The Human Cost
75,000
estimated total dead
Each dot below represents 1,000 human lives. Scroll to watch the scale unfold.
55,000 soldiers killed in combat, from wounds, or from disease. Each = 1,000 lives.
20,000 civilians killed — from violence, famine, disease, and displacement. Wars are not fought only by soldiers.
incl. 7,500 civilians
How Scottish Independence's dead compare to other conflicts and events.
7,500 dead
The death toll of the 1296 sack of Berwick is disputed — medieval chroniclers claimed figures from a few thousand to an implausible 15,000–60,000; the true number is unknown but the massacre was real and enormous for a single town.
10,000 dead
Casualty figures for medieval battles are estimates drawn from chronicles that rarely counted the dead precisely; Bannockburn's English losses in particular are impossible to fix, though the defeat was catastrophic.
55,000 dead
No reliable overall casualty count exists for the wars; the totals here are broad modern estimates spanning both wars of independence from 1296 to 1357.