Schiltron Spear

Origins

The word schiltron, also spelled schiltrom or sheltron, comes from an Old English term meaning a shield-troop, and at first it meant any tightly packed body of soldiers. During the wars with England that began in 1296 it came to be used above all for the massed spearmen of Scotland. The kingdom had few heavy cavalry and could not match the numbers of English knights and men-at-arms. What it could raise was the common army, the free men called out to serve on foot with whatever arms they owned. For most of them that meant a spear. No spear that can be tied to these armies is known to survive, so its form has to be worked out from chronicles, laws and later practice.

Design & Construction

The weapon was a long, plain spear: a wooden shaft, probably of ash, with a small iron head. Modern writers usually give its length as about twelve feet, or some 3.5 to 4 meters, though this is an estimate. It was too long to throw or to use easily in one hand, and was held in both hands. This made it longer than the ordinary spear of earlier centuries but probably shorter than the true Pike of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Later Scottish parliaments tried to enforce longer weapons, and an act of 1471 called for spears of six ells, well over five meters.

Most spearmen had little armor. A statute of Robert I in 1318 required men with goods worth ten pounds to have a padded coat, a helmet, plated gloves, a spear and a sword, and those with goods worth one cow to bring a good spear or a bow. Many would have worn a quilted coat and a simple helmet such as the Kettle Hat.

Combat Use

At the Battle of Stirling Bridge on 11 September 1297, William Wallace and Andrew Moray sent their spearmen down onto the part of the English army that had crossed the River Forth. The spearmen seized the bridgehead and destroyed the trapped vanguard on ground too soft and cramped for cavalry.

The schiltron is first clearly described at Falkirk on 22 July 1298. The chronicler Walter of Guisborough says Wallace drew up his spearmen in four round bodies, with the front ranks kneeling and the spears slanting outward, and with archers placed between them. The English cavalry scattered the archers and the few Scottish horsemen but could not break into the rings. Edward I then brought up his bowmen. The English Longbow and the crossbow shot gaps in the standing ranks, the cavalry rode into the gaps, and the Scottish army was destroyed.

Robert Bruce learned from this. At Bannockburn on 23 and 24 June 1314 his schiltrons were trained to move and to attack. On the second day they advanced on the English cavalry, which was crowded between the Bannock Burn and the Forth, and pushed it back spear point by spear point. A small force of Scottish horse drove off the English archers before they could do much harm. The Knight's Lance was no longer than the infantry spears, and a horse would not charge home onto a steady hedge of points.

Legacy

The schiltron showed, in the same years as the Flemish victory at Courtrai in 1302, that disciplined foot soldiers could beat mounted knights. Its weakness to archery did not go away. At Dupplin Moor in 1332 and Halidon Hill in 1333, Scottish spearmen advancing against English men-at-arms flanked by archers were shot down in great numbers. The long spear still remained the main weapon of Scottish infantry for more than two hundred years, growing into the full pike carried at Flodden in 1513. The film Braveheart (1995) shows Wallace's men raising long sharpened stakes against a cavalry charge at Stirling. That scene is invented, though it is clearly modeled on the schiltron. The spear takes its place with the other Scottish Arms & Weapons of the period.