H.L. Ivo Blackhawk, Herald At Large: Sword Sunday #28: The knightly sword; A sword that helped win independence!

Of course, when Americans thinks of independence, there is a not unjustified assumption that we are talking about the American revolution, and the beginning of the fall of the British empire. Considering how monumental the american breakaway from from the empire at the time, the presumptions is not unfounded. However, the truth of the mater is that nations, and kingdoms have fought for, and won their independence a great many times before across history.

When King Alexander III of Scotland died towards the end of the 13th century, he left a 3 year old daughter as the next monarch, a situation that required the creation of the Guardians of Scotland, a council of statesmen and regrets intended to rule in the young princess'es place until she came of age. When the daughter passed before reaching majority, the rivals for he throne announced themselves, and the two top contenders were Robert Bruce (Grandfather of the future king Robert the Bruce) and John Balliol. The Guardians of Scotland of feared that a war between the two factions would bleed the country out and lead to ruin for the nation. They asked England, their powerful neighbor to the south, to decide the succession, and Edward I named John the king.

For Edward, the price of this decision was a commitment from the Scots to send troops to the mainland to fight the French and reinforce English claims to land on the continent. The order were followed, and soon the English army marched into Scotland, an occupational force, to control and tax the country that Edward now considered his own.

These were the precursor steps to a bloody, and violent half century long conflict between England and Scotland, marked by places such as Sterling, Falkirk, and Bannockburn, and names like Wallace, Lamberton, and Bruce.

To be sure, the true killing arms of either army were their infantry, armed with pike, spear, cavalryman's lance. But this summary glances over an important aspect of both the political, social, and military makeup of Scotland in this time.

Stepped in ceremony, with the majority of its population claiming faith in the church while also clinging to pagan traditions in the same breath, the royals, nobles and commoners of the country also shared an ingrained understanding of the importance of the sword, and the people who wielded it. While much could be said for the massive, six and a half foot tall great-swords that would later be called Claymores, and tradition also ran as thick as blood around the roman-inspired 14th century sword, with its wider guard and squared, longer pommel, through it all, there was a common class of blade that all sides knew about, all made, and all used to one extent or another.

Today it is called the knightly sword, a long, balanced, one-handed weapon made to be used by a skilled practitioner and able to both strike at range, with the tip of its 3 foot blade honed to a sharp point, and the full length of it no less deadly.

Replica of the Sword of Saint Maurice,
one of the best-preserved 13th-century swords, now kept in Turin.
This sword is considered typical of the "knightly sword".

Sword making of the day had found what would be the optimum types of metal and forging for the blade, and the best ratios of weight to length for the European wartime environment. The 'knightly sword' was between 29 and 25 inches long, and maintained its strength by using layered and hardened steel, and matched that with speed and accuracy not typically not weighing in much over two and a half pounds. In technical terms the weapon by the time of the Scottish war or independence was a type XIII in the Oakeshott typology of sword. Knights and footmen on both sides would wield weapons like this for the duration of the war, itself a small chapter in the swords half-millennium long story across the European military history.

Neither flashy, nor massive, and not able to cleave rocks with a single hit, or punch armor with a single blow, the knightly sword was, however, the weapon of a class of men who made warfare their profession, a violent tool for a violent trade.

In 1357, the war finally came to an inauspicious end when the last of the belligerents viewing for control of the throne (in one capacity or another) died. John Balliol had reigned 4 short years before the throne was claimed by Robert I, who reigned for 23 years before passing. His on, David II floundered in his attempts to militarily take control of Scotland from the English. He was ultimately captured, and ransomed back to Scotland for a sum that was never paid, and would have likely bankrupted the country if it had been.

England, for its part, had been during the same war the indomitable military and political prowess of Edward I, only to be followed by breathtaking incompetence of his son, Edward II. The third generation of monarchs to carry the name Edward would spend almost half of his reign attempting to remedy most of what his father had let come undone, and then leading a nation with its own problems both foreign and domestic. With his dead, only a few years removed from his opposite, David II of Scotland, came the effective end of the war.

Robert II would assume the throne of an independent Scotland in 1371, beginning a term of over 300 years of independence for the nation before it was diplomatically include into the founding of great Britain in 1707, per the Treaty of Union.

Coins, paintings, and funeral effigies contemporary to each play shows them with knightly swords on their person.