By William Scott, published by
Elenkus, £25; hardback,456 pages plus plates; reviewed
by Chris Jackson.

"If you can afford only one book on Bannockburn, then
this is the one you must buy; if you can afford two,
buy only this; for after it, all the rest will seem to
be just "pot-boilers".

The story of Bannockburn is so well known that many
would say that it needs no re-telling. Who has not
heard of how Stirling was besieged, and how its
governor struck a deal with The Bruce's brother that,
unless it was relieved by a set date - a date so far
in the future that it defies belief - he would
surrender; how one of England's least popular monarchs
collected an army in such a dilatory fashion that,
although given a year, he only just made it to
Stirling in time; and how, having accomplished the
relief within the terms of the truce, he hazarded all
on a battle, which he promptly lost, the nobililty of
England going down before the pikes of common
Scotsmen.

Well, the truth of the matter, as you will appreciate
from Mr Scott's book, is that very little of the
oft-told story is true. Now, I know that is the kind
of claim you will have heard made for many books; and
more often than not, you will have been sadly
disappointed. Here at last is a book which can truly
claim to be the definitive work on its subject - a
book by which you will judge all others. What becomes
obvious, right from the start, is that Mr Scott has
not written just another formulaic battle book, in
which you get a general introduction, then a couple of
chapters on army organisation, numbers, and how long
the pointy sticks they carried were. "Bannockburn
Revealed" assumes you already know the bare bones of
the story, and so instead you are launched on a voyage
of discovery, in which nothing is taken for granted
just because that is what everyone has believed up to
now, and everything is closely analysed in the
minutest detail.

The starting point is a close consideration of all the
original sources, all of which are printed together,
in full, for the first time. This gives you a full
opportunity to read them all and form your own views.
This in itself is sufficient justification for buying
the book. What strikes you, right from the very start,
is the extent to which the commonly accepted version
depends so heavily on Archdeacon John Barbour's
account, written sixty three years after the battle,
when very few of the participants can have been around
to be interviewed, and designed more to curry favour
with the monarch of his own time, rather than to
illuminate posterity. The Barbour version is very much
at odds with the other sources (and at times with
itself), which agree very well with each other, and
have the advantage of having been written very much
closer to the events. As with many other mediaeval
authors, Barbour's grasp of numbers is at best
tenuous.

Besides the original sources, the works of more modern
scholars are put under the microscope, and subjected
to rigorous scrutiny.

From the book, you will learn that there were not four
schiltroms, but three, and why Barbour chose to invent
the fourth. You will learn that there was no Scottish
cavalry charge, sweeping away the English archers,
because none of them fought mounted; and even had they
done so, there was no room for such a manoeuvre. There
was no heroic appearance by the "Small Folk", waving
their laundry in lieu of banners; and even had they
appeared where they are supposed to have done, no one
on the battlefield would have seen them. And, most
surprising of all, you will learn that the basis on
which size of the Scottish army has been computed is
wholly fallacious. Their true numbers were two and a
half times larger than has normally been claimed -
something which becomes obvious when, as Mr Scott has
done far more times than any other author, you walk
the battlefield. Not every part of the traditional
story is discredited; I had been won over by the
arguments of one modern author, who doubts that the
truce could have been so inordinately long. Having
read the sources, and Mr Scott's arguments, I no
longer think that such a view is tenable.

And what of the site of the battlefield? As one who
has read extensively on the subject, I sometimes feel
authors have approached this as a sort of military
"pin the tail on the donkey", taking an Ordnance
Survey map and superimposing their view on it. I will
not go into all the details of his many discoveries
about the terrain and area; unless you have a detailed
map, references to "Skeoch" and "Milton Ford" will
mean little. Mr Scott has, I believe, definitively
established that the main action took place in the
Carse of Balquhiderock.

He has reached this compelling conclusion as a result
of an in-depth study of old maps and photographs of
the area, particularly a map prepared in 1750 by
General Roy and a team of cartographers who,
individually, went on to great distinction. The map
has not formerly been given the attention it deserves,
and it is pleasing that he has brought it to light,
and included it in his book. All this is combined with
an unrivalled knowledge of the ground, achieved
through spending many hours trudging over it. It soon
becomes apparent that you are not reading an account
of the ground gleaned by one who has spent only the
odd weekend walking the area - and this is something
which will shriek out at you when you read any other
recent work. We are accustomed to looking at our 2D
maps, and assuming that everything is shown on them,
and we often underestimate the effects that the humps
and hollows can have. The many photographs of the area
will leave you in no doubt that the maps you have seen
in all other books are, at best, simplistic, and
underestimate its complexity. To take just the most
obvious example, I wonder how many Slingshot readers,
who have read extensively about the battle, appreciate
that the Dryfield of Balquhiderock is separated from
the Carse by a steep escarpment, varying from 60' to
30' high? What is more, Mr Scott's book shows that it
was as heavily wooded in 1314 as it is today. All this
is well brought out in the 51 (!) photographs of the
area. Mr Scott also shows the existence of a knoll,
which has previously gone unnoticed on which King
Edward must have pitched camp.

All in all, this is an excellent book, which I whole
heartedly recommend.