Set the trap, victory is in sight
On the morning of June 23, 1314, the English army general Mowbray, who was trapped in Sterling, slipped out of the castle to see Edward II and sought 500 heavy cavalry. In the afternoon, the 500-strong heavy cavalry arrived in Bannockburn.
The Scottish Sentinel found them and Robert immediately ordered Randolph to stop. Randolph blocked the northern end of the Burley Dirk trail, forcing the English heavy cavalry to attack only along narrow, rugged paths.
Due to the narrow battlefield and the soft ground, the heavy cavalry has a small number of people who are involved in the assault, and the speed cannot be lifted, and the impact is very limited. As a result, they were defeated in front of the formation of the Scottish spear.
Seeing the morale of the England heavy cavalry frustrated, Robert decisively sent Douglas to support Randolph, the England army was defeated, and many heavy cavalry fell into the swamp.
More than 100 England heavy cavalry were killed in this outpost, while only 6 of the Scottish Army were killed. In this campaign, Robert was eager to beat the English Sir Henry de Bochum, which greatly encouraged the morale of the Scottish soldiers.
After a brief calm on the battlefield, 700 England heavy cavalry Clifford and Sir Beaumont led an attack on the Scottish Army's right-wing in an attempt to score a wedge between Strindberg and the Scottish Army. In the eyes of the English, the right-wing seems to be the weakest part of the Scottish Army's entire front. In fact, this is the trap that Robert deliberately set.
When the England heavy cavalry rushed over, Robert led the ambush to jump suddenly and launched a siege to the English army. According to military common sense, Cliffe should be ordered to retreat after the mid-volts, but he ordered the troops to continue to rush to the Scottish spear array.
As a result, the English heavy cavalry without the shield of the Longbows bravely launched a wave of shocks, but they fell in front of the dense Scottish spear. At the end of the night, Clifford died. Some of the surviving heavy cavalries fled back to England with Beaumont, while some escaped to Strindberg and the other became a Scottish prisoner.
The night began to fall, and the battlefield finally sank. The defeated England army retreated to the alluvial plains southeast of Bannockburn, facing the enemy's backwaters; the Scottish Army rested with the cover of the forest. At this time, the Scots are full of confidence to win.
Reinventing the English Army
For the England Army, a defeat is not fatal, the most deadly is that their commander is a straw bag. On the morning of June 24, 1314, Edward II personally ordered this to prove. He led the English army through the swamp and attacked the Scottish Army, which had been sternly treated, using a heavy cavalry assault tactic that had proved to be wrong.
From the topography, the English army must not only pass through the swamp but also pass through a canyon on the side of Bannock. Although it is not deep, it is steep and narrow, which becomes a bottleneck and greatly limits the development of the British army. Robert also changed the tactics, so that the Scottish soldiers lined up the dense "Schieryan" square, and actively pushed down the hillside.
The England heavy cavalry who just passed through the canyon launched a round of impact. However, due to organizational confusion, the English heavy cavalry was killed and injured in front of the Scottish spears due to the lack of cooperation with the longbowmen. Their impact was weaker than a wave, and they stepped back under the oppression of the Scottish spear.
On the occasion of the two sides riding, the Welsh Longbows completed the assembly on the right-wing of the Scottish Army. Seeing that the English heavy cavalry fled, they immediately shot a terrible arrow rain to the Scottish military. Rows of Scottish infantrymen were shot dead, and there was turmoil in the square. If this continued, the square could be torn.
But Robert had long been prepared, and with his command, the 700 heavy cavalry ambushing on the left-wing of the Scottish Army quickly rushed down the hillside, and in the blink of an eye, the Welsh Longbows, who had very poor protection, rushed to the West. The last hope of winning is shattered.
The huge number of English infantry did little to play in the Battle of Bannock because the battlefield capacity was too small and the vast swampy terrain limited the movement of the English infantry. To make matters worse, their maneuvering speed is too slow. When the heavy cavalry and the longbowmen begin to defeat and retreat, they are still marching into the canyon.
As a result, the retreats huddled with the infantry who had entered the canyon and trampled on each other.
Death and injury pillow. At this time, the slow advancement of the Scottish Army infantry squadron pushed to the mouth of the canyon, further exacerbating the chaos of the English army in the canyon, and the fear caused by this chaos was more quickly transmitted to the brigade outside the exit of the other end of the canyon. The British infantry eventually led to the collapse of the entire line.
Edward II, who fell into the back, saw that the trend had gone, and had to escape under the protection of a few relatives. The defeated England defeated the British army and suffered heavy casualties again. Seven nobles, 200 heavy cavalry and thousands of infantry were killed, including four nobles, 70 heavy cavalry and thousands of English infantry.
According to historical records, the England Army had a total of more than 9,000 heavy cavalry, longbowmen and infantry in the entire Battle of Bannock. It was the worst casualty in England's 700-year history. After the defeat of Edward II's army, the Strindberg defenders had to surrender.
Scottish independent hero
The Battle of Bannock is the decisive battle of the Scottish War of Independence. For the next 10 years, England was no longer able to travel to Scotland.
In November 1314, Robert convened a parliament at the Camps Kenneth Abbey near Sterling, passing a bill requiring landowners whose positions were not yet clear to be loyal to themselves or to England, and almost everyone expressed loyalty. For him, this marks the establishment of Robert's dominance in Scotland.
In 1328, Edward II, the successor of Edward II, signed the Northampton Treaty with Robert, officially recognizing the independence of the Kingdom of Scotland.
To this day, the Scots still maintain their national consciousness in various ways. The Bank of Scotland issued the currency without the head of Queen Elizabeth II, but the head of the "stained hero" Robert Bruce.