King Hob

ROBERT BRUCE by G.W.S. Barrow. 502 pages. University of California. $7.50.

On Aug. 23, 1305, while thousands jeered, a fearless Scot named William Wallace, the heart and soul of his country's resistance to the conquering English, was dragged through the streets of London behind a horse, hanged by the neck, cut down while still alive, disemboweled, decapitated with a bloody great cleaver, hacked into four chunks and sent home to Scotland severally.

In the 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.

Ghastly & Glorious. As an epic, the legend of the Bruce ranks among the noblest achievements of medieval romance; as history, it is miserably beset with errors. Recent researches suggest that the history of the Scottish war of 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.

Ghastly indeed is the beginning of the tale. On Feb. 10, 1306, Bruce fell upon his principal political rival, John Comyn of Badenoch, and stabbed him to 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 his sister up in a cage and hung her for several months on the walls of Roxburgh Castle. The King fled headlong to the Irish Sea, and for five fateful months was lost to history.

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."

In 1314, however, the English marched north under Edward II to make an end of the wild laird they called "King Hob"--the royal yokel. The armies met at Bannockburn, a village before Stirling Castle. In the opening skirmish, King Robert was caught alone in an open strath, by an English knight who leveled his lance and charged in for the kill. As the Scottish host stared stupefied, Bruce lightly eluded the lance and then brought his battle-axe down with such force that the English knight was split from skull to saddle.

The rest of the battle took much the same course. It was fought on a site of the canny Scot's selection: a dry field bordered on two sides by sodden carseland. The front was so narrow that the English could not bring up archers or engines. It was the English cavalry against the Scottish schiltrom (shield ring), and for the first time in British history the schiltrom carried the day.

With all thar mycht and all thar mayne

Thai layd on, as men out of wit.

Edward and his knights fled the field so fast that, according to a 14th century chronicle, they "had not even leisure to make water."

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.

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