The field near Stirling where Robert the Bruce broke an English army in 1314, the great Scottish victory of the Wars of Independence
Over two days in June 1314, a Scottish army under Robert the Bruce beat a much larger English force led by Edward II here on the boggy ground south of Stirling. Edward was marching to relieve the English garrison still holding Stirling Castle; Bruce chose the ground and hemmed the heavy English cavalry into the boggy carse, the low flat land beside the river, where they lost their advantage, and by the second day had routed them. Bannockburn was the decisive battle of the Wars of Scottish Independence and secured Bruce’s crown, though full English recognition of Scotland’s independence took years more. The exact line of the fighting is still argued over, since the medieval landscape has largely gone under fields and housing. The National Trust for Scotland runs a visitor centre on the traditional site, with a memorial rotunda and a bronze statue of Bruce on horseback looking towards the castle. It is on the southern edge of Stirling, close to the town, and not far from the field of the Battle of Stirling Bridge, Wallace’s win seventeen years earlier, remembered by the National Wallace Monument on the hill north of town.
