Coming Soon: Not for Glory, a Historical Novel of Scotland

The final novel in The Black Douglas Trilogy and still in edit but here is the opening:

June 24, 1314

The English were trapped against the Bannockburn. The hedge of Scottish steel shoved once more against the desperate knights, and Sir James de Douglas saw the banners flying above the writhing mass. Those banners included the huge scarlet banner with the Plantagenet leopards; that banner proclaimed that King Edward of Caernarfon was somewhere close in the chaos.  James bellowed his battle cry, “A Douglas! A Douglas!” battle fury sweeping through him. Rage and hatred unleashed for the losses and the pain. He smashed his sword into an English face. For Isabella. For his father. For Thomas. For Alycie. He swung again and again.

Around him his men screamed, “Scotland! Scotland! On them!” Hungry for revenge, they had spent their lives fighting the invader, and they had become savagely good at war. An arrow sliced in from the right, striking James’s shield. He lifted it, but no more came. Archers would have been the last chance for the English, but King Robert de Bruce had planned well for them, and held back his five hundred Scottish chivalry to sweep behind the English line and attack the archers.

James’s men shouted as they thrust their pikes into the belly and face of English horses, into the gaps in gleaming armor; they chopped with their weapons. And the English fell back, horses screaming as they went down the steep edge of a gully.

The English had nowhere more to go. Under the English hooves, men lay, dead, wounded, shrieking in pain. Their commanders were shouting to retire. And the Scots slashed into them. English knights shouted curses, thrust with lances, swung swords as they were forced back. Ribbons of scarlet waved through the Bannockburn’s waters. The English knights fought with the desperation of trapped men.

Next to James, one of his men grunted as he hacked his pike into the writhing mass of English. Another horse went down. Blood and mud splattered onto James’s helm. The rider threw himself free, landing flat on his back. James grunted as he slammed a foot on the knight’s chest and thrust his sword down through his throat.

“On them!” The bellows from his men were deafening. "They fail!"

"Sir James!"

James spun at the hand on his shoulder, jerking his sword arm into position.

A pale-faced lad dodged backward. "The king sent me. He wants you."

An unhorsed Englishman screamed as his head was crushed by a slashing hoof. He fell atop a knight already dead. James's own men wore helms and studded leather, marked with the blue and white Saltire of Scotland, now streaked with mud and blood and gore. The steel tide surged against the crumbling mass of a panicked foe. They heaved forward a step.

Six hours they’d fought, since the cool of dawn, hacking at an army that seemed without number. His arm suddenly was heavy with the fatigue of a day of slash and thrust.   

The English trumpets shrilled thin. Harooo Harooo… Retire… Retire…

He blinked the sting of sweat from his eyes. Where was Walter Stewart? In the chaos, James spotted Walter’s blue and white checky pennant. He grabbed Iain’s arm and pulled him out of the line of pikesmen. "Find Sir Walter. Tell him he has command." He shoved his sword into his black leather sheath and jerked a nod to the squire. "Lead on."

The lad turned and clamored across the broken sod, past a sprawled body of a knight, his armor still agleam as his blood soaked into the dry earth. For a moment a breath of a breeze cut through the fug of blood and shit. Who could have imagined such a battle? A body wearing a studded brigandine marked with a Saltire was pierced by the shattered remains of a pike next to a stallion, its guts spilled onto the ground. They trudged past it all and the uproar faded behind them into a rumble.

Beyond a ragged stand of alder, leaves drooping in summer’s heat, the king’s golden lion banner hung limp in the still air. The lad pointed. James slapped his shoulder and strode through the welcome shade of the trees as he reached up to wrench off his helm.

Title, Title, Who Has a Title?

I am deep into work on my next (and final) novel in The Black Douglas Trilogy. It isn't coming easy. I hadn't researched the years after the Battle of Bannockburn as deeply as I had the years before and I needed some additional books. I am still waiting for the part of Bower's  Scotichronicon that covers from 1320 to 1360 and the cost made me cry. But I have most of what I need and am just looking for bits and pieces I may have missed. Of course, much of it is open to question and a lot of details are lost in the shroud of history. All the more fun for me.

I am still wrestling with a big question. Who WAS the mother of James Douglas's bastard son, later  known as Archibald the Grim or Black Archibald? Admittedly it could have been anyone, including the local milkmaid, but the fact that Archibald grew up in the King's household is rather mysterious. Even King Robert's illegitimate children were not normally a part of the royal household. And Archibald eventually became the 3rd Earl of Douglas. A bastard becoming powerful and inheriting was not unknown in 14th century Scotland, but was a long way from the norm. This leads me to speculate that the mother had some power in addition to his being Douglas's son. But who would she have been?

Another big question is the title. I am wavering on choosing "The Hammer of England" in spite of some people saying that it sounds as though he was English. TheOldNat suggested Mell of England since I've been known to sneak in a word or two of Scots. Of course, hardly anyone would know what the title meant (it means a wooden mallet in Scots) but that might not be a big issue. Or it might be.

I'm open to suggestion on both questions. 

Anyway, I am researching and writing away at it. The artist is working on art for the cover and I have a cover designer ready to design the cover. My editor is ready. Unless something really unexpected happens the final book in The Black Douglas Trilogy will be out early next year.

King Robert the Bruce, Bannockburn and Braveheart Part Two

Blàr Allt a' Bhonnaich, The Battle of Bannockburn, on 23-24 June 1314, was one of the most important occasions in all of Scottish history. I mention the movie Braveheart, because so many people take what is in that movie as truth rather than fiction. In the movie, Robert the Bruce hasn't quite decided whether he will fight the English or not. Finally, the Scottish army simply makes a pell mell, sword-waving charge at the huge English army and (miraculously) defeat it.

Ha! They would have been SO dead.

I think in Part One of this series, I indicated pretty clearly that King Robert made a lot of preparation for that battle, but that doesn't answer what happened at the battle itself.

Many people have the idea (probably from movies where it isn't practical to have enough extras to form a real army) that medieval armies were small. This was very often not the case.

A levy called by a king could form an army with a substantial portion of the entire kingdom's adult male population who owed him service. While the English army, very likely of about 20,000 men, was unusually large, it was not at all outside the range of what was possible with a year's preparation, which is what King Edward II put into it. It was led by the King Edward, who didn't have a great reputation as a fighter, but also by hardened fighters such as Aymer de Valence, 2nd Earl of Pembroke, Henry de Beaumont and Robert de Clifford, 1st Baron de Clifford as well as the earls of Gloucester and Hereford.

The Scottish army, made up of about every fighting man in Scotland, was about one-half that size, probably in the range of 8,000 to 10,000 men total. You can vary those estimates by a few thousand, but not much more than that. I find the possibility they were larger unlikely. It is also highly unlikely they were much smaller.

The Scots knew not only that an English army was on its way but very close to when they could expect it. However, they didn't know its makeup. On 23 June, King Robert sent one of his most trusted lieutenants, Sir James Douglas, with a small force to scout the approaching army. Even this doughty fighter was horrified at the sight of the medieval host they would face. There was debate about whether to retreat--always something King Robert was willing to do rather than have an army destroyed. King Robert the Bruce decided to take the risk.

On the first day of battle occurred one of the most stirring fights in all of Scottish history -- a fight witnessed and described by chroniclers with both armies.

The English vanguard was approaching the Scottish host. King Robert himself decided to scout the ground. No one knows quite how he got so far ahead of his commanders, but, alone, not wearing armour, on a regular steed rather than a warhorse and armed only with a battleaxe, the King was spotted and was identified by Sir Henry de Bohun, slightly ahead of his own army, by his crown and gold tabard.

De Bohun couched his lance and set his massive warhorse into a charge.

It is hard to imagine the horror of the king's watching lieutenants as Robert the Bruce sat calmly, watching the oncoming knight thunder towards him. When de Bohun was no more than a few feet away, King Robert turned his horse, rose in his stirrups, and slammed his battleaxe down on de Bohun's head.

The single blow split de Bohun's helmet and his head in two.

The Scot version of the fight says that when he was reproached for so risking himself, King Robert's reply was a complaint that he had broken his favorite battleaxe. Sir Henry de Bohun, nephew of the Earl of Hereford, lay dead. Only the king's command held the Scots back from a charge.

Thus began one of the greatest battles in all medieval history.


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Please check out my novels on Scotland's struggle against English conquest. Freedom's Sword is available on Amazon and Smashwords. My novel about Robert the Bruce's most trusted lieutenant, Sir James, the Black Douglas, is A Kingdom's Cost is also available on Amazon and Smashwords.

King Robert the Bruce, Bannockburn and Braveheart Part One

Anyone who writes a about the Scottish War of Independence as I do in Freedom's Sword and A Kingdom's Cost can not ignore these topics so today I'd like to discuss them.

I'll start with the movie Braveheart to get that subject out of the way. I assume that many of you have seen it. In the last scene, Robert the Bruce. leading a ragtag army of Scots, can't quite decide whether he will fight for Scotland or not. He fiddles with a piece of cloth he somehow inherited from William Wallace. A glance from one of Wallace's men (who hasn't aged in spite of the fact that it has been nine years since Wallace's death) makes the royal Bruce realize that to retreat would be cowardice and he has this same ragtag, untrained army charge an English force of armored knights which vastly outnumbers them. They win because--well, for some mysterious reason.

Did you enjoy the movie? As movie it was probably enjoyable. As history--it was wrong in every implication and detail.

The Battle of Bannockburn was one of the most important events in all of Scottish history. It was certainly the worst defeat of the English/Normans during the middle ages. It absolutely did not happen by chance.

So what did happen?

During the years between 1306 when Robert the Bruce was crowned King of the Scots and 1314 when the English King Edward II marshalled one of the largest armies then ever raised in English history to attempt to defeat him, Robert Bruce had fought one of the most successful guerilla wars ever waged in Europe. Yet he also suffered terrible losses. Three of his four brothers were captured and executed. His wife, his only child, and two of his sisters were captured and imprisoned in England. In spite of it, he had driven the English almost entirely from Scotland.

In fact, no one would have criticized the king had he chosen to retreat because that was his usual tactic when faced with a large force on the field. His well-thought-out guerilla tactics come down to us today in a very old verse called Good King Robert's Testament:

On foot should be all Scottish war
Let hill and marsh their foes debar
And woods as walls prove such an arm
That enemies do them no harm.
In hidden spots keep every store
And burn the plainlands them before
So, when they find the land lie waste
Needs must they pass away in haste
Harried by cunning raids at night
And threatening sounds from every height
Then, as they leave, with great array
Smite with the sword and chase away.
This is the counsel and intent
Of Good King Robert's Testament

This is the tactic that had served Scotland's Good King Robert so well in defeating the English.

During those years, King Robert had captured and razed almost every major castle in Scotland. Stirling Castle with its strong walls high on a cliff overlooking the sea still held out. The governor of Stirling Castle had agreed that if relief from the English did not arrive by early July of 1314, he would surrender. This would be a humiliating blow that the English king, who was already in trouble with his nobles, could not endure.

For months King Edward II raised the English levies and prepared a huge army.

For months, King Robert the Bruce called upon the men of Scotland to rally to him. In the Torwood, a huge forest in the center of Scotland, he led his men as they worked to make the schiltron -- a pike square -- manueverable. Those same sixteen-foot pikes had brought down the English army at the Battle of Stirling Bridge under the leadership of Andrew de Mornay and William Wallce. But they had not charged. They could only stand and wait to be attacked.

Bruce was determined that a schiltron, with its multiple rows of deadly pikes, would charge the English, and King Robert trained his men until they could. Each of the four schiltron's was lead by one of his most trusted lieutenants. But they were still dreadfully outnumbered, at least three to one.

How to even the odds even more?

The land their wall, as his testament so famously says. Much of the land in the region of Stirling Castle was marshy, bad country for the huge destriers ridden by knights in their heavy armor. So the Bruce positioned his army so they would have to be attacked across bad country, but not bad enough. Then he ordered pits lined with sharpened stakes to be dug across most of the same area.

It was a horror waiting to happen for the English.

Yet even with all the training and preparation, the Bruce was willing to retreat. He would not lead his army to defeat merely for pride. Facing an army of that size and might was a terrible risk, but one that could have a great prize if they won. That night with the advisement of his faithful lieutenants, King Robert made his decision.

Before them stood an English army of unimaginable might. Against it, King Robert the Bruce was determined to stand.

King Robert was not a king who "led from the rear" and in another post I'll talk about what happened on that amazing day.
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Please check out my novels on Scotland's struggle against conquest. Freedom's Sword is available on Amazon and Smashwords. Please also check out A Kingdom's cost also available on Amazon and Smashwords.