Edward, after a feeble invasion in 1310, retreated from a land laid desolate by the Scots.
In 1311 Bruce carried the war into England, seconded by the most audacious if the least skilled of his captains, his daring brother Edward. For two years the north of England, as far south as Durham and Chester, was the prey of the Scots, and some English counties secured themselves by paying an indemnity. The castles of Carlisle and Berwick, however, repelled the assailants, but Perth was surprised, in January 1313, Bruce himself leading the advance. Randolph, earl of Murray, took the chief hold in the country, Edinburgh castle, by scaling the precipitous rock to the north, while a feigned attack was being made on the accessible southern front. In short almost every castle held by the English was captured, and the fortifications were destroyed.
In the spring of 1313 Edward Bruce invested Stirling castle, the key of Scotland; on midsummer day he accepted a pact for the surrender of the place if not relieved within a year. This was a heedless piece of chivalry on Edward's part. It gave the English king, less opposed by his nobles since his favourite, Gaveston, was slain, time to muster a large army, which Bruce must meet, if at all, in the open field. Edward II. not only summoned English but Irish levies, and knights of Hainault, Bretagne, Gascony and Aquitaine crowded to his standard. The estimates of numbers by the old writers are usually much exaggerated; modern authorities reckon King Edward's army at 50,000 of whom 10,000 were cavalry. Old accounts put the infantry at 100,000, the horsemen at 40,000. Bruce had but five hundred horse, under Keith the Marischal; Douglas led the levies of his own district and Ettrick Forest; Randolph commanded the men of Moray; Walter Steward, those of the south-western shires; and Angus Og brought to the Scottish standard the light-footed men of the Isles, and, probably, of Lochaber, Moidart, and the western coast in general. Bruce commanded the people of Carrick and probably of his old earldom, Annandale.
Moving out from the Torwood forest, Bruce arrayed his force so as to guard either the Roman road through St Ninians, or Bannockburn the way through the Carse, which was then studded with marshes and small lakes. The former route appeared to be chosen by the English, and Bruce stationed his army in a position where it was defended by a cleugh, or ravine of the Bannockburn, and by two morasses between which was a practicable but narrow neck of firm land. Randolph, on Bruce's left, was to guard against a rush of English cavalry to relieve Stirling castle. The Macdonald tradition is that their clan was on the right wing, under Angus Og; the old accounts place them with Bruce's reserves. Three hundred English horsemen appear to have stolen round Randolph's flank unseen by him, and Bruce is said to have warned him that “a rose had fallen from his chaplet.” Randolph advanced with his footmen against the English horse, who unwarily accepted his challenge and were defeated by his spearmen. While Edward's army paused, Bruce, mounted on a palfrey, was attacked by Sir Henry Bohun. Bruce evaded his spear and slew him with an axe stroke; the axe shaft broke in his hand. The omens were evil for England; and her forces bivouacked, reserving the general attack for the following day. Bruce is said to have proposed retreat and a guerilla war, but his council were for fighting.
In the general engagement, next day, the English cavalry could not break the “impenetrable wood” of the Scottish spearmen, who, however, were galled by the arrows of the English bowmen, which had broken their formation at Falkirk. Bruce bade Keith, with his five hundred horse, charge the archers in flank: apparently they were unprotected by pikes; they were broken, and the great peril passed away. The Scottish archers charged with axe in hand, and the Scottish right front was protected by a mass of fallen English horses and fighting men; the rear ranks of the English, clogged and crowded, could not reach the foe, and the line of Scottish spears pressed steadily and slowly forward. Now a panic was caused by a rush of camp followers from the “gillie's hill”: the English wavered; Bruce commanded an advance of his whole line: the English rout was general, and, had Bruce possessed cavalry, few would have escaped. The Bannockburn was choked with the fallen, and it was only by hard spurring that Edward and his guards reached Dunbar, whence he sailed to Berwick. An immense booty and many ransoms rewarded the Scots, whose victory was one of the decisive battles of the world. It was won by the generalship of Bruce and his captains; by the excellence of his position, by the steadiness of his men, and, obviously, by the reckless fury of the English cavalry, and by the folly which left their archers open to defeat by the Marischal's handful of horse (24th of June 1314).
Bruce now swept the country, but Carlisle he could not take. He married his daughter, Marjory, to the Steward, and from this union came the Stewart (Stuart) dynasty. The invasion of Ireland by Edward Bruce failed (1315-1318), and Edward fell in battle: after which (1318) parliament settled the crown in the Steward's line, failing male descendants of Robert Bruce. He disdained the pope's efforts to make peace with England, except on terms of absolute independence for his country. He took and held Berwick, and (14th of October 1322) defeated Edward with heavy loss near Byland Abbey in Yorkshire, where the highlanders scaled a cliff and drove the English from a formidable position. A thirteen years' truce was arranged in 1323: the pope removed his excommunication from Bruce, and acknowledged him as king: a son, David, was born to him in 1324.
The murder of Edward II. (1327) was followed by successful Scottish raids in the north, and in May 1328 the Treaty of Bruce's death and work. Northampton sealed the triumph of Scotland. David Bruce was to marry Joanna of England: Bruce was recognized as king: former owners of forfeited lands, with three exceptions, were not to be restored. This led, after Bruce's death, to an invasion by the disinherited English ci-devant lords of lands in Scotland, and to a long war from which Scotland was only “saved as by fire.” Bruce died, outworn by war and hardships, on the 7th of June 1329: his body was buried in Dunfermline abbey; his heart, which Douglas was bearing to the Holy Land, was brought home again, after Douglas's chivalrous death in battle with the Moors in Spain.
Bruce, previously so shifty, had never wavered or turned back since he smote the Red Comyn at Dumfries. In face of obstacles apparently insurmountable he had made a nation, consolidating all the forces which Wallace had stirred into life. There is, perhaps, nothing in the history of medieval Europe which so closely resembles a voice from ancient Greece as the reply of the nobles and the whole communitas of Scotland to the pope (parliament of Aberbrothock, 6th of April 1320). They will be liegemen of Bruce only so long as he resists England. As long as a hundred Scots are left alive, they will continue the war for freedom, “which no good man loses save with his life.” They show that the barbarities of Edward I. (which he regarded as reprisals) have made it eternally impossible for Scotland to yield to an English king. Their excommunication by Rome does not trouble them at all. They are free from Rome, from England, from all alien powers. Henceforth, through good and evil fortune, this was the spirit of the nation.
The most important point in constitutional history was the action of a parliament at Cambuskenneth, near Stirling, in 1326. The representatives of the burghs were present: they made a grant of all tenths to the king during his life; while they covenanted with him that he should collect no other taxes and should exercise the privileges of prisiae et cariagia with moderation. The long wars had been adverse to commerce, for which ransoms and the booty of Bannockburn made inadequate compensation. But the great abbey church of St Andrews was, none the less, completed, to stand for some two hundred and forty years, and was dedicated in the presence of Bruce.
The brilliant and sustained effort which made Scotland independent was almost paralysed by the deaths of Bruce and
