 The
Auld Alliance with France, 1295-6
In 1295-6
the Scots declared their intentions to Edward I, signing the Auld
Alliance with England’s enemy, France. It was a declaration of
war. The treaty made no immediate military difference, but recruiting
the French as allies made Scotland’s future an issue for Christendom
at large.
Edward’s
response was swift. The Scottish border-town of Berwick, second
only to London in economic importance in medieval Britain, was sacked.
Edward’s army quickly stormed its wooden walls with horrific
consequences for all inside.
‘When
the town had been taken in this way and its citizens
had submitted, Edward spared no one, whatever the
age or sex, and for two days streams of blood flowed
from the bodies of the slain, for in his tyrannous
rage he ordered 7,500 souls of both sexes to be massacred...So
that mills could be turned round by the flow of their
blood.’
Account of the Massacre of Berwick, from Bower’s
Scotichronicon
Marching
north, Edward crushed the Scots army at Dunbar before
penetrating into the scottish heartland, north of the
Forth. King John Balliol was forced to surrender and was
humiliated at Stracathro Churchyard. There he was stripped
of the crown, his insignia ripped from his coat (giving
him the nickname ‘toom tabard’, meaning empty
coat), before he and much of the Scots nobility were imprisoned
in England. However, for Edward 'Longshanks', conquest
and ritual humiliation were not enough.
He set about stripping Scotland of its lodestones of identity, just
as he had done to the Welsh in 1282. The Stone of Destiny, on which
the Scottish Kings were inaugurated, the crown, and one of the Scots’
holiest relics, the Black Rood of St Margaret (believed to be a piece
of the True Cross), were all taken south. His aim was nothing less
than the destruction of the Scots nation and its total incorporation
into his kingdom. As he left Scotland, Edward was reported to remark
- ‘A man does good work when he rids himself of shit.’
William
Wallace, Guardian of Scotland
Edward’s conquest was not yet secure. Within
a year, in 1297, he had lost control of Scotland.
Risings led by two knights, William Wallace in the
south and Andrew Murray in the north, loosened his
grip. The grip was finally broken at the Battle of
Stirling Bridge.
Wallace and
Murray's victory was a stunning achievement, not just because the
Scots had not defeated the English in battle for centuries, but
because for the first time in the history of medieval battles a
superior force of heavily armed knights had been defeated by a small
army of spearmen. Unfortunately
Murray was fatally wounded, but Wallace was proclaimed Guardian
of Scotland and took the war to English soil, raiding deep into
northern England.
Humbled,
the English nobility united behind Edward. In 1298
he invaded Scotland again and this time defeated Wallace
at The Battle of Falkirk. In defeat, Wallace resigned
the Guardianship of Scotland, but the struggle continued.
Many Scots had resolved to fight until the end.
War
and Diplomacy 1298-1304
Every year for six years Edward led his army north
to attack Scottish strongholds in a bitter war that
laid waste to the south of Scotland.
From Edward’s point of view the war was bearing
little fruit. Even more worrying was the fact that
the Scots appeared to be winning on the diplomatic
front. William Wallace was dispatched to the court
of Philip IV in France to drum up support. The Scottish
Church, directed by Bishop Lamberton, appealed directly
to the papacy (the equivalent of the UN in medieval
Christendom) and seemed to be getting a sympathetic
hearing. By 1302 it seemed that the Scots were on
the verge of victory, with the exiled Balliol ready
to return to claim the crown.
However,
events would soon turn against the Scots. In the politics
of the Scottish Guardianship, the Comyns, supporters
of Balliol, had sidelined the Bruces, who, faced with
Balliol’s return, again submitted to Edward I.
Eventually
Edward prevailed in the diplomatic game with the French
and the Pope, who needed the English for his latest Crusade
against Islam more than he needed the Scots. By 1304 it
looked like Balliol was not to return after all, and,
exhausted after seven years of war and diplomatic defeat,
the Scots’ nobility capitulated and cut a deal. Edward
had triumphed.
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