Edward decided that only more castles could help sink English roots and stabilize the shifting political soil of Wales. Luckily for the king, his reign coincided with the great age of medieval military architecture, and he found a builder of genius in Master James of St. George.

Master James’ fertile imagination produced a series of elaborate designs, each adapted to the particular needs of an individual site. Even today, Conway, Harlech, Rhuddlan, Beaumaris and Caernarvon castles give an overwhelming impression of strength and majesty.

Wales was pacified, at least for the moment, so Edward turned his attention to Scotland. The Scottish throne was empty, and there were no less than 13 claimants for it. To solve the impasse, the claimants asked Edward to be arbiter and choose a candidate among their number. The English king should have known better; the Scottish succession was a morass of claims and counterclaims.

After fevered consultations with barons, lawyers and churchmen, Edward chose John Bailol as king of the Scots. Bailol was a weakling, but the fractious Scottish nobles stiffened his backbone enough to defy Edward. Once again, Edward could brook no disobedience from a man he considered his feudal underling. The English monarch invaded Scotland with a large army, and in March 1296, he proceeded to besiege the important Scottish town of Berwick. Feeling overconfident, the citizens of Berwick shouted insults at Edward, in particular making fun of his ‘long shanks.’

Mounted on his great warhorse Bayard, Edward personally led the assault on Berwick. Hooves flailing, Bayard leapt across a ditch, bounded over a low palisade and brought his royal master into the very heart of the city. Soon English troops poured into the narrow streets and fighting gave way to a general massacre of the inhabitants.

In short order Bailol was deposed, and Edward ruled the northern kingdom through a series of military garrisons. But Edward’s brutal conquest had unleashed a sort of early nationalistic spirit among the Scots. A Scottish knight, William Wallace, gathered an army and managed to defeat an English force at Stirling Bridge on September 11, 1297. With his prestige on the line, Edward–though he was now growing old–took to the field once again and invaded Scotland.

On July 22, 1298, the English and Scottish armies met at Falkirk. The backbone of Wallace’s forces was his infantry, drawn up in four phalanx-style formations called schiltrons. Bristling with spears, the schiltrons seemed invulnerable to the kind of cavalry charge favored by medieval knights. And sure enough, before Edward could fully deploy his unwieldy army, his knights rushed forward in a headlong charge. Try as they might, the English knights could make no impression on the prickly Scottish formations, and round one went to the stubborn Celts.

But Edward had a surprise waiting in the wings–swarms of Welsh archers, who came forward in large numbers to discharge their deadly shafts. The schiltrons were quickly reduced to heaps of dead and wounded men, and the remaining Scottish infantry became easy prey for Edward’s cavalry. Only Wallace and a handful of fugitives escaped the terrible slaughter, and the back of Scottish resistance seemed broken forever. At Falkirk, Edward Long Shanks acquired a new nickname: Scottorum malleus (Hammer of the Scots). The battle validated his reputation as a general and showcased his tactical skills. His adoption of the Welsh longbow foreshadowed the English triumphs at Crécy, Poitiers and Agincourt.

Eventually, Wallace was captured and hanged, drawn and quartered, but his grisly fate left the Scots uncowed. Time and again, Edward had to return to Scotland in an attempt to crush the embers of revolt. Yet every time he returned home, the flame of Scots nationalism would blaze anew. A new Scottish champion, Robert the Bruce, declared himself king of Scotland and girded himself for another English invasion. It was not long in coming.

Edward, white-haired and ailing, must have felt he was an English Sisyphus, condemned to roll the rock of conquest forward again and again. At 69–something akin to 90 by the standards of the Middle Ages–the king had little reason to find happiness in his waning years. His son and heir, Prince Edward of Caernarvon, was a homosexual and a worthless spendthrift, more interested in fine clothes than the arts of war.

King Edward moved forward toward Scotland, but his battle-scarred and aging body could not obey the commands of his iron will. He died on July 6, 1307, a short distance from the Scottish border at Burgh-on-Sands. Later, Edward II would return to Scotland in force–only to suffer a humiliating defeat at the hands of Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn, on June 23, 1314, by which Scotland won its independence from England.

Although he was not the equal of a Caesar or Napoleon, Edward I was still a great commander who grasped the essentials of war. Even his enemies recognized his military greatness. Comparing Edward I to his son Edward II, Robert the Bruce once declared, ‘I am more afraid of the bones of the father dead, than of the living son; and, by all the saints, it was more difficult to get a half a foot of the land from the old king than a whole kingdom from the son!’

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This article was written by Eric Niderost and originally published in the December 1995 issue of Military History magazine.

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