I'm a young Scottish solider riled up by the independence wars and am ready to leave my village and join Robert the Bruce. What can I expect?

by southsideslug

For example:

What to expect at Bannockburn? What would life for me be like? How would we fight against the known superior English army?

historiagrephour

As is often the case, the answer to this question would depend largely upon your social status. In theory, military service in medieval Scotland was compulsory for all males between the ages of sixteen and sixty, yet, as was the case elsewhere in Europe, such service was not actually a universal expectation for very practical reasons. Scottish elites (nobility and landed gentry) generally fulfilled their military service to the crown by acting as men-at-arms, the heavily armored and mounted "knights" we tend to associate with the Middle Ages today. There were those, though, who could not have been expected to have fulfilled military service since medieval soldiers were required to provide their own equipment. Thus, the humblest and most socially disadvantaged men would not have been able to afford even the most basic weaponry, and, as Alastair J. Macdonald, has pointed out, this most likely meant that they would have been excused from military service.

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Medieval Scottish soldiers were not paid consistent wages, however, soldiering usually meant better provisions in food and alcohol (in quantity if not necessarily in quality) than the average civilian could probably expect. It is worth noting that Macdonald finds a link between the abundance of alcohol and the fortitude or courage of the average soldier; that said, the aristocratic soldier is often seen as deriving his courage from the traditions of chivalry and from training from a young age. While the average soldier would not have experienced the same rigorous training as a future man-at-arms, medieval legislation in Scotland required that the male population become adept at archery, and there is even evidence that James II (so later than the period about which you're asking) banned football because he felt that playing sport was detracting from the military readiness of the kingdom as men were choosing to play games rather than practice their archery.

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Now, as for the day-to-day experiences of Scottish soldiers in the field, rations were likely to have been variations on boiled meat, water, oatcakes, and beer, if we can rely on the eyewitness account of Jean le Bel in 1327. Wages, while inconsistent, as noted above, were occasionally paid, particularly to soldiers serving longer than the compulsory forty days, or to soldiers serving garrison duty. There were also the material rewards associated with looting towns after sieges and from looting corpses after battle.

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Battles in this period were, themselves, beginning to undergo a shift in military tactics. Earlier in the Middle Ages, men-at-arms, mounted and armored, served as heavy cavalry, charging down the enemy infantry. Yet, the fourteenth century witnessed a change in the style of infantry warfare with infantry beginning to be armed with long spears and being deployed in schiltrons, similar to a phalanx, where the rows of spears would deter horses from approaching too closely. It was this formation that served the Scots well at Bannockburn against the mounted English knights. In addition to infantry spearmen, the Scots army employed mounted archers and spearmen as well, and Scottish men-at-arms tended to dismount and fight their enemies on foot. This latter tactic was actually adopted by English knights during the Hundred Years' War against France.

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For further reading on this topic, I would suggest looking at the following:

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Barrell, A.D.M. Medieval Scotland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

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Brown, Michael. The Wars of Scotland, 1214-1371. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004.

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Caldwell, David H . "Scottish Spearmen, 1298-1314: An Answer to Cavalry." War in History 19, no. 3 (2012): 267-89.

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Kaeuper, R.W. Violence in Medieval Society. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2000.

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Macdonald, Alastair J. "Courage, Fear and the Experience of the Later Medieval Scottish Soldier." The Scottish Historical Review 92, no. 235 (2013): 179-206.