Why Scottish History Matters Quotes

“The Church and learning had formed the main channels through which Scotland's links with Europe - in both directions - had run. In 1560 or 1638 as much as in 1450, students went abroad to pursue a second degree: in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, their most usual destinations were the universities of Louvain and Cologne; Paris was the favourite resort of promising Scots scholars for the two generations either side of the Reformation of 1560; by the 1580s the Calvinist University of Heidelberg and the Huguenot academies had taken over from Beza's Geneva; and by 1625 Leiden in the Netherlands had become a Mecca for the two rising professions, the ministry and the law.”
― Michael Lynch, Why Scottish History Matters

“After Scotland's mounted knights had been routed by Edward I in 1296, resistance leaders worked out new methods of waging war, using foot-soldiers armed with long pikes and axes. Medieval infantry usually fled when charged by cavalry, but William Wallace and Robert Bruce (King Robert I) solved the problem by organising their men into massed formations ('schiltroms'), and fighting on the defensive on well-chosen ground; that is how Robert I's army won the battle of Bannockburn. Also, Robert ordered that castles recaptured from the English should be demolished or slighted. This denied the English any bases for garrisons, and meant that subsequent warfare consisted chiefly of cross-Border raids - in which Robert I perfected the technique of making rapid hard-hitting strikes. The English could not win this type of warfare. The actual fighting was done by ordinary Scotsmen; most of the pikemen came from the substantial peasantry, whose level of commitment to the independence cause was remarkably high. But the organisation and leadership came from the Normanised Scottish landowners. Norman military success had been based on these qualities as well as on armoured cavalry; now they were vital in countering the armies of English knights. There is a most significant contrast here with the Welsh and the Irish, who never found the way to defeat the English in warfare. It was the Normanised Scottish landowners, forming the officer corps of Scotland's armies, who achieved that crucial breakthrough.”
― Alexander Grant, Why Scottish History Matters

“[Under] David I (1124-530, Scotland undoubtedly had a place in the comity of catholic realms. It restored a regular ecclesiastical organisation, received the new religious orders which revived the spiritual life of the Church, and accepted French secular culture, which, allowing for local variants, dominated the ruling classes west of the Elbe including much of Britain, where not only knighthood and chivalry, but also French language and Romance literature inspired, even pervaded, the culture of the ruling elite.”
― A.A.M. Duncan, Why Scottish History Matters