Edward’s Scottish campaign began promisingly. On 17 or 18 June the king marched a formidable army out of Berwick. It was well equipped, well funded and well stocked. The wagon train was said to stretch seven leagues (roughly twenty miles) from end to end, while ships hugged the coast to keep the army provided. The army was easily the largest that had been raised for fifteen years, since Edward I’s Falkirk campaign of 1298. The earls of Gloucester, Hereford and Pembroke, Hugh Despenser and Roger Clifford all brought large contingents with them, and there were thousands more knights and infantry recruited both in the king’s personal retinue and in the army at large. Missing, however, were the earls of Lancaster, Warwick, Arundel and Surrey, who sent the minimum number of fighting men to which they claimed they were obliged under law. They argued, falsely, that the campaign was not properly agreed upon in parliament: the true reason was that these most extreme opponents of the king feared that if Edward was victorious in Scotland then he would be quite capable of turning on them and their lands in England.
At first it seemed like no great loss to a formidable force. Edward marched his men fifty miles north from Berwick, and the thunderous approach of the English army gave the impression, according to the author of The Life of Edward II, that it was ‘quite sufficient to penetrate the whole of Scotland … some thought that if the whole strength of Scotland had been gathered together, they would not have stayed to face the king’s army’. Unfortunately for Edward, that would not be the case. He arrived near Stirling on 23 June to find that Robert Bruce had camped a smaller army, consisting of 500 light cavalry and no more than 6,000 infantry, in the ‘New Park’, a leafy hunting ground on the road to Stirling. Half a mile away lay a stream known as the Bannock Burn, which regularly flooded the land around it, making it boggy and treacherous underfoot, conditions that Bruce’s men had deliberately worsened by digging potholes in the ground, which were disguised under piles of sticks and grass.
The battle of Bannockburn fell into two phases. The first, which took place on 23 June, was a day of skirmishing between English and Scottish knights. Henry de Bohun, the earl of Hereford’s nephew, challenged Robert Bruce himself to single combat. He had his head split clean in two with a blow of the Scottish king’s battleaxe and died on the spot. The 23-year-old Gilbert earl of Gloucester then wrought dissent in the English ranks by disputing the leadership of the vanguard with Hereford (who was constable of England). The vanguard was the foremost of the three traditional divisions of an army, and the honour of leading it was therefore substantial. Gloucester, however, gained little from winning the argument with Hereford, since he was knocked from his horse in combat and was fortunate to escape with his life. In a separate engagement on the same day, English cavalry aiming to reconnoitre a siege at Stirling castle were attacked by Scottish spearmen. Sir Thomas Gray had his horse killed under him and was captured, along with many other knights.
If this was an ominous beginning, then it was soon compounded by further divisions among the English ranks. After such a pathetic start, Gloucester argued overnight with the king. The earl believed that the troops, exhausted from the march north, urgently needed rest before they carried on the engagement with Bruce. Edward wished to fight on. He called the earl a traitor and a liar, and a furious argument erupted.
The following morning, as the armies drew up again for battle, Gloucester attempted to defend his honour. He began the fighting hot-headedly and recklessly by charging the English vanguard at the Scottish infantry. But far from achieving a feat of chivalrous derring-do, Gloucester was surrounded and killed in a seething crush of horses and men. This was the cue for a general slaughter of the English cavalry by Scottish spearmen, arranged in hedgehog schiltroms, as they had been at Falkirk in 1298. On that occasion Edward I’s archers had destroyed them with a deadly rain of arrows. But at Bannockburn, Edward kept his archers in the rear until too late, and his cavalry was run through on the sharp tips of Scottish spears.
As a battle turned into a chaotic massacre, Edward had to be dragged from the battlefield by the earl of Pembroke and Sir Giles d’Argentein – a man reputed as the third-greatest knight in the Christian world. The king fought bravely as he retreated, smashing at Scottish attackers with his mace, even though his horse was killed. Only through the force and will of Pembroke and Sir Giles was Edward removed from safety and a catastrophic capture averted. But there was a sickening end even to the king’s escape. Sir Giles, mindful of his knightly duty in the face of abject defeat, was hacked to pieces when he left the king in safety and hurtled back into battle.
Edward and an escort of 500 men escaped Bannockburn and left Scotland in a hurried naval evacuation from Dunbar. They left behind them thousands of doomed men. The Bannock Burn, the river Forth and the boggy ground that lay all around them groaned with dead and dying Englishmen. The Stirling mud thickened with blood, seeping into the tiny crisscrossing streams that covered the battleground. Some of the greatest knights in Christendom were slain by Robert Bruce’s army: butchered on the battlefield by the Scots or drowned attempting to cross the Bannock Burn or the river Forth. Besides Gloucester and Sir Giles d’Argentein, at least 200 knights were killed, including Sir Roger de Clifford. The earl of Pembroke was very lucky to escape alive. Edward’s privy seal was captured in battle. The earl of Hereford was taken prisoner by the Scots, as were numerous other high-ranking knights. As the English fled, the Scots pursued them across the border, their plundered belongings left behind. The author of The Life of Edward II lamented ‘so many fine noblemen, so much military equipment, costly garments, and gold plate – all lost in one harsh day, one fleeting hour’.
But the gold plate and costly garments were not the principal losses. Although military tactics were turning at the beginning of the fourteenth century, and infantry were beginning to hold sway over mounted knights wherever the two met, the loss at Bannockburn was still humiliating. Bruce was stronger than ever in Scotland, and was free to open a military front in Ireland.
Edward II, meanwhile, was once again at a grievous disadvantage in his relations with the earls who had tormented him during the Gaveston years. Lancaster, Warwick, Arundel and Surrey, having gambled on Edward’s military incompetence by refusing to serve on the Scottish campaign, were now ascendant. Instead of a victorious king swooping to crush his domestic enemies, a humbled king was returning to face his demons. With the king’s fortunes as low as at any time during his reign, the disgruntled barons were free to press their desire for reform upon him once again.