A Scottish army perhaps ten times the size of its enemy destroyed itself against a narrow line of dismounted men-at-arms at Dupplin Moor on 11 August 1332, with archers shooting into both its flanks.
The Battle of Dupplin Moor was fought on 11 August 1332 on high ground above the River Earn, about five miles south-west of Perth, between the army of the Guardian of Scotland, Domhnall, Earl of Mar, and an invasion force of some 1,500 men under Edward Balliol and Henry de Beaumont. The invaders were the Disinherited: lords, mostly English, whose Scottish estates had been forfeited by Robert the Bruce and never returned. They were outnumbered by something close to ten to one and they won the most one-sided victory of the Anglo-Scottish wars.
Beaumont placed his men-at-arms on foot in a narrow gap between two slopes, put his archers on the rising ground at either side, and kept almost nothing in reserve. The Scottish schiltrons charged into the gap, the second crashed into the back of the first, and the arrows came in from both flanks into men who could no longer lift their arms. Chroniclers on both sides record heaps of Scottish dead taller than a spear, many of them suffocated rather than struck. The Guardian died, four earls with him, and six weeks later Balliol was crowned king of Scots at Scone.
After Bannockburn, the parliament held at Cambuskenneth in November 1314 stripped every landholder who had not come into Robert the Bruce's peace. The Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton in 1328 recognised Scottish independence but left those forfeitures standing, and the men who had lost by them — Henry de Beaumont, who claimed the earldom of Buchan through his wife; David of Strathbogie, who claimed Atholl; Gilbert de Umfraville, who claimed Angus — spent the next four years pressing for restoration and getting nothing.
Bruce died in June 1329, leaving a son of five. Thomas Randolph, Earl of Moray, governed as Guardian until he died on 20 July 1332, and the Scots elected Mar in his place on 2 August. By then the Disinherited had already sailed. Edward III of England, who had sworn to the 1328 peace and was not ready to break it openly, forbade them to cross the border by land, so they went from the Humber by sea, landed at Kinghorn in Fife on 6 August, brushed aside a levy sent to stop them, and marched for Perth.
Balliol had about 500 men-at-arms and about 1,000 archers and other foot, with a body of German mercenary knights among them. Mar had the army of a kingdom: chronicle figures of 20,000 to 40,000 are not believable, but modern estimates still put the Scots at something above 15,000, and a second Scottish force under the Earl of March was marching to join him. The invaders were camped on the south bank of the Earn with a Scottish army in front of them and another coming up behind.
The ground that saved them was a shallow valley about two hundred yards wide, running up from the river with rising, broken slopes on either side. It gave Beaumont a front so narrow that numbers could not be brought to bear on it, and two flanking positions from which archers could shoot down into anyone who entered. It is the single most important fact about the battle: the deployment that made the Disinherited famous was a response to being trapped, chosen by men who expected to be destroyed the following morning.
The Scots held the fords, and on the evening of 10 August the Disinherited let it be seen that they were settling down for the night. Around midnight they moved instead, guided to an unguarded crossing and over the river in the dark. What they found on the far bank was a Scottish camp keeping no proper watch. They attacked it, killed men in their beds, and scattered the rest into the night.
The confusion did more than kill: it left the Scottish army rising in darkness to news of an enemy already across the river, and it bought the invaders the hours they needed to choose their ground and stand on it before dawn. By first light Beaumont's line was formed across the valley with the archers already on the slopes. Everything that followed was decided before the two armies could see each other.
The Scots came on in two great schiltrons, and they came on divided. Mar was accused of treachery for suggesting caution; Robert Bruce of Liddesdale answered by charging first, to prove which of them loved the kingdom more. His formation entered the valley, was squeezed inward by the slopes, and struck the dismounted men-at-arms with enough weight to drive them back about ten yards — the only ground the Disinherited lost all day.
Then Mar's schiltron arrived behind it. The rear ranks pushed, the front ranks could not go forward, and the men between them were crushed standing up. Chroniclers on both sides describe Scots dying without ever reaching an enemy, and heaps of bodies that English foot climbed over to strike at the living. The archers on the flanks shot into faces and the sides of the press, where mail did least good, and there was no Scottish answer to them: the horse that might have ridden them down was not there, and the men who might have reached them could not turn.
The fighting lasted from dawn until past midday, which is itself evidence that this was a slaughter rather than a rout. When the press finally broke, the men-at-arms called for their horses and pursued the survivors until sunset. Modern accounts date the fighting to 11 August; some give 12 August, and some 10 August, counting from the night crossing rather than the day of the battle.
Mar was killed, and so was Robert Bruce of Liddesdale. So were the earls of Moray and Menteith, fourteen barons and, by one count, one hundred and sixty knights. Duncan, Earl of Fife, was the only senior noble taken alive; he changed sides. Two English chronicles claim more than 15,000 Scottish dead, Scottish accounts give two to three thousand, and neither figure can be checked — but the shape of the loss is not in doubt, because the names of the dead are.
On the other side, thirty-five men-at-arms were killed: two knights and thirty-three squires. No archer died at all. Numbers this lopsided usually mean a rout, where the losing army is cut down in flight. Here they mean something stranger — an army that destroyed itself by its own weight while being shot at, and the accounts agree that more Scots died at the hands of other Scots than at English hands.