Warfare in early modern Scotland

In the late Middle Ages, Scottish armies were assembled on the basis of common service, feudal obligations and money contracts of bonds of manrent.

As armed conflict between the Covenanter regime in Scotland and Charles I in the Bishops' Wars became likely, many mercenaries returned home, including experienced leaders like Alexander and David Leslie and these veterans played an important role in training recruits.

Royalist armies, like those led by James Graham, Marquis of Montrose (1643–44) and in Glencairn's rising (1653–54), were mainly composed of conventionally armed infantry with pike and shot.

After the Covenanters allied with the English Parliament they established two patrol squadrons for the Atlantic and North Sea coasts, known collectively as the "Scotch Guard".

Scottish seamen received protection against arbitrary impressment, but a fixed quota of conscripts for the Royal Navy was levied from the sea-coast burghs.

In the later Middle Ages, Scottish armies were still largely assembled on the basis of common service and feudal obligations, with the addition of troops maintained by money contracts of bonds or bands of manrent.

Such troops were expected to serve at their own expense and to bring their own supplies, a factor that severely limited the ability of Scottish armies to take part in sustained campaigning.

[1] Feudalism had been introduced to Scotland in the twelfth century,[2] meaning that knights held castles and estates in exchange for service, providing troops on a 40-day basis, particularly heavily armed noble cavalry.

[3] In 1513 for the Flodden campaign these systems were successful in producing a large and formidable force, but in the religious and politically divided mid-sixteenth century there is evidence that the authorities were experiencing increasing difficulty in recruitment.

After the disaster at Flodden there seems to have been a deliberate abandonment of plate armour by the nobility, perhaps because of the difficulties it created in handling a pike, and by 1547 many noblemen were virtually indistinguishable from the majority of troops.

[6] A clan leader like John Grant of Freuchie in 1596 could muster from his kin, friends, and servants 500 men able to fight for James VI and the Sheriff of Moray.

Modelling themselves on Swiss and German infantry, Scottish tactics tended to focus on rapidly engaging the enemy, particularly necessary to counter the advantage enjoyed by the English in missile power.

[14] However, his 18 heavy artillery pieces had to be drawn by 400 oxen and slowed the advancing Scots army, proving ineffective against the longer-range and smaller-calibre English guns at the Battle of Flodden Field.

[16] In the period of French intervention in the 1540s and 1550s, at the end of the Rough Wooing, Scotland was given a defended border of a series of earthwork forts and additions to existing castles.

[24] James V built a new harbour at Burntisland in 1542, called 'Our Lady Port' or 'New Haven,' described in 1544 as having three blockhouses with guns and a pier for great ships to lie in a dock.

[26] Later in the year he sailed from Kirkcaldy with six ships including the 600 ton Mary Willoughby, and arrived at Dieppe to begin his courtship of his first wife Madeleine of Valois.

[30] When, as a result of the series of international treaties, the emperor Charles V declared war upon Scotland in 1544, the Scots were able to engage in a highly profitable campaign of privateering that lasted six years and the gains of which probably outweighed the losses in trade with the Low Countries.

[31] In 1629 two squadrons of privateers led by Lochinvar and William Lord Alexander, sailed for Canada, taking part in the campaign that resulted in the capture of Quebec from the French, which was handed back after the subsequent peace.

It appointed two lairds in every parish to draw up lists of men suitable for military service, arms and the names of Scots serving abroad so that they could be recalled.

[17] The appointment of Leslie as field marshal avoided a contest between inexperienced nobles for leadership and his reputation made the service by Scottish mercenaries in Covenanter armies more likely.

In the view of historian James Scott Wheeler, the first Covenanter army was "marginally trained, irregularly armed, poorly paid and badly supplied", but it proved sufficient to the task.

Scottish armies also had Gaelic speaking Highland contingents who fought as individuals as much as for their Chiefs with older types of weapons including recurved short bows and standard longbows, Lochaber axes, and halberds.

[43] Royalist armies, like those led by James Graham, Marquis of Montrose (1643–44) and in Glencairn's rising (1653–54) were mainly composed of conventionally armed infantry with pike and shot.

[49] After the Covenanters allied with the English Parliament they established two patrol squadrons for the Atlantic and North Sea coasts, known collectively as the "Scotch Guard".

[55] Pikemen became less important in the late seventeenth century and after the introduction of the socket bayonet, a process complete by 1702, disappeared altogether, while matchlock muskets were replaced by the more reliable flintlock.

[58] Although Scottish seamen received protection against arbitrary impressment onto English men-of-war under Charles II, a fixed quota of conscripts for the Royal Navy was levied from the sea-coast burghs during the second half of the seventeenth century.

[59] Royal Navy patrols were now found in Scottish waters even in peacetime, such as the small ship-of-the-line HMS Kingfisher, which bombarded Carrick Castle during the Earl of Argyll's rebellion in 1685.

[62] In the same period it was decided to establish a professional navy for the protection of commerce in home waters during the Nine Years' War, with three purpose-built warships bought from English shipbuilders in 1696.

[66] The bulk of Jacobite armies were made up of Highlanders, serving in clan regiments in similar vein to their make up in the previous two centuries but had been affected by the Disarming Act deliberately aimed at reducing their capability.

[70] The clan gentlemen formed the front ranks of the unit and were more heavily armed than their tenants who made up the bulk of the regiment and who had been affected more strongly by the efforts to disarm the Gaeltachd.