Word: scotlanders
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...death of Wallace, all reasonable Scotsmen saw the death of Scotland. But they were wrong. They reckoned without a thoroughly unreasonable Scotsman named Robert the Bruce, a 31-year-old firebrand with energy to burn, military and political genius to fan the flames, and a hereditary claim to the throne of Scone that set the firths on fire. In a quarter-century of ferocious fighting he drove the English out of Scotland, broke his domestic enemies in a bloody civil war, founded a dynasty that endured for four centuries, and bequeathed to his countrymen their national epic...
...independence must be considerably rewritten, and in this volume a Scottish professor has manfully attempted the task. He summarily deflates the theory that Bruce was merely an ambitious feudal magnate, effectively demonstrates that his movement was fundamentally powered by a patriotic passion for "the community of the realm of Scotland." At times the book is clotted with corrigenda, but it tells the ghastly and glorious old story with new vigor and delight...
...death before the altar of a village church. Crowned King at Scone, he promptly sent to warn England's Edward I that "he would defend himself with the longest stick he had." Edward, the master of a nation six times the size of tiny (pop. 400,000) Scotland, disdainfully instructed his legate in Scotland to "burn and slay and raise dragon" in the land. On June 19, at Methven field, the English scattered the rebel forces with great slaughter. King Robert's wife, daughter and sister were captured-in the spirit of fair prey, the English shut...
Royal Yokel. In that time an arrogant young upstart was transformed into a chastened commander with an inglorious but practical strategy: fight in small detachments, hit and run, scorch the earth, demolish captured castles. In a single year of maniacal activity and stunning hardship, Bruce reconquered two-thirds of Scotland and during the next five years he successively reduced almost all the major English fortresses north of the border. "On any showing," says Historian Barrow, "this must be reckoned one of the great military enterprises of British history...
Bannockburn broke the English hold in Scotland. In 1327, the stupid Edward was at last deposed-and somewhat later dispatched with a red-hot poker that was rammed up his rectum. In 1328, the two powers signed a treaty that recognized Scotland as an independent state and Bruce as its rightful monarch. The next year, "Guid King Robert" died of leprosy. His work was done-indeed, done better than he knew. Three centuries later, in 1603, his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson, James Stewart, was crowned King of England...