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(battle chanting)

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- [Voiceover] In 1315, an army from Britain invaded Ireland.

Numbering 6,000 battle-hardened veterans,

it was one of the most 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.

- Soldiers, arms! (shouting)

- [Voiceover] 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 of history.

(anxious violin tones)

- Open the gates!

Open the gates!

- Open the gate!

(anxious violin tones)

- I have word for the King.

I have urgent word for King Robert.

- What word?

- Sire, the English King has died.

- [Voiceover] I beheld these brothers of boundless ambition

with whom no obligations were binding, no oaths sacred.

No promises regarded that interfered

with their goal of freedom for their country.

- [Voiceover] The story of Ireland and Scotland

700 years ago is a story of struggle against tyranny.

At this time the Celtic nations were pitted against

a ruthless enemy that seemed determined to subdue

every inch of Britain and Ireland.

(swords clanking, soldiers shouting)

When the Normans conquered England in 1066,

their arrival signaled one of the greatest transformations

in European history and their search for power

and land would change the politics and culture

of these islands forever.

- The Normans come from northern France

where they have been used to building

castles and training as heavy cavalry.

They bring that military technology with them

when they conquer England in 1066 and they carry on

bringing it with them when they move into Scotland

and as conquerers into Wales and Ireland.

That there was a kind of demonic, psychic drive,

they seemed to have the urge to dominate.

They seem to want to have not only what

they possess but what everyone else possesses.

- They were of the view that they'd come to conquer

and Wales was as vulnerable as England was

and Scotland likewise, and Ireland of course

was always there in the background.

It was on their to-do list.

- [Voiceover] Just over 100 years after

the Battle of Hastings in 1066,

an Anglo-Norman invasion force landed in Ireland.

They conquered the island, established a new

power base and became known as the Anglo-Irish.

Most native Irish Kings had no option

but to submit to these powerful newcomers.

But many resented the new presence in their country

and never truly accepted the English King as their monarch.

- In the late 12th century what began to happen

in the hundreds of years after it was

essentially two different societies coexisted.

So you had Gaelic society and Norman

or what became Anglo-Irish.

What fascinates me about Gaelic Ireland,

about medieval Ireland is the fact that

you have two distinct societies in many ways.

So I could travel from Dublin up to say O'Neill in

Ulster and it would be like leaving one world for another.

It's essentially two alien societies.

So that's the fascination which you don't get

in a lot of other countries in the Middle Ages.

- The thing about Ireland in the Middle Ages

which is not true of Scotland is that

Ireland was a very polarized society.

You had the native Irish and you had the English

of Ireland and they were two nations.

They believed each other to be polar extremes.

- [Voiceover] As far as the English were concerned,

they had good reason to despise the Irish.

After they first conquered the country they

brought with them a chronicler, Gerald of Wales,

who described what he saw as the savage

and uncivilized conduct of the native people.

- The Irish are a rude people

subsisting on the produce of their cattle only

and living themselves like beasts.

A people that has not yet departed

from the primitive habits of pastoral life.

- Really Gerald's writings begin

a very long tradition of anti-Irish sentiment.

He's pushing the Irish to one side

and I suppose what can be called other-ing them.

He's making them something that you can defeat.

Because of what they are, you're absolutely justified.

- Neither willing to give up their

old habits or learn anything new.

Abandoning themselves to idleness and immersed in sloth,

their greatest delight is to be exempt from toil.

Their richest possession, the enjoyment of liberty.

This people then is truly barbarous.

Indeed all their habits are barbarisms.

In whatever requires industry, they are worthless.

- It's always more comfortable if you're a colonizing

and imperial power to be told that you're also superior.

But there's also at the same time growing evidence

that the English politically are worried about integration.

Famously the Statutes of Kilkenny and other laws

in which the English are saying, "We want the Irish

"to be separate and we want the English to be separate."

English people should not adopt Irish names,

they should not have Irish hairstyles.

These things are actually legislated against

and the law is a kind of apartheid law

because by the end of the 13th century,

whereas to kill an English person in Ireland

is a felony, to kill an Irishman is not.

(rain pouring)

(dramatic violin tones)

- [Voiceover] The native Irish felt a much closer

affinity with their Celtic cousins in Scotland.

The two countries had a shared history

that dated back many centuries.

In this shared history it was the Irish

who were the aggressors and colonizers.

From around the third century A.D. they conquered

large parts of their neighbor to the northeast.

- The Scots were originally Irish.

They came and settled in what is now

Scotland very early in the Middle Ages.

The Kingdom of the Scots was originally

an Irish Kingdom, Dal Riata, Gaelic-speaking.

And up until say about the year 1000,

when you said the word Scot, you meant someone from Ireland.

- The first Irish people that we know of who

settled in Scotland, they were conquerors.

We tend to think of course of ourselves in Ireland

as being on the receiving end all the time of conquest.

But these people from Dal Riata who settled on

the western seaboard of Scotland came to conquer land.

But when that became like a little province of Ireland,

separated from Ireland by the North Channel,

the Irish Church spread there as well.

- [Voiceover] The invaders carried a sword

in one hand and a Bible in the other.

Saint Columba and other Irish monks

helped to bring Christianity to Scotland.

- People who came over to Scotland like famous examples

like Columkille, Columba were members of Irish dynasties.

The Kings of Scots were descended from Irish royalty.

So in fact you're talking about a world,

a kind of Gaelic world that's absolutely

continuous from say Cork up into Argyll.

- [Voiceover] The links between the two countries

were strongest in Ulster and Western Scotland.

Far from being a barrier,

the sea helped to bind them together.

The North Channel could be crossed in

just a couple of hours in a Birlinn,

a small Scottish galley similar to the Viking longboat.

These ships were often used to ferry soldiers

between Ulster and Scotland but there were stronger links,

links forged in blood and friendship.

- The prevailing ascendancy in Scotland is

a Gaelic ethos and its heritage draws

from Ireland and draws back towards Ireland.

- Within their Scottish tradition they looked

to Ireland as a sort of a fertile ground

for them, where they came from.

They looked to Irish culture as

their primary influencing culture.

- Maybe it goes back to notions of Greater Scotia

and Lesser Scotia which they had in the early Middle

Ages of the big Scotia and the smaller Scotia.

And the big Scotia was Ireland at that point

because this was seen from an Irish point of view,

looking across towards the fringes of Scotland.

Of course the other thing which brings the two

nations together very strongly is genealogy.

And so many of the Highland clans for example

in a nutshell trace themselves back to Niall

of the Nine Hostages and these characters,

Brian Boru of the Cais.

That's another thing which is kind of an awareness,

a binding together if you like of

the peoples on both sides of the Channel.

- [Voiceover] At their nearest point,

Scotland and Ireland are just 12 miles apart.

- An exercise I sometimes do with my students

is to turn the usual map of the British Isles on its side,

point to Turnberry and say "There was the heart

"of the British Lordship, now look at it."

You see Ireland and the Western Isles, the Scottish coast,

the northwestern English coast in a very different light,

a different way of understanding it.

- If you went from a royal court in Ireland

to a royal court in Scotland in the early

Middle Ages, you wouldn't have noticed a difference.

The language would have been the same,

the culture would have been the same.

The stories that wouldn't been told would've

been the same and in fact in some cases

the families would have been the same.

- [Voiceover] When faced with the Anglo-Normans,

the Scots had one major advantage over the Irish.

The Irish did not have an undisputed High King.

Scotland on the other hand was

ruled by a single, decisive monarch.

Rather than sit back and wait to be conquered,

David the First of Scotland invited the Anglo-Normans in.

He allowed some Norman Lords to settle in the country,

relying on them to safeguard his authority.

The greatest of these Lords took his name from

the small town near Sherber where his family originated,

Brie or Bruce.

The most famous of all Scottish Kings

sprang from this lineage.

His name was Robert Bruce

and he was not just of Norman stock.

His father's marriage to the Countess of Carrick

had injected Celtic blood into the Bruce line.

- His mother after all was

Countess of Carrick in her own right.

The story was that when she met Robert's father,

the Lord of Annandale, she fell for him in a big way.

Supposedly abducted him.

This is a nice inverse of the usual story.

She abducted him, dragged him off to Turnberry Castle

and they were inside for three days and when

they emerged, they announced they were getting married.

And Robert Bruce was the product of whatever went on there.

(anxious violin music)

Carrick was part of Galloway, it was the northern

part of Galloway and it was definitely Gaelic-speaking

quite a long time after the reign of Robert Bruce.

So he was raised very much in a kind of

Celtic or Gaelic-speaking area if you like of Scotland.

- This you could say is what really makes Robert Bruce

and Edward and all the other brothers real hybrids

if you like, real sons of many kingdoms.

I've come increasingly to think of it

kind of as a search for place for Bruce.

I think he's brought up by his grandfather and his

father as are probably his brothers as well

to expect some level of royal status,

some enhanced level of political standing.

- [Voiceover] Robert could aspire to be King

of Scotland because he was related to

a previous claimant to the throne.

In 1302 he strengthened his position by

marrying Elizabeth, the daughter of Richard de Burgh,

the Earl of Ulster and one of the most

powerful Anglo-Irish leaders.

- Because Richard Burgh had a very eligible

daughter in Elizabeth who grew up here at Green Castle,

there's a certain amount of matchmaking we think

that Edward the First and his, basically one of

his best friends Richard de Burgh said,

"Well we'll cobble together a marriage arrangement

"between Robert Bruce and Elizabeth de Burgh."

- It's possible the marriage is dangled as

a sort of carrot by Edward the First himself.

It's a way from his point of few of getting

a leading Lord of southwestern Scotland,

part of that Irish sea world as an ally of

the de Burgh of Ulster and stabilizing the Irish situation.

- [Voiceover] While Robert harbored a desire for the crown,

Edward the First had his own plans for Scotland.

- Edward the First was an extremely successful,

ambitious and ruthless monarch and when he came to

the moment in circa 1290 when he thinks that he can

establish once and for all that he is overlord of Scotland,

he doesn't stop for a moment in asserting that claim.

- He's turning it into another Ireland, another Wales.

A land, not a realm and I think that quite

quickly turns him into a very strong figure of hate.

There's now a difference between a Scot and an

Englishman and Edward kind of marks it.

The characteristics which the Scots later would

like to label the English with of being arrogant,

presumptuous, overconfident are first

and foremost attributed to Edward himself.

- [Voiceover] Some refuse to bend the knee.

Among them was a young patriot named William Wallace

who waged a desperate guerrilla war

against the English takeover.

Robert Bruce hedged his bets.

He supported Wallace, then he supported Edward but foremost

in his mind was his own claim to the Scottish throne.

- Robert does have this reputation

of being slightly schizophrenic.

Allying himself to Edward and the English one day

and then the Scots the next and I think that

duplicity, to understand that we've really

got to see Robert Bruce in context.

- He tries the political solution, the diplomatic solution.

Move to the Scots under Wallace for a bit

then leave them, go back to the Lordship of

Edward the First 'cause that's a better bet.

After all Edward the First was the head honcho

in western Europe practically and so

that's where the power base is.

That's where you should hang in if you

want to advance the interests of your people.

- He's a pragmatist, he will take whatever

path he needs to take to get to where he wants to go

and if one day that means he's got to basically

give himself up to the English and fight

on their side, he will do.

(dramatic violin music)

- [Voiceover] If he wanted to be King of Scotland,

Robert had to deal with his main rival John Comyn

and in 1307 when the two men met at Greyfriars

Abbey in Dumfries, an event took place

that shaped the future of Scotland forever.

- [Voiceover] He rode their at once and met

with Sir John Comyn in the Greyfriars at the high altar.

In a mocking manner he showed him the indenture

and then with a knife took his life on the very spot.

Because of it such great misfortune befell him.

- The killing of Comyn is a real puzzle

in terms of where the church stood because

we have to understand that when Bruce killed Comyn,

he did it at the altar of the Church of the Greyfriars

in Dumfries and when you kill somebody in hot blood

at the altar, you're automatically excommunicated.

So it's surprising then that Bruce seems to

have garnished so much support from the Scottish Church.

You would've expected the opposite to happen,

that they would hold him in total disregard.

He's a heretic, he's damned to hell for eternity.

But they don't see it that way for some reason.

They, some remarkable talent rallies around Bruce

and I think that's strange.

- That action, whether it is premeditated murder

or an act of rage in an argument, that's the turning point.

He has a lightning decision to make.

Either he goes on the run, he basically becomes

a fugitive or he grasps the thistle and goes for the throne.

As soon as we get to that point where Comyn is killed,

the path is straight ahead and the path is

conflict between Bruce and the King of England.

(swords clanking)

- [Voiceover] With the support of the Scottish Church,

Robert had himself crowned King of Scots but

Edward the First moved quickly to crush the upstart king.

He captured several members of the Bruce

family and had them killed or imprisoned.

Robert's wife Elizabeth de Burgh was taken captive.

Robert was now a hunted man.

With his followers reduced to only a small band of men,

he fled to the Western Isles of Scotland.

(rain pouring)

- [Voiceover] It was nearly winter and there were so many

enemies around him that all the country made war on him.

Such dreadful misfortunes tested them then

like hunger, cold and cutting rain

that no one alive can tell it all.

(thunder, waves crashing)

- [Voiceover] Robert Bruce found himself at

the Mull of Kyntyre on the very edge of Scotland.

From here he could see the coast of Ulster.

Not for the last time the thought struck him

that the Irish could help in the war with England.

- When we're trying to understand him and his

ultimate success and then we're trying to understand

what on earth they were up to in Ireland,

it's something about his background in the Gaelic

world that provides us with part of the key to that.

- [Voiceover] From Kyntyre, Bruce made the short

sea journey to Rathlin Island off the Antrim coast.

He is supposed to have hidden here with his followers

in a dank cave accessible only by boat.

It seems that he planned to regain

the throne with the help of Irish allies.

In fact his two younger brothers Thomas and Alexander

Bruce had raised an Irish army and landed in Scotland.

But their mission came to nothing and the brothers

were captured and executed by Edward the First.

It would be nearly a decade before

Robert could cement his alliance with the Irish.

- Open the gates!

Open the gates!

- Open the gate!

- [Voiceover] In July 1307, Edward the First died

and in a single stroke the greatest obstacle

to Scottish freedom was removed.

- Shortly before he dies Edward has a couple

of English friars executed for stating that

Robert Bruce is the subject of the prophecies of Merlin

and that means that Robert Bruce is a second King Arthur.

That his destiny is to unite Wales and Ireland

and Scotland against England and drive the hated

English dragon back into the North Sea whence it came.

- [Voiceover] King Edward the First would be long

remembered as the most ruthless and vindictive

foe ever faced by Scotland.

His tomb in Westminster Abbey was inscribed

with the words Scotorum Malleus, Hammer of the Scots.

But his son, who now succeeded him as Edward the Second,

would prove to be a much less formidable opponent.

(anxious violin tones)

- Be near your surviving comrades who yet strive for glory.

Inspire us to emulate your actions,

that our efforts may prove glorious.

- [Voiceover] In 1314 an army led by

Robert Bruce faced the English in battle.

The fight took place south of Stirling somewhere

near a stream known as the Bannockburn.

For hundreds of years there have been

arguments as to the exact location of the battle.

In 2013 military historian and archaeologist

Tony Pollard spent a year searching and eventually locating

the site of the most important battle in Scottish history.

It was the pivotal encounter in the long

and brutal war between Scotland and England

and it was very much a case of David and Goliath.

The Scots were outnumbered two-to-one.

- Leading up to the battle, Edward had

been in command of the siege of Stirling Castle

and it's that siege that brings about the battle.

It's that siege that coaxes the English army north.

So you've got these three massive divisions

of well-trained men delivering a massive

victory of the common man really.

These are men on foot, many of these men are just commoners.

They're farmers, they're people from the town.

And it must have been incredibly demeaning for

the English who have at the heart of their army

the nobility, men on expensive horses

wearing state-of-the-art armor.

They're literally brought to their knees.

The Scots absolutely wipe the floor with them.

It's an absolute disaster for the English

and a huge triumph for the Scots.

(shouting)

- [Voiceover] Bannockburn would go down in history

as Scotland's greatest single victory over England.

Slowly but surely, Robert Bruce was

driving the invaders back to their homeland.

(swords clanking, grunting)

- There has been a tendency for Scottish

historians to ignore the aftermath of Bannockburn.

It really should be the wonderful climax to

Bruce's career and he has to drip on for another,

what is it, 16 years before the English

actually recognize his title as King of Scots.

- Robert Bruce wanted the English

to recognize the independence of Scotland.

That didn't change but he also

wanted one thing more than that of course.

He wanted them to recognize the independence

of Scotland with him as its King and that

didn't change one iota after Bannockburn.

So he was probably scratching his head

trying to figure out what he might do next.

- This must've been very, very depressing

and it seems to be one of the reasons why

he has to open up new fronts in the war

with the English after Bannockburn.

- [Voiceover] Despite the great Scottish victory,

there was another crucial chapter in

the story of the war against the English.

But this part of the tale would be

told not in Scotland but in Ireland.

- The Anglo-Irish colonists in the country

would've been devastated by the news that

this upstart Scot had defeated their King

and I'm pretty sure that nearly everyone in

Gaelic Ireland would've thought it was bloody good news.

- [Voiceover] In April 1315, Robert Bruce called

a Parliament at Heir in southwest Scotland

to decide on the future campaign.

It has always been thought that it was from here

that Robert Bruce sent forth a famous appeal to the Irish.

- The King sends greetings to all the Kings of Ireland.

To the prelates and the clergy and to

the inhabitants of all Ireland, his friends.

Whereas we and you and our people and your people,

free since ancient times share the same national

ancestry and are urged to come together more

eagerly and joyfully in friendship by a common

language and by common custom.

- It was only discovered in the 1950s or thereabouts.

It's a tremendously interesting letter

from Robert Bruce and it's a very kind of important

call to the Irish to join forces with the Scots.

It's an appeal to some kind of ancient bond between the two.

- [Voiceover] But what if the letter

dates from a much earlier period?

Had Robert Bruce always yearned to unite the Celtic nations?

Sean Duffy of Trinity College, Dublin believes

that the letter was composed around 1306,

when Robert and his followers were based on Rathlin Island.

- When you get down to the small print of

the letter as it were, he says that the envoys

he's sending are these two men called T and A.

He just gives the initials because

that's the way the letter has survived.

It's pretty certain that that letter that Robert sent,

the envoys mentioned in it are his brothers

Thomas and Alexander and so it belongs in the winter

of 1306 to seven when he was in a lot of trouble

and he was hanging on by his fingernails to

the throne of Scotland and he wanted an Irish

alliance to join sides with him against the English.

- We have sent you our beloved kinsmen,

the bearer of this letter to negotiate with you

in our name about permanently strengthening

and maintaining inviolate a special friendship

between us and you.

So that with God's will, our nation

may be able to recover her ancient liberty.

- There's a tendency by some people to

think that Robert Bruce, because he's from

a predominantly Anglo-Norman background,

that this must be pure cynicism on his part.

Because how could he dare talk about our nation,

the Scots and Irish nation and our common language

as if he was a Gaelic speaker and imbued

with all things Gaelic?

The letter is genuine.

It seems to me the letter was sent

by Robert right at the start of his reign.

It seems to me it won a lot of backing for him

in Ireland and I think therefore we have to accept

that there was a Gaelic side to Robert Bruce's character.

- I think the existence of this document,

and I think Sean's right in this actually,

does imply very much that there's some

understanding before the letter if you like,

some sense of what may be a nation.

And that's very powerful.

This is a statement if you like, if there's

such a thing of kind of Gaelic nationality

if you could call it such.

The trouble is, the danger here is

whether we can use words to describe

concepts in the past where they

didn't have words for them themselves.

This is our problem, so if nationalism's a word

that doesn't come into the English language

until the 19th century, can we apply it

to the people who were living in

the 15th or the 14th centuries?

Personally I would say yes we can.

If it's not nationalism we're talking about,

it's that by almost any other name.

(anxious piano tones)

- During one long winter on Rathlin Island,

I dreamed we would assist the sons

and daughters of our sister nation in

their fight against the common foe, the English.

And in doing so, reunite the Celtic people.

Scotland under Robert Bruce

and Ireland under Edward.

Were we not colonized by the Irish,

been bound by blood, family, language?

Were we not Christian-ized from the same source?

Reparations have been made.

We will be one with Ireland.

- After Bannockburn he feels

you've gotta carry the torch to the enemy.

This was Bruce's number one weapon

in trying to get some sense out of the English

Kings to recognize the legitimacy of his Kingship.

The notion was just as we're opening up a front

in the north of England, let's open up one in Ireland.

(dramatic violin music)

- [Voiceover] Assembling to himself men of great courage,

then he took ship in the following month

of May and took his way straight into Ireland.

They have undertaken a great project when with so few

as they were there, they prepared to conquer all Ireland

where they would see many thousands

come out to fight against them.

But although few, they were brave.

- [Voiceover] Battlefield archaeologist Tony Pollard

was born in England but his grandparents are from

Ireland and he lives and works in Scotland.

He's a living example of the close links

between the three countries and he's fascinated

by the incredible events that brought them

together in bloody conflict 700 years ago.

- Today Larne Harbor is the most important port

between Ireland and Scotland on the Irish side.

In 1315 this would have been the place where

Edward Bruce's Scottish army came together after

landing on the beaches all the way up and down this coast.

Around 6,000 men carried in 300 boats it said and these

boats were Birlinns, they were West Highland galleys.

And they would've plied a daily trade between here

and Scotland and up and down the west coast of Scotland.

They wouldn't have been an uncommon sight.

(dramatic violin music)

But to have been on the hills behind us

and seen 300 of these heading towards

these shores must've been incredibly daunting.

(anxious violin music)

(men shouting)

- Scots are used as the kind of traditional boogeymen.

The Scots will come and get you.

And then in May the Scots are no longer

separated from them by a stretch of land.

They're actually here which throws the whole

of the Anglo-Norman community into a panic.

They never really expected to end up

fighting the Scots in their own backyard.

So when 6,000 of them come into Antrim,

this is like their worst nightmare come true.

(dramatic violin music)

- [Gavin] And the thing is now Tony,

do you see what's over there?

- [Tony] That, of course, Eos Creek, yeah.

So that's Scotland. - [Gavin] That's Scotland.

- We're on the hill just above the town of Larne

on the coast and this is said to be the site

of the first battle of the campaign.

- Absolutely Tony, this is where Sir Thomas

Mandeville gathers all the Norman Lords from Ulster.

The Bishops, the Savages, the Logans, gathers them here,

concentrates 'cause he can see Larne over there.

(dramatic violin music)

This is a victorious army.

Bruce has got about five or 6,000 men with him.

They are the men that smashed

Edward the Second's army at Bannockburn.

- It's D-Day down there.

- This is D-Day, yes.

If Mandeville manages to hold Bruce here,

the campaign's off.

- He can kick him back into the sea.

- Kick him back into the sea.

(swords clanking, grunting)

(thunder)

(rain pouring)

(anxious violin music)

- [Voiceover] Edward Bruce knew that

he could count on certain allies in Ireland.

First and foremost was Domhnall O'Neill,

the King of Tyrone, who had pledged to support the Scots.

- [Voiceover] Robert had made ample preparations

but we would have no success in Ireland

without the help of the Irish families.

Their attitude towards him was the pivot

on which all his plans were based.

- Domhnall O'Neill was a descendant

of the ancient High Kings of Ireland.

He was in no doubt about his own royal blood

and his own place at the apex of the pyramid

of power in Gaelic Ireland.

The problem was though for him that many

other Irish people rejected his claim to be High King.

If you were a descendant of Brian Boru,

you weren't necessarily convinced that it was O'Neill's

ancestors who had a monopoly on the High Kingship.

He was a realist who recognized that his own

interests could be served best if they

could all unite behind another figure.

Sure he was into it for what he could get out of it

like all politicians and like all powerful men.

- Though the Irish hut be poor and though our

feast be small, he sees his little lot as the lot of all.

No prince's palace rears its head

to shame the meanness of his humble bed.

(laughs)

- Man is worthy of this world who rejoices

in the world and makes the most of it.

(laughs)

- The English King and the English Lords

born in Ireland have heartlessly inflicted

cruel injuries on us and on our ancestors.

They have forced us to live on mountains

and in forests, in bogs and other

barren places like wild animals.

It's not just their laymen, but even some

of their clergy say it is no more a sin to

kill an Irishman than it is to kill a dog

or other brute creature.

So we are compelled to enter into a deadly war with them.

- If ever thy hast occasion for assistance

to repel an invader or attack a foe,

call on Scotland, in thy hospitality is

thought to be grateful and on whose heart

thy kindness has made a deep impression.

(anxious violin music)

(waves crashing)

- [Voiceover] Today Carrickfergus is a satellite

town of Belfast but in the 14th century,

Belfast was no more than a tiny village

and Carrickfergus was the most important town in Ulster,

a strategic outpost of great military significance.

It was vitally important that Edward Bruce capture it

to prevent the English from landing an army there.

- Castles like Carrickfergus were the power base

for the Anglo-Normans or the Anglo-Irish.

These were the people that had come in

and taken over Gaelic Ireland and these

were the people that Bruce was intending

to have a go at in his invasion.

So for Edward Bruce this castle is a very

important target and he's very keen to take it.

- Because he has to take Carrickfergus.

If he can take Carrickfergus,

that means that Robert's position in his wars against

the English in the north, it opens up everything.

If they can take Carrickfergus then

the entire northern sea zone is theirs and probably

the entire sea zone right down towards Bristol.

And if you can cut off that channel,

then the oxygen to the supply routes

for Edward the Second are almost extinct.

- Surely one motive behind the Irish invasion

was that they could somehow damage the English

supply routes and the sources of English supply.

Now if you could cut off that kind of supply,

you could make a big dent in enemy

support or support for the enemy.

And I think Ireland was, Ireland's recognized to

have been a very important breadbasket for the English.

- [Voiceover] The Scots took Carrickfergus

Town without much difficulty.

The castle was a more difficult proposition.

Edward Bruce did not have the siege equipment

needed to take the castle by storm so he surrounded

it and prepared to starve its garrison into submission.

- When Edward Bruce arrives in Ireland in 1315,

he's very keen to identify himself with Carrickfergus.

And indeed it's while he's here that around

a dozen Gaelic Chiefs or even minor Kings

come to him and proclaim him High King of Ireland.

(anxious violin tones)

- [Voiceover] Then all the Kings of the Irishry

came to Sir Edward and did their homage to him.

He was well set now and in a good way

to conquer the land altogether,

for he has on his side the Irish and the Ulster.

- All hail Edward the Bruce,

High King of all Ireland!

(swords unsheathing)

- [Voiceover] With Edward now proclaimed

High King of Ireland, many Gaelic leaders

threw their support behind the Bruce invasion.

Allegiance to a Scottish King in Ireland

was preferable to supporting an absent English King.

- There were Irish allies of the Bruces

who had convinced them that this would work.

The Irish wanted the English out.

The Irish had proved themselves incapable

of uniting behind any one figure within Ireland

and so the best thing therefore was to get somebody

from outside Ireland behind whom they could align.

- It's an interesting part of

the history of Ireland and Scotland.

There are cultural links, there's no doubt

about that but really it's a significant

political leap between them with Edward

coming over and claiming the High Kingship.

And you could say it was misguided,

you could say it's political sleight-of-hand.

You could say a lot of things but really

I think it does indicate that there's a recognition,

even though he's a politician there is a recognition

that there's a possibility here that

there's something he could build on.

The strength of the cultural ties was enduring

and had been going on since the early Middle Ages.

- [Voiceover] The Anglo-Irish had been completely taken

off guard by the invasion and were even slower to react.

The English King told his representative in Dublin,

Edmund Butler, to gather the Anglo-Irish

Lords and raise an army.

The most powerful of these Lords was Richard de Burgh,

the Earl of Ulster.

He was also Robert Bruce's father-in-law.

The Scots marched south through de Burgh's lands

in Ulster into a gap between Slieve Gallion

to the west and the Cooley Mountains to the east.

This area is known as the Moyry Pass and to this day

it is an important corridor between Ireland north and south.

Edward Bruce was now being guided into Leinster

by people who had old scores to settle

with local Anglo-Norman Lords.

The most notorious Anglo-Norman family

was the de Verdons, who held extensive

estates in the Meath and Louth areas.

The de Verdons had enforced a violent claim over the people,

essentially ruling the area by fear and extortion.

- This was a de Verdon castle and they were

to be really quite important players in

the fight against the Scottish invasion.

(dramatic violin music)

The feudal system is really like a protection racket.

If you're a tenant or a peasant,

you pay taxes or you do service for your Lord

but in return your Lord will protect you.

And that's what this castle is designed to do,

is to symbolize that power and that ability to protect.

But it doesn't really work.

Bruce comes down from Ulster with his army,

he takes one look at this and very sensibly

thinks we're already tied up with one siege

at Carrickfergus, this place looks pretty impregnable.

We'll give it a swerve.

So they just leave it but there's more than

one way to skin a cat and what they do is

they burn the nearby town of Dundalk

and that demonstrates to the local population that

their Lords and masters no longer have the ability

to protect them and it does exactly what taking

that castle would do but it's much easier.

(women screaming)

(dramatic drumbeat)

- Dundalk suffered very severely

during the course of the Bruce invasion.

Not indiscriminately, I believe it was

because it was held by the de Verdons.

You look at all the places they attack,

there's usually a local political reason for it.

It's not some kind of indiscriminate

carpet bombing of Ireland by them.

- [Voiceover] Unless the King of England

invades Scotland again, the Scots

will try to conquer Ireland this winter

and the Irish of Ireland will help them.

I have lost everything fighting Edward Bruce.

My lands, my horses, my armor,

my rents and my revenues.

(battle chanting)

- There was very little concerted

opposition to Edward Bruce to begin with.

But by the end of his first summer in Ireland,

their government was beginning to get its act

together and it realized that they would have

to get an army and march after him

and try and meet him in the field.

- Richard de Burgh was Earl of Ulster.

He created an almost impenetrable,

invincible realm for himself.

He's one of the most powerful

Anglo-Norman magnates on the island.

He controls lands in Connacht, he controls

most of the land around here in Ulster.

He's the one who says to the Chief Governor

Edmund Butler that he wants to tackle Bruce himself.

- [Voiceover] I have here a force of my own

of 20 battalions, it is large enough to expel

an equal number from the country or to kill them in it.

- He wants to go back to Ulster

and actually wrestle Ulster back from the Bruces

because it's almost like a personal insult to him.

This is his son-in-law effectively saying,

"I'm gonna send my brother over

"to take away your personal kingdom."

Richard de Burgh effectively says "I'm not having this."

And he decides that I'm gonna march from Connacht,

I'm gonna take my Gaelic allies and we're

going to defeat Bruce in my backyard effectively.

(anxious violin tones, low drumbeat)

Looking at this site, do you think this

bit's a bit more prehistoric than

the sites across the way, or?

- I don't know.

You can see a big stone wall over there.

- I know, that looks extremely interesting.

Oh wow, look at how big are these stones.

- Massive, careful here, it's collapsing.

- I know, this is known as the old fort.

Known locally in Connor as the trench.

- But it's a motte isn't it of some sort?

- [Gavin] It is.

- [Tony] Why is it here, what function is it serving?

- Well the thing about Connor is it's a very

important Anglo-Norman ecclesiastical center.

We think it might've been fortified so whenever

de Burgh is coming up chasing after Bruce's army,

he suddenly finds himself out of supply.

He comes from Antrim to here because

it has stores of whatever they need.

Now he comes here to defend it and take those stores.

Bruce is out there watching him.

De Burgh comes up here with an Irish ally, Felim O'Connor.

Felim O'Connor however, halfway through this campaign

of chasing after Bruce, goes back down to Connacht.

So de Burgh is actually left high and dry.

Sir Philip Mowbray actually organizes the Scots

to go and wave banners and taunts the Anglo-Normans

to come out and chase him, come out and chase him.

De Burgh sees the banners and they go out

in that direction and they're hit in the flank

and then Bruce sees the battle and suddenly joins in.

They refer to this battle as being

one of the bloodiest of the campaigns.

The field is wet with blood.

- [Tony] As an archaeologist this is really interesting.

It says "The field was wholly covered

"by weapons, arms and dead men."

(swords clanking, shouting)

- [Voiceover] The field soon grew wet with blood.

We fought there with such great fierceness

and struck such blows on each other with stick,

with stone and with blunt weapons

as each side could land on the other,

that it was dreadful to see.

(weapons clanking, screaming)

(ominous tones)

- De Burgh is the most powerful Lord in Ireland.

He's a battle-brother of Edward the First,

he was at Bannockburn, he is a military mind.

He's a good, good warrior and yet when

he comes up here, he is all-powerful.

After the Battle of Connor,

his power almost completely broken.

He leaves here shattered.

After Connor, Ulster is Scottish.

It's no longer de Burgh's land at all.

If he thought that he was going to

send a message to the Bruces that

"Hang on here, this is my turf."

What actually ends up happening is

he has to leave Ulster, he flees Ulster.

The annals of Connacht refer to him rather

wistfully as almost being like a wanderer

up and down the lands with no Lordship, no power.

(dramatic violin music)

- Show them front face.

Soldiers, arms! (shouting)

Show them! (shouting)

- [Voiceover] Ireland was only one front

in Robert Bruce's war against the English.

He had raided territories in Northern England

and personally led the army which laid

siege to the English border town of Carlyle.

No one could deny that the Bruce brothers were causing

major problems for the English both at home and abroad.

- The more they be,

the more honor all out have we

if we bear it finally.

We are set here in jeopardy to win honor or for to die.

We are too far for him to flee,

therefore let each man worthy be.

Here are gatherings of this country

and they'll flee, I trow it likely.

And to each man, assail them mightily.

(steady drumbeat)

(dramatic violin music)

- [Voiceover] 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 Domhnall 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 de Burgh,

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.

(anxious violin music)

- Winter 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.

(armor clanking)

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.

(thunder, rain pouring)

- [Voiceover] The Scots knew that overall

victory in Ireland was far from certain.

Before long they were faced with a devastating

enemy that couldn't be defeated in battle.

- [Voiceover] The heavens shoot anger as if

the spirits of our fallen foe were imploring

the unearthly powers to pour their

gathered stores on our unsheltered heads

directly as we went through it.

- [Voiceover] 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 subjected to a series of crop failures

and that 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 subjected to I suppose the iniquities

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.

- [Voiceover] Many afflictions in all parts of Ireland.

Very many deaths, famine and many strange diseases.

Murders and intolerable storms as well.

- I think it's very telling that a number

of the Irish Annals sources for the period

and later actually blame the famine itself

on the presence of the Bruce army.

That somehow they've cause 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, the two are run together.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,

War and Famine, here's two of them

being positioned on us at the same time.

(anxious violin music)

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 an essential

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.

The population would be moving about in search of food.

It's really a large part of the war itself.

- [Voiceover] 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.

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 who 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 unidentified sins that you

or somebody else did awhile 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.

- [Voiceover] 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 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 kinda starve them out.

The Great Famine been described as

an early example of total warfare because

it attacks women and children as well as men.

And I suspect that suddenly this may

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 have 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 then by surprise

in the ferocity of what was happening.

(rain pouring)

It's probably the worst time to be alive in

the Middle Ages is the first half of the 14th century.

It's pretty much hell.

(anxious violin music)

- [Voiceover] Ravaged by famine,

many areas were deserted.

Entire towns vanished at this time

like Audrey near Athye.

This place was once a thriving settlement

but was abandoned in the 14th century.

When a cemetery was excavated there,

over 1,000 skeletons were recovered.

Some of them date from the time of the Bruce invasion.

(anxious violin music)

- During the course of excavation works here

over 1200 people were found, so a full Medieval population.

And we noticed this is actually an area

that the Bruce army passes through because

they go through Athye and the surrounding area.

So it was an area that would have been affected

without a shadow of a doubt by the wars.

When you come to look in 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 sustained

are practically unimaginable to us now.

The tough aspect of their lives is just quite incredible.

The human remains are 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 has swept in like this.

(swords clanking)

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 coming through here,

there is the blunt force trauma on the top of the head.

So either at the same time or at two separate occasions,

this man was hit by two different weapon types.

A sharp force trauma, probably a sword

and then a 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 lived through it.

(relaxed violin tones)

- [Voiceover] Just a few miles northeast of

the now-vanished town of Audrey is a huge

artificial mound, the motte of Ardskull.

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.

- [Tony] There can be no denying

that this is very impressive.

- [Gavin] 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.

- What we have here Tony is

a very important settlement site.

So what we're lookin' 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

route ways, whether they're roads or rivers.

We're beside a road here, a road that

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 to be seen for

a number of hundred years in Ireland.

And an army that size has to

operate along the major route ways.

It has to move close to these centers of power

consistently and that's exactly what we have at Ardskull.

- So these are like castles really but built on the cheap.

- That's exactly it, a quick fix to try

and control a 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 to Scots who by this time

must have been in a fairly dilapidated state.

But they kind of let it go, don't they?

- Oh absolutely, there is no doubt

that they significantly outnumbered

the Scots and should have won.

The Scots say that there were about 50,000

English descended on them, they had about 10,000 men

and they 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 they're 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 and then they had

this argument and leave the field.

So that 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.

- I'd hate to balance it out but 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.

- [Voiceover] Ardskull 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 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 it wasn't

going to go as easily as he had thought initially.

(armor clanking)

- [Voiceover] 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.

- [Voiceover] 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.

(anxious violin music)

- [Voiceover] 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 cam

and let nature take its course.

So it's an incredibly brutal conflict but

its 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 are 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.

- [Voiceover] 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.

Felim 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 polarized 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 inverted common national cause.

- [Voiceover] Bruce still had the backing of

a formidable Gaelic leader, Domhnall 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.

Degenerates.

Manifestly unworthy of our ancestors.

It was by their valor and splendid deeds

that the Irish race in all the ages past

retained our 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.

But 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 of a branch of the family.

He was somebody who was trying to hold on to his land

and ultimately it's all about land.

(relaxed guitar music)

- [Voiceover] 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 has been thrust so quickly into the heart

of English influence and yet you did

not march on to 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 fear 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.

I mean 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

gonna 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's 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.

(dramatic violin music)

- [Voiceover] 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 hole 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 gonna topple the 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.

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 pull 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 have tipped the balance in Ireland.

It takes them over a year to take Carrickfergus,

it falls and it doesn't really make much difference.

What are they actually trying to achieve?

- Th 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.

(dramatic violin tones)

- [Voiceover] Leaving Dublin behind,

the Scots marched 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 Glandore.

(tense violin tones)

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.

- 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 Domhnall O'Neill for example,

there's direct allegation that

monks are going around hunting Irishmen.

- The monks?

- [Gavin] The monks going out hunting Irishmen

because he wants to say "This is the chaos

"that Edward the Second has wracked upon Ireland.

"This is why we want Edward Bruce to come over and save us."

(swords clanking, screaming)

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.

- [Voiceover] The Bruce army was

slicing its way through the heart of Ireland,

leaving a trail of smoldering ash

and a land stripped bare in its wake.

(thunder)

(ominous guitar tones)

(fire crackling)

- 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 could talk about public opinion in

the early 14th century that 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 have to look at the campaign.

How endless it almost seems weaving 'round and about

first past Dublin down into Leinster,

across to Limerick, back across, back up.

Are they actually desperately in search of food?

They almost starve to death, they're eating their horses.

How do you explain it?

- They're marching to places to try to

rouse the Irish population to join their side.

So I mean 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 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.

And that 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, hut, hut.

- [Voiceover] There was more bad news for the Scots.

An army of English reinforcements had

landed at Yal 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?

- [Voiceover] 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 was a sense in which Ireland stretches them too far

and as much as its a sort of two-front policy,

they can only really run one at a time effectively.

I suspect the English after awhile know that

and they know that unless Edward Bruce commits

to really taking somewhere like Dublin,

it's not gonna tip the balance.

(ominous violin tones, drumbeat)

- [Voiceover] 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.

- 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.

- [Voiceover] In 1317 O'Neill and other

Gaelic leaders sent a letter known as the Remonstrance

of the Irish Princes to Pope John the 22nd.

It explained why they had supported

Edward Bruce against the English.

- From the time the English crossed the borders

of our kingdom with evil intent,

with all their strength and using all

the skills in their power they have

tried to destroy our people utterly

and eradicate them completely.

On account of the aforesaid injuries then

and innumerable others which cannot

easily be grasped by the human understanding,

we are compelled to enter into

a deadly war with the aforementioned.

- The Remonstrance claims that Domhnall 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 had 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 the Fourth

and that part of their mission in Ireland

was meant to be to 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 of Carrick

and brother to the Lord Robert,

the most illustrious King of all the Scots

and sprung from our noblest ancestors.

- [Voiceover] 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 detect the 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 the First, or Edward the Second

tried to rule in Scotland.

So there is a direct relationship between

these two documents, I'm pretty sure of it.

It's controversial 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, we could never build a state

or a nation and I think that's when he said,

"We've gotta 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 the Second to recognize Bruce

as the legitimate King of Scots,

to end these terrible wars.

They tell the Pope that if you don't do this,

you will 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

really of the contractual theory of monarchy in Europe.

And then they go on to make the statement

which many people still weight court.

For so long as 100 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?

(dramatic violin music)

- [Voiceover] 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 of 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 Edwards leads the vanguard down south

and Robert's main army follows him and it could

have been some kind of attempt to take Dublin.

- I suspect they only headed south in October

1319 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've

been able to pull some kind of a rabbit

out of the hat at that stage.

(relaxed guitar, piano 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 him.

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 gonna do against that massive force?"

- There could be in Edward's mind

that he wanted to finish this off.

Maybe there is some kinda 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 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 gonna 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.

(anxious piano music)

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 was a battle.

And it's a motte, it's a type of Anglo-Irish

fortification, the Normans were very good at them

and its 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 from 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.

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.

- [Voiceover] Then with great anger Edward said,

"Let whoever wants to help but rest assured

"that I will fight today without more delay.

"Let no man say that while I am alive

"that superior numbers would make me flee.

"God forbid that anyone should blame

"us for defending our noble name."

(swords clanking, shouting)

(grunting, shouting)

- As it turns out it really ends up being

an Anglo-Norman Bannockburn 'cause they completely

route the Scots and that's the end of the dream

on the Dundalk hillside.

(shouting)

He should have won that battle.

The leader of the Anglo-Irish forces

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 Lowe,

some of them from County Mead.

It 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.

(gate creaks)

(tepid violin music)

(swords clanking, grunting)

- It goes very badly wrong for 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 the Second

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.

(tepid trumpet, violin music)

(grunting)

- We are set here in jeopardy to win honor or for to die.

We are too far for him to flee.

Therefore let each man worthy be.

(relaxed guitar tones)

- [Voiceover] For Bruce's Irish supporters,

things took a turn for the worse.

Domhnall O'Neill's rivals, the O'Donnels,

attacked him and killed his son Showan.

Domhnall 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 for him.

I think that in a way this was down to his brother.

This was Edward, he was carrying

the cairn 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 have 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.

- There are later charges against Edward Bruce

that he's headstrong, that he's overambitious,

that he's short-tempered.

Some of that probably has to be later distancing

by the Scots probably of Robert the First

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.

There's a real danger for the Bruce Dynasty.

- [Voiceover] 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 recognize 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 deathbed,

one contemporary source says he was so ill

that he could barely move his tongue,

he 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

quarters and specialized quarters has been

effectively dismissed and that is interesting

in itself because the potential that it

might have had is staggering.

The idea of having an Irish Kingdom,

albeit one which had a Scot's ancestry,

well we don't know how on earth that could've

played out in you know, sort of centuries to come.

But for a small brief period,

the Scots did have a Kingdom in Ireland.

- [Voiceover] 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 violin music)