Battle of Otterburn
| date | August 1388 |
|---|---|
| place | 1 mile northwest of Otterburn, Northumberland |
| output | Scottish victory |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
| Commander | |
| Troop strength | |
| approx. 2900 men | approx. 3200 men |
| losses | |
|
approx. 500 fallen |
approx. 1,500 dead, wounded and prisoners |
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The Battle of Otterburn took place as a result of the Anglo-Scottish Border Wars on August 5, 1388 (according to other information on August 14 or 19, 1388) between Scots under James Douglas, 2nd Earl of Douglas and the English under Henry Percy near Otterburn (Northumberland) instead of.
The battle
The Scots divided their army into two raiding parties to carry out a border raid on English territory. The main force and the entourage moved towards Carlisle in Cumberland , while the smaller raiding party under the Earl of Douglas devastated the areas around Durham and Newcastle upon Tyne in Northumberland . Henry Percy, 1st Earl of Northumberland sent his two sons, Sir Henry Percy and Sir Ralph Percy, to raise the bulkheads while he stayed in Alnwick to cut off the marauders ' retreat.
According to the French chronicler Jean Froissart , when the armies first met, a scuffle between the Earl of Douglas and Henry Percy took place, in which Henry Percy's Pennon was captured by Douglas. James Douglas then moved to the castle near Ponteland, destroyed it and besieged Otterburn Castle (today Otterburn Tower). Percy then launched a surprise attack on Douglas Camp in the late afternoon, but initially only found the Earl's servants and servants, which gave the majority of the army time to gather and so enabled their flank to attack.
During the battle on a moonlit night Douglas was killed and both Percy brothers captured, the rest of the English army retreated to Newcastle upon Tyne. Although, according to Froissart, Percy's force outnumbered the Scots three to one, 1,040 Englishmen were captured and 1,860 killed, while the Scots lost 200 prisoners and 100 dead. The Westminster Chronicle ( Westminster Chronicle ) estimates the Scottish losses to around 500 men.
When the Bishop of Durham from Newcastle upon Tyne arrived with 10,000 reinforcements, he is said to have been so impressed by the orderly bulkheads, the noise they made with their horns , and their seemingly unassailable position that he refrained from attacking.
The fallen Englishmen and Scots were taken to St. Cuthbert's Church in the Alnwick district , about 3 miles from the battlefield, and buried there. The Earl of Douglas was buried in Melrose , Roxburgshire.
Web links
literature
- Peter Armstrong: Otterburn 1388: Bloody border conflict. Osprey Publishing, 2006, ISBN 1-84176-980-0 . (English)
- Geoffrey Wallis Stewart Barrow: Otterburn, Battle of (1388) . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages (LexMA). Volume 6, Artemis & Winkler, Munich / Zurich 1993, ISBN 3-7608-8906-9 , Sp. 1563.