Robert the Bruce, James Douglas, and the Border Wars

[William Douglas]

Across much of Scotland, Robert the Bruce is remembered as the king who restored independence: the ruler crowned in crisis, the victor of Bannockburn, and the statesman who secured the Treaty of Edinburgh–Northampton. Yet when the story is viewed from the Anglo‑Scottish Marches—from Teviotdale, Liddesdale, and the Merse—a more complicated memory emerges. Here, Bruce’s long struggle for the crown, carried out in close partnership with his most formidable lieutenant, James Douglas, brought hardship on a scale that shaped Border life for generations.

The Borders were not a distant theatre of war; they were the invasion corridor. Their open grazing lands, lightly fortified towns, and economies tied to cross‑border trade made them acutely vulnerable. Loyalties among local families were divided—Bruce, Balliol, and Comyn affinities often ran through the same kin networks. When Bruce adopted a strategy of attrition against England, it was the March communities who bore the immediate cost.

James Douglas—later famed as the Black Douglas—was central to this strategy. His relentless raiding, rapid strikes, and scorched‑earth tactics were instrumental in undermining English authority in the south. To Bruce, Douglas was indispensable: a commander who could hold the frontier, harry English garrisons, and keep pressure on the enemy. But for the people living in the path of these campaigns, the consequences were stark. Douglas’s methods, though militarily effective, contributed to the destruction of crops, the driving off of livestock, and the abandonment of vulnerable settlements. His reputation for ferocity, celebrated in national tradition, was experienced very differently by those whose lands lay between the armies.

Scorched earth was a strategy born of necessity. By denying the English army food and shelter, Bruce and Douglas prevented occupation and forced repeated withdrawals. Yet for Border families, this meant hunger, homelessness, and the collapse of agricultural cycles. Even when the intended target was the English host, the immediate suffering fell upon Scots living on the frontier.

Internal conflict deepened the strain. Bruce’s consolidation of power required the elimination of the Comyn faction, the confiscation of estates, and punitive action against resistant districts. Although the harrying of Buchan is the most famous example, similar patterns touched the south, where allegiance was often pragmatic rather than ideological. Douglas himself played a role in enforcing Bruce’s authority in regions where loyalties were mixed. For some Border families, this meant forced oaths, the loss of land, or the burning of their own steadings.

English retaliation ensured that the cycle of devastation continued. The invasions of Edward I and Edward II, the repeated assaults on Roxburgh and Berwick, and the constant raiding and counter‑raiding turned the March into a near‑permanent war zone. Villages were burned, livestock slaughtered, and towns captured and recaptured. Monastic centres such as Jedburgh Abbey suffered disruption, and whole valleys saw population decline and the abandonment of marginal lands.

The long-term consequences were profound. Trade routes collapsed, agricultural recovery was slow, and many families who had lived for generations on the frontier found themselves widowed, orphaned, or dispossessed. For them, the memory of Bruce’s reign—and of Douglas’s campaigns—was not shaped by Bannockburn or the Declaration of Arbroath, but by fire, flight, and loss.

Both perspectives are historically defensible. Bruce and Douglas were essential to preserving Scottish sovereignty. Yet their methods—shaped by the brutal logic of medieval warfare—inflicted deep suffering on the very people they sought to defend. From the vantage point of Edinburgh or Stirling, Bruce and Douglas appear as national saviours. From the valleys of Teviotdale or Liddesdale, they may be remembered as leaders whose war brought relentless hardship to the March.

The pedestal of nationhood stands upon ground where, for many Border families, the cost of independence was measured in devastation.