Killing Fields of Scotland

by R J M Pugh

  A final word on this book. It has been said that history may not always repeat itself but historians invariably do. This is inevitable, given that history happened; what is important are the arguments and the theories postulated by historians and the conclusions they draw from these. I trust that, in writing this book, I have not simply revisited other works – both ancient and modern – but hopefully produced a fresh, concise and useful account of Scotland’s killing fields.

  R. J. M. Pugh,

  July 2012

  MAP 1. principal battlefields during the roman – dark age – early middle age period ad 83-1263.

  Map 2. Principal battlefields during the Medieval – Late Medieval period 1296-1638.

  Map 3. Principal battlefields during the Civil Wars and the Jacobite Risings 1594 – 1746.

  TO EDITOR. DO THESE SMALLER MAPS NEED TO GO IN THE TEXT THROUGHOUT THE BOOK? IF THEY DO CAN YOU MARK THE LOCATIONS AND I WILL PUT THEM IN THE CORRECT PLACE ON NEXT PROOF

  Introduction

  For the fortunate majority of people living in Scotland today, war is a far-off thing, whether in distance, through images and reports of modern conflicts in the media, or in time, held in the memories of those who lived through the dark days of the First and Second World Wars. However, for much of Scotland’s history, warfare was far more familiar to her people. Indeed, Scotland’s history as a whole is inextricably connected to the martial history of the country. The long centuries of internal struggle and external strife affected every layer of society, from peasants and serfs displaced by the actions of war, to kings of the nation slain on the field of battle.

  Today, evidence of this violent history is all around us in Scotland. The national flag, the Saltire, is visible across the country and is said to come from the legend of a cross appearing in the sky before the battle of Athelstaneford. Many stories and songs have been passed down through the centuries as part of Scotland’s oral tradition and then been written down, telling tales of mighty warriors and great battles of old, some true, others mythical. These range from Aneirin’s Y Gododdin, an ancient poem telling the tale of 300 warriors, who marched south from Edinburgh to their deaths in battle at Catterick, through to the work of men such as Robert Burns, a great collector of old stories and songs, and are part of Scottish culture today through music, literature and even Hollywood movies, such as Braveheart, Rob Roy and Brave. Scottish art also displays this influence, with examples like the Romantic portraits of legendary figures like Robert Bruce, Mary, Queen of Scots and Bonnie Prince Charlie, and the stunning carving of the Aberlemno churchyard stone’s battle scene, through to vast canvases depicting battles like Culloden and even the recently created Prestonpans Tapestry, a 104-metre-long embroidery telling the story of the Jacobite victory of 1745.

  With such a notable presence in the nation’s history and culture, it can often seem strange how little attention and care has traditionally been given to the places where many of these stories began: the battlefields of Scotland. At many of the sites, the sole testament to their bloody history is a battlefield memorial, sometimes a simple cairn, other times an elaborate obelisk or column. At others, there is nothing at all to mark the momentous events that the landscape bore witness to. In addition, over the centuries since armies clashed on the battlefields, many of the sites have changed considerably, sometimes drastically, by the ongoing life of the landscape. The sites of the battles of Langside (1568) in Glasgow and Aberdeen II (1644) were slowly subsumed by the growth of their respective cities. Other changes over time, such as new farming techniques, development of transport and communication routes, quarrying and forestry, have all had an impact on some of the fields of conflict of Scotland’s past. While some sites, such as Culloden, with its excellent new visitor centre, may appear to be unchanged since the day of the battle, even here there has been impact, with much of the area afforested until relatively recently, and a road formerly running directly through the site.

  It was in recognition of the risks faced by many of the battlefields in the modern age that the Scottish Government took steps to introduce new legislation, in order to manage and maintain this fragile and finite resource for future generations. And so, with the publication of Scottish Historic Environment Policy in 2009 and the Historic Environment (Amendment) (Scotland) Act in 2011, Historic Scotland, on behalf of Scottish Ministers, was given an additional statutory duty to ‘compile and maintain (in such form as they think fit) an inventory of such battlefields as appear to them to be of national importance’, which would provide specific protection through the planning system for the battlefields included on the Inventory. Following a period of extensive research work in association with the Centre for Battlefield Archaeology at the University of Glasgow, the ‘Inventory of Historic Battlefields’ was formally launched on 21 March 2011. Initially containing seventeen sites, another eleven battlefields were added in November 2011, with work continuing on a further group for inclusion in summer 2012.

  The basis of the Inventory, to protect Scotland’s nationally important battlefields, is laid out in the revised Scottish Historic Environment Policy (2011). For a battlefield to be included it must meet certain criteria. The battle must be considered to be of national importance, either for its association with key historical events or figures; or for the physical remains and/or archaeological potential it contains; or for its landscape context. In addition, it must be possible to define the site on a modern map with a reasonable degree of accuracy. This is vital in order for the Inventory to be a useful tool which can help inform the decisions of planning authorities.

  Over time the Inventory is intended to grow as a resource. It will take into account new research and new discoveries, with records being updated where new information has come to light. In addition, evidence may lead to further sites being added to the Inventory in future, for example, where the location of a battlefield is currently uncertain.

  Even though it is still in its relative infancy, since its launch the Inventory and its associated guidance has proved to be a valuable and popular resource, aiding planning authorities in making informed decisions which safeguard the valuable heritage of the sites, while at the same time not obstructing the modern life of the landscape. It has also become a valued resource for both education and tourism, and has attracted interest from around the world and from a wide range of people – from academics and researchers to members of the public and serving and retired members of the military. However, despite its success, the Inventory is only one of many ways in which Scotland’s battlefields are being preserved for future generations.

  Across Scotland there is a vibrant network of local societies and battlefield groups, actively campaigning for and working on numerous battlefield sites, bringing them to the attention of both the local community and people farther afield, and turning them into a resource for the area. Each year more sites are commemorated with new memorials, and anniversaries, both small and large, are marked on some of the sites. Battlefield tours become more popular and publications such as this book continue to inform and educate the public about the battlefields and martial history of Scotland. Interpretation panels are appearing at a growing number of sites and, with the rise in new forms of media, there are exciting opportunities to provide interpretation and information in new ways, such as through smartphones, apps and the internet. The new ‘high-tech’ visitor centre that opened at Culloden in 2007 has been a great success and, as I write, work is underway at Bannockburn to create another new centre in advance of the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn in 2014.

  Around the world, battlefields have long been a source of fascination to those interested in history – whether that of their family, their local area, their nation or even the world. This interest is clearly seen on the sites themselves, where visitors from across the globe can be found returning to the spot where history was made, where stories started and ended, and where ancestors fought and died. Some visitors to battlefields treat them as an educ
ational resource, some simply as a leisure trip and some as an almost spiritual pilgrimage to remember the fallen at the place where they died. Yet, regardless of their motives, all their experiences are connected by the very location where the battle took place. An individual may read books about battles, or see them depicted in paintings, films and on television, but it is only at a battlefield site that someone can experience the battlefield. By placing themselves physically in the landscape, people can understand better what happened, where and why, and can also place themselves mentally and emotionally ‘in’ the battle. Without the battlefield itself that connection is lost, and if the battlefield itself is lost, the connection is gone forever. The survival of Scotland’s battlefields depends not just on the Inventory of Historic Battlefields, but also on the dedication of the many staff and volunteers striving to protect and promote battlefield sites across the nation. By working together to share expertise, understanding and resources, there is every reason to think that the future of the killing fields of Scotland may be happier than their history.

  Kevin Munro,

  May 2012

  Chapter 1

  The Roman Occupation

  The Roman occupation of Britain lasted from AD 43, when the Emperor Claudius, or, to give him his full name, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Claudius, or, to give him his full name, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus (10BC – AD54) sent his legions to conquer the southern part of the island. The legions remained in Britain until AD 410, when they abandoned Hadrian’s Wall, recalled to Rome to defend the Eternal City against the Visigoths. Thirty-four years after the Claudian invasion, the Emperor Titus Flavius Vespasianus, or Vespasian (AD 9 – 79) appointed Julius Agricola (AD 37 – 93) as governor of Brittania, as Britain was then known. In the third year of his governorship, Agricola was said to have ‘discovered new nations’1 – meaning peoples – in the northern part of Britain known to the Romans as Caledonia, named after the tribe which lived there.

  Between AD 80 and 83, Agricola, the ablest of the Roman generals, first subdued the Lowlands of Scotland, extending the limits of the Provincia Romana as far as a line from the Firth of Clyde to the Firth of Forth. In AD 81 Agricola constructed a network of twenty forts from Clyde to Forth covering a distance of eighty miles to protect the southern part of Caledonia. (This chain of forts would form the route of the wall built in AD 123 by a later governor, Titus Aurelius Fulvus Pius Antoninus; the Antonine wall, built on a sandstone base and topped with turf only ran for thirty miles but it was strengthened by many more forts per mile than Agricola’s wall.)

  After establishing his defensive line, Agricola returned to southern Britain, content for the moment with the progress he had made. He consolidated his partial conquest of the north by creating 1,300 miles of roads from the river Tyne in Northumberland into Caledonia. However, in AD 83, the Caledonians began to resist the Roman invaders; that year, the warrior tribes wiped out the Ninth Legion in Galloway, which brought Agricola north with a large army. On this occasion, he began his campaign in the west, subduing Galloway, then marched north at the head of 17,000 legionaries and 3,000 cavalry, intent on subjugating the entire region.

  Agricola’s army was supplied by Roman galleys hugging the eastern seaboard. During his progress, he met with little resistance and was able to build an impressive fort at Ardoch, Perthshire. Ardoch is a classic example of Roman military and engineering skills in planned entrenchments adapted to suit the geographical conditions and the terrain.

  However, despite his unopposed advance, the Caledonian tribes were gathering in strength, united in their determination to be rid of the invaders. The subsequent battle of Mons Graupius, fought in the autumn of AD 83, was neither the first nor the last confrontation between the Romans and the Caledonians. However, it is unique in that we are fortunate in having a well-written account of the battle. For this historians are indebted to the Roman historian and writer Gaius Cornelius Tacitus, Agricola’s son-in-law. Tacitus was present on the field of Mons Graupius and provided posterity with a detailed, eyewitness account of the action – albeit embellished – but not written until AD 98. Tacitus’s De Vita et Moribus Julii Agricolae (The Life and Death of Julius Agricola) is a pious tribute to his father-in- law, extolling his virtues and achievements, written five years after Agricola’s death. More of this follows.

  Our knowledge of the main tribes of Scotland – the Caledonians and the Maetae – at the time of Agricola’s campaign is sketchy and obscure. Tacitus described the Caledonians as large-limbed and red-haired. According to an account by Cassius Dio (AD 155 – post 229) a Roman consul in AD 211,2 a contemporary of and praetor (chief magistrate) in the reign of Emperor Lucius Septimus Severus (AD 146 – 211), the Caledonians and the Maetae ruled various sub-tribes; the Maetae occupied the region close to Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland, the Caledonians occupying the rest of north Britain. Neither tribe built walled towns or settlements; they lived in tents, wattled structures and crannogs – the name given in both Ireland and Scotland to artificially-constructed platforms supported by piles driven into the beds of rivers and lochs which served as domestic habitations as well as places of refuge in time of war. The native tribes depended on hunting, agriculture and pillage for their survival. Cassius Dio tells us that, on their foraging expeditions, the Caledonians subsisted on a special kind of compressed food which apparently satisfied both hunger and thirst3 – rather like their descendants, the Highland clansmen who could survive on a bag of oatmeal mixed with water. The Caledonians possessed chariots drawn by small but sturdy ponies – possibly the breed known as garrons – and the tribesmen carried dirks and short spears with a bronze knob on the un-business end of the haft which they beat against their small shields to intimidate the foes upon whom they advanced – rather in the manner of the impis of King Cetewayo during the Zulu war with Britain in 1879. The Caledonians also bore long swords with a cutting edge but lacking a point, somewhat unwieldy and not suited to close-quarter combat. Caledonian warriors were fleet of foot and extraordinarily brave; Tacitus admired their courage and skill in war. They went into battle practically naked so that the animal images tattoed on their bodies could be seen, thus intimidating their enemies. (The Roman soldiers called the Caledonians Picti, or the Painted People.) Such were the men against whom Agricola led his legions in the autumn of AD 83.

  Mons Graupius

  Precisely why the Caledonians chose to attack the Roman legions at this point may well be explained by the time of year. The Romans may have burnt the harvest or appropriated the grain needed to feed the native population during the coming winter. The force which confronted Agricola was a confederacy of disparate tribes united under a local tribal leader, whom Tacitus identifies as Calgacus. Of this man, we know nothing apart from the speech attributed to him by Tacitus before the battle of Mons Graupius – the Grampian Mountain.4

  Calgacus’s Latinized name may derive from the Celtic Calg-ac-os ‘The Swordsman’, or perhaps the Irish Calgach, meaning ‘Possesser of a Blade’. (In the tenth century, the area around Morayshire was known to Scottish kings as ‘The Swordlands.’) Whatever the truth of it, Tacitus describes Calgacus as ‘the most distinguished for [sic] birth and valour among the [Caledonian] chieftains’.

  There were, of course, many chieftains in the Caledonian host facing Agricola, but Calgacus alone is named. On that autumn day 30,000 Celtic warriors were positioned on the upper slopes of an unidentified mountain or moor, looking down on 20,000 Roman infantry and horse. Agricola ordered his cohorts forward. As they advanced uphill, the intimidating host of half-naked warriors greeted them with hoarse war cries and imprecations until one man stepped from the throng, calling for silence so that he might address them. Tacitus records Calgacus’s words as follows:

  battles have been lost and won before, but never without hope. We were always there in reserve. We, the choicest flower of Britain’s manhood, we the last men on earth, the last of the free, have been shielded before today by the very remotenes
s and seclusion for which we are famed … [to] robbery, slaughter, plunder, they [the Romans] give the lyric name of Empire … the Romans have created a desolation5 and they call it peace …

  Fine words worthy of William Wallace and Winston Churchill, designed to stir a people’s blood in the coming fight – if indeed Calgacus ever spoke them. Setting aside the fact that, in all probability, neither Calgacus nor Tacitus were conversant in each other’s tongue, it is also extremely unlikely that Tacitus could have been within earshot of Calgacus and the Caledonian host. The words Tacitus put into a barbaric warrior’s mouth owe more to fiction than historical fact. Calgacus’s speech is couched in the manner of perfect, measured Latin prose and we cannot accept it as genuine. Tacitus had an altogether different motive for attributing this speech to Calgacus, as we shall presently learn.

  At the commencement of the battle of Mons Graupius, Tacitus tells us that both sides hurled missiles at each other – Roman pilum (javelin), Caledonian javelin and rocks and stones. After these preliminaries, Agricola ordered forward 8,000 of his soldiers, six cohorts of Batavian and Tungrian auxiliaries, men who would bear the brunt of the battle. No doubt the auxiliaries advanced in the famous Roman testudo (tortoise) formation of three sides, the heads of the soldiers protected by their long shields held aloft. When they neared the Caledonian front line, the veteran auxiliaries shook out into battle formation to prepare for close-quarter combat with their gladii (short swords).