Bannockburn 1314 by Peter Armstrong

Author:Peter Armstrong [Armstrong, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Bannockburn 1314: Robert Bruce’s Great Victory
ISBN: 9781782004196
Publisher: Osprey Publishing
Published: 2012-08-22T23:00:00+00:00

Note: I have calculated the numbers of the Scottish army from the minimum number of men that would be needed to cover half a mile of front, allowing each a frontage of 30 inches and standing in ranks six deep. There may have been many more Scots, perhaps as many as 10,000 men. I have divided the infantry into battalions or sub-divisions of ‘schiltrons’ of 600 men, although there is no concrete evidence for this organisation.

THE BATTLE OF BANNOCKBURN

The Terrain at Bannockburn

The Carse of Stirling, of which the Carse of Balquhiderock formed a part, was in 1314 a large area of flat, low-lying, boggy ground with areas of sodden peat. It was bordered to the north by the River Forth and to the south by a steep bank or escarpment, marked by the 20m contour at its base, which follows an almost straight line south-east from Stirling. Above this bank to the south-west the terrain is dryer and firmer, the ground undulating and wooded and rising gradually across two or three miles towards the higher and rougher moorland and hills around the headwaters of the Carron and Bannock Burn 500m above the carse. In addition to the springs that rise above the escarpment, all the surface water from the hills drained down into the flat peaty carse, which as a result was intersected in the 14th century by a large number of sluggish streams with deep peaty pools and overhanging crumbling banks, known by the Celtic word ‘pols’. The entire Carse of Stirling was known at the time of the battle as ‘les Polles’ and would have presented a serious obstacle to a large army with its baggage train. The Carse of Stirling is mainly well-drained farmland today, the pols have largely disappeared, though the place names of the area betray their former existence.

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