Bannockburn 1314: Bruce's Axe Blow and Schiltrons That Sank English Knights

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By 1313 Robert the Bruce held a disputed crown and was still fighting Balliol loyalists as well as the English. When his brother Edward Bruce besieged Stirling Castle, its English commander agreed to surrender unless relieved by midsummer 1314, which forced Edward II to march. The English king brought up to 25,000 men from England, Wales and Ireland, including 2,000 heavy cavalry, pushing them 70 miles in a week. Bruce had perhaps 5,000 to 8,000 men, almost all infantry with axes, swords and long pikes, plus about 500 light horse. He chose the New Park woods above the carse of Balquhiderock, a tidal floodplain of clay and peat hemmed in by the River Forth and the Bannock Burn.

On 23 June, Sir Henry de Bohun charged the lightly armed Bruce on his pony and was killed by one axe blow, and Thomas Randolph's schiltron routed a second English detachment. That night the Scottish knight Alexander Seton defected from the English camp and reported its collapse in morale. On 24 June Bruce sent his four schiltrons forward on the attack, something even William Wallace had not managed at Falkirk. Hemmed in by the stream, English cavalry crushed itself, archers hit their own knights, and Sir Robert Keith's horse scattered the bowmen. Stirling surrendered, and in 1328 the Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton recognized Bruce as king.

• An English source, the Vita Edwardi Secundi, describes the de Bohun encounter as a Scottish ambush rather than a duel.
• Seeing the Scots kneel to pray, Edward II supposedly said they prayed for mercy, and an attendant replied it was from God, not him.
• The Earl of Gloucester, called a coward by the king for urging delay, charged alone and was killed.
• Sir Giles d'Argentan escorted Edward off the field, then rode back into the Scottish spears and died.
• Some 11,000 English infantry and 700 knights were reported killed or drowned, and Bruce had Stirling Castle razed.