PART TWO
Great was the task that Robert Bruce took upon himself and unbearable the burdens upon his shoulders. His mishaps, flights and dangers; hardships and weariness; hunger and thirst; watchings and fastings; nakedness and cold; snares and banishment; the seizing, imprisoning, slaughter and downfall of his near ones and – even more – his dear ones no-one now living, I think, recollects or is equal to rehearsing.
But if there were one to tell how with a glad and dauntless heart Robert Bruce triumphed single handed over all the ill-luck and numberless straits through which he went: the victories and battles, where, by the Lord’s help, by his own strength and by his human manhood he cut fearlessly his way into the columns of the enemy, now mightily bearing these down and now mightily warding off and escaping the pains of death – then such a one, I deem, would prove that in the art of fighting and in vigour of body, Robert had not his match in his time in any clime.
John Fordun’s fourteenth-century Chronicle of the Scottish Nation
King Edward was about to hold his Lenten court in Winchester when he received the news of Comyn’s murder and the revolt of Bruce. A terrible rage possessed him. His clemency had been abused, his trust betrayed. The whole realm of England must be roused to crush a stubborn and ungrateful people. Hoisting his long legs, which had now become unwieldly, into a horse-drawn litter, he was borne to London. From there he issued a proclamation throughout the country that at the Feast of Pentecost, 22 May, he would bestow a knighthood on his son, the Prince of Wales, and that all esquires eligible for that honour should repair to Westminster to be knighted in their turn by their future King and march with him against the perfidious Scots.
On the appointed day, some three hundred of the flower of English youth received their accolade in the Abbey church and then attended a banquet at the Temple presided over by the King. Two swans enmeshed in golden chains were laid before him on the table and all the knights there present swore upon these never to rest until the kingdom of Scotland had been subdued. The King then rose and vowed, ‘Before God and the swans’, to avenge the death of Comyn and the insult to the Church, and when this had been accomplished never again to bear arms against a Christian but only against the heathen in the Holy Land.
A shout of acclamation greeted his words and the Prince of Wales, responding to the heady enthusiasm of the new-made knights, swore before them all never to sleep two nights in the same place until he had reached Scotland. A great army was set in train and made for Carlisle under his command, while behind him his father followed in slow and painful stages because of his infirmities.1
But long before the bizarre pageant of the swans, King Edward had taken more mundane measures. Troops and provisions had been sent to strengthen the garrisons of Berwick and Carlisle against invasion.2 Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, cousin of the King and brother-in-law of the murdered Comyn, had been appointed special lieutenant for Scotland and ordered, with Sir Henry Percy and Sir Robert Clifford, to march against the rebels with an army drawn from the northern counties.3 No mercy was to be shown. All taken in arms and all who had given them shelter were to be executed without trial. All who had been concerned in Comyn’s death and those who had joined their ranks were to suffer the ghastly fate of William Wallace.4
Armed with these plenary powers and accompanied by a picked body of 3000 mounted men, Pembroke rode swiftly north. Many Scottish nobles related to the dead Comyn joined his forces as he made for the Forth crossing, and without opposition he reached Perth early in June and secured the town with numbers now increased to 6000. His progress was so rapid that he surprised and captured the Bishop of Glasgow at Cupar Castle, Fife, which that churchman ‘comme homme de guerre’ had recently seized from the English,5 and hard by in Kinross, the Bishop of St Andrews, after urging his tenantry to join the forces of Bruce, submitted his person. Only their cloth saved them from the gallows. They were sent under escort to King Edward, who cast them in irons into the dungeons of Porchester and Winchester castles respectively.6
The loss of two of the three foremost leaders of the Scottish Church was a grievous blow to Bruce, but the clergy remained faithful to his cause and rejected without hesitation the papal excommunication against him which King Edward had asked for and received. The remaining bishop, the Bishop of Moray, who had not sued for peace even during King Edward’s massive sweep through Scotland in 1304 but had retreated into the mountain fastnesses of the Cairngorms, now laid his firm hands on the reins of clerical control. Throughout his diocese in the Mounth he never ceased to preach and exhort his flock that ‘they were not less deserving of merit who rebelled with Sir Robert to help against the English King and his men … than if they should fight in the Holy Land against pagans and Saracens.’7
It was to this province that, after his coronation, Bruce made his way, there to recruit an army to make head against an English invasion. His forces were too thin to man the borders. Apart from the four earls who attended his crowning at Scone, only a little over a hundred landed knights had rallied to his call, and of these two-thirds came from the country north of the Forth and Clyde.8 Even before his coronation Dumfries had been recaptured by his enemies in the heart of his own domain of Annandale. But in the northeast was a complex of support: the men from his own lordship of Garioch, from the estates of the Earl of Atholl in Strathaan and Strathbegie, from the domains of his ward the young Earl of Mar, from the followers of the Bishop of Moray. So, leaving his Queen and her little court of women under the care of Nigel Bruce, his youngest brother, at Kildrummy Castle, he canvassed throughout the area until he had raised a force of some 4500 men. On hearing of the Earl of Pembroke’s approach, he moved south and on 18 June drew up before the walls of Perth.
He had neither the numbers nor the siege engines to invest the town so, resorting to an old chivalric tradition, he rode to the city gates and challenged Pembroke either to bring out his men to fight or to surrender the town. Pembroke replied that the day was too far advanced for combat but on the following morning he would accept his challenge.9
Bruce must have known the earl at the English court and regarded him as a man of honour, for when he had withdrawn his men to bivouack for the night near Methven,10 some six miles away, in a wood on the high ground south of the Almond river, he did not trouble to set out pickets, relying on Pembroke’s word. He had failed to realize either the intense pressure put on Pembroke by King Edward to capture Bruce or the virulence of the blood feud of the Scottish nobles who were with the earl. In these circumstances honour played no part.
Some of Bruce’s men were foraging for fodder, some cooking their supper, some disarmed and sleeping when the English fell upon them in the summer dusk.11 There was a wild scramble for arms and horses and a desperate hand to hand struggle ensued. At the first onset Bruce engaged the Earl of Pembroke and slew his horse,12 but in the mêlée he himself was unhorsed, and as he was mounting again Sir Philip Mowbray seized his horse’s bridle and, in the words of John Barbour:
called aloud ‘Help, Help. I have the new-made king.’ With that Christopher Seton, when he saw the King seized by his foe, came spurring straight, striking to right and left, and dealt Mowbray such a blow that, though he was of great strength, it made him reel dizzily and had sent him altogether to the ground but that he held by his horse. Then he let go the King’s bridle, and Bruce, raising his battle cry rallied his men at hand.13
But outnumbered and taken unawares his army had no chance. Twice more he was unhorsed and twice rescued14 until a little group of his knights, the Earl of Atholl, Edward Bruce, James Douglas, Neil Campbell and Gilbert de la Haye, closed round him and in a tight phalanx broke through the cordon of the English and disappeared into the night.
It was a shattering defeat. In a few hours Bruce’s only coherent force had been destroyed. Many of his bravest and most devoted followers, Sir Alexander Fraser, Sir David Inchmartin, Sir Hugh de la Haye, Sir John Somerville, Alexander Scrymgeour, the royal standard bearer, and his nephew Thomas Randolph, were taken in the field and others, among them those two stalwart veterans Sir Christopher Seton and Sir Simon Fraser, were rounded up from the castles to which they had fled. A savage vengeance was exacted.
The normal civilities of war by which a knight could ransom his life were brushed aside by a king of England whose hate transcended traditional codes. All who were captured were treated as outlaws and were hanged or beheaded or drawn and quartered without trial.15 Only Thomas Randolph was protected by the friendship of the Earl of Pembroke and granted pardon in return for his promise henceforth to fight for the English.
The Prince of Wales and his young companions, who had pushed north from Carlisle and captured Lochmaben, spread over the south of Scotland in the wake of Pembroke and dishonoured the vows of chivalry, which they had sworn at the altar in their midnight vigils before they were knighted, by such merciless severity against the lesser folk that even King Edward was moved to restrain their excesses.16 All the Lowlands of Scotland were cowed into submission.
Bruce and his handful of knights had taken refuge in the mountains of Atholl, and after remaining there for several weeks, comfortless and hungry in the heather, so that stragglers from the battle of Methven could join them, they drew down Deeside to Aberdeen. From there Bruce sent word to his brother Nigel to bring to him from Kildrummy his Queen, the Countess of Buchan, his daughter Marjorie and his two sisters, Mary, wife of his comrade Neil Campbell, and Christina, now twice widowed, first by the death of her husband the Earl of Mar and then by the execution of her second husband, Christopher Seton.17
It was essential for him to bring them under his protection, however inconvenient they might be to a fighting force, for, after the battle of Methven, King Edward had ordered his heralds to proclaim throughout the country that all the wives of his enemies were to be treated as outlaws. Any man, as he might wish, could rob, rape or murder them immune from punishment.18
Whether it was Bruce’s intention to embark from Aberdeen and seek aid from Norway, where his eldest sister Isabel was Dowager Queen, no one knows. He may have been dissuaded by the Bishop of Moray, since subsequent events indicate that he did meet the bishop there and that together they worked out a plan for the renewal of the struggle in the spring of 1307. All that is certain is that the bishop made his way to the Orkneys, which belonged to Norway, and that Bruce and his womenfolk with a force of some five hundred men, on learning that the Earl of Pembroke was advancing towards them, struck east to the mountainous region on the borders of Perthshire and Argyll in an attempt to reach the Western Isles where old friends of the family, the Macdonalds of Islay, held sway.
Early in August Bruce had reached Tyndrum, the head of Strathfillan, beyond Loch Tay, and had camped near the shrine of St Fillan of Glenlochart.19
This holy man of the sixth century was the most venerated of early Scottish saints, and it was not without purpose that Bruce had halted his little army beside his tomb. The sacrilege committed in Grey friars church weighed upon Bruce’s conscience and could shake with superstitious fears the faith of his followers. So here, on a spot hallowed by the most ancient of Scottish churches, it is believed that, as his men gathered about him, he knelt for absolution before the Abbot of Inchafray and received his blessing for all to hear. He had little time to spare.
The hillside on which he was carrying out this ceremony was within the domains of the Lord of Lorne, a son-in-law of the murdered Comyn and vengeful for his kinsman’s death. When Lorne received news of Bruce’s approach, he mustered his Macdougall clansmen, and with other barons of Argyll blocked the head of the pass to which Bruce was making his way. On 11 August, as Bruce and his small band of knights were riding up the narrow defile at Dairy where they had no room to deploy, Lorne launched his attack. The half-naked Highlanders, swarming down from the slopes on either side, slashed at the bellies and legs of the horses with their long Lochaber axes and brought many to the ground. James Douglas and Gilbert de la Haye were wounded and others unhorsed and slain.20
Apprehensive of the danger to his women if all his horses should be lost, Bruce gave the order to retreat and for his women to be lodged and defended in a small castle on an island in Loch Dochart which he had passed on his way to Strathfillan.21
The route was along a narrow track between a steep hillside and the loch. On this track Bruce stationed himself at the rear of his diminished forces, turning again and again to face and check the pursuing Highlanders. The Lord of Lorne, angry at the manner in which Bruce kept them at bay, ordered a father and two sons from the MacIndrosser clan to race along the hillside and ambush him at a place where the loch and the rock face met so close that a horse could hardly turn. As Bruce passed beneath them, they leapt upon him. One son seized his bridle but had his arm and shoulder cut from his body by the stroke of Bruce’s sword. The other son took hold of his leg intending to unseat him, but Bruce spurred his horse forward so that his assailant lost his footing and was dragged along with his hand trapped between horse and stirrup; the father leapt on the horse’s crupper and clasped Bruce’s cloak so close to his body that he could not use his sword blade, but Bruce, striking back violently with the pommel of that weapon, dislodged him and split his skull as he fell and then cut down the man whose hand was trapped. When the pursuers saw this feat of arms, they were afraid to follow him, and without further disturbance he rejoined his troops and bivouacked for the night.22
Bruce had saved part of his force but his losses of men and horses were severe and the risks to his women very great.
Realizing that the only route to the west accessible to them was blocked by his enemies, Bruce altered his plans. Handing over all the surviving horses to his brother Nigel Bruce and the Earl of Atholl, he ordered them to escort the Queen and her companions with as many men as could be mounted back to Kildrummy Castle. When the women had recovered sufficiently from their hardships, the earl should conduct them as best he could to rejoin the Bishop of Moray in the Norway-held Orkneys, while Nigel should fortify and defend the castle against the advancing English to hold them in check as long as possible. Meanwhile Bruce and his remaining followers would take to the heather and bypass his foes to the south.23
When the little group of women with their cavalcade of mounted men had disappeared out of sight, Bruce and his companion knights divested themselves of their mail and, armed only with their swords, daggers and bows, made their way on foot by Glen Ogle south to Balquhidder24 where they lay up in a cave. Bruce’s object was now the castle of Dunaverty at the tip of Kintyre peninsula, to which he had sent victuals and arms soon after his capture of Dumfries. If he could cross to the west of Loch Lomond, he would find himself in the country of the Earl of Lennox, his constant supporter, of whom he had heard nothing since the battle of Methven, and from there could pass to the Campbell lands in the mountains, which push like a huge fist southwards between Loch Fyne and the Firth of Clyde, and so by sea to Kintyre.25
To this end he sent ahead his brother-in-law, Sir Neil Campbell, with a small body of followers to go to his kinsmen and arrange with them for boats and provisions to be made ready for the sea voyage to Dunaverty, and he appointed a time and a place for their meeting.26
Soon after Campbell’s departure from Balquidder, Bruce and his little contingent of knights and men travelled southwest by rough tracks through the wooded hillsides, enduring great cold and hunger, reduced to a diet of roots and berries and such small game as they could snare or net. Eventually they found shelter in a cave at Craigroyston under the shadow of Ben Lomond.27 From there they searched for boats to carry them to the western shore of Loch Lomond so as to avoid the long trek round its northern end which would bring them into the hostile territory of the MacDougalls.
But no boats could be found until James Douglas discovered one sunk among the reeds which, after it was drawn ashore and emptied, was capable of carrying three persons at a time.28
Bruce and Douglas were first rowed over and then two at a time the rest were ferried across while Bruce related to those who had landed tales from a French romance.29 When all were gathered together, Bruce divided them into two parties between himself and James Douglas to hunt for venison, for they were near starvation. As the two parties beat up the quarry towards each other blowing their horns, the Earl of Lennox, who had escaped to his homelands and was also hunting in that area, heard them and, recognizing the note of Bruce’s horn, came quickly towards him, and when they saw each other they embraced with tears of joy for each had believed the other to be dead at Methven.30
The earl took them to his encampment and gave them food and drink, and when they had finished he went with them to where Sir Neil Campbell had galleys waiting and from there they sailed down the Firth of Clyde, past the Isle of Bute, to Dunaverty where they were welcomed by Angus Macdonald of the Isles.31
But the Earl of Lennox, delaying to give final instructions to his thanes before he departed, was almost captured by the galleys of the Lord of Lorne which were searching the waters for Bruce. Hurriedly launching a boat, he only escaped by throwing overboard all his goods except his armour so as to lighten the ballast and tempt his pursuers to pause to collect the booty.32
During this time, Nigel Bruce and his party of women had made their way through the mountains of Atholl and Braemar to the castle of Kildrummy on Deeside. When they arrived they were greeted with the news that the Earl of Pembroke was already installed in Aberdeen33 and was only waiting for the arrival of the Prince of Wales and his army with their complement of siege engines to attack the castle. The ladies therefore continued their journey northwards towards the Orkneys under the guidance of the Earl of Atholl. For some hundred miles they travelled safely, but in Easter Ross their fortune changed. The Earl of Ross, a supporter of the Comyns, heard of their presence and sent a party to apprehend them. They took refuge in the hallowed sanctuary of St Duthac at Tain on the shore of Dornoch Firth. But the power of the saint was unable to preserve them. They were seized and dispatched under an armed guard to the brooding presence of the English King, who had taken up his residence at the monastery of Lanercost.34
At Kildrummy matters had fared no better. The castle was one of the most formidable in Scotland, well provisioned and manned and capable in ordinary circumstances of withstanding a long siege. Day after day, Nigel Bruce and his men beat off every attack with such loss to the enemy that they considered abandoning the siege and returning to England.
But what force could not effect was achieved by treachery. Bribed by the promise of English gold, the castle’s blacksmith, Osborne, threw a red-hot ploughshare into the corn store. The flames spread from this to the wooden buildings within the castle grounds so that the garrison was driven to the narrow walk along the battlements. The castle gate was burned, the English entered and, after resisting for a night and a day, the defenders, attacked from both sides, surrendered.35 The blacksmith received his reward. Having covenanted for as much gold as he could carry, the English fulfilled their bargain by pouring it molten down his throat.36
King Edward took instant revenge for the wound which the rebellion of Robert Bruce had inflicted upon his pride. Nigel Bruce, known to his contemporaries as ‘a young knight of exceeding beauty’,37 and all who were taken prisoner with him, were dragged through the streets of Berwick and hanged and then beheaded. The Earl of Atholl was conducted to Westminster and there, in response to the claim of his peers that in virtue of his royal blood he should be treated differently from other men, King Edward granted this distinction, with sardonic humour, by having him led on a horse rather than dragged to his place of execution, and there suspended from a gallows thirty feet higher than the normal and, when he had been cut down and beheaded, by having his head hoisted on a pole on London Bridge taller than all the other grisly relics erected there for the edification of the populace.38
The women were spared death but King Edward conceived for them a punishment peculiarly humiliating to their sex. The Countess of Buchan, whose dash to the coronation of Robert Bruce had caused the English Court to accuse her of being his mistress,39 and Mary Bruce, whose husband Sir Neil Campbell was still in arms with her brother, were the objects of his greatest displeasure. For them he ordained that wooden cages should be built jutting from the battlements of Berwick and Roxburgh castles respectively,40and that within them they should be shut up as animals in a zoo, exposed to the gaze of passers-by41 with the only concession to their modesty the provision of privies within the walls.42 There for the next four years these two heroic young women each endured their solitary confinement with no communication except to the English maidservants who brought them their food and drink. A similar cage was prepared at the Tower of London for Robert Bruce’s twelve-year-old daughter Marjorie, with the express condition that she should not be allowed to hold converse with any but the constable of the Tower. So savage a sentence against an innocent child must have stirred the pity and sense of outrage of some about the King, for later he revoked the order and dispatched her to a nunnery at Walton.43 Christina Bruce, whose second husband Christopher Seton had so recently been hanged, drawn and quartered, perhaps for that reason was treated more leniently than her sister and was lodged in a convent at Sixhills in Lincolnshire.44
The last and most important prisoner was Queen Elizabeth, wife of Robert Bruce, through whom the greatest hurt could be done by King Edward to the man he now regarded as a viper nurtured in his bosom. But fortunately for her she was the daughter of the Earl of Ulster, a noble so valuable to the King that any offence against him was dangerous and impolitic. She was therefore only placed under house arrest in the manor of Burst wick-in-Holderness. She was allowed two ladies-in-waiting but it was specified that they should be ‘elderly and not at all gay’,45 and her conditions were such that she was forced to complain to the King that she had ‘neither attire for her person or head nor a bed nor furniture of her chamber’.46 She was to remain a prisoner for the next eight years.
No news of the fate of his family and friends had time to reach Bruce when he arrived at Dunaverty: only the unwelcome information from Angus Macdonald that Sir John de Botetourt and Sir John Menteith, with powerful English forces, were on their way to besiege the castle.47 To be cornered in a castle, however strong, on which all his enemies could converge by land and sea was a situation he had, at all costs, to avoid. He needed time, secrecy and mobility in order to gather together the men and ships for the renewal of his struggle. So, after three days’ respite, he slipped away by boat across thirteen miles of turbulent sea to the Isle of Rathlin off the north coast of Ireland.48
Only six months had passed since he had been crowned King of Scots and now his kingdom had shrunk to a little island six-and-a-half miles long and one-and-a-half miles wide. Against him was arrayed the might and wealth of England supported by some of the most powerful nobles of Scotland. But he had a toughness and determination so strong that he was inspired to undertake one of the most colossal gambles in history.
His one immediate advantage was the support of Angus Macdonald of the Isles, whose fleet of galleys dominated the western seas and gave him the freedom of manoeuvre to seek men and money for his cause. Agents were landed secretly in his earldom of Carrick to collect his Martinmas rents;49 his younger brothers were instructed to move into Northern Ireland to raise recruits from his estates in Antrim and those of James Stewart in Londonderry, and Bruce himself set sail for Garmoran in the Western Highlands where his sister-in-law by marriage, Christiana of the Isles, held sovereign sway.
Christiana was the widow of Duncan of Mar, brother of Bruce’s first wife Isabella and brother-in-law of Bruce’s sister Christina. As sole heiress of Alan Macruarie of Garmoran, she became, on his death, mistress of the lands of Arisaig, Moidart and Knoydart and of the islands of Uist, Barra, Rum, Eigg and Gigha.
Throughout the islands and highlands of Western Scotland, the King’s writ hardly ran. They were ruled by semi-independent chieftains whose support of Plantagenet, Comyn or Bruce was motivated rather by family relationships and clan quarrels than by the dictates of a central authority.
Robert Bruce throughout his life was attractive to women, and when he came to Christiana to seek her help kinship and inclination alike caused her to place her resources at his disposal. During the winter months, with her support, he toured her islands and her lands50 and those of her immediate neighbour, MacKenzie of Kintail,51 and still further north to the borders of Sutherland, with such effect that by January he had returned to Rathlin with a fleet of galleys and many men.
By then the English had discovered that he was no longer, as they had thought, in the besieged castle of Dunaverty, and on 29 January 1307 King Edward sent out orders for a fleet to seek him in the islands.52 But the orders were too late. Bruce had already left Rathlin to carry out a two-pronged attack on the mainland.
Some time during these months Sir Robert Boyd, who had been captured at Kildrummy with Nigel Bruce,53 had escaped his guards and found his way to Bruce. He brought him news of the flight of the Queen and her ladies north and of the fall of Kildrummy, but of their subsequent fate he knew nothing.
Now with Sir James Douglas he was sent ahead with a small raiding party to the Isle of Arran. Rowing close inshore along the eastern side of Kintyre peninsula until nightfall, they crossed unperceived to Brodrick Bay below the governor of Arran’s castle. There, hiding their galley and tackle close under the cliffs, they lay in wait until the morning.
It happened that the evening before, near to their place of concealment, the underwarden of the castle had arrived with three boats from the mainland, loaded with provisions, clothing and arms and beached them on the shore. At first light thirty or more English began to unload the boats for transit to the castle. At a signal from Douglas, his men fell upon them and killed them all.
When those in the castle heard the uproar below they hastily armed themselves and ran to their comrades’ rescue but Douglas, rallying his men, turned on them so savagely that the governor and most of his followers were killed before they could regain the safety of the castle. Douglas and his company now gathered up the arms and provisions and established themselves in a fortified camp at the head of Glen Coy to keep an eye on the castle and await the coming of their King.54
Ten days later, Robert Bruce with thirty-three small galleys made landfall at Drumadoon Bay on the west of Arran and reunited his forces preparatory to making a landing on the coast of Ayrshire. Ahead he sent by night a native of Carrick, called Cuthbert, to spy out the land and, if he found the people were willing to rise, to light a fire at Turnberry point on a day agreed between them.55
Meanwhile Bruce’s two younger brothers, Thomas and Alexander, accompanied by Sir Reginald Crawfurd and Malcolm McQuillan, an Irish chieftain, with several hundred recruits raised from Northern Ireland, set sail in eighteen ships for Galloway to drive inland and threaten the English lines of communication between Carlisle and Ayr and so facilitate the invasion by Bruce to the north. But their plans went badly wrong. On 9 February 1307, as their galleys entered Loch Ryan and tied up in the harbour or beached upon the shore, they were ambushed as they landed by the Macdowalls of Galloway who were allied to King Edward. Some were killed in the woods beyond the shore, some on the shore, many were drowned in the sea. All the rest, except a few who escaped in two galleys that were still seaborne, were captured. Malcolm McQuillan was beheaded on the spot. Thomas and Alexander Bruce and Sir Reginald Crawfurd, who had all been severely wounded, were taken alive to Carlisle and there by the order of King Edward were hanged, drawn and beheaded and their heads placed on spikes above the gates of the town.56
At the time of his brothers’ expedition, Bruce was waiting in Arran for the signal from his messenger. On the appointed day, about noon, a light was seen from the expected direction. Orders were given for the embarkation of his men, and a little before evening they put to sea and steered towards the fire which shone more brightly as the darkness fell. When eventually the galleys grounded upon the shingle of the further shore, a distracted Cuthbert emerged from the shadows to tell the King that someone else had lit the fire. He had hidden nearby to give warning that Turnberry Castle above them was garrisoned by Henry Percy and a hundred men. Two hundred more were quartered outside, and the English were so thick upon the ground throughout Carrick and so vicious in reprisals that no one dared rise against them.
When Bruce heard this he turned to consult with his companions. To seek to penetrate a hostile country with his tiny force would seem to be an act of unparallelled rashness. But his brother Edward expressed the feeling of them all when he exclaimed, ‘No peril shall drive me back to sea. Here I will take my chances, good or bad.’ Bruce replied that, if they were all agreed, their best chance of survival was to attack the troops in the village while they were sleeping unaware of the presence of an enemy.
Noiselessly they surrounded the cantonments and at a given signal fell upon the unsuspecting English with such success that all were killed except a single man who escaped to the castle.
In the castle Henry Percy heard the uproar from the fighting outside and called his men to arms but, uncertain in the darkness of the number of the attackers, dared not attempt a rescue. He shut himself up within the walls leaving a rich harvest of booty to the invaders, including his warhorses and his household plate. For three days Bruce remained on the outskirts of the castle and then, dividing the plunder among his Highlanders, disappeared with them into the mountains of Carrick.57
Hidden in the glens of the wild hill country he had known so well as a boy, Bruce took stock of his position. He had been brought up in the chivalric mode of combat. War was a sharpened extension of those tournaments in which he had so often excelled. The mailed warrior on his mighty horse thundered against an opponent distinguished only by the escutcheon on his surcoat, and though numbers counted so also did the skill in arms of each individual and a smaller force might overcome a larger if the combatants had more champions among their number. On this premise he had challenged the Earl of Pembroke outside Perth. Now, apart from his immediate companions – his brother Edward, James Douglas, Gilbert de la Haye, Robert Boyd, Neil Campbell and the Earl of Lennox – he had no accoutred knights among his following. He had little money, few chargers, no shock troops, nor could he forsee the time when he could match the long purses, the heavy cavalry and the siege machinery of the English forces. His men were cat-footed Highlanders, swift in movement, apt in concealment, artful in stalking, silent in execution. The whole mould of his military upbringing must be recast and adapted to different skills and different circumstances.
It is a measure of his genius that in his shifting headquarters in the heather he evolved a strategy from which he never willingly departed throughout his life. From now on he taught his nation the virtue of guerrilla warfare. The forest ambush, the sudden raid, the night attack, the scorched earth, the dismantling of fortresses, these were to become the hallmarks of his campaigns.* Meanwhile his immediate problem was to survive in a region where the inhabitants, whatever their instinctive sympathies, were too fearful of the omnipresent English to give him aid.
NOTES - CHAPTER 8
1 Flores Historiarum, ii, 586, 587
2 Cal. Doc. Scots, ii, 1748
3 ibid., ii, 1754
4 ibid., ii, 1908
5 Palgrave, 348, 349
6 Cal. Doc. Scots, ii, 1813
7 Palgrave, 330
8 Barron, 224–35
9 Barbour, 23
10 ibid., 25
11 ibid., 25
12 Langtoft, 261
13 Barbour, 27, 28
14 Flores Historiarum, ii, 588
15 ibid., ii, 588; Cal. Doc. Scots, ii, 1811
16 Cal. Doc. Scots, ii, 1909; Walsingham, 237
17 Barbour, 30
18 Pluscarden, 177
19 Barbour, 32
20 ibid., 34
21 ibid., 34 footnote
22 ibid., 36, 37
23 Barbour, 42
24 Local tradition
25 Barbour, 43
26 ibid., 43
27 Local tradition
28 Barbour, 44
29 ibid., 44
30 ibid., 45, 46
31 ibid., 48
32 ibid., 48
33 Cal. Doc Scots, ii, 1810
34 Barbour, 54
35 ibid., 57
36 Sampson, Official Guide, Kildrummy Castle
37 Flores Historiarum, ii, 591
38 ibid., ii, 591; Scalaronica, 33
39 Flores Historiarum, ii, 584
40 Cal. Doc. Scots, ii, 1851
41 Scalaronica, 31
42 Palgrave, 358
43 Cal. Doc. Scots, ii, 1910
44 ibid., ii, 1910
45 Palgrave, 357
46 Cal. Doc. Scots, ii, 1963
47 Cal. Doc. Scots, ii, 1833, 1834
48 Barbour, 51
49 Guisborough, 370
50 Fordun, 335; Pluscarden, 178
51 Local tradition that Bruce stayed at MacKenzie’s castle of Eilana-doon
52 Cal. Doc. Scots, ii, 1889
53 ibid., ii, 1829
54 Barbour, 63–5
55 ibid., 67
56 Guisborough, 370; Lanercost, 179, 180
57 Barbour, 75–7
* cf note V