nobleman and sent to the Pope declaring scotch independence. So it's kind of their own version of the founding fathers, signing this thing, sending off to the Pope and being like, hey, we just had a discussion with England. Things went well for us.

And at this point, I think we want to do our own thing. The document itself, and there was another one, it was, I think, one of the homages that was paid to Edward. It was called like the rigamaroth or something like that. It's where we get the term rigamarole from. And that was them kissing their ass. But at the bottom of these declarations that they would send, there would be like wax seals that would come from the nobleman.

So you would, instead of, like, you would sign it. And then to prove that it was you, you would press these wax seals along the bottom of it. They still do that shit in Dune. Oh, really? Yeah. It's, they have, so they have like their rings, they have their signet on it. Oh. And then what they'll lose, they'll take the wax mills.

and then press the ring into the signet and use it to like, you know, like, you know, like in movies when you see them do the scroll and they'll use it to seal a document. And then once you break the seal, you know. Yeah. That's pretty sick. So, at this point in time, it's unfortunate because the Pope is still angry at the Scots. And he's like, yeah, I, cool. You guys want to be independent? That's fine.

You're still not a part of this. Part of this religion. You're still excommunicated. And then we run into 1327. when Edward II is deposed for all of his misdoings. Edward III is given the crown, and as we know from the monarchy episode, Roger Mortimer and Queen Isabella are kind of like his caretakers.

They're the ones that sort of take control of what's going on in the country. Robert DeBruce starts raiding into the north of England, and he also has a brother named Edward. Edward is sent over into Ireland, And this is pretty advantageous because if you send Edward over to Ireland where he became the leader of Ireland over there, you then have two fronts to where you can attack England again and you're drawing England into two different wars. You now have a whole new populace of people that can fight. You have a whole new chain of supplies.

Probably not pumped about England being their rulers for a while. You know, they've had their troubles. Probably a little bit disgruntled. Yeah. So unfortunately, Edward, I think, ends up getting... and killed fairly early on in his tenure in Ireland. But they really don't have much of a, or the English don't have much of a choice.

Edward III is kind of coming into his own, and Mortimer and Isabella don't really have control of what they're doing, and they have to start making some concessions. So England ends up signing this treaty. It was the Treaty of Northampton on May 1st, 1328, and part of the treaty was the marriage into the families, so we're going to see the crossover again. I don't know how this is still happening

because they've already married into each other's families numerous times. You're not directly related enough. You're not getting enough genetic anomalies to understand that maybe you've got to freaking get a little variety in the gene pool. And along with that, you get Scottish independence. So they've won their independence a second time. Part of the declaration of Arbroath that they had made, and I forgot to mention it,

was a big thing for the church is still, we need crusade. And in that Treaty of Arbroth, when they declared their independence, they also said this doesn't mean that we're not willing to fight in the Crusades. We still want to be a part of the team. We still want this to happen. So magically, after this North Hampton Treaty is signed, where they get their independence back, the Pope's like, oh, so you guys.

settled this, right? Yeah. Okay, everybody's un-excommunicated. You're all back in. Everybody's back. He probably saw, and he was like, England's been taking these guys over forever. It's only going to be a matter of time before they take it back over.

Then England is the one pulling in the money and sending it to us. When they find out that Scotland now has independence, they're like, oh, so England can't take your money anymore and send it to us. You know what? Forget the... What did I? Did I say?

communicated? I don't remember saying that. No, you guys are good. I meant less communicated. Keep sending your money and your people to fight in our ridiculous fucking crusades. Yep. So that is definitely not the end of Scottish history. In fact,

it is so large that we are actually going to be splitting this one into two parts. So we're going to be following up with essentially from the end of the second Scottish War of Independence. We're going to be taken off from there and walking through everything from that point up to Scotland as it currently stands today.

but this is where we leave you tonight or today or whenever you're listening to this. This topic has, we kind of kicked back and forth that this thing was going to actually be fun or not. We didn't really know a lot about Scotland and this thing has surprised us in so many different ways. I can't wait to start studying for the next episode and kind of find out. We have some making up to do for Scotland during World War II. So we're going to go deep into that. but there's a whole ton of stuff to talk about before that. So do you got anything to end this one?

Really in true fashion in this podcast, we always start with a topic. We're like, yeah, let's do the history of Scotland. And then we get a day into research. We're like, ah, it's a lot of history, isn't it? Let's do episodes on Scotland. And then we kind of adapt and overcome. And whereas we are going to spread out the monarchs

just because there's so many kings and queens of England, and it's just crazy in that regard. This one I think we can pretty much do in two. There's still a lot more fun stuff going on. We will end up seeing the first dual king of Scotland and England. The advent of whiskey? Yep. Yep.

The advent of golf. We have a lot of stuff. You guys aren't going to want to miss next week episode. Next week's episode, Jesus. It's late. Yes, it is. All right, guys. Well, thanks for joining us at this one.

We'll catch you on the next one. Peace. All right, ladies and gentlemen, thanks for joining us for another episode. If you like what you heard, hit that subscribe and like button. Follow us. If you didn't like what you heard, still hit that anyway, because we'll probably cover something in the future that you do like. Please follow us on our social media.

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