Who Won the Battle of Bannockburn? And What Did they Win?

It consolidated a web of entrapment as complex as anything that could have been spun by Bruce's spider. Unplanned and unforeseen, it would ultimately cost Scotland everything.

So much so that, 700 years on, the nation is once more battling England for Scottish independence. It would seem that the Scots won the battle only to lose the war. So who were the real victors here?

Before we can talk about winners and losers, we need to be sure that we know who was fighting, and what was it for.

These were Scots who saw their fortunes as more secure under English rule, and who sought to gain more power yet after helping put down Bruce and his fellow rebels. After all, who could have predicted, on the eve of Bannockburn, that the mighty English forces would be so decisively driven back?

Nor can we extend this and say that it was a monumental clash between the Celts and their English repressors. Anglo-Norman levies raised in Ireland saw thousands of Irishmen march as infantry against Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn.

Bruce was also alarmed to realize that his Scots would be up against the infamous Welsh archers. The Earl of Pembrokeshire had amassed them on behalf of Edward II. 

In the two months leading up to the clash, Bruce ordered hundreds of yew longbows to be crafted. But he could only find 500 men with the skills, and inclination, to wield them.  It was a threat which must have caused him plenty of sleepless nights.

Finally, there were Frenchmen on that field, cavalry and infantry alike raised amidst the French territories owned by the English monarch.

In fact, the primary language spoken by the leadership on Bannockburn field was not English nor Scots. Give or take the Gaelic of the Highland chieftains, it would have been French all round on both sides.

And on the other side, there were between 3,000 and 6,000 Scots; a great number of which were Highlanders, out of their comfort zone and disdained by their Lowland leader Robert the Bruce.

A man who, himself, owed his name to a fortified town in France. Bruce's ancestor, William de Brus, had been a Norman knight, who traveled from Brus, near Chebourg, to claim British lands alongside William the Conqueror.

In many ways, Bannockburn was nothing to do with Scotland versus England. It was a land grab amidst the conquering classes of both countries. Part of an on-going power struggle between the Anglicized descendants of Norman invaders, in which the English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish were little more than cannon fodder.

Thus Bannockburn stands as a great example of how the British were divided and conquered; as well as illustrating just how far the Norman Conquest cast its shadow through the centuries.

It could be argued that, as she'd been hitherto raised in Norway, her father's death in 1286 signified the passing of the last ethnically and culturally Celtic ruler in Scotland.

John III, aka Red Comyn, had been half Celtic, half Norman. His cousin, John Balliol, naturally came from French stock too. It says much about how far the colonists had infiltrated the upper echelons of Scottish society, that in that royal succession crisis, the favorites - and those with the strongest claim - should all be of Norman descent.

This may also explain why Scotland, at its weakest and most vulnerable hour, should ask the strong and predatory English monarch to chose their king for them.

Robert Bruce did not initially throw in his lot with the native Scots. When the Bruce family first sought to press their own claim to the Scottish throne, they did so by asking Edward I of England to award it to them.

The request was made under the explicit understanding that the prospective Bruce monarchy would preside over a vassal state. They would swear oaths of allegiance to the English king and his heirs.

The Bruces had fought on the English side against William Wallace. The future Robert I murdered Red Comyn in cold-blood, after he emerged as a credible competitor, able to command genuine Scottish support.

It's been argued that Robert Bruce was Scottish. Six generations of his family had been born in Scotland, since William de Brus first arrived as part of the Norman Conquest. But that did not make him culturally and linguistically Scottish.

He spoke French as his mother tongue. His traditions, mores and manners were Norman.

Those six generations had all lived as the subjects of Celtic monarchs, who could trace their lineage back to the most ancient rulers of the Gaels. Yet the first instinct of the Bruce family was not to press their claim amongst the native Scots, but to ask for it from the foremost living descendant of William the Conqueror.

It was only when Edward I dismissed that claim, in favor of elevating John Balliol as his subject king north of the border, that the Bruce family became aggrieved. Yet they still supported the English choice, right up until their own holdings began to suffer.

Personal power and pique saw Robert the Bruce finally turn his back on his Norman roots. It was neither patriotism nor nationalism, which caused him to raise an army of native Scots in rebellion. He was fighting for the chance to become king.

Some of those following him into battle may well have done so for Scottish independence from English rule. But evidently not to return as a strongly self-governing Celtic state. They'd opted for the home-grown Norman noble, over all of those still answerable to London.

Scotland secured its political freedom, at the cost of cementing the Norman conquest with a crown.

His system of government and administration aped that in England, rather than the traditional ways of the Scottish Gaels. King Robert I retained those burghs and burgesses established by Edward I, then looked towards his Anglo-Norman peers for further inspiration.

His ancestral credentials and stable monarchy attracted traders from the north of England. They came to the markets also initiated by Edward I and demanded that business was conducted in English.

Those Scots seeking to get rich on the proceeds quickly taught themselves and their children the language.

Little by little, the Bruce's Lowland subjects were edged away from their Celtic roots and taught to disdain their native culture as old-fashioned, unprogressive and downright wrong. Embracing the example shown by this new crop of aristocrats, they hoped to find power and prestige by rejecting all that had made them Scottish.

By 1390, no-one south of Stirling spoke Gaelic at all. They were Scots forged in the mold of Robert the Bruce's ancestry, at the expense of their own.

In the northern Highlands, where no Normans had settled and the chieftains retained control of their clans, Scottish culture, traditions and the Gaelic language continued on unabated. Within a generation or two, the Lowland Scots had come to view their compatriots as barbarians, or knuckle dragging idiots, too backward to be considered truly Scottish.

Thus the divide and conquer took hold on the back of a cultural genocide in the south. The far-reaching consequences would eventually return a Scottish king to the English throne, who was indistinguishable from the English aristocracy. And who preferred London to Edinburgh.

Further still, it would facilitate the circumstances which gave rise to Culloden and the Highland Clearances; then would ensnare Scotland politically and economically into an Act of Union.

Seven hundred years after Scotland's victory at Bannockburn, it would be necessary for the nation to look for independence again at the ballot box.

The campaign trails would be conducted in English, amongst a population which culturally appears no different to its neighbors south of the border. Not because Scotland ever wished to become England, but because the rule of Robert I was not fundamentally different to what may have been expected under Edward II.

Both countries simply became Anglo-Norman, and that looked the same regardless of their location relative to Hadrian's Wall.

Who won at Bannockburn?  Robert the Bruce and the descendants of the Norman conquerors. What did they win? Scotland, and the completion of the Anglo-Norman conquest of Britain.