In the Shadow of Flodden: Tactics, Technology and Scottish Military Effectiveness, 1513–1550

Abstract

The opening decades of the sixteenth century were the darkest years of Scotland's military history. The catastrophic defeat at Flodden in 1513 was followed by the humiliating rout at Solway Moss in 1542 and the disaster of Pinkie in 1547. Adding insult to injury was the belief that these defeats were inflicted by English armies which were them selves organisationally and technologically primitive. As 'the military revolution' swept Western Europe, warfare in the British Isles was reactionary, insular, backward. The exact nature of this 'revolution' remains contentious. Interpretation has centred on tactical and technological change: the emergence of a more professional soldiery armed with gunpowder small arms, the construction of increasingly sophisticated forms of artillery fortification, and military establishments increasingly capable of undertaking the most ambitious of strategic designs. These developments in turn, it is argued, increased both the scale of warfare and its impact on societies.1 Scotland, however, with its defence resting on an archaic national levy, was outpaced in technological and tactical development even by the English who supplemented their 'bows and bills' with expensive foreign professionals: German Landsknechte (pikemen), Spanish arquebusiers (handgunners), Italian engineers.2 Such an uninspiring picture has inevitably attracted only limited attention from historians. Gladys Dickinson has carefully surveyed the military obligations of the Scottish people, via the requirements of the 'wappinshaws'.3 David Caldwell has written the definitive account of'Black Saturday', the routing of Governor Arran's