Bannockburn Spear formations.

How effective is a spear battle formation ? The short answer is 'very effective'. Hundreds of years before Mons Graupius the spear battle line was the formation that the Spartans excelled at and it was the main formation of the army of Alexander the Great, enabling him to conquer the known world. He and his spearmen turned for home undefeated, after erecting an altar in Bengal India, saying 'Alexander stopped here.'

The spear battle line was so effective that Scottish armies continued to use modified spear formations for much of their history. Even at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314 ( 1,230 years after Mons Graupius ), the Scots fought in 'schiltroms' i.e. 'sheltered-rings' or 'shield-rings'. These were massive circular formations of 1,000 men, who were armed with 15 ft pikes and had a shell of shields around the complete circle. The pikes pointed out from the ring for all 360 degrees, so that even if cavalry got behind the ring they still faced a resolute embankment of shields and an impenetrable porcupine of spears. William Wallace had pioneered the use of these defensive rings, but the Scottish king Robert the Bruce added a new tactic to the schiltroms. Previously they had been static defensive formations, but Bruce transformed them into an offensive weapon, by training his men to be mobile and still hold their compact formation.

The Scots had a massive army arrayed against them; knights had come from all over Europe even bringing their furniture to fill the castles they expected to be given, so before the battle, to a man the Scots knelt to pray for assistance. The English king seeing the Scots army kneel as he rode over the brow of a hill to watch the battle said to one of his lords, 'Look, they kneel for mercy'. The noble replied,' Sir, they kneel to a greater King than you' !

An English knight named De Bohun ( pronounced De Boon ) seeing Bruce inspect his troops mounted only on a small war pony, lowered his lance and charged his steed at Bruce who calmly waited on De Bohun reaching him. At the last moment, using the fleetness of his smaller pony to avoid the lance Bruce drew his battle axe and cleaved the head of De Bohun, who fell dead. Both sides looked on this as an omen from heaven; many ordinary English foot soldiers felt that their doom was pronounced. To this day some Scottish kids still use a spoon to smash their morning boiled egg saying, 'I am Bruce and you are De Bohun !'

On the first day of the battle of Bannockburn a schiltrom was charged by 500 heavy cavalry. Although they were isolated without any support from other schiltroms, and infantry always lost in those circumstances, they boldly held their ground and lost only 6 men - yet killed 100 armoured cavalry knights including the Earl of Gloucester. Bruce had four schiltroms at Bannockburn that freely cart wheeled about the battle field; while one stood against the charge, another circled behind the cavalry and hemmed them in between the rings. Bannockburn was the first battle where heavy cavalry were charged by foot soldiers, something that was thought to be suicidal. The schiltroms were so successful that although they were outnumbered four to one, they inflicted the greatest defeat that an English army had ever experienced. The pivotal point when Bruce knew that the battle was in his favour, was when his Generals brought him word that the English knights, in absolute frustration, enraged at their complete inability to penetrate the enemy - were throwing their expensive, hand made weapons at the schiltroms. The schiltroms proved even more effective when they were used against infantry. Bannockburn and the victory of the schiltroms was a turning point in history, as it marks the beginning of the end - of the dominance of the wealthy knight on horseback. It showed that the ordinary foot soldier fighting in spear formation could defeat the privileged, rich knights who had trained all their life for war, were mounted, armoured, well armed and used to deciding the outcome of battles. The age of the knights was finished - the age of the infantryman had begun !

Visit the | Caledonian 1 | page for info on the Roman invasion of Scotland.