THE KINGDOM OF SCOTLAND
By oppression's woes and pains!
By your sons in servile chains!
We will drain our dearest veins,
But they shall be free!
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ROBERT IV
THE ROYAL HOUSE OF STUART
KING OF SCOTLAND
♱
Robert The Unready's ambitions for a restored Scottish nation were secondary to the concerns of the ruling Clan Council and their allies in parliament; corruption was rife across the realm, with many Clan Chieftains now missing their payments to the crown entirely, or paying their taxation to King Edward V or Swedish nobility who increasingly made up the merchant class and political influncers within Holyrood.
In 1546, the King of France launched a further invasion of England and, sensing his chance to assert his so-far nominal authority, Robert launched a war of his own with the assistance of the Swedish expeditionary force in 1547.
The campaign in the south went extraordinarily well - with Swedish forces first supporting, then surpassing Scottish forces on the battlefield, their continental training was incredibly effective against the English levies, crushing them at Bolton and York, clearing the way for a final battle against King Edward's forces at the Battle of Gloucester in 1551...
The Battle of Gloucester began on the morning of March 2nd, 1551, at the bend in the Severn where the English camp had been established.
Lord Duncan of Clan Moray urged the King caution - for the English host outnumbered Robert 2:1 - and the Swedish were in distant Norfolk, preparing a siege of their own. Without support here, without attack, the English armies may have unified and threatened the whole invasion. More than this, here was the host of the English King Edward - the sworn enemy of Robert, who had seen him wounded by the border raids.
Now a man, and keen to prove it, Robert ordered to press an assault on the English camp, to drive the enemy into the river just as Robert the Bruce had at Bannockburn. Here, indeed, was a similar situation - with forest covering the approach of the Scots, and the English encamped surrounded by the river of three sides.
The attack broke before dawn could rise, with the Scots charging the field and making it within seveal hundred feet of the English cam before men-at-arms could be roused and repel them Robert rode with his cavalry, and wheeled into the side of the English first wave, before his horse was killed from under him and from there Robert fought on foot.
Through the mud of the floodplain, the Scots pressed forward until the narrow paths of escape were lost to the English. Many of the enemy, seeing their route of escape close, abandoned the fight and fled into the river - wide and dangerous, much more so than the burn of his ancestors. Hundreds drowned in their failed attempts to cross. The Scots fought on until they met the Welsh heavy knights, who stood and fought back, killing many of the Scottish light infantry in a terrible massacre.
The English archers, now organised for a counter-assault, prepared to target the Scottish host before they could press ahead.
Then, the morning broke in the east, and shone with brilliant illumination on the English, blinding their archers - and giving the Scots time again to charge ahead, swarming the Welsh and pushing the English host into a full route.
King Edward V, the English tyrant, fell from his boat as he was taken across river to the safety of Cymru - and drowned.
King Robert IV was wounded in battle by an English arrow that embedded deep in his stomach, slipping between the plates of his armor.
He would fall into a slumber and did not wake.
He died the following day, on March 3rd 1551.
♱
HOLYROOD
THE GRAND COUNCIL OF SCOTLAND
THE SCOTTISH PARLIAMENT
♱
The dead King Robert IV was returned to Scotland in a grand procession becoming of Robert Bruce himself. In death, he was honoured before parliament - who now controlled the country more than the Clans, a pivotal tipping point in Scotland's internal political landscape.
The parliament was composed of the ancient clans of old Scotland, among newer, wealthy barons of Swedish ancestry who now controlled Scottish trade and production, English Lowlanders, and Ulster-Scots, all of whom decided they could do a better job at running the country.
It was now, following the death of Robert and the end of the male line of the Royal House of Stuart, that Holyrood flexed its authority and declared itself as paramount protectors of the Scottish realm. All possible heirs of the Stuart crown were hunted down, the Moot Hill at Scone was occupied by a parliamentarian garrison, and an active suppression of all royalist sentiment began across Scotland - it was the start of the era of Parliament Rule...
Fearing for his safety, Clan Chieftain Moray, who had fought with young Robert at Gloucester, fled to the Isle of Skye - and then on to the New World where he sought to build a new life for himself and his clan.
♱
BENN
OF CLAN MORAY
THE PIRATE KING OF PROVIDENCE
♱
Chieftain of Clan Moray arrived in the Scottish trading port of the Bahamas in 1556 and within a year he had marshalled six-thousand men; sailors, slaves, and mercenaries, to revolt against the local colonial governor of the port and declare a themselves a land of piracy, with Moray as their Chief and Pirate King.
The Caribbean was an uneasy mess of hostile native tribes, Portuguese exiles from north Africa, English colonists and Spanish territorials who - cut off from their homeland - had grown used to independence.
After years of plundering the coastlines of Cuba and the Antilles, Moray ordered his small band of pirates to seize the colony of Florida.
Eight-thousand men, through sheer tactical brilliance and deception, fooled the Floridian Governor away from his defensive position around Miami and into the swamps where an ambush was set. In a classic Highlander encirclement, Moray entrapped and destroyed the numerically superior territorials and raised the Black Saltire over Florida.
To the south, the Portuguese had grown tired of raiders and now imposed a blockade on the captured territory.
In Miami, Benn found a group of prisoners. A woman among them claimed to be a mistress of the late King Duncan - one of many - and had sired a bastard son to him. He took Moray to a young boy, aged the same as Robert had been... His eyes reminded him of his friend and king.
The boy was named Jamie. Benn was certain that this boy, this bastard, was the illegitimate son of King Duncan and possibly the last surviving son and heir of the Royal House of Stuart.
Sensing a chance to return to his homeland, and retake his ancestral lands, he gathered his forces for a restoration - to sail across the Atlantic, depose the parliamentarians, and restore the Stuarts to power.
Yet, within weeks, the Portuguese has met the pirates in open battle and crushed them at the Battle of Havana. With his own kingdom falling to pieces, Benn took what few ships he had left and fled north, abandoning Providence, taking the young man he thought king home towards Scotland.
He did not know he had been deceived, for this man was a stranger - and he was about to made king.
♱
JAMES IV
THE FALSE HOUSE OF STUART
KING OF SCOTLAND
NORTH SEA PRINCE
TLATOANI OF THE AZTEC
♱
Chieftain of Clan Moray arrived in the Scotland in 1569, by this time Holyrood-rule had degenerated into near complete chaos; with clan conflicts, border incursions, and a ruling council that was partly dominated by competiting politicians influenced by either Sweden, England, and even those whose loyalties had been bought by France.
Upon news of the return of a Stuart heir, many royalist clans flocked to join his banner.
Edinburgh fell with little resistance. The parliament was dissolved by royal decree and its leaders were hunted down and executed. James, who had lived his whole life as a commoner, and in the New World, was now King of Scotland. He was not the son of King Duncan, nor was he a capable ruler.
Fearing his deception would be discovered, he engineered the death of Benn Moray in 1570. A robbery on the road to Falkirk that appeared to have gone wrong.
In order to maintain his rule, and his kingdom, James was pressured by his new parliament to adopt a tributary status towards Sweden. This was accepted in 1570 as James became King of Scotland and the first North Sea Prince. For decades, Scotland had owed its very survival (economically, militarily, diplomatically) to the Kingdom of Sweden, now it was official.
Lacking an independent foreign policy, or even an independent government, Scotland languished in poverty. In 1572, Sweden ordered war with England and so it was so - despite Scotland being able to field a fraction of what it had under Robert IV and even this was disastrously expensive. The war with England yielded many provinces along England's eastern coast, further cementing Swedish authority in the North Sea, even if nominally claimed in the name of Scotland.
An engorged territory in service to a master, the idle idiot King James, eager for a war of his own, would leave his kingdom behind in 1580, after fathering an heir, a girl called Mary.
Amidst the chaos of the Deluge War between the Commonwealth and Russia, the states of Europe took little notice as Scotland once again found itself under parliament-rule, its sovereign now setting off to personally take command of the recently captured English Texas by the Rio Grande.
THE NEW WORLD CAMPAIGN
The New World campaigns were a set of bloody conflicts that began after King James IV's arrival in the Mexican Gulf in 1581.
Consisting of levies from Clan Robertson and Clan MacLean and ten thousand men of the Grand Company, under the command of John Sellars, James would light the ancient realm of the Aztec Empire ablaze in a terrible conflict.
Plunging like a knife into the jungles of central Mexico, the Scots burned and mauraded their way south; slaying thousands of Aztecs and their subjects without discrimination. When gold was discovered in the vast Highlands of the interior, the war took on a darker character; no longer about expanding Scottish coastal territory, it became one of total annihilation and subjugation.
In horror, James would discover that the pirate empire of eastern savages, the Madyas, had begun expanding from the far western side of the continent - and were now also at war with the Aztecs, threatening James' dream of a complete conquest of the golden cities.
The greatest test of his bloodlust came in 1586 at the Siege of Xiolpec, which lasted over a year and took the lives of many hundreds of the Scots - and thousands of the indigenous population who fought for the lives, their home, their families. After the victory, James re-instated the slave trade in the colonies to make money from the thousands of captives.
With the road to Tenochtitlán, the Aztec capital, opened to James - he invaded and occupied the city in 1587, declaring himself as Tlatoani (King) of the Aztecs who, in defeat, swore their fealty to the land of the pale men - "Zcotlan".
Shortly after, James would die of disease, a persistent curse of the New World.
♱
MARY I
THE FALSE HOUSE OF STUART
QUEEN OF SCOTLAND
NORTH SEA PRINCESS
QUEEN OF CALEDONIA
♱
Queen Mary I was crowned a year after the death of her father and ruled as a puppet of the parliamentarians in Holyrood.
Under her rule, the American colonies were incorporated into the Colony of Caledonia. Looking to expand their holdings, the Governor MacLeish invaded the Portuguese gulf colonies, triggering a war with Portugal that crippled the Scottish state - with most of its army and all of its navy in the New World, Scotland could not resist the Portuguese invasion of its home islands.
Landing at Hull, English frontier fell and by the winter of 1592 Edinburgh had been looted and Queen Mary had fled to Dunnett Castle at the north end of the mainland in search of safety.
Humiliated once again, Scotland found itself liberated by Sweden. In the New World, however, Scotland had fared well and had defeated several Iberian invasions. In the Treaty of Thurso, Scotland gained the Louisianan colonies, further expanding the power of the overseas Caledonia in comparison to the failing Scottish state.
Mary died of illness in 1596
♱
JAMES V
THE FALSE HOUSE OF STUART
KING OF SCOTLAND
NORTH SEA PRINCE
KING OF CALEDONIA
♱
James the Mad was crowned at Scone in 1596, his rule began by granting the Caledonians the right of conquest into the lands of Cherokee and the Florida Free State - the remnants of Old Moray's pirate kingdom of Providence. Preparations for the new war began in earnest.
In 1597, the ruling Scottish and Swedish lawmakers in parliament compelled the king to declare war on England - again - for Scottish conquest in service to the Swedish.
This time, the battles and marches were Swedish, and so were the flags. Scotland was a legal signatory, but the most blood spilled in the conflict had been those of the rump English state, falling before the Swedish cannons.
By 1600, Scotland's borders stretched from the Shetland isles to the English channel, the Saltire flies from the Isle of Wight and yet its land is impoverished, its king a mere puppet, its colonies built on terror and blood.
This story is still yet to end...
Broken faimlies in lands we’ve herriet
Will curse Scotland the Brave nae mair, nae mair;
Black and white, ane til ither mairriet
Mak the vile barracks o their maisters bare
end of part 3