(shouting)
In 1315,
an army from Britain invaded Ireland,
numbering 6,000 battle-hardened veterans.
It was one of the powerful foreign forces
ever to set foot in the country.
But this was no English army,
it's tough mail-clad soldiers were Scotsmen.
Gallowglasses and fighting men from the Highlands,
and Western Isles.
Their commander was Edward Bruce,
brother of Robert Bruce, the king of the Scots.
Celtin arms!
Ho-ah!
They had a simple objective
to drive out the English,
and make Edward Bruce king of Ireland.
It was an ambitious plan.
In over 100 years, no one had succeeded
in breaking the English stranglehold on Ireland.
This is a story of two Celtic nations,
a shared heritage, and a forgotten war
that could've changed the course history.
Soon after he arrived,
Edward Bruce had himself proclaimed High King of Ireland.
In a bid to forge an Irish, Scottish alliance,
support for Edward's claim came from Donal O'Neill,
the powerful king of Tyrone.
The English in Ireland, known as the Anglo-Irish,
were in disarray.
One of their greatest lords, Richard DeBurgh,
had been crushed in battle.
Edward Bruce now had control of most of Ulster.
He brought his army southwards into Leinster,
hitting at the heart of Anglo-Irish power.
The winter of 1315-1316,
the Scots are in a position where they're actually
on the threshold of sweeping everything away
in front of them.
You can't stop the Scots, they've had no serious reverse.
When the Bruces invaded Ireland,
the only people, almost without exception,
who supported them were the native Irish.
The reason being, that if you were a member
of the English colony in Ireland, and you joined the Bruces,
that made you a traitor.
So, there was very little support for them in Anglo-Ireland.
Overwhelmingly, it became a war between
the English in Ireland, and the native Irish.
And they only had the backing of the native Irish.
The Scots knew that overall victory
in Ireland was far from certain.
Before long, they were faced with the devastating enemy
that couldn't be defeated in battle.
Their ensured anger,
as if the spirits of our fallen foe
were imploring the unearthly powers to pour
their gathered stores on our unsheltered heads
threatening us with ruin.
Heavy rain had been falling in May 1315.
The month in which the Scots arrived in Ireland.
All summer long the country was plagued
by the worst weather seen across Europe
in generations.
When the time came to gather what was left of the harvest,
the reality was bleak.
There would not be enough food to last the winter.
This was the beginning of the Great European Famine,
one of the worst natural disasters
in the continent's history.
For the early years of the 14th century,
Europe is subject to a series of crop failures,
and culminates in the Great Famine of 1315 to 17.
Life was pretty difficult, in general, in Ireland.
By the time Edward Bruce arrives, in 1315,
the population would probably have been
substantially weakened.
It's a poor country.
People are subject to, I suppose,
the inequities of war all the time,
whether you're in a Gaelic, or an Anglo-Irish area.
Edward Bruce comes in here, to a country where
it's not exactly optimum conditions for the population
at that time.
In fact, it's going to become very difficult,
very quickly from 1315 to 17.
Many afflictions in all parts of Ireland.
Very many deaths, famine,
and many strange diseases,
murders, and intolerable storms, as well.
And I think it's very telling that a number of the Irish,
and all sources for the period and later,
actually blame the famine itself on the presence
of the Bruce army.
That some how they caused it,
or worsened it.
Although, they also criticize the English forces
for adding to it, too.
So, there's certainly a sense in which
for the ordinary populace
that the two are run together.
It makes you think of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
War and Famine, here's two of them, being visited on us
at the same time.
In his first few months of being in Ireland,
Edward Bruce clearly rounds up large bodies of supplies,
spoil, booty, and ships it back to Scotland.
And it may be that supply was a central motive
to going there in the first place.
But by the time you get to 1316, 1317,
after two failed harvests, into your third bad winter,
livestock would be dwindling,
population would be moving about in search of food.
It's really a large part of the war itself.
We left nothing but the harvest
of a charred desert,
that was now the bitterness of dust and ashes.
And in their reflection we began to see
the hand of God outstretched to punish sin.
Famine and sickness waited not to be invited,
as the oppressed looked around for a protector,
and finds he has none.
People in the Middle Ages understood
their place, in a way.
That's the way the system worked.
So, if you were born into poverty,
you could look forward to an afterlife
of heaven.
I mean, that's what was sold to them.
That keeps you in your place.
The world is run on these lines,
there are those who work, those pray,
and those who fight.
And depending on which one you're born into,
that's where you stay.
So, there is an acceptance of that.
There's a kind of a fatalism about
what you're born into.
There would be an idea that well this is my lot,
and this is what I have to put up with.
You are being punished, in a way,
by suffering now for some identified sins
that you, or somebody else did a while ago.
So, that is the worldview, that is how calamitous
events are understood.
Like the Bruce invasion, like the famine,
like the Black Death that follows
not that long afterwards.
As the year 1315 drew to a close,
Edward Bruce was campaigning in the Irish midlands.
He was many miles from his base in Ulster,
and his main priority was to find food and shelter
for his army.
But in a scenario that was becoming more and more common,
the local population suffered the burden of war.
The main idea is not to engage so much
in actual battles, as to take a phalanx,
a huge number of men through a territory
and devastate it.
Destroy anything in it that could help
the residents once you've passed through.
So, you can starve them out.
The chevauchée's been described as an early example
of total warfare, because it attacks woman and children,
as well as men.
And I suspect, that something like this
might have been in Edward's head in Ireland.
I have looked at an example of an attack on a settlement
outside Slane in County Meath.
There is an entry saying that 80 men, women, and children
were killed by an attack of the Bruce.
So, even from that you can just tell
that it must've been tremendously savage.
No quarter seems to have been given.
This was a village in an English-held area.
So, what you do have, even in a country
which was used to quite savage warfare,
what was happening with Edward Bruce
seems to have taken people, even them,
by surprise in the ferocity of what was happening.
It's probably the worse time to be alive.
And the Middle Ages is the first half of the 14th century,
it's pretty much hell.
(dramatic music)
Ravaged by famine,
many areas were deserted.
Entire towns vanished at this time,
like Ardreigh near Athy
This place was once a thriving settlement,
but was abandoned in the 14th century.
When a cemetery was excavated there,
over a thousand skeletons were recovered.
Some of them date from the time of the Bruce invasion.
(dramatic music)
During the course of excavation work here,
over 1200 people were found,
so a full medieval population.
And we know this is actually an area that the Bruce army
passes through because the go through Athy
and the surrounding areas.
So, it was an area that would've been affected,
without a shadow of doubt, by the wars.
When you come to looking at how things really
were for people hundreds of years in the past,
if you're looking at human remains,
you're looking directly into the face of somebody
who was alive at the time that the Bruce invasion
was taking place.
The types of injuries that they sustain
are practically unimaginable to us now.
The tough aspect of their lives
is just quite incredible.
The human remains like this, they're like a storybook
of people's lives at the time.
Here we have an individual that is male,
and aged between 35 and 45 years of age at death.
Evidence of interpersonal violence would be evident
by the presence of sharp force trauma to the skull.
Which we have here in the frontal bone.
Comes in at a point which has sharp edges on each side
which indicate it may have been a sword,
and it comes to a point just above the eye,
which narrowly misses the eye.
So, here we have the frontal bone
which has the orbits of the eyes, here and here.
And this is the ear.
This male was probably facing his assailant,
and a right-handed attack has come in,
probably from a sword,
and was swept in like this.
The sharp force trauma, it probably exposed the skull.
This individual is incredibly lucky
because he survived this blow.
And as well as this blade cut coming through here,
there is the blunt force trauma on the top of the head.
So, either at the same time, or two separate occasions,
this man was hit by two different weapon types.
The sharp force trauma, probably a sword,
and then the blunt force trauma,
which could be a variety of different weapons,
but the type of things in the medieval period
that can inflict this type of force,
are things like hammers,
that type of weaponry.
We have some from the same cemetery
where people, we can tell that they've raised
their arms above their faces in an attempt
to ward off blows.
So, really it's the human remains
are the human story of what's going on
at this time.
And this man is one of the people
who live through it.
Just a few miles northeast of
the now vanished town of Ardreigh,
there's a huge artificial mound, the Motte of Ardscull.
Today, the motte is covered with trees,
but in the 14th century it had a very different appearance.
In January 1316, the Anglo-Irish lords gathered
a great army here, commanded by Edmund Butler,
the English king's representative in Ireland.
They knew the Scottish army was nearby,
and were determined to destroy them once and for all.
Battlefield archaeologist, Tony Pollard,
is following the trail of Edward Bruce,
and the Scottish army, as they advanced through Ireland.
There can be no denying
that this is pretty impressive.
Absolutely, yeah.
We've been looking for battlefields
all the way down to get to here,
and everywhere we've been we've seen mottes.
But they've all been much smaller than this.
Well, what we have here Tony is a very important
settlement site.
So, what we're looking at is this huge mound
that originally would've had a wooden palisade on the top.
It would've had a small garrison inside,
but what we see today is only a small fraction,
really, of what used to be here.
There would've been a major settlement
that accompanied this motte.
And when the Anglo-Normans came to Ireland,
they constructed these mottes to try and control
the landscape.
So, you'll consistently find them beside
routeways, whether they're roads or rivers.
We're beside a road here, a road that undoubtedly
the Bruce army would've marched down originally.
The Bruce army is the largest army
that's really ever come to the country,
and it's the largest army that'll be seen
for a number of hundred years in Ireland.
And an army that size has to operate
along the major routeways.
It has to move close to these centers of power consistently.
And that's exactly what we have at Ardscull.
So, these are like castles, really.
But there on the cheap.
That's exactly it, a quick fix to try and control
territory as quickly as they can.
The Anglo-Irish, they seem to have
a fairly big army here.
They surely had an opportunity here
to smash the Scots.
I mean, by this time, must've been in a fairly
dilapidated state,
but they kind of let it go don't they.
Oh, absolutely.
There's no doubt that they significantly
outnumbered the Scots,
and should have won.
The Scots say that there were about
50,000 English descending on them,
they had about 10,000 men.
And the defeat, using the tactics that you
would be familiar with at Bannockburn,
defeat the English.
If you then look at the other side of the accounts,
the Anglo-Irish accounts, what their saying is that,
in fact, really the Scots didn't have much
to do with this battle at all.
That they had a bit of a disagreement
among themselves, and after killing about
70-odd Scots, they lost five men.
They had this argument and then leave the field.
Said it was really unfortunate what occurred to them here.
Whichever way you cut it, it doesn't really bode well
for the Anglo-Irish, does it?
Either they're defeated by the Scots
through sheer force of arms,
or they can't agree among themselves
what to do and have a barney,
and then clear off.
And I think the balance of evidence
you have to consider that the Scots,
more than likely, defeated them militarily
on the battlefield.
The Scots are allowed to fight another day.
Yep, allowed to fight on their terms,
and allowed to fight another day, and the war continues.
And the misery continues for everybody, really.
Ardscull was a missed opportunity
for the Anglo-Irish.
Edmund Butler had failed to take his best chance yet
to annihilate Edward Bruce,
and now Dublin lay open to assault
by the victorious Scots.
However, in the days that followed the battle,
they found themselves caught in the fog of war.
That cloud of uncertainty when an army
is unsure of its own capability,
and its enemy's intentions.
The Scots were hungry and exhausted.
Edward Bruce knew they were in no condition
to attack the most important city in Ireland.
At the end of the first campaigning season, if you like,
contemporary opinion was that Bruce was winning,
he had the advantage,
and he had an opportunity then to consolidate
his position and work ahead.
The problem for him, I suppose,
was that first season in Ireland
was also the first of these famine years.
The conditions weren't ripe for him
to do something very elaborate to begin with.
I think even Edward Bruce was,
even after his first matter of months in Ireland,
he might have begun to think that maybe
that wasn't going to go as easily
as he had thought, initially.
The Scots had no option
but to begin the slow and painful march
north to their base in Ulster.
Their supplies were now almost gone,
and the men began to die of starvation.
What was happening during the course
of the Bruce invasion, was very extreme.
Contemporary accounts say that people were struggling
so much they were resorting to cannibalism
in parts of Ireland.
It was said, truly, that some evil men
were so distraught by famine,
that they dragged out of the cemeteries
the corpses of the buried,
and roasted the bodies on spits,
and ate every single one of them.
And women ate their sons for hunger.
It was a very bleak time.
And I think, it was
the timing was devastating
from the Scots point of view.
The weakened Scottish army
limped back to Ulster.
Even there, the Scots were not secure.
As Carrickfergus castle,
the most important stronghold in the North,
still held out against them.
Edward Bruce relied on the tried and trusted
weapon of siege warfare, starvation.
The Scots don't really need big siege engines
they don't need to be actively attacking this all the time.
They just sit outside in their siege camp,
and let nature take its course.
So, it's an incredibly brutal conflict,
but it's not one that involves lobbing huge missiles inside.
It's just keeping them bottled up.
And at one point the Scots send emissaries
into the castle to negotiate,
and they're taken prisoner by the garrison.
And rumors start to leak out that these guys
have actually been eaten by the garrison,
so hungry are they.
And eventually, nature does take its course,
and around about late July, August 1316,
just over a year after the siege begins,
the castle opens its gates,
and Edward Bruce takes control.
This victory could not hide the fact
that Edward Bruce was still a long way from being
recognized across the island as the high king.
Phelim O'Connor, the king of Connacht,
now threw his lot in with Bruce,
and attacked English settlements throughout
the Western province,
but he was defeated and killed
in the Battle of Athenry.
Other Gaelic chiefs showed little or no interest
in joining the Scots.
The thing about Ireland in the Middle Ages,
which is not true of Scotland,
is that Ireland was a very polar society.
You had the native Irish, and you had
the English of Ireland.
So, of course, it probably was a bit naive
to think that they could put aside these internal divisions,
and rise above it for some kind of, in inverted commas,
national cause.
Bruce still had the backing
of a formidable Gaelic leader, Donal O'Neill of Tyrone.
O'Neill's army represented the main Irish support
for the Scottish campaign.
Instead of fighting the English, we fight ourselves.
And so we owe to ourselves the miseries
with which we are afflicted.
Degenerate,
manifestly unworthy of our ancestors.
It was by their valor and splendid deeds
that the Irish race, in all the ages past,
retained her liberty.
We must be at harmony at home.
We must prosecute this war with our united forces.
If we are to regain our liberty.
The idea that they thought of themselves
as distinctively Irish does emerge,
but Ireland is still a very divided country
for most of the Middle Ages.
That's the tragedy, is that they didn't band together,
and work together.
That just never happened.
You can argue that these Irish leaders
should have put their differences aside
in this national cause.
You're asking a person to take a gamble
on losing everything that he has in the world
for some greater cause,
and it was too much to ask.
Each of these Irish leaders was the head
a branch of the family, he was somebody who
was trying to hold on to his land,
and ultimately, it's all about land.
Edward Bruce's campaign
was losing momentum.
He desperately needed reinforcements and supplies
for his depleted and weakened army.
And only one man could provide such assistance.
In September 1316, Edward traveled to Fife
to see his brother, the king of Scotland himself,
Robert Bruce.
The Irish are impressed.
The government is frightened of the wedge
that hath been thrust so quickly into the heart
of English influence, and yet, you did not
march onto the walls of Dublin.
My hand was forced.
Famine and fatigue wore weary my few remaining men,
while Carrickfergus still lay under siege.
I could not afford a battle on two fronts.
I heeded your advice, brother.
Demand nothing until you have the force
to enhance your claim.
I feel they must face the wrath of two kings,
to convince them of their loyalty.
Replenish your stock, reinforce your men,
prepare yourself for war.
It was always Edward Bruce that we see to the fore
in this invasion of Ireland,
and indeed, Robert's contemporary biographer,
this man John Barbour, who wrote a very long poem
about Robert later on in the 14th century.
He paints Edward as a bit of a troublemaker,
and that Robert wanted rid of him,
but I think there are other reasons for that.
All the contemporary evidence suggests that
Robert and Edward were very close.
Edward was Robert's right-hand man.
It could be that Edward was desirous
of proving himself as the worthy successor,
worthy potential successor to Robert Bruce.
Edward may have thought, "Well, if I'm going to be
"the next king of Scots, maybe I should show
"that I've got the mettle for it."
Because he must've felt somewhat overshadowed,
I think, by his brother Robert.
The whole thread running through this story, I think,
is the relationship between the two brothers,
Robert and Edward.
And it's a relationship that I don't think
has been given enough attention.
I think there are assumptions made about it,
and I think some of them are very wrong.
One of which, is that Robert wanted to get his brother
out of the way, because he was a possible threat.
I think that's absolute nonsense.
Robert sent his brother to Ireland
because he fully trusted him.
And I don't think it smacks at all
of a suspicious or difficult relationship
between Edward and Robert.
And let's face it, the entire Bruce family
has almost been wiped out,
all of the other brothers are dead.
It's only that pair,
and I think they've got a fairly close bond.
King Robert arrived in Ireland in this way.
And when he had stayed in Carrickfergus for three days,
they consulted and decided that with all their men
they would hold their way through all Ireland
from one end to the other.
It is to me, very interesting that one-fifth
of John Barbour's poem is devoted to the Irish expedition.
And that suggests that to contemporaries
this was a really important thing, it was a big deal.
Much bigger deal than most Scottish historians
have made of it ever since.
When Robert Bruce came into Ireland
the army marched down, and they were clearly
marching on Dublin.
Dublin was at the center of everything in Ireland.
It was the headquarters of the English government,
and if you were going to topple English government
in Ireland, you had to get control of Dublin.
They came as far as Castleknock,
and they were looking at the city,
and they were contemplating an assault
on it maybe the next morning.
But the citizens of Dublin, they went inside the walls
and burned the suburbs after them
to deny the Scots cover as they
tried to get to the town.
The citizens of Dublin pulled down their own walls.
They retreat within the very bastions
of the core of the city.
The governor flees Dublin for Cork.
It's effectively wide open.
It's hard to see, other than the capture of Dublin,
what would've tipped the balance in Ireland,
I mean, it takes him over a year to take Carrickfergus,
and it falls and it doesn't really make much difference.
What are they actually trying to achieve?
Well, the problem for Robert Bruce when he was in Ireland
was that he was committed to
a short, sharp, shock here in Ireland.
He couldn't spend a year hanging around outside Dublin
for them to surrender.
So, I think they took a look at the situation,
and they realized it was either a lengthy siege,
or we just abandon Dublin for the time being,
and march on.
Leaving Dublin behind,
the Scots march west to Leixlip
where they spent four days burning and plundering.
Further south, the Franciscan monks at Castledermot
had no reason to welcome the approach of Robert Bruce.
Two years before, his brother had destroyed
their friary in Dundalk.
Throughout the campaign,
the Scots had seen religious orders as legitimate targets,
because these same religious orders stood accused
of committing atrocities of their own against
the native Irish.
(dramatic music)
So, these places are certainly not set aside,
they're not left alone.
They are embroiled within this conflict.
They are.
Neither side is offering any sanctuary to these
locations at all.
These are fair game.
There's no rhyme nor reason why they
necessarily single out a particular monastery,
friary, or abbey.
But when they do, they visit the wrath of the Bruces
upon the place.
It just demonstrates how serious the Scots were
about this place and this operation.
They left no stone unturned, really, did they?
No they didn't.
In the remonstrance in 1317 by Donal O'Neill, for example,
there's direct allegation, at Abbeylara,
that monks are going around hunting Irishmen.
The monks?
The monks going out hunting Irishmen.
Because he wants to say this is the chaos
that Edward II has wrecked upon Ireland.
This is why we want Edward Bruce
to come over and save us.
One side is accusing the other side
of the absolute most terrible crimes imaginable.
It is horrific, really.
What we're looking at is total war, I guess.
Absolutely nothing is sacred.
There's all that Braveheart nonsense about the Scots
always being the underdog, and the English aggressor,
but when you step back and look with an objective eye,
the Scots are capable of mixing it up in a bad way
with the best of them, or should I say the worst of them.
The Bruce army was slicing its way
through the heart of Ireland.
Leaving a trail of smoldering ash,
and the land stripped bare in its wake.
(dark, dramatic music)
(fires roaring)
It's a Scots military practice to actually
deny your enemy food supplies,
resources, and provisions.
The only thing is, of course, that it actually
robs your own army of the ability to have
provisions as well.
If you can talk about public opinion
in the early 14th century,
they might've begun to swing opinion slightly
against the Scots.
Some people were saying, what was so wrong with the English?
There is one source that says this exact thing.
Our old foreigners are much better than
these new foreigners who've come in
and doing all this damage.
You only had to look at the campaign,
how aimless it almost seems
weaving round and about, first passed Dublin
down into the south across to Limerick
back across, back up.
Are they actually desperately in search of food?
They almost starve to death,
they're eating their own horses.
How do you explain it?
They're marching to places to try to rouse
the Irish population to join their side.
So, the furthest south they get to
is within sight of Limerick, literally.
And they're trying to get the O'Briens to join them.
The problem with the O'Briens, as with the O'Connors,
and many of the other dynasties,
is that there are two rival branches.
And once one side says that he's going
to join with the Scots,
the other fellow stays with the English government.
The kind of unity that they were expecting,
it was alien to Ireland in the early 14th century.
Treachery stalks unashamed in Ireland
among the nobility as well I see!
What now, Robert?
Demand nothing until you have the strength
to enforce the claim.
We retreat to Carrickfergus!
Hup! Hup!
There was more bad news for the Scots.
An army of English reinforcements had landed at Youghal,
and was on its way north.
That campaign in particular is the one to really question.
At one point, the king of Scots, his brother,
the high king of Ireland, the man who would've been
guardian of the Scottish realm in the event
of the death of both of these men, Thomas Randolph,
so the three leading men of Scotland are pretty close
to being starved, killed, hunted down, wiped out
at a time when Robert Bruce only has a grandson
to follow him.
What's going on?
Why do they think it's worth it?
The Scots latest retreat
had an air of finality to it.
Robert was needed back in Scotland
which the English were threatening to invade again.
In May, he boarded a ship for his homeland.
There's a sense in which Ireland stretches them too far.
And as much as it's a two front policy,
they can only really run one at a time, effectively.
I suspect the English after a while know that.
And they know that unless Edward Bruce
commits to really taking somewhere like Dublin,
it's not going to tip the balance.
There is virtually no information
on how the war went for over a year
after Robert's departure.
It seems that for many months,
the Scots, the Irish, and the Anglo-Irish
abstained from further fighting.
The most likely explanation is that each side
needed to recover after almost three years
of war and famine.
Excommunication is to be pronounced
against all invading England and disturbing its peace.
Donal.
Your brother may be able to afford to fight the pope,
but if the judgement of heaven is called down
on me and my people,
what is to become of us?
We shall address the pope ourselves.
Through the cardinals, we shall persuade them
that Ireland's cause is a just one.
In 1317, O'Neill and other Gaelic leaders,
sent a letter known as,
the Remonstrance of the Irish Princes,
to Pope John XXII.
It explained why they had supported Edward Bruce
against the English.
From that time the English crossed the borders
of our kingdom with evil intent,
with all their strength,
and using all their skills and their power
they have tried to destroy our people utterly.
And eradicate them completely.
On account of the aforesaid injuries then,
and enumerable others which cannot be easily grasped
by the human understanding,
we are compelled to enter into a deadly war
with the aforementioned.
The remonstrance claims that Donal O'Neill
had the support of a large number of the Irish bishops,
and I think that may well be the case.
Because if you read the text of the remonstrance,
the importance of it is that it was sent to the pope
who was then in Avignon.
And so it has to make an appeal to something
that might win the pope over.
So, it reminds him that actually the English
came to Ireland because they had a license
from the then pope to do it, Pope Adrian IV.
And that part of their mission in Ireland
was meant to be reform the Irish church.
But, in fact, the remonstrance says the opposite happened.
They didn't reform the Irish church,
they damaged the Irish church.
So, it's trying to make an ecclesiastical appeal
to get the pope to take the Irish side against the English.
Just as at the same time Bruce in Scotland
was trying to get the pope to take the Scots side
against the English.
And to achieve our aims more swiftly,
we call to our help and assistance the illustrious
Edward the Bruce, Earl of Carrick,
and brother to the Lord Robert,
the most illustrious king of all the Scots,
and sprung from our noblest ancestors.
In its wording,
the remonstrance is uncannily similar
to the Declaration of Arbroath,
which the Scottish church and nobility
sent to the pope three years later.
A number of Irish historians,
as well as Scottish historians,
did take to hand that was behind
the Declaration of Arbroath in the remonstrance.
That this was a product of Bruce's chancery, if you like.
A propaganda document, no question.
But it's making many similar points.
The Irish had ruled for centuries unconquered
by a foreigner, exactly as the Scots did
in the declaration.
The English king came to the Irish
as a friend but betrayed them as an enemy.
The same thing in Scotland.
The English ever since have reigned as tyrants in Ireland,
the same as Edward I, and Edward II,
tried to rule in Scotland.
There is a direct relationship between
these two documents.
I'm pretty sure of it.
It's controversial this, but if things are not controversial
in history they're not worth talking about.
It is in truth, not for glory,
or riches,
or honor,
that we're fighting,
but for freedom alone.
Which no honest man will give up,
but with life itself.
I think this is really where Bruce invents
something called Scottish independence.
Bruce must've realized somewhere along the line
that as long as people had this
loyalty to their clan, and their family,
you could never build a state, or a nation.
And I think that's when he said,
we got to give these guys something greater
than themselves to which they can aspire.
Bruce's supporters send a letter to the pope,
begging him to bring pressure to bear upon Edward II
to recognize Bruce as legitimate king of Scots.
To end these terrible wars.
They tell the pope if you don't do this
you'll be responsible for the bloodshed
that follows.
And in the course of this letter,
they make two great pronouncements.
If Bruce should ever submit us, or our kingdom
to the king of England, or the English,
we will remove him and set up another,
better able to govern us as our king.
And this, I have argued is the first
articulation of the contractual theory of monarchy
in Europe.
And then they go on to make this statement which
many people still like to quote,
"For so long as a hundred of us remain alive
"we shall never surrender.
"It is not for glory, nor riches, nor honors
"that we're fighting, but for freedom alone.
"Which no honest person will lose
"but with life itself."
Who could argue with that?
(sweeping, dramatic music)
Some 450 years later,
the Declaration of Arbroath would inspire
one of the most famous assertions of freedom,
human rights, and self-determination ever written,
the American Declaration of Independence.
This document could've had its roots,
in a forgotten war fought in Ireland and Scotland
centuries earlier.
And in 1317, that war had still to reach its conclusion.
Time was running out for Edward Bruce.
Twice, he and his army had a chance to capture Dublin,
and twice they had failed.
The Irish kings who supported him
outside of Ulster had been defeated in battle.
But even in the face of these setbacks,
Edward had reason to believe that things might improve.
In 1318, for the first time in years,
there was a good harvest.
Finally, he was able to supply his men properly.
And news came from Scotland that further
reinforcements were on the way.
And so in the autumn of 1318,
Edward made the decision to bring his army south,
and out of Ulster.
We know that Robert is sending reinforcements
to Carrickfergus, and it's just a question why Edward
suddenly decides to leave Carrickfergus before
King Robert comes over again.
It could be something to do with
a repeat of the events of 1317,
when effectively Edward leads
the vanguard down south,
and Robert's main army follows him.
And it could've been some kind of attempt
to take Dublin.
I suspect they only headed south in October 1318,
because they had a new idea.
There was one final effort that they
thought might do the trick.
So, the Scots still had hopes for Ireland.
It's just possible that they might have been able
to pull some kind of a rabbit out of the hat, at that stage.
(melodic music)
We're just south of the Moyry Pass
which is one of the most important ways
to get from the North into the South.
And we're on the hill at Faughart which is just
at the mouth of the pass.
So, a very important strategic location.
It's still a very important place.
Indeed, during the Troubles, this was a hot spot.
So, for Edward to be up here makes total sense.
But whatever the reason, the Anglo-Irish have
got their act together and have a big army
waiting for them.
And Edward Bruce has to decide what to do,
and Barbour talks about him having a council
of war with his Irish allies.
And everybody's basically saying don't be so foolish,
we're massively outnumbered we've only got 2,000 men.
What are we going to do against that massive force?
There could be in Edward's mind
that he wanted to finish this off.
Maybe there is some kind of thing
going on in Edward's head where he needs
to have the same kind of victory as Robert had,
at Bannockburn.
It might be the case that Edward Bruce, likewise,
was a bit of a hothead, and that he rushed into this
battle even though there were four other,
apparently the contemporary sources say,
there were four other troops on their way,
by way of reinforcements to him.
But he decided to take the gamble on the battle.
Historians have settled on this spot,
this slope
facing down towards the mouth of the pass
as the battlefield.
To me, it doesn't really make sense.
It's far too steep, for cavalry to be positioned on it,
if the Anglo-Irish are up here.
If Edward Bruce is up here, he's surely going to be facing
towards the town.
That seems to be where the enemy are coming from.
I am not convinced that this is the battlefield.
To me, having seen a lot of battlefields in my time,
this really doesn't make too much sense.
Every time I've been in a place of historical importance
on this trip, there's been one of these things.
Almost like a signpost saying, here is a battle.
And it's a motte.
It's a type of Anglo-Irish fortification,
the Normans were very good at them,
and it's basically just a mound of earth
that gives you a strong point.
And this being on the top of the hill at Faughart,
makes it an ideal location for Edward Bruce
to be able to see whatever's happening around.
So, I think this location is probably a pretty good marker
on where to start to think about where this battle
was fought.
On top of the motte, on top of the hill at Faughart,
I've got a very clear view down into the town,
but importantly it's not just the visibility,
this is a much gentler slope.
So, if Edward Bruce and his Scottish army,
and his Irish allies are on this hill,
it offers a much better
advantage going into a fight
because his men can move down it.
They've got the advantage of height,
but they can move down it in a controlled fashion.
Unlike the other side, which is just far too steep.
But he seems to fancy his chances,
so there are scores to be settled,
and indeed, on that day they are.
Then, with great anger
Edward said let whoever wants to help.
But rest assured I will fight today without more delay.
Let no man say that while I'm alive
that superior numbers would make me flee.
God forbid that anyone should blame us
for defending our noble name.
(shouting)
(metal clanging against metal)
(grunting)
As it turns out, it really actually ends up
being an Anglo-Norman Bannockburn,
because they completely rout the Scots,
and that's the end of the dream
on that Dundalk hillside.
He should've won that battle.
The leader of the Anglo-Irish forces in it,
was not a particularly elevated individual,
he's a man called John de Bermingham.
He led, what by all accounts, is a relatively
local force of people primarily from County Louth,
some of them from County Meath.
There wasn't some vast government army,
and they were trying to forestall the Bruces,
presumably before they got to Dundalk
and could do a lot of damage there.
If they had beaten Bermingham's army at Faughart,
the chances of the Scots establishing their foothold
here permanently would probably be a safe bet.
(somber music)
It goes very badly wrong from them.
Indeed, so badly wrong that Edward Bruce
is killed in the battle.
Edward's head is removed,
it's packed in a box of salt,
and sent to Edward II to prove that he's actually dead.
His limbs are hacked off, and displayed
in various parts of the kingdom,
again to demonstrate that the dreaded Edward Bruce
has been vanquished.
If that's the case,
this can't be the grave of Edward Bruce.
But it is a fitting memorial, it marks the end
of Edward Bruce's story,
it marks the end of the Scottish invasion of Ireland,
and three and a half years
of warfare and grief,
and fear come to an end
somewhere near this hilltop.
(dramatic music)
We are sent here in jeopardy
to win honor, or for to die.
We are too far from home to flee,
therefore let ilk man worthy be.
For Bruce's Irish supporters
things took a turn for the worse.
Donal O'Neill's rivals, the O'Donnells,
attacked him and killed his son, Sho-ane
Donal, himself, survived,
but his hopes of driving the English from Ireland
were in tatters.
The war was over.
I think there is a sense, in which,
King Robert is taken out of the account
of the campaign which came to grief at Faughart.
I think that, in a way,
this was down to his brother.
This was Edward.
He was carrying the can for what happened here.
Maybe there's even a notion that Bruce,
given these few hints we have in his correspondence,
that Bruce somehow understood the Irish, sympathetically,
in a way that Edward didn't.
Edward didn't know really how to treat them.
When you think about it, it's a pretty odd thing
for a guy to sort of show up
on the Irish shore
and say I'm here to be high king.
And they say, well, who are you?
So, I suspect Robert Bruce, the king, felt
that if he had led the expedition there might've
been a different outcome.
Barbour is probably just as accurate as any medieval
source would be,
but you have to bear in mind the various
kind of agendas he has.
And his agenda mainly is to glorify Robert,
not Edward,
and so he will give Edward due,
regarding courage and bravery,
but not necessarily a lot of common sense.
And it's always Robert who's perceived as being the one
who's the wiser head.
Which I think is unfair on Edward,
but that's John Barbour for you.
The later charges against Edward Bruce
that he's headstrong, that he's overambitious,
very short-tempered,
some of that probably has to be later distancing
by the Scots, probably, of Robert I from
his brother's failings.
For Robert, I think it probably only confirmed
the difficulties of Ireland.
Probably the insurmountable difficulties.
I think he's more worried about what it means for Scotland
because with his brother's death,
it's fairly clear from the evidence,
that this provokes a major crisis in Scotland.
Bruce's enemies see that now he only has his grandson,
an infant, as his heir presumptive.
He hasn't yet had sons by his queen,
Elizabeth de Burgh.
And there's a real danger for the Bruce dynasty.
But the shadow of misfortune did seem to fade,
in 1324 Robert's wife gave birth
to a son and heir, David.
And in 1328, the English finally recognized Robert's right
to rule Scotland.
To this day, he is remembered as the greatest
monarch ever to sit on the Scottish throne.
Robert Bruce, all through his life,
you find him back and forth in Ireland.
Even when he was on his death bed,
one contemporary source says,
"He was so ill that he could barely move his tongue."
He had had himself brought to Ireland
on a couple of occasions,
in the latter years of his life.
But I think it does show that this Bruce connection,
with Ulster in particular, is an ongoing thing.
It's part of their background, it's part of the family life.
And if you want to understand the Bruce invasion,
it's not just in terms of the long running relationship
between Ireland and Scotland in the Middle Ages,
but it's the family ties between the Bruces
and some people in the northeast corner of Ireland.
This period,
except in some very unique quotas,
and specialized quotas has been effectively dismissed.
And that is interesting in itself
because the potential that it might've had
is staggering.
The idea of having
an Irish kingdom,
albeit on which had a Scots ancestry,
well we don't know how on Earth that could've
played out in the centuries to come.
But for a small brief period, the Scots did have
a kingdom in Ireland.
For over three years, Edward Bruce
was the self-styled ruler of that kingdom.
But he never managed to inspire,
and lead the Irish in the way that Robert
did the Scots.
Ireland remained, and would remain,
a divided country.
(dramatic music)