The Independence Struggle: 1296-1328

Illustration: Monument to Robert the Bruce, Bannockburn Heritage Centre, Stirling.

The Independence Struggle: Overview

 The Wars of Independence were a protracted conflict during which England attempted to bring Scotland under control whilst the Scots struggled to assert their national independence. It was a defining moment in Scotland's history, not least because it brought the disparate peoples of this remote northern kingdom together under a common cause of shared nationhood for the first time. And something of even greater historical importance was to come out of this struggle. In 1320 the “Community of the Realm of Scotland” signed a bond by which they pledged themselves to the defence of national freedom: the Declaration of Arbroath. Centuries later the principles articulated in 1320 would inspire another great historical document: the American Declaration of Independence. Of  fundamental importance in the history of both Scots and Americans, the Independence Struggle continues to resonate amongst both peoples today.

Historic Voices

"So long as one hundred of us remain alive we shall never under any conditions be subject to the dominion of England. For it is not for glory, nor riches, nor even honour that we fight, but for Freedom alone which no good man loses but with his life."

The Declaration of Arbroath, 1320. The Declaration has been described as one of the earliest expressions of nationalism and constitutionalism in European history. It is also believed to be the medieval European world's first articulation of the principle of elective kingship - the Sovereignty of the People.

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Background: A Nation Emerges

Go back  far enough in time and every nation is a nation of migrants. In the case of the Scots, their forefathers came from Ireland, Scandinavia and mainland Europe bringing with them their own languages, cultures and beliefs. They formed tribes, warred, allied, traded, intermarried and slowly converged. Gradually over thousands of years some kind of national order developed out of this multicultural chaos.

By 1189 a single royal dynasty and a national church had emerged and a monk at Melrose Abbey felt confident enough that some kind of unified nation existed to be able to write about “the Kingdom of the Scots.” Yet geography, language, custom and stubborn tribalism still divided the peoples of this remote and wild kingdom.

It was only the threat of conquest by external forces that would bring these fractious peoples together. The challenge came at the end of the thirteenth century when a ruthlessly ambitious monarch to the South, King Edward I of England, strove to extend his kingdom northwards. The Independence Struggle that followed would be one of the defining events in the history of the Scottish nation.

Illustration: Monument to Robert the Bruce at the Bannockburn Heritage Centre, Stirling

The Independence Struggle: 1296-1328

The origins of the Independence Struggle: 1296

One of the most important episodes in Scotland's history began, quite literally, by accident. In 1286 the Scottish king Alexander III, galloping home eager to enjoy the embraces of his young wife, was killed when his horse tumbled over a cliff in Fife. This was more than a personal tragedy: the king had left no heir and his death plunged the entire nation into a dynastic succession crisis.

Instability and conflict followed after Alexander's death as the nobility began squabbling for the empty throne. The nightmare of civil war loomed. The Scots scrambled for a way to bring some authority and order to the country. One solution lay very close to home: King Edward I of England. Warrior, statesman and one of the mightiest political figures of his day, Edward alone had the power, authority and indomitable personality to bring the squabbling nobility to heel and adjudicate over the process that would decide who would become the new Scottish monarch. This was far from ideal but, in the circumstances, it seemed the best course of action available. The invitation was proffered, Edward accepted. Now, with the formidable English monarch and his army overseeing the country stability was restored. The long process of selecting a new Scottish monarch was soon underway.

The Price of Peace

Conflict, it seemed, had been avoided; but at what cost? The presence of the English king to impose order over the Scottish succession had been necessary to prevent a civil war; but the Scots knew that they were taking an enormous risk. Edward I had long dreamed of conquering Scotland. He had already brought Wales and Ireland under his control. Would the crisis north of the border deliver Scotland into English thraldom too?

Edward at first acted with calculated restraint. The formalities were observed until, after months of arcane and tedious legal deliberation, one of the claimants, John Balliol, was appointed king. The succession crisis was over, but relief was short-lived. The political foot stamping that followed Balliol's coronation confirmed what many had feared all along: Balliol was to be turned into a puppet king under the control of the English monarch.

Balliol's Impossible Struggle

Balliol was in an impossible position: on one side, a recalcitrant Scottish nobility most of whom still coveted the Scottish throne and resented his succession; on the other, one of the mightiest states in early medieval Europe headed by a powerful monarch who was determined to subdue him. Hapless and beleaguered, Balliol struggled to maintain control over his new kingdom. Finally in  1295, desperate for allies against England, he entered into an ill-advised alliance with France.

This was staggeringly inept diplomacy. By allying Scotland with France Balliol had delivered a direct challenge to Edward's authority. Even worse, he had given the southern kingdom an intolerable security headache: now England was faced with the threat of an invasion launched from Scottish soil by France or some other hostile European power. This was to be the root cause of much of the Anglo-Scottish conflict that now ensued over the following decades and centuries.

Scotland Conquered: 1295

Edward was outraged. This menace to the north would have to be dealt with. The English army mustered for invasion. The outcome was predictable: the Scots forces were crushed under England's superior military juggernaut and Balliol was deposed at a humiliating ceremony before being forced into exile (though perhaps grateful just to have kept his head). English officials now took over the government of Scotland. The speed, efficiency and savagery of the English onslaught had left the Scots reeling. Scotland was now a province of England.

The Scottish Resistance Stirs: 1296

The shock and awe of the English onslaught had crushed everything in its path leaving the Scottish kingdom prostrate - all of which makes it difficult to explain the events that followed. Throughout Scotland spontaneous outbursts of civil disobedience and revolt started to flare up. This was as unexpected as it was unsettling. Something had stirred north of the border and it took the English occupation forces by surprise.

Triumph at Stirling: 1297

It is at this point that a hitherto unknown minor Scottish landowner called William Wallace first appears. Wallace brought some much-needed national leadership and cohesion to what had been, up until then, a series of unconnected skirmishes by a local populace resentful of a foreign presence. In 1297 he united these disaffected elements into something like a single force and led them against a superior English army at Stirling Bridge. To the astonishment of everyone, including the Scots, Wallace's peasant army emerged triumphant.

The Scottish victory came as an immense shock in England. Before Stirling  few had believed that the ragged Scottish resistance could overcome the organised might of an English army that was, at that time, one of the most powerful in Europe. Now, here at Stirling, was the first hard evidence that the conquest of Scotland would be far more difficult than Edward's initial overwhelming victory had led everyone to believe.

Disaster at Falkirk: 1298

Unfortunately Wallace's reign as a political and military leader was short-lived. A year later he was defeated at Falkirk by a vengeful Edward I and forced to go on the run. He continued to mount guerrilla attacks until in 1305 Wallace was captured and executed. The first phase of the Scottish resistance had been brought to an ignominious end. Yet Wallace's personal tragedy was transcended by something of  greater importance: his brief run of victory had proved that the English forces were not invincible - and the struggle could lay claim to its first martyr. This was enough to inspire the Scottish nation to continue the fight, this time under a new leader: Robert the Bruce.

Robert Bruce and the Independence Struggle

Robert Bruce came from a prominent noble family with strong claims to the Scottish throne. Like many of the Scottish nobility, pragmatism led him to submit to English rule in 1302 when the Independence Struggle was faring badly. Then, in 1306, events conspired to change his mind – and the course of Scottish history. Bruce met with “Red” John Comyn of the powerful Comyn family, possibly to discuss a joint campaign against the English occupation. Quite what happened next is uncertain, but they quarrelled and the meeting ended in Comyn's death. It was an ugly, ignoble beginning to what would prove to be a long, hard and bitter struggle for the man who now set out to rid Scotland of English domination and make himself King Robert I of Scots.

His position was hopeless. The killing of Comyn outraged Comyn's kinsmen forcing Bruce to fight two wars: a civil war against the Comyn supporters in Scotland; and a long struggle against the superior English occupation forces. Few either in Scotland or elsewhere recognised Bruce as a legitimate monarch or expected his desperate bid for power to succeed.

Despite these overwhelming odds Bruce persevered. The death of Edward I in 1307 eased much of the pressure on him. Edward's successor, his son  Edward II, was effete, foppish and largely ineffectual. Scotland was of little interest to him. In this, as in many things, he was unlike his father who had often seemed possessed by an irrational obsession to subdue the northern kingdom. With Edward distracted by Machiavellian court politics in England Bruce was able to concentrate on his campaign. Over the next few years he fought doggedly to attract support, subdue his Comyn and English enemies, consolidate his power and establish himself as Scotland's king.

Bruce at Bannockburn: 1314

By 1314 Bruce was confident enough to face the might of the English army at a set piece battle at Bannockburn close to where Wallace had secured his stunning victory seventeen years previously. The historical parallel is unavoidable: Like Wallace before him Bruce and the Scots triumphed against all the odds.

Military victories like Bannockburn were crucial to the Scottish national struggle, but perhaps even more so to Bruce personally: they strengthened his claim to the Scottish throne and added credibility to the diplomatic campaign he now launched to compel the rest of the world to recognise Scotland's independence. This was the origin of one of history's most important documents: the Declaration of Arbroath.

The Declaration of Arbroath: 1320

In 1320 Robert Bruce ordered that a letter be sent to Pope John XXII at Avignon. Composed at Arbroath Abbey, the letter denounced the tyranny of English rule and followed this up with a bold entreaty to the Pope asking him to affirm the legitimacy of Robert I as monarch of a wholly independent Scottish kingdom. Seven hundred years after it was written the bold and sonorous prose of the Declaration continues to resonate with an astonishing power and dignity:

"So long as one hundred of us remain alive we shall never under any conditions be subject to the dominion of England.

For it is not for glory, nor riches, nor even honour that we fight, but for Freedom alone which no good man loses but with his life."

Rarely before or since has the timeless case for the defence of freedom been so eloquently expressed.

Words, of course, are never enough to decide the outcome of any struggle; and for the Scots and English many years of conflict still lay ahead. Finally, in 1328, another document, the Treaty of Edinburgh, was concluded between the two warring parties. By the terms of the Treaty, England agreed to recognise that

“the kingdom of Scotland shall be separate in all respects from the kingdom of England.”

Here at last was the principle for which Wallace, Comyn, Bruce and countless others had fought and died during the relentless and bitter thirty year conflict. War would continue to erupt between the two kingdoms for centuries to come; but the long Independence Struggle had finally compelled England to accept this important principle for the future of the Scottish nation.

The Independence Struggle did not end in 1328. Only four years later a fresh wave of hostilities would break out between England and Scotland and these, too, would take years to resolve. This does nothing to undermine the importance of the settlement reached at Edinburgh. The reality now was that England had been compelled to recognise Scotland's status as a separate, independent kingdom. Future rulers, Scottish as well as English, would come to find this irksome and inconvenient for a variety of reasons; but this basic principle had now been established.

The history and mythology of this era still are still important to Scots today, with the figure of William Wallace held in particularly high esteem. This is in no small part due to the release in the mid-nineties of an extremely successful Hollywood movie, Braveheart. The film brought William Wallace to the attention of a worldwide audience, including many Scots both at home and abroad who had previously known very little about Wallace and the Independence Struggle.

Not everyone was impressed. Historians and pundits accused the films makers of playing fast and loose with the historical facts. Undoubtedly they were right about this, but what was new? The story of the Independence Struggle was preserved by chroniclers who mixed history, propaganda, poetry, folk-tale and myth over so many centuries that it is now very difficult to disentangle them. It certainly did nothing to deter cinemagoers who were drawn into cinemas with the promise of being entertained by a dramatic adventure yarn, something that the movie delivered.

Much of the movie was, of course, sheer invention; but it did convey something of the broader historical themes of the Independence Struggle - the fight against arbitrary rule and the defence of freedom. These elements, as the film -makers were doubtless aware, resonate with people everywhere. They have resurfaced time and again in Scotland's history and have gone on to inspire other national and resistance movements throughout history. It is astonishing just how far-flung and profound this influence has been. Of particular importance here is the Declaration of Arbroath and its assertion that rulers are answerable to their subjects - and may even be deposed by them if they fail to discharge their duties towards them:

"If [Bruce] should seek to make us or our kingdom subject to the King of England or to the English, we would strive at once to drive him out...and we would make some other man who was able to defend us our king."

This is then followed by the better-known and oft-quoted "For Freedom alone" passage, the power of which tends to eclipse the rest of the document; but it is this preceding principle that is really significant. The historian Edward Cowan asserts that this established a then-radical principle of elective kingship. He argues that "this is the first time in European history that we have a clear articulation of this view. The Declaration of Arbroath is not only one of the earliest manifestations of nationalism - it is also one of the earliest manifestations of constitutionalism."

The extraordinary and long-lasting historical influence of the Declaration of Arbroath was recognised on March 20 1998 when the United States Senate passed Resolution 155:

"April 6th has a special significance for all Americans, and especially those Americans of Scottish descent, because the Declaration of Arbroath, the Scottish Declaration of Independence, was signed on April 6 1320, and the American Declaration of Independence was modelled on that inspirational document."

 Hundreds of years after Scotland's Independence Struggle was won the basic principles of the conflict, as articulated in the Declaration of Arbroath, have proved timeless enough to extend their influence far beyond Scotland in ways that its participants never anticipated and in a modern world which they could not even begin to imagine.

Illustration: Declaration of Arbroath Monument commemorating one of Scotland's most significant historical documents. The figures depicted holding the Declaration aloft were instrumental in creating it and make for an interesting contrast: Bernard de Linton, the obscure and scholarly monk who drafted the document, and Robert Bruce, the celebrated warrior who inspired it.

The Independence Struggle

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