The Auld Alliance
by James Laidlaw

Among the edicts promulgated by John Row, Principal of King’s College Aberdeen (1653-61), was an injunction to students to speak Latin or Greek or Hebrew at all times. The only modern European language permitted was French – on account of the antiquum foedus, the Auld Alliance between the Scots and the French.
The Vita Karoli imperatoris, the ninth-century life of Charlemagne by Eginhard, makes reference to the relations between the kings of the Scots and the Emperor, making it clear that on the Scottish side the relationship was one of dependence:

Through his munificence Charles had made the kings of the Scots conform to his will to such an extent that they only ever described him as their lord and themselves as his subjects and slaves. There exist letters sent to him by them which clearly show that this was their attitude to him.
Almost seven hundred years later the contacts between Charlemagne and Scotland were described in the History of Scotland of Hector Boece, who associated the beginnings of the Auld Alliance with a Frankish embassy to Achaius, king of the Scots. According to Boece, the Alliance dates back to 788, to a time when the Emperor Charlemagne, finding that his sea-borne trade was suffering from the depredations of English sailors, saw the solution to his problem in a league with the Scots and the Picts against the English. The Picts were less far-sighted than the Scots, for they rejected the proposals made by Charlemagne’s envoys. The Scots, on the other hand, accepted “with blyth consent of the whole people”, to quote the phrase in translation; the alliance was held to be the work of divine providence:

In trouble and vexation, France could never find a stouter man of war than a Scot… The Frenchman with the Scot, wherever he met, held him for no other than for a Frenchman, than for a brother, than for a faithful observer of the old constant, confirmed bond (i.e. alliance).

Boece’s account may be based more on myth than on reality, and we may smile at the thought of Charlemagne seeking help from the Scots more than 1200 years ago. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that this “constant, confirmed bond” was centuries old when Boece wrote his History.
For most modern historians the Auld Alliance dates from the Treaty of Paris of 1295, the first agreement of which we have documentary evidence. There are, however, shadowy references to a still earlier alliance in Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle, an authoritative account of the Anglo-Scottish War of 1173-74. Alarmed by threats from England, King William the Lion sent envoys to negotiate with both Count Philip of Flanders and Louis VII of France. In a dramatic scene Philip urged the French court to abide by the faith they had pledged to the King of Scotland: “Tenez al rei d’Escoce la fiance afiee”. Encouraged by Louis’s promises of help, the Scots army invaded England, only to be defeated at Alnwick, where William the Lion was captured. The evidence is tantalisingly slight, but it does suggest the existence of at least one Franco-Scottish alliance in the twelfth century.
In 1295 we are on firmer ground. A treaty between Philippe le Bel and John Balliol was sealed in Paris on 23 October 1295 and ratified in Dunfermline on 23 February 1296. Of the two originals, only the French copy has survived; it took pride of place at the exhibition in Stirling Castle, organised to celebrate the 700th anniversary of the Auld Alliance in 1996. Philippe le Bel, no doubt aware that John Balliol’s position on the Scottish throne was far from secure, asked for the treaty to be ratified not just by the king but also by the kingdom at large. That was duly done, as can be seen from the range of episcopal, baronial and municipal seals attached to the surviving copy of the treaty. And so, in a very real sense, the treaty of 1295/96 was agreed “with blyth consent of the whole people”, to recall Boece’s phrase.
Scotland and France remained close allies for the next three centuries, united against England, their common enemy. The alliance, or rather alliances were regularly renewed: the surviving French documents refer to the anciennes alliances, the ancient alliances, rather than to the vieille alliance, as it tends to be called today. Scots and French soldiers regularly fought alongside one another during the Hundred Years War (1337-1453) between England and France. At the Battle of Poitiers in 1356, where the English captured John II of France, his entourage included a certain William Douglas. In 1385, following the arrival in Scotland of Jean de Vienne, Admiral of France, a Franco-Scottish army raided the North of England. And in the 1390s the accounts of the Duke of Orleans show that he had Scots archers in his employ. The contacts were not exclusively military: in 1323 David, Bishop of Moray, desiring to support Scottish students at the University of Paris, gave the lands at Grisy-Suisnes, just outside the capital, which formed the initial endowment of the Collège des Écossais; the College’s second founder would be Archbishop James Beaton of Glasgow (1517-1603), the trusted ambassador sent to France, first by Queen Mary and later by James VI.
The years 1419-1429 mark one of the high points of the alliance. By the Treaty of Troyes, negotiated in May 1420 between Charles VI of France and Henry V of England, the Dauphin Charles was declared illegitimate and Henry was named as heir to the French throne in the right of his wife, Catherine of France. A year earlier several thousand Scots soldiers had come to the Dauphin’s aid, led by the Earls of Buchan and Wigtown, and Sir John Stuart of Darnley. In 1421 they helped to win a remarkable victory at Baugé, where the Duke of Clarence, brother of Henry V, was killed. Following Baugé the Earl of Buchan was appointed Constable of France, i.e. commander-in-chief of the army. In the years immediately following, Fortune began to smile on the English: Franco-Scottish armies were defeated first at Cravant (1423) and then at Verneuil (1424), where Buchan was killed. In 1427, when the cause of Charles VII, as the Dauphin had become, was near desperate, he sought further help from Scotland. By the Treaty of Perth (1428) James I agreed to the marriage between his daughter Margaret and the Dauphin Louis (who would later reign as Louis XI) and promised to send further troops, and substantial Scots reinforcements arrived in France early in 1429. They helped Joan of Arc to raise the Siege of Orleans in May of that year and took part in the march to Rheims where Charles VII was crowned two months later. With Scots help the tide had turned in favour of the French.
From the reign of Charles VII onwards Scots archers formed the French king’s personal bodyguard. Readers of Quentin Durward by Sir Walter Scott will remember how Durward, the younger son of a noble family, left Scotland to join the garde écossaise and seek advancement. The Captains of the Guard included Béraud Stuart, Lord of Aubigny and Marshal of France, one of Charles VIII’s most successful generals in the Franco-Italian wars at the beginning of the sixteenth century.
Béraud was the grandson of Sir John Stuart of Darnley, Constable of the Scots Army in France from 1419 until 1429, when he was killed near Orleans at the so-called Battle of the Herrings. The extent of his achievements can be gauged by the honours bestowed on him by Charles VII. He was granted the lordships of Aubigny and Concressault in Berry, and was then made Count of Évreux. This last dignity could only be prospective, however, for it looked forward to the day when the English would lose control of Évreux and the rest of Normandy. Most remarkable of all, Sir John Stuart was given the right to quarter the arms of Darnley with the royal arms of France.
The late fifteenth century saw something of a rapprochement between Scotland and England. In 1497 the two countries signed a Treaty of Perpetual Peace and in 1503 James IV married Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII. But the peace ended in 1512, prompting an immediate renewal of the Auld Alliances. A year later James IV led the ill-fated invasion of the North of England which ended in the disastrous defeat at Flodden. Understandably, support for the alliance with France dwindles thereafter. Indeed, after the death of James V in 1542, the pro-English party which was then dominant negotiated the betrothal of the infant Queen Mary to Edward, the heir of Henry VIII. The engagement was quickly repudiated, however, not least because of the opposition of Mary of Guise, the Queen Mother. English anger provoked the Rough Wooing of 1544-45, whereupon the Scots turned to their old ally. Military help arrived from France, and in due course the young Queen was sent there for safety.
Queen Mary’s marriage to the Dauphin Francis in 1558 created the possibility that the Auld Alliance might be transformed into a political union between Scotland and France. That prospect was short-lived: Francis II, as he had become, died in 1560, having reigned for less than eighteen months. When Mary returned to Scotland, she quickly found herself mired in the religious controversies which raged in pre-Reformation Scotland, and in the factional disputes for which the Scottish nobility was only too well known. Further jealousies and rivalries were created by the substantial French presence at the royal court.
The rest of Mary’s tragic story – her disastrous marriages to Darnley and Bothwell, her flight to England, her imprisonment and subsequent execution – need not be retold in detail here. Central to our subject is the gradual change in relations between Scotland and England, a change largely inspired by the increasing likelihood that Elizabeth of England would die unmarried and she would be succeeded by Mary’s son, James. Against that background Franco-Scottish relations began to lose the political importance they had previously enjoyed. In 1603 James VI of Scotland succeeded Elizabeth as James I of England, or rather, as he preferred to style himself contrary to English wishes, James, King of Great Britain, France and Ireland. Following Elizabeth and her predecessors, James was happy to adopt that increasingly theoretical English claim to sovereignty over France.
The Union of the English and Scottish Crowns effectively marked the end of the Auld Alliance. Its demise was signalled more strongly still by the Union of the Parliaments of 1707. The short-lived attempts to reinvigorate the Auld Alliance during the unsuccessful Jacobite risings of 1715 and 1745 had no long-term effect on the politics of Great Britain. It was not until the nineteenth century that memories of Scotland’s special relationship with France began to be reawakened, above all by Sir Walter Scott and the Romantics. These memories, which blend history, myth and popular tradition, have not lost their evocative power. There are few Scots today who have not heard of the Auld Alliance – even though many might find it hard to put substantial flesh on its ancient bones.

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