The Arsenal

The backbone of the Scottish army was the common footman armed with a twelve-foot spear, drilled to stand shoulder to shoulder in the schiltron — a bristling ring or block of pike-points that no cavalry could break. At Stirling Bridge and Bannockburn these formations destroyed English knights; at Falkirk and Halidon Hill they proved deadly when stationary but vulnerable to arrows.

The war-winning weapon of the age: a six-foot yew bow of enormous draw weight that could loose a heavy arrow every few seconds and pierce mail at range. Massed by the hundred, longbowmen turned the tightly-packed Scottish schiltrons into targets, shooting them apart before the spears could close — decisive at Falkirk (1298), Dupplin Moor (1332), and Halidon Hill (1333).

The mounted man-at-arms on his heavy destrier, encased in mail and increasingly in plate, was the shock arm and social elite of both armies. A massed charge of knights could ride down infantry — but on the boggy, constricted fields the Scots repeatedly chose, and against unbroken schiltrons, the charge bogged down and the knight became vulnerable.

The single-handed battle-axe and the long-hafted Lochaber axe were favoured Scottish close-combat weapons. The most famous blow of the wars was struck with one: on the eve of Bannockburn, Robert the Bruce, caught alone, split the skull of the charging English knight Sir Henry de Bohun with a single axe-stroke, rising in his stirrups as the horse passed.

Both sides fielded crossbowmen — often mercenaries — whose heavy bolts could punch through armour, though their slow reload made them far less prolific in fire than the longbow. Crossbows were especially useful in the many sieges of the wars, shot from and against castle walls.

Control of Scotland's stone castles — Stirling, Edinburgh, Roxburgh, Berwick — was the strategic prize of the wars, garrisons of a few dozen dominating whole regions. Edward I built and held them; Bruce made a policy of taking them by surprise and then slighting them (tearing down their walls) so the English could never re-garrison them against him.

Taking a castle meant siegecraft: the trebuchet and mangonel hurling stones, belfries and scaling ladders, mining beneath the walls, and blockade by starvation. Edward I famously built a giant trebuchet nicknamed 'Warwolf' to batter Stirling Castle in 1304, so impressive that he reportedly refused the garrison's surrender until he had seen it fire.

Unable to match English cavalry and archery in the open, the Scots shaped the battlefield itself. At Loudoun Hill and Bannockburn, Bruce dug ditches and concealed pits ('pots') to channel and trip the English horse, and strewed caltrops — spiked iron devices — to lame the destriers, funnelling the enemy onto the waiting spears.

The oared galleys of the western seaboard and isles — descendants of the Viking longship — gave Bruce vital mobility during his fugitive years, carrying men between the Hebrides, Ireland, and the mainland when the land routes were closed. The sea-lords of the west were crucial allies in his survival and recovery.

Beyond the spear, Scottish fighters carried swords and the long dagger known as the dirk for the press of close combat once formations broke. The knightly arming sword was standard among the men-at-arms of both nations; the great two-handed swords for which Scotland later became famous largely postdate these wars.

The knights and wealthier men-at-arms of the age wore the mail hauberk, increasingly reinforced with plate defences for the limbs and a great helm or bascinet — the transitional armour between the mail of the Crusades and the full plate of the later Middle Ages. Common spearmen made do with padded jacks and iron caps.