Scottish Independence: The Battle of Bannockburn Pt 2

Flat plains as battle sites were alien to the majority Gaels. Those fields of war were much more suited to the Anglo-Norman style of fighting, facilitating cavalry charges and clusters of pikemen, covered by rows of archers.

Bannockburn remains the most important battle in Scottish history. But it was fought along Anglo-Norman lines. Tactics which nominally favored the English, long experienced in such norms.

As for the Gaelic warriors who answered the call, centuries worth of effective warfare was dismissed as irrelevant. Bruce spent two months drilling them into as much Anglo-Norman military competence and discipline as possible, in order to withstand the rigors of the open pitched battlefield.

But on the eve of battle, he still didn't want the Scots to fight. Fortunately for him, morale was high enough for his dread predictions to be over-ridden.

Tomorrow, at Bannockburn, Scotland would fight for independence, with or without the Bruce; the English could bring what they may.

Edward II was now surrounded by generals and knights whom he couldn't exactly trust. Even if they'd personally had nothing to do with the decapitation of Piers Gaveston, then they almost certainly supported the action.

The interim between then and now had been tense in the extreme. Civil war had seemed certain. English nobles and the Marcher Lords had all been straining at the bit to rise in rebellion against their anointed king.

Yet somehow Edward II had clawed it all back. The situation had simmered down far enough for his monarchy to raise the army that marched on Scotland. Robert the Bruce was right to worry about it. Battle-hardened men led well equipped troops, in numbers which far out-stripped those standing on the Scottish lines.

But the expected cohesion wasn't quite there. The cracks of the near miss civil war still showed.

For a start, the amassed English armies could have been so much bigger. Residual fury told in sullen nobles mustering only at the eleventh hour; fulfilling their feudal obligations with the smallest possible number of militia in their train.

More damaging yet was the power vacuum, which had opened up around Edward II. For decades, it had been the families with the prettiest young men which had gained prestige; now they were discovering that might, while not precisely right, could certainly bully their monarch into a grudging compliance. At least until things blew over.

At the highest level, diplomatic wranglings dogged the English army from Berwick to Bannockburn.

Stunned, and still mourning Gaveston, Edward II moved amongst them, cowed for his crown and fearing for his person. Understanding too that he rode in the shadow of his ferocious late father - Edward I, the Hammer of the Scots - and any comparisons would surely be unduly exaggerated and cruel.

Thus it's hardly surprising that, when pressed to choose a commander, Edward floundered into a compromise. It wasn't one person, but two, which jointly controlled the English vanguard across the border into Scotland. Nor were the Earls of Hereford and Gloucester precisely working together, as they rode north towards Stirling Castle.

Such fracture lines were unforeseen by the Scots, but were exploited to the utmost at the battle of Bannockburn.

The Earls of Hereford and Gloucester, along with all their peers behind them, pretty much laughed in his face.

Furious and frustrated, they were spoiling for violence and bloody vengeance. If they couldn't murder King Edward or each other, then they might as well take down some Scots. All notions of continued diplomacy were strangled before they even took hold.

Sir Philip Mowbray had not spent two months twiddling his thumbs. While Robert the Bruce drilled his troops and dug 'pots' into the terrain, the English were watching from the turrets of Stirling Castle. 

"Do not enter Bannockburn!" The English garrison commander now warned. He relayed all of his intelligence about how the landscape had been configured to suit the Scots. Mowbray had identified the danger, seen how the English could become ensnared.

His advice was ignored, or not passed along. The battle would commence. Bruce's Scottish army were positioned on Bannockburn field, so that's where the English would go in order to fight them.

It probably goes without saying that this heated dismissal of Mowbray's observations did not end well for the English. It placed them exactly where Robert the Bruce hoped they'd be. Now he could bring into play all those terrain preparations, designed to bog down the English and turn their greater numbers against them.

The Scots must have wondered if it was their birthday. But this was Bannockburn, so in many ways, it was. Now all Bruce had to do was use the gift of bloody-minded English complacency to give Scotland a fighting chance of victory.