The chief weakness of the campaigns of Edward I of England, virtually from the outset, was that he was unable to build a lasting alliance with the Scottish nobility, a traditional power base on which his rule depended: friends at one moment were liable to be enemies at the next.

With the murder of John Comyn, his extensive network of family and kinsmen, long in the forefront of the national struggle, were guaranteed to fight on the side of the English against Robert Bruce, whom they now considered to be the greater evil.

[5] Bruce's Scottish enemies controlled large and strategically important lands throughout the realm, in Galloway, Lochaber, Atholl, Ross, Buchan, and Badenoch and Strathspey.

Although the king made a remarkable recovery from these disasters, descending on Ayrshire in the spring of 1307 to begin a guerrilla war, it was by no means certain in these early days that he would be able to prevail against the combination of English military power and internal resistance.

Soon after his Ayrshire campaign began he was favoured by a major stroke of good fortune: Edward I, on his way north with an army, died just short of the Scottish border in July 1307.

[3] John Bacach, who gave as an excuse in a letter to King Edward that he was recovering from an illness, observed his dispositions from a galley on Loch Awe.

A party of loyal Scottish archers commanded by Sir James Douglas climbed even higher up Ben Cruachan and – completely unobserved – positioned themselves in the enemy's rear.

They were chased westwards across the River Awe back to Dunstaffnage, while John escaped down the Loch in his galley, eventually taking refuge in England, like the Earl of Buchan.

R. A. MacDonald in his 1997 book, The Kingdom of the Isles, argued that the traditional site of the battle is wrong, and that it took place further north on the shores of Loch Etive.

An advance along the difficult shores of Loch Etive north of Ben Cruachan in the full view of the enemy galleys would have been military suicide.