James, 2nd Earl of Douglas, beat Henry Percy — Hotspur — in a night battle at Otterburn on 5 August 1388: Douglas was killed and both Percy brothers were taken prisoner, and the fight passed into the ballad of Chevy Chase.
The Battle of Otterburn was fought in Redesdale, Northumberland, on the night of 5 August 1388 — the date given by the Scottish sources, where the English chronicles say 19 August, and nothing survives that settles the argument. A Scottish raiding column under James, 2nd Earl of Douglas, was camped near Otterburn on its way home when Henry Percy, called Hotspur, came up from Newcastle and attacked at dusk without waiting for the force marching behind him. The fighting went on by moonlight, which is rare enough in medieval warfare to be the first thing every account mentions.
It ended as a Scottish victory that cost the Scots their commander and gave them both Percy brothers as prisoners. Douglas was killed in the melee and his own men did not learn of it until daylight. Because Froissart wrote it up at length, and because two ballads grew out of it, Otterburn is one of the best-known small battles of the Middle Ages and one of the most misremembered: the ballad that carried it furthest, Chevy Chase, turns the campaign into a quarrel over a hunting party and kills Percy along with Douglas.
The raid answered an older one. Richard II had invaded Scotland in 1385 and burned the border abbeys and Edinburgh, and the Scots had been waiting for a moment to reply. It came in 1388, when England was tearing at itself: the Lords Appellant had taken control of the government and the Merciless Parliament had spent the spring destroying the king’s friends. Scottish captains who had taken English prisoners learned from them how divided the north was, and a council at Aberdeen planned an invasion on two fronts.
The main army went west under Archibald, 3rd Earl of Douglas, and Robert Stewart, Earl of Fife, toward Carlisle. The smaller eastern column — the one that fought at Otterburn — was led by James, 2nd Earl of Douglas, with John Dunbar, Earl of Moray, and George Dunbar, Earl of March, and it rode down through Northumberland into Durham, burning as it went, before turning back on Newcastle. Splitting the effort was deliberate: two columns forced the Percys to guard two roads, and the eastern one was meant to provoke exactly the pursuit it got.
At Newcastle the Scots skirmished at the barriers outside the walls, and Douglas and Hotspur fought each other hand to hand. Douglas took the silk pennon from Percy’s lance and — in Froissart’s telling — announced that he would fly it from his castle at Dalkeith, at which Hotspur swore he would never leave Northumberland without it. Froissart then has Douglas obligingly halt at Otterburn to give him the chance, which is the chivalric convention his audience expected rather than a plan of campaign.
What the sources agree on beneath the romance is simpler. The Scots left Newcastle, stormed the tower at Ponteland, tried and failed to take the castle at Otterburn, and camped there in a strong position with their plunder and their cattle; and Hotspur came after them fast, against the advice of men who wanted to wait for the Bishop of Durham. A commander who has just lost his pennon in front of a garrison town has reasons to hurry that need no formal agreement with the enemy.
The English arrived at dusk and went straight in. The first attack struck the part of the camp held by servants and drovers, which bought the Scottish men-at-arms the minutes they needed to get their armour on — the single luckiest accident of the night for Douglas. Moray’s division met the English attack head-on while Douglas took a body of men around the hill and came in on the flank, and from there the battle turned into a long confused melee in the dark that lasted, by every account, most of the night.
Moonlight flattens formations and ruins command. Men fought in small groups, could not tell who was winning, and in places stopped and started again as they found each other; the English, who had marched all day and attacked without eating, wore out first. By the time it was light the English force had broken up, the survivors were streaming back toward Newcastle, and the Bishop of Durham’s relieving force came within sight of the Scottish position, judged it too strong, and turned round.
Douglas was killed in the middle of the fighting, in the front of his own attack and wearing — Froissart says — no bascinet visor and less armour than he should have. Froissart’s version, which is the only detailed one, has him struck down by three spear wounds, found dying by his chaplain and a few companions, and using his last minutes to order them to hide his body, raise his banner and shout his war cry, so that neither army would know the Douglas had fallen. His men did exactly that, and the Scots fought on believing their earl was alive somewhere in the dark.
The chronicles agree only on the outline: he died, and his death was not generally known until morning. The rest is Froissart writing for an audience that valued a good death more than an accurate one, and he revised the chapter more than once as new informants reached him. He did talk to men who had been there, on both sides, which makes him a genuine source and not a romance; it does not make him a transcript. The body was carried north and buried at Melrose Abbey.
Hotspur was taken by Sir John Montgomery of Eaglesham, who is said to have paid for Polnoon Castle out of the ransom; Ralph Percy was wounded and captured in the same fight. A ransom of that size was beyond even the Percys, and much of Hotspur’s was met from public funds — the war on that border was a national charge, and the family’s standing in the north made it everyone’s business. His reputation survived the defeat entirely intact, which says something about how the fourteenth century scored these things.
The casualty figures are a mess and should be shown as one. Froissart reports 1,860 English dead and 1,040 taken against about a hundred Scots killed and two hundred captured; the Westminster Chronicle puts the Scottish dead nearer five hundred. Both sides had reasons to shape the numbers and neither counted. A three-year truce followed in 1389, and the border went back to what it had been: wardens, raids, ransoms, and the next reckoning fourteen years later at the Battle of Homildon Hill, where Hotspur took his revenge on a Douglas army and started a chain of events that killed him.