Centuries ago, much of Scotland was a law unto itself...
..beyond the control of any king.
Here, it's not the king who's the lawmaker. It's the clan chiefs.
Like Mafia godfathers, they control the people, wield the power.
I'm going to make you an offer.
They lead armies.
They scheme and slaughter...
..in a violent struggle for dominance.
It's clan against clan...
..but this is more than just gang warfare.
You forget yourself! ..who is your Queen?!
Their struggles will shape a nation.
Blood will be spilled.
This is a story of rebels and rogues,
of heroes and freedom fighters...
Raibeart!
..of kingmakers...
ALL: Ar righ!
..and breakers.
This is the rise of the clans.
Midsummer 1314.
Scotland holds her breath.
A massive English army has marched north of the Border.
Its mission - to do battle with the rebel King, Robert Bruce.
Bruce has been fighting a guerrilla war against English rule
for eight years, and he's been winning.
Crucial to his success is an alliance of clan warriors,
among them Campbells and MacDonalds.
At dawn, they're set for a final face-off with the English.
If Bruce prevails, the clans will gain land and power,
but they're outnumbered three to one...
..and if they lose, they'll lose everything.
Now Bruce is telling them he wants to quit,
he's decided not to fight, but to retreat north into mountain country.
He's not convinced that they can fight the English army -
cavalry, archers, foot soldiers - in pitched battle.
"It's madness," Bruce argues.
"Let's stick to what we've been good at.
"Guerrilla tactics, terror, hit-and-run, clan warfare."
But the clan chiefs who've stuck with Bruce through thick and thin
are spoiling for a fight.
TRANSLATED FROM GAELIC:
History can turn on a sixpence,
its direction decided by a single instinctive act.
Eight years earlier, Bruce acted, and it altered the fate of a nation.
1306.
Scotland is under the rule of the English King, Edward I.
The King of Scots, John Balliol, is in exile, chased out of the country.
Robert Bruce is a clan chief with a claim to the Scottish throne
through his grandfather.
He intends to take the crown and restore the kingdom...
..but he's not the only one with designs on royal power.
He has a rival.
RAISED VOICES
They meet at Greyfriars Church to negotiate.
It's the equivalent of a medieval Mafia meeting.
Bruce has come here to meet a great clan chief called John Comyn.
it's a chilly winter's morning, but the relationship between the two men
is positively glacial.
Bruce has chosen Greyfriars for good reason.
The church offers sanctuary and neutrality.
Bruce and Comyn are well known as bitter enemies,
but today they're on their best behaviour.
Amid Bruce's retinue is his wee brother Edward
and his old friend Neil Campbell.
They might be on holy ground, but at any moment things might kick off.
The last time the pair were together,
their hands were round each other's throats.
What have you got to say for yourself?
I'm going to make you an offer. Step aside.
The way Bruce sees it, Balliol is redundant, the throne vacant.
He believes that he should be declared
as Scotland's rightful king.
Bruce starts by reminding Comyn of his claim to the Scottish throne.
"Hardly news," retorts Comyn. "Balliol is king, though."
"Aye," replies Bruce,
"but the Scottish Kirk has withdrawn support for Balliol.
"They've decided to back me."
Now, this is a breaking news story.
The Scottish bishops really struggled
with the presence of the English, and English domination in Scotland.
They believed in Scottish sovereignty,
they wanted to see English interference removed,
and Balliol was no longer really able to fulfil his role...
..his God-ordained role as being defender of the people.
And I think once they see that Balliol's cause is lost, you know -
he's hopeless as a king - they need to move
and find their new champion, which, in this case, is going to be Bruce.
Do you have the backing of the Church?
I have...
Bruce might have the divine thumbs-up
but this carries no truck with Comyn.
I have land. What do you have?
Tell me, do you have the backing of the Church?
Who backs you? I'm backed by everybody.
Who's behind you? Everybody.
Who stands by you?! Nobody! You're no leader, you're no king.
You're nothing but the lapdog of your dad!
Your dad was nothing but a leper!
Not cool to diss big Bobby's dad like that -
and although meant to be unarmed, it seems Bruce has come tooled up.
This is ugly. This isn't the plan.
Or is it?
Bruce has committed murder in a church.
This sin alone condemns his soul to damnation.
The crime must carry a sentence of execution for him,
and send his kin into Edward's jails, or worse.
Actually, much worse.
I think Bruce didn't mean to murder Comyn.
I don't think he planned that.
I don't think he would have gone for something so drastic, I think,
because of the fallout from it.
You know, he didn't have enough support in Scotland at the time
to ensure that he'd be able to come through it, you know, safely.
So I think that he's gone in there,
he's had this heated discussion with Comyn,
and they've just lost it,
and I think that he's acted in anger,
and his group have obviously supported him in that,
and then he's thought, "Right, well, it's happened now.
"There's nothing I can do.
"I just have to go and try and make the best of it."
Whatever was said to make Bruce lose it, whether it was planned or no...
MAN ISSUES ORDERS
..he started a clan blood feud.
Clan is the Gaelic word for children.
Clans are organised around the idea of family, of kinship,
whether real or not,
and those obligations and duties extend across everybody
who can claim kinship with the clan chief.
The kindred of John, chief of the Comyns,
whose body now grows cold in Greyfriars Kirk,
belong to the most powerful clan in Scotland.
They control vast territory in the north,
they're allied to the mighty Clan Dougall,
who dominate the western Highlands.
The House of Bruce, though,
controls the south-west,
and has clan followers like the Campbells to call upon.
The murder of John Comyn is a trip switch
that will now set these clan confederacies
against one another in open warfare.
There's about 50 clans. Some are powerful, some are not so large.
They are not always warring with each other.
They try to ally with each other as a means of defence.
Unfortunately, feuding is also quite rife.
Petty land disputes or family quarrels
can turn into major clan disputes,
and so while there's a lot of stability,
there's also a lot of upheaval.
And pulled into this upheaval is Bruce's old friend Neil.
He's a chief of the Campbells.
They're not a Premier League clan, but they're very handy in a fight.
Within days, Neil Campbell
instructs the fiery cross of his clan to be lit.
It's a summons to arms.
Refusal is not an option.
Loyalty is everything.
Campbell and Robert have been friends since boyhood,
their families bound by ties of blood,
but Neil never forgets his place.
The Bruces provide the Campbells with protection,
with land and with jobs,
and in return they demand military service...
..but this is much more than just a clan feud
Neil's calling out the Campbells to fight in.
It's armed revolt against the occupying rule of England
and its king, Edward I.
Neil Campbell epitomises a kind of middle rank
of Scottish society
which is crucial in supporting the Bruce revolution.
Now, people like Neil Campbell are taking an enormous risk.
Anybody who stands against Edward at this point in time
will be subject to the full rigour of the common law of England -
regarded as traitors.
On the other hand, the prize in supporting a king, if he can make it
and assert his legitimacy over the kingdom,
the prizes could be immense,
in terms of the rewards that might await them,
in terms of territories within their own back yards.
With Clan Campbell at his back,
Bruce moves north, seeking more allies.
English troops are in hot pursuit. Sides must be taken now.
Are you with Bruce or against him?
An epic poem in Scots immortalises these desperate days
with a not-too-subtle bias in Bruce's favour.
TRANSLATED FROM SCOTS:
News travels to England of Bruce's deeds.
This is rebellion, treason.
Not only that. Bruce is heading for Scone,
the traditional site in Scotland for crowning kings.
When Edward hears this, he's furious
cos he knows that the only reason that Bruce would head to Scone
is to make a play for the Scottish throne.
I think Bruce is going to make himself King.
Bruce's coronation is a hurried affair.
It hadn't been planned this way, if you like,
that Comyn would be murdered
and that he'd be moving to take the throne at this kind of pace.
Bruce might be crowned,
but there's no time for coronation bunting and street parties.
Edward, "Hammer of the Scots", wants this sedition stamped out.
He orders his English knights occupying Scotland
to raise the dragon banner, to unleash fire and sword
on the House of Bruce and all who side with it.
The terrible dragon banner means only one thing.
No mercy.
An English army sweeps down on the town of Perth,
just a few miles from the site of Bruce's coronation.
The capture of Perth presents Bruce with a dilemma.
On the one hand, he needs to show the chiefs
that he's a strong commander,
so it makes sense to deal with the English vanguard
before the main army arrives under Edward I.
He's got limited forces, though. He's still outnumbered,
but the new King does have fire in his veins,
and he decides to fight...
..but this impetuousness, this lack of caution, proves unwise.
The Scots army doesn't even have an opportunity to assemble.
It doesn't have an opportunity
to even put up a reasonable type of defence.
It's caught unawares as the English heavy armour,
the knights on horseback,
come thundering through the encampment.
Bruce's army is shattered, scatters in all directions.
There are heavy casualties,
and Bruce is left with a small hard core of his inner retinue,
and they escape westwards.
So, Bruce's military career as King starts with an abject failure,
and it's kind of ironic, in a sense,
that the Scots should be caught out like this.
It demonstrates, I think,
Bruce's naivety at this stage in his military career.
The defeat is a brutal lesson for Bruce.
Fighting the English on their terms,
outnumbered by mounted knights over open ground -
it's doomed to failure.
He needs time to regroup, time to think,
and he needs to get his family to safety quickly.
Bruce sends his wife, daughter and his sister north
to where they have kin, praying they'll be safe.
He's now excommunicated, outlawed and on the run.
In the eyes of the common people, it looks like their new king
is even worse than the last.
TRANSLATED FROM SCOTS:
HE WHISTLES
Bruce has his brother Edward,
the ever-faithful Neil and a small war band of clansmen by his side -
but they're hunted men.
They head west, hoping to lose their pursuers
amid Highland forests and glens,
and this brings them into Clan MacDougall territory.
They're desperate, on the run. It's a mistake.
Top dog in Clan Dougall is John of Lorne.
He's a kinsman of the murdered John Comyn.
The Bruces and the Campbells are now sworn enemies of the MacDougalls...
..and they don't take kindly to them strutting into their glens.
Bruce is in a very difficult spot.
The MacDougalls are the dominant clan on the Scottish west coast
by the end of the 13th century.
They're used to running the region as a semi-autonomous lordship,
almost a kingdom unto itself,
and their links to the Comyns
mean that they're duty-bound, honour-bound,
to try and either capture or kill
the man who bought about John Comyn's death.
So, whichever way Bruce is heading, he's heading into trouble.
So when Bruce and his Campbell allies
try sneaking through MacDougall territory...
..John of Lorne lies in wait for them, with archers and axemen.
Clan Dougall unleash a devastating attack.
Given the ragged state of Bruce's men,
it's not so much a battle as a mugging.
Bruce's men are cut to pieces.
Now even fewer in number, Bruce and the clansmen flee.
They're down to 200 men.
They head higher into the mountains, their enemies in pursuit.
They travel a long, bitter and bloody road south to reach the sea.
Behind them lie two crushing defeats.
As for the women Bruce sent north to safety, they never made it.
His wife, his daughter, his sisters,
they were captured and sent south to face Edward's justice.
This is their darkest hour,
but Neil Campbell still has Bruce's back.
He's led his King into his own clan territory, Argyll,
and sent for galleys to ferry them to safety
off the mainland and away to remote islands in the west.
Campbell has proved his loyalty,
but what isn't lost on the Bruce
is Neil's ability to raise a fleet of galleys in just a few days.
Bruce might be King of Scots, but Clan Campbell rule these parts.
Bruce is a powerless fugitive...
..and as he waits for rescue, his thoughts focus upon the family
he thinks he's sent to safety in the north,
a family now in the clutches of Edward of England.
It was to the women that Edward was especially cruel.
Bruce's wife and daughter were imprisoned in nunneries.
His sister Mary was put in an iron cage
hung from a castle tower, open to the elements,
forbidden to communicate with anyone -
treated like a beast in a menagerie...
..but as for Bruce, after the Campbell galleys spirit him off,
as far as the English are concerned, he simply vanished.
Well, Bruce disappears off the map in this period.
Perhaps Edward thought that all was well,
that Bruce's early defeats had convinced him
that there was no possibility in pursuing this campaign
to resurrect Scottish kingship.
But Bruce hasn't given up.
He's seeking new allies,
this time on the island of Islay,
home to the MacDonalds.
Their chieftain is the fearsome Angus Og,
and his clansmen are a heady mix of Gaelic warrior and Viking marauder.
They're the Hell's Angels of the Hebrides.
Bruce is probably quite anxious when he meets Angus Og.
He's powerful, and Bruce really doesn't know
what to expect at this moment,
because Angus is still allied to Edward,
as many people are at the time.
Bruce is also very vulnerable. He's quite weak,
he doesn't have much support any more,
and so he's really on the back foot and not sure what to expect
when he meets Angus Og.
So Bruce tries to make a deal.
Angus Og sees potential in this wretched fugitive
who has come to Islay.
He is prepared to offer him shelter.
He's prepared to offer him military support,
but at a price - because Angus Og has got his own agenda.
His terms won't be easy.
He is expecting lavish promises from Bruce,
and these promises are about land,
especially land which is now under the control of his deadly enemies,
the MacDougalls.
He's expecting promises of future power and authority
under a Bruce-led Kingdom of Scotland.
But there is also a loyalty to Bruce and an affinity.
So when these two men come together,
I think that there would have been an understanding on both their sides
that they can profit from a strong working relationship,
a shared belief in the causes that they each espouse
that bring them together and create a very, very important relationship
in determining the ultimate success of Robert Bruce as King of Scots.
Bruce has no choice. He accepts all of Angus's demands.
Now he has two major western clans on side,
the Campbells and the MacDonalds.
Three days later, Bruce's renegade fleet heads for the open sea again
and he vanishes from his enemies' sight.
Winter is coming, and now the fugitive King
seeks out another clan on the remote western seaboard of the Hebrides,
one with blood ties to the House of Bruce - the MacRuaidhris.
Chief of Clan Ruaidhri is Christiana of the Isles.
The Gaels accepted women as leaders,
and she's quick to offer Bruce support and shelter.
It's usually said that Bruce spent the winter of 1306
in a cold cave, with only a legendary spider for company.
The truth is, he was probably much more comfortable than that.
A warm family welcome,
a warm bed, food, advice on what to do next,
and not a spider in sight.
WOMAN SINGS IN GAELIC
It's said that Christiana gave Robert much more than just shelter
in the winter of 1306 -
that later she bore him an illegitimate child -
but above all, she believed in his cause,
pledging clan warriors to his rebel band of Campbells and MacDonalds.
TRANSLATED FROM GAELIC:
Bruce and his new friends talk long into the winter evenings.
How can they challenge the great English war machine?
They have neither numbers nor arms to go into battle conventionally.
Bitter experience has taught them that...
..but what if they could use
the ferocious fighting style of the clan warrior
and the forbidding Scottish landscape to their advantage?
The strategy was recorded as a poem.
What we should think about poetry at this time
is, all across Europe, poetry, song, balladry,
is one of the major means of communicating,
getting news across,
getting an objective presented to your wider public,
because most people are illiterate,
and this is how key messages are going to be communicated -
and in Gaelic culture, this is critically important at all levels.
TRANSLATED FROM GAELIC:
It's how you can get across even as basic a message as,
"This is how we want you to organise yourself when it comes to fighting.
"Don't do this, do what we're telling you here,"
and you put that into rhyme, and people tend to remember it.
Bruce has the loyalty of three powerful and influential clans -
the Campbells, the MacDonalds and now Clan Ruaidhri.
In the winter of 1306, he announces a change of tactics.
Basically, what the poem says is that he will use clan warfare
to fight Edward, and unleash hell.
TRANSLATED FROM GAELIC:
ALL: Ar righ!
It's time for the King to return.
When Bruce returns, King Edward can't believe it.
He hasn't returned with a massive army or with a great fleet at all.
He's just returned with a few followers.
Bruce has come back to the south-west.
Now, that's Bruce's own territory,
if you like, that's where his own earldom is,
the Earldom of Carrick, a Gaelic-speaking area.
But it's also part of the country
where the English have a strong presence on the ground
in terms of controlling castles,
so, in a sense, this is a very bold move by Bruce, I would think,
from Edward's point of view. He's literally entering the lion's den.
But Bruce has absolutely no intention
of taking on Edward's army.
He's about to change the very nature of war.
Like a shadow, Bruce moves north.
Bruce has not forgotten the previous year,
where he was caught unprepared and in the open.
Now he will apply guerrilla warfare.
Speed, mobility, surprise,
small-scale hit-and-runs, scorched earth -
this will be the style of his new campaign.
TRANSLATED FROM GAELIC:
In April 1307, Bruce ambushes the English
on his home turf at Glen Trool in Galloway,
using his knowledge of the country to his advantage.
Then, a month later, he smashes his enemy again...at Loudoun Hill.
At Loudoun Hill, Bruce once again exploited the landscape
to give him the upper hand,
its rocky, slender top forcing the English to fight on a narrow front
so that their superior numbers gave them no advantage.
The Bruce's men attacked so violently
that the rear of the English army fell back in a panic.
Bruce's new tactics are working.
These small victories are a turning point in Bruce's campaign
and their effect is electric.
Word has got around. God is on Bruce's side...
..and not just God, it seems, but the mythical wizard Merlin, too.
Bruce was brilliant at this - an absolute master of propaganda.
We know that he had what were termed by the sources
"false preachers" in his army,
who were going around spreading the news,
the good news of the coming of Bruce and his legitimacy as King of Scots.
A rattled Scots noble in service to Edward takes up his quill
and writes to the King.
"The people believe that Bruce will carry all before him,
"exhorted by false prophets.
"They have told the people
"that they have found a prophecy of Merlin,
"that after the death of Edward
"the people of Scotland and the Welsh
"shall band together and have full lordship and live in peace together
"till the end of the world."
Red rag - bull.
And just like a raging bull, the King of England charges up the road
to deal with the Scottish upstart -
but Edward I is now an old man.
Edward's been ill for months but he still travels north
to try and deal with the Scottish problem.
I think he can't stand that he hasn't bought the Scots to heel -
but he actually dies just in view of the Scottish Border,
in the arms of his servants, so we're told,
and I think this catches them off guard.
Obviously, they hadn't planned for their King to die.
They knew it might have been a possibility,
but what do they do now? And I think their gut instincts
really tell them to keep it a secret,
because if the Scots find out that Edward has died,
then it's going to potentially bolster the Scottish war effort.
On Edward's death, Edward II is crowned King of England,
but he's not his father's son.
He's no warrior,
he's weak and divisive,
and while Ed Junior's knights and barons squabble,
north of the border, Bruce's power grab gains momentum.
Clans that once swore loyalty to the English
now feel the time has come to join Bruce.
If you're not with him, you're agin him -
and God help you if you're not on his side.
Bruce heads north with Neil Campbell and Angus Og.
They have clan enemies to slaughter.
First on the list are the Comyns.
Bruce's crown will never be secure
for as long as even one of them remains alive.
In September 1307, Bruce tears up the Great Glen.
The audacity and speed of his guerrilla army
take the Comyns completely by surprise,
and the Bruce's treatment of them is merciless.
The clan name Comyn is all but obliterated...
..and there's another clan about to get the Bruce treatment.
The now-ascendant King of Scots hasn't forgotten the doing-over
he and his beleaguered men got from the MacDougalls
and their chieftain John of Lorne just two years earlier...
..and it's not just Bruce who holds a grudge.
Neil Campbell has a score to settle with the MacDougalls, too.
Once, Neil Campbell trained in Paris to be a priest,
to be a man of peace,
but peace is not on his mind now.
The MacDougalls are responsible for the death of Neil Campbell's father,
so you have a feud going on there, as well -
and in the Highlands, justice is kin-based,
and it's about retribution, and they are committed to taking revenge.
And if that's not enough,
Angus Og has an axe to grind, too - literally.
The MacDonalds have a problematic relationship with the MacDougalls.
There have been tensions there in recent years,
and a close relation of Angus Og's has been slain by the MacDougalls.
That gives the MacDonalds a motive,
just as the Campbells had, for taking the other side,
for opposing the MacDougalls
and the Comyns and for supporting Bruce.
This isn't just about backing a new king
in return for rewards of land.
This is a blood feud, and it's going to be messy.
John knows what's coming.
In desperation, he sends a letter to Edward begging for support.
"Robert the Bruce approaches these parts with 10,000 men -
"they say 15,000.
"I have no more than 800.
"Bruce asked for a truce, which I granted him for a short space,
"until you send me help."
John's estimate of 15,000 is a colossal exaggeration,
but it hardly matters.
Edward II sends no reply and no help.
Showdown between Robert the Bruce and John of Lorne takes place
in the summer of 1308 in the Pass of Brander
deep in the MacDougall heartland.
The MacDougalls conceal themselves
along the hillside overlooking the road,
lying in wait,
waiting to do to Bruce and his men
what Bruce had done to the English in Glen Trool - ambush them...
..but Bruce and his now highly disciplined clan army
outflank the MacDougalls.
Using the slopes of the pass,
they execute a deadly pincer movement and attack from the rear.
TRANSLATED FROM SCOTS:
The ambushers get ambushed.
The MacDougalls are butchered.
Neil Campbell and Angus Og are avenged.
By now, Bruce's reputation ran before him.
Assaulted from both above and below, the Argyllsmen flee.
Their brave leader quickly follows.
John of Lorne, last of the MacDougalls,
lost the battle to simple terror.
Bruce's power grows.
We pledge our lives...
Clan chiefs like Neil Campbell
formally swear oaths of allegiance...
..to our Prince and King, Lord Robert.
..and there are others pledging their lives to the rebel King -
like Alexander Seton, a veteran knight from the border lands.
We pledge our lives and eternal loyalty to our Prince and King.
Men like Alexander Seton are in the front line
between the English and Scottish kingdoms.
They've endured a decade of invasion.
He has a wife, children, a household to support.
They've seen armies come and go, they've lost family and friends,
but now Bruce's success in the Highlands has the Lowlands talking.
Maybe, just maybe, the tide is turning
in favour of the King of Scots...
..but Seton's position isn't clean-cut.
He's also sworn the same oath to the King of England.
If Bruce prevails, he can jump the fence.
If not, he's lost nothing.
Seton is playing a double game...
..and Bruce knows it...
..but he's preparing for a tipping point in his campaign,
when England's hold on Scotland is so weak that knights like Seton
will have no choice but to fully commit to him.
Yet, although he is now master of the Highlands,
winning over the Lowlands is a much tougher proposition.
This is border country,
studded with seemingly impregnable fortresses,
all controlled by English garrisons,
impossible to recapture without siege engines,
limitless men
and a serious war chest.
Or so it seems.
Things have been rolling along quite well for Robert,
but you've got to bear in mind
he does not have access to heavy siege artillery.
So he's now got to resort
to a completely different style of capture.
Bruce harasses these garrisons
whenever they come out of their castles, and he tries to disrupt
the supply routes of the English to make life
as miserable as possible for the soldiers serving in these garrisons,
and once he senses that these garrisons
are starting to become that little bit more vulnerable,
that's when he puts all of his efforts into trying to...
..town or the castle, wherever it is they happen to be.
You have various Scots, including Bruce, apparently, himself,
swimming the moats of castles to get access to the walls.
You have Scots attacking castles from the points
at which the defenders think they're impregnable.
There's very many famous stories. William Bunnock...
..driving his hay cart under the portcullis
of the Peel at Linlithgow, making sure that it can't be shut.
So every trick in the book is used to capture these English castles,
and it's amazingly effective,
so that by 1313, pretty much most of Scotland has been recaptured,
barring a few obstinate examples.
While all this capture-the-castle lark
is going swimmingly, thank you very much,
Bruce has a problem.
In order to be taken seriously as a legitimate king,
he has to ditch all the rebel guerrilla tactics
and face and defeat the mighty English army in open battle -
chivalric combat,
the outcome of which is decided by God.
Now, that's precisely the sort of warfare
Bruce has never succeeded at.
If only there was a way that he could know precisely where and when
such an open battle might take place.
Then he could give himself a fighting chance.
By 1314, only Stirling Castle remains in English hands.
It's the most important fortress in the country,
the keystone that governs access between Highlands and Lowlands.
It's a simple strategic fact -
control Stirling and you control Scotland.
Need to know our next move.
Robert's wee brother, Edward,
proposes they strike a deal with the English garrison
occupying Stirling Castle.
TRANSLATED FROM GAELIC:
ROBERT LAUGHS
A deal that will lure the English army into battle
at a time and place the Scots can plan for...
..but it's risky.
Well, in effect, the deal states
that if Edward II can't bring an army north
to relieve Stirling Castle by St John the Baptist's Day,
or Midsummer's Day, 24th June 1314,
then the garrison will surrender the castle to the Scots.
When Edward II hears of the pact,
he has very little choice, anyway, but to respond.
His kingly reputation,
his chivalric standing within the English community,
which is already doubted, in part, by his own nobles,
wouldn't survive another failure,
and so he is caught on the horns of a dilemma.
He has to march to Stirling's relief,
and he has to be shown to make a good effort of it.
Edward II had already been raising forces
to take down the upstart King in the north -
but now he's got a deadline to meet,
and the gears of England's war machine start turning faster.
The countdown to Bruce's high noon has begun.
Now he's committed to meeting his enemy
under the terms he's avoided since 1307.
He has to meet him in open battle, not a surprise battle,
not a hit-and-run battle, not a battle of the clans' choosing,
but a full-on face-to-face,
"stop King Edward getting to the castle" battle.
Things can only get medieval.
Bruce has got this far by playing a high-stakes game,
but on the face of it, he's taking a gamble here,
where the odds are seriously stacked against him.
The danger of Edward II coming to Stirling
is that Bruce has created this vision of himself
as the Warrior King,
and it's his success on which all this rests.
There are still those within Scotland
who do not support his kingship,
but do so quietly, and it only takes one defeat,
potentially, to break the spell,
and that's the gamble he's taking.
It's also worth remembering
that Bruce hasn't actually convinced everyone that he's the man to back,
so failure here at this crucial juncture
could lead people that are on the fence to switch their allegiance
and take their loyalty elsewhere.
Edward gathered his forces at Berwick by the 10th of June.
15,000 foot soldiers and 2,500 cavalry.
A large army compared to Bruce's 6,000,
but, in reality, numbers don't matter.
The battle will be a contest between Bruce's clan foot soldiers
and Edward's mounted knights, archers and infantry.
It doesn't sound like a fair fight,
but Bruce, as always, has a plan.
Methodically, the King of Scots starts to prepare his clan army
for the greatest trial of strength they will face...
..and he has an ace up his sleeve.
He trains his men to form schiltrons.
Well, a schiltron is a tightly packed spear formation,
probably oval-shaped, or possibly crescent-shaped,
with spears pointing, basically, in any direction you can get them.
And they are designed, in effect, to stop heavy cavalry charges,
which for the last 200 years
have dominated the battlefields of medieval Europe.
But they tend, like most infantry in the Middle Ages,
to have been largely static -
but if you can turn that static infantry
into a highly mobile, organised mass of spearmen,
you completely change the complexion of fighting,
and that's what Bruce is able to do,
and he reorganises the great mass of Scottish foot soldiers
into these bodies called schiltrons,
and these are bristling with spears,
they're described as being like hedgehogs, almost,
but they're not standing still in one place.
They're able to move en masse and not lose formation.
It's late afternoon, and the 18,000-strong English host
arrives within sight of Stirling.
They've marched up the old Roman road,
but blocking their path is a Scottish schiltron.
Well, when the English arrive,
they are not necessarily expecting the Scots
still to be even waiting for them at all.
They are still thinking of Bruce very much as a guerrilla leader.
They also think that this much smaller army
can't possibly withstand
this much bigger, more sophisticated army that they have,
so they thunder straight towards the first Scots that they meet.
However, that English force is stopped in its tracks
and ultimately forced to pull back.
Bruce has prepared a brutal surprise for the English knights.
On either side of the road leading to the castle,
Bruce's men dug a honeycomb pattern of deep pits
and they put sharpened wooden stakes in the bottom of them.
They were deadly, like medieval tank traps.
To make them even more dangerous, Bruce's men concealed them,
camouflaging the pits with cut branches.
It's dirty warfare, but the ultimate effect of the pits,
combined with the wall of disciplined,
spear-wielding clan warriors,
neuters the English vanguard's opening gambit.
When Edward finds that he can't
push his way directly up towards the castle,
he's got very little option at that point other than to head east,
and he ends up making camp in a wide flat area known as the Carse,
bounded on the north side by the Pelstream,
bounded on the south side by the Bannock Burn.
The clans might have won the opening skirmish
but Bruce knows that was just the foreplay.
The main event is still to come...
..and the rebel king has seen too many of his comrades-in-arms
slaughtered when facing a full-scale charge by English heavy horse.
So, as he and his lieutenants gather to plan their next move,
for the first time, Bruce appears to be losing his nerve.
He's turning 40 and he has no legitimate son
to continue his line if he dies.
His heir currently is his brother Edward,
who is also going into battle at Bannockburn -
and the only remaining member of the Bruce dynasty
at that point is Marjorie,
Bruce's daughter from his first marriage,
who is a prisoner in England at the time.
So, if Robert and Edward don't make it off that battlefield,
and, of course, it's quite possible that they wouldn't,
then the whole of the Bruce dynasty goes up in smoke, in effect,
and those clan leaders, those Lowland families,
all of them will then have to find themselves a new strongman,
or else they're going to go over to Edward II.
Rather than fight next day,
Bruce wants to withdraw to the hills near Loch Lomond.
So determined is he to avoid pitched battle
and to wage the guerrilla warfare
that has worked so brilliantly until now,
he urges his men to quit while they have the advantage...
TRANSLATED FROM GAELIC:
..but then Neil Campbell introduces a surprise guest to the council.
Alexander Seton is still officially in the service of Edward II,
but now he's crossed enemy lines with urgent news for the Scots.
First, Neil Campbell reminds Bruce
of the bond Seton swore with him at Cambuskenneth six years previously
to die fighting for his King.
Seton is a Scottish spy.
Seton reports that after the initial clash,
English confidence has been rocked...
..that the barons squabble, and Edward II's leadership is weak.
"My lord, now is the time, if ever you mean to win Scotland.
"The English have lost heart, they are discomfited,
"I swear on my head and on the pain of being hanged and drawn
"that if you attack in the morning
"you will defeat them easily without loss."
For Bruce, cunning, ruthless warrior that he is,
this intelligence changes everything.
By contrast, the clans are spoiling for a fight.
It's game on.
In the dawn light of midsummer,
the Scots emerge and take up a position
overlooking the English army.
Bruce himself commands a division of spearmen.
At Bannockburn, Bruce has within his own division of the Scottish army
the men of Argyll and the Isles.
Now, these were, I think, the troops that Bruce understood the best,
troops who fought the Gaelic way,
troops who had been the backbone of his army and his guerrilla campaigns
since 1306, 1307.
The men Bruce leads aren't just the King's subjects, they're comrades.
He knows he's taking them into a fight
where they're vastly outnumbered and outclassed.
See those barons over there?
They think they'll win, they think today is theirs -
but I tell you,
they will not win.
The Bruce has lost family -
brothers, kinsmen.
His wife, daughter, sisters have been kept like animals in cages.
His clan warriors have lost more besides.
Now the English King must be made to pay,
or else they will lose everything.
The Scots schiltrons advance out of the gloom of the dawn.
Only now do the English see them.
They're not ready to fight -
and that's the point.
Bruce might be facing his enemy in open battle,
but his plan is simple - to once again exploit clan warfare,
to use speed, shock and surprise, this time on an epic scale.
Bruce is trying to bring the battle to the English
as quickly as possible.
He's trying to close the distance between them
and meet them in an area
where it is too narrow for them to bring their superior numbers.
And now facing them is what looks like
an impenetrable wall of Scottish spearmen
advancing slowly, inexorably
towards the English host.
And Bruce is confident that the discipline
that he's instilled in these men
is going to allow them to push the English back, to kettle them in.
With the Bannock Burn hemming them in to the rear,
the English heavy horse can't charge with any force of momentum,
and are driven back by the deadly schiltron spears.
Pushing forward, the Scots soon begin to gain ground.
Chaos breaks out in the English ranks,
as dead and wounded are trampled underfoot.
Slowly but surely, the whole army
is driven back toward the Bannock Burn.
And then, at a crucial junction in the battle,
when Bruce realises that the tide is about to turn,
he unleashes the men of his own division
in what we would now call, I think, the Highland Charge.
Those of the English that haven't been impaled,
trampled or crushed to death now flee,
only to drown in the Bannock Burn,
or be cut down by pursuing Highlanders.
Bruce has won.
Victory at Bannockburn gives Bruce legitimacy as King.
He is Scotland's champion.
The ransoms raised from captured English nobles
buy the release of his family from captivity,
and he now has the power to deliver on the long-promised rewards
to the clan chiefs who supported him -
namely Neil Campbell and Angus Og MacDonald.
Victory at Bannockburn is really setting the seal
for a complete transition
from the old regime to the new Bruce regime -
and one of the ways that you see that being manifested
immediately after Bannockburn
is a series of land grants and gifts of territory and power and title.
Along with the parchment that actually is what you need
to give you the title deeds, if you like,
it's that still symbolic handing over of earth and rock
as a sign of, "You've got physical possession of this land."
Land's still the key to power,
and this is rewarding the new regime's key members.
Bruce's victory meant a redrawing of the whole map of the Highlands.
The previous all-powerful warlords, the Comyns and the MacDougalls,
had their power either greatly diminished
or else eliminated altogether.
In their place, new victors stood.
We have the Campbells in Argyll,
we have the MacRuaidhris in the northern Hebrides,
and above all we have the Clan Donald.
The great swathe of land both in the mainland and in the Hebrides -
the foundation for a great territorial empire
over the coming generations.
And there's another clan who will benefit from backing the Bruce,
one currently headed by a young chief known as the "beardless boy".
Meet Walter Stewart.
Take away the final T and replace it with a D and it becomes Steward,
and that's how this man's ancestors started,
as the king's food-bearers -
but by backing Bruce, everything has changed.
Walter hasn't featured in our story much so far,
but watch out,
because he has ambitions far beyond serving in the royal household.
Young Walter doesn't just get lands
for his part in the Bruce revolution.
He also receives the hand of the King of Scots' daughter in marriage.
History turns on a sixpence,
and the direction it's taking now
will lead to the rise of the greatest clan dynasty of all.
By creating and investing such power
in the hands of a handful of clan chiefs -
MacDonalds, Campbells, Stewarts -
Bruce hopes his new kingdom will thrive...
..but what if those clan chiefs
become overly ambitious, competitive?
What if they themselves come to believe
that it's them who should be kings?
Next time...
How one clan murders,
betrays and fights its way to the greatest prize...
..the Scottish Crown.
The story of four rival brothers and how their lust for power
led to the emergence of Britain's greatest and enduring clan dynasty.