The King Who Fought a Knight Alone: Bannockburn 1314

On a summer evening in 1314, an English knight saw the King of Scots riding alone in front of his army, on a small pony, armed only with an axe. He lowered his lance and charged. The next day, the greatest English army to march into Scotland in years was destroyed between two streams below Stirling Castle. ▶ The 60-second version:    • He Charged the King. The King Had an Axe.   ▶ Watch next: The Bridge Was Too Narrow: How William Wallace Won at Stirling Bridge (1297)    • The Bridge Was Too Narrow: How William Wal...   ▶ Playlist:    • Great Battles of History   This animated documentary tells the full story: the fall of William Wallace, the murder of John Comyn in a church at Dumfries, Robert Bruce's rushed coronation and years as a hunted king, Edward I's revenge on his family, the castle war of night raids and ladders, the Midsummer deadline at Stirling, Bruce versus Henry de Bohun, the miserable English night on the carse, the kneeling Scots, the trap between the burns, Edward II's escape, and the Declaration of Arbroath. Chapters 0:00 Cold open 0:32 1. After Wallace 1:11 2. Murder in a Church 1:54 3. The Hunted King 2:59 4. Edward's Revenge 3:30 5. The Hammer Falls 4:18 6. The Castle War 5:10 7. The Midsummer Deadline 5:58 8. Bruce Prepares 6:43 9. The Axe 7:45 10. A Bad Night 8:25 11. They Kneel 8:54 12. The Trap 9:56 13. The King Runs 10:45 14. For Freedom Alone 11:40 Outro A note on the history: army sizes, what happened in the church at Dumfries, Bruce's plan before the second day, the role of the "small folk", and even exactly where the main fighting took place are debated. Several famous lines (Bruce's broken axe, "they kneel for mercy", "On them! They fail!") come from John Barbour's poem The Brus, written about sixty years later, and the video says so. The spider story is a legend made famous by Sir Walter Scott. Sources include John Barbour's The Brus, Sir Thomas Gray's Scalacronica, the Vita Edwardi Secundi and the Lanercost Chronicle, and modern historians including G. W. S. Barrow, Michael Brown, Chris Brown, Aryeh Nusbacher and Michael Penman, plus the Historic Environment Scotland battlefield inventory. Which battle should we cover next? Tell us in the comments. Subscribe to Drawn Through Time for animated history: @DrawnThroughTimes #Bannockburn #RobertTheBruce #ScottishHistory