Battle of Largs

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The Battle of Largs. Historicizing representation from 1899

The Battle of Largs was a battle during the Norwegian-Scottish War from 1263 to 1266 . It took place on October 2, 1263 at Largs in Scotland and ended without a clear winner.

prehistory

After Scottish attacks on the West Scottish islands under Norwegian sovereignty, the Norwegian King Håkon Håkonsson led a large fleet to Scotland in the summer of 1263. Off Northern Scotland he united his fleet with the contingents of his Scottish vassals, who had remained loyal to him. The combined fleet advanced along the west coast of Scotland to the Firth of Clyde , which it reached in September. The Scottish King Alexander III. offered negotiations to the Norwegian king. However, these were unsuccessful, and the Scots may have played for time in view of the approaching autumn towers. Then part of the Norwegian fleet made an advance into Loch Long , while the main part anchored off the Cumbraes in the Firth of Clyde.

The Firth of Clyde with the sites of the campaign of 1263

Course of the battle

During a storm that lasted from September 30th to October 1st, the Norwegian longships , which lay between the Cumbraes and mainland Scotland, suffered severe damage. Several Norwegian ships were forced by the storm to raise their anchors and leave their berths. Some of them were driven to the coast near Largs. There, on October 2, a series of skirmishes between Scottish foot soldiers and the crews of the stranded Norwegian ships developed into a battle. There is no reliable information about its exact course, as the contemporary Scottish and Norwegian reports are very different. According to the Scottish Chronicle of Melrose , the Norwegians were mostly defeated by the storm. The Norwegians received support from the crews of the other Norwegian ships during the day, while the Scottish forces also received reinforcements. The Scottish army consisted mainly of local contingents from Strathgryffe , Cunninghame and Kyle . The Scottish commanders were believed to have been Walter Stewart, Earl of Menteith as Sheriff of Ayr and Alexander Uvieth (also Unieth ) as Sheriff of Lanark . The supreme command of the Scottish forces was led by Alexander of Dundonald . The Scottish foot soldiers are said to have been well armed with bows, battle axes and slingshots. Even if there is no precise evidence, a greater number of knights probably took part in the battle. According to the Norwegian Håkon saga , the Scottish cavalry is said to have been 500 men strong. After several hours of skirmishing, the Scots withdrew from the battlefield and the Norwegians returned to their ships. The battle remained undecided. There is no information about the amount of losses. According to contemporary information, with Peter de Curry only one Scottish knight should have fallen.

Aerial view of the battlefield with the memorial to the battle in the foreground (2019)

consequences

The Norwegian fleet remained in front of Lamlash for a few days before King Håkon withdrew slowly north. He chose the Orkney Islands as winter quarters , where he died in December 1263. After it had already been foreseen that the Norwegian campaign would be a failure, it had completely failed due to the death of the king.

memorial

A memorial from the early 20th century commemorates the Battle of Largs. Commemorations of the battle have been held here every year since the 1980s.

literature

  • Derek Alexander, Tim Neighbor, Richard D. Oram: Glorious victory? The battle of Largs, October 2, 1263 , in: History Scotland 2 (2000) 17-22.
  • Geoffrey Wallis Steuart Barrow : Kingship and Unity: Scotland 1000-1306 , Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 1989 (= The New History of Scotland , 2) ISBN 0-7486-0104-X
  • Geoffrey Wallis Steuart Barrow: The army of Alexander III's Scotland , in: Norman H. Reid: Scotland in the Reign of Alexander III, 1249-1286 , Donald, Edinburgh 1990, pp. 132-147. ISBN 0-85976-218-1
  • Ian Beuermann: `Norgesveld?` South of Cape Wrath? , in: Steinar Imsen: The Norwegian Domination and the Norse World c. 1100-c. 1400 . Norgesveldt occasional papers, Tapir Academic Press 2010. pp. 99-123. (= Trondheim studies in history ). ISBN 978-82-519-2563-1
  • Steve Boardman: Late medieval Scotland and the matter of Britain , in: Edward J. Cowan, Richard J. Finlay: Scottish History: the Power of the Past , Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 2002, pp. 47-72, ISBN 0-7486 -1420-6
  • Margaret Clunies Ross, Amanda J. Collins: Johnstone, James (d. 1798) , Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford 2004 (online January 2008)
  • Edward J. Cowan (1990): Norwegian Sunset - Scottish Dawn: Haakon IV and Alexander III , in: Norman H. Reid: Scotland in the Reign of Alexander III, 1249-1286 , John Donald, pp. 103-131, ISBN 0 -85976-218-1 .
  • TK Derry: History of Scandinavia: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland , University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis / London 2000, p. 49. ISBN 0-8166-3799-7 .
  • HF Doherty (2011) [2007], Dauvit Broun, Julian Harrison (Eds.): The Chronicle of Melrose Abbey. A stratigraphic edition , Vol. I: Introduction and facsimile edition , The Innes Review (2011) 101-107, doi: 10.3366 / inr.2011.0008 , ISBN 978-0-906245-29-3 , ISSN 0020-157X.
  • Magnus Magnusson : Scotland: the Story of a Nation , Grove Press, 2003. ISBN 0-8021-3932-9 .
  • Rosemary Power: Meeting in Norway: Norse-Gaelic relations in the kingdom of Man and the Isles, 1090-1270 (PDF), Saga-Book, Viking Society for Northern Research, 29 (2005) 5-66. ISSN 0305-9219.
  • Norman H. Reid: Alexander III: the historiography of a myth , in: Norman H. Reid: Scotland in the Reign of Alexander III, 1249-1286 , John Donald, 1990, pp. 183-213, ISBN 0-85976-218 -1 .
  • Alan Young (1990), Noble families and political factions in the reign of Alexander III , in: Norman H. Reid: Scotland in the Reign of Alexander III, 1249-1286 , John Donald, pp. 1-30, ISBN 0-85976 -218-1 .
  • Alex Woolf (2004), The age of sea-kings, 900-1300 , in: Donald Omand: The Argyll Book , Birlinn, pp. 94-109, ISBN 1-84158-253-0 .

Web links

Commons : Battle of Largs  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ GWS Barrow: Kingship and unity: Scotland 1000-1306 . Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 2015, ISBN 978-1-4744-0183-8 , p. 117.
  2. ^ A b Geoffrey Barrow: The Army of Alexander's Scotland . In: Norman H. Reid (ed.): Scotland in the Reign of Alexander III, 1249-1286 . Edinburgh, John Donald 1990, ISBN 0-85976-218-1 , p. 138.
  3. ^ Alan Young: Noble Families and Poliical Factions in the Reign of Alexander III . In: Norman H. Reid (ed.): Scotland in the Reign of Alexander III, 1249-1286 . Edinburgh, John Donald 1990, ISBN 0-85976-218-1 , p. 15.
  4. ^ A b Edward J. Cowan: Norwegian Sunset - Scottish Dawn: Hakon IV and Alexander III . In: Norman H. Reid (Ed.): Scotland in the Reign of Alexander III 1249-1286 . John Donald, Edinburgh 1990. ISBN 0-85976-218-1 , p. 122.
  5. ^ Geoffrey Barrow: The Army of Alexander's Scotland . In: Norman H. Reid (ed.): Scotland in the Reign of Alexander III, 1249-1286 . Edinburgh, John Donald 1990, ISBN 0-85976-218-1 , p. 139.
  6. ↑ Michael Brown: The wars of Scotland, 1214-1371 . Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 2004, ISBN 0-7486-1237-8 , p. 83.