Nigel Tranter · 1970 · overland

The middle book, and the comeback. Bruce returns from hiding in 1307 with a handful of men and spends seven years taking Scotland back castle by castle - refusing every pitched battle, slighting every stronghold he captures so nobody can hold it against him, and finally choosing ground near Stirling where an English army cannot deploy.

1. 1
   Rathlin

   February 1307, and he crosses back to Carrick with about three hundred men - having spent a winter learning that the war he was fighting was the wrong war, and that he will have to fight a different one.

2. 2
   Glen Trool

   April 1307 in the Galloway hills, and the new method: an English column caught in a narrow glen and broken by boulders rolled down on it from above - no chivalry, no set battle, and it works.

3. 3
   Loudoun Hill

   May 1307, and Pembroke is defeated in open field on ground Bruce has prepared with ditches to funnel the heavy horse - the first proof that the method scales, and Edward I dies within two months.

4. 4
   Inverurie

   North to break the Comyns in their own country - and the harrying of Buchan, which Tranter does not soften: a Scottish earldom burnt by a Scottish king to make sure it can never rise behind him again.

5. 5
   Bannockburn

   23 and 24 June 1314, and ground he has chosen himself: boggy carse, a burn, and pits dug across the only firm approach - twenty thousand English who cannot deploy, and the end of the second book.