Conflicts of the Clans by David R Rorer instant download

Conflicts of the Clans by David R Rorer instant download

The earliest recorded battle in Scotland took place in AD 83 or 84. Then the historical record is silent until In the year 596 when an important battle took place immediately to the west of Kirkcaldy from then there are records of other battles but little else.

Prehistoric Scotland was a violent and lawless place and despite their victory over the Pictish tribes in 83 AD, the Romans failed to consolidate their victory over Caledonia (as the Romans called the area to the north of Britannia). Forty years later, the Emperor Hadrian ordered the construction of a 118-kilometer-long defensive wall from Bowness-on-Solway in the west to Newcastle on the east coast, to contain the Picts

Scotland was occupied by five different peoples. The Picts lived in the large area north of the Rivers Forth and Clyde. The Scots, from Ireland, made their home on the west coast, in Argyll in the fifth and sixth centuries. The Angles held Lothian; the ancient Britons retreated to Strathclyde, and, in the ninth century, the invading Norsemen settled in Orkney, Shetland, Caithness, Sutherland and the Western Isles.

Very little is known about many of the early Scottish kings other than their accession dates (often because kings won their crowns by killing other kings) and their deaths (particularly if these were sudden and violent). Unlike Anglo-Saxon England, where clergy such as Bede the Chronicler recorded additional details of English kings' reigns, there are no surviving literary memorials of Pictish kings.

The unification of Scotland began in the mid-ninth century, when Kenneth MacAlpin became king of both Picts and Scots. Kenneth I (843-58) son of Alpin, King of Scotia succeeded his father in 843. He defeated the Picts about 843, uniting them with the Scots in the new kingdom of Alba, which comprised a large part of present-day Scotland. But even then the country remained a violent and lawless place of conflict.