During the war with England in the 1520s, the Scots mobilised men for both offensive and defensive purposes. The most intensive period of warfare came in 1523 when they suffered a range of devastating attacks and then launched their own large invasion of England following Albany's return to Scotland. Accordingly, the Scots needed to field large numbers of men. These preparations are very well documented in the contemporary evidence, which provides numerous insights into mobilisation methods in pre-modern Scotland. The first part of the chapter focuses on the preparations for Albany's march on Wark (September–October 1523), including: an examination of the French army which fought on the campaign; developments in artillery; and the methods Albany used to raise the Scottish host. The second part moves on to situate the evidence for Scottish mobilisation in 1523 within a wider context, drawing on contemporary evidence from other Scottish military campaigns. The third part of the chapter moves away from looking at the offensive capabilities of the Scottish army to consider the methods employed for the defence of the kingdom. Again, we have excellent evidence from 1523, which reveals the sophisticated arrangements put in place to defend the realm. Whereas the mechanisms employed to secure the immediate local defence of the borders have been studied previously, the evidence from 1523 reveals that there was also a comprehensive strategy looking to the security of the entire kingdom.

Albany's 1523 Invasion of England

French Participation

While there was direct French military participation in Scotland from the fourteenth century, the resources Francis I sent to assist Albany in the 1520s were far in excess of what his predecessors had offered. At the beginning of the war, it appeared as if the Scots were going to be left to fight the English alone as Francis neglected to send a significant number of soldiers to assist Albany with his Sep tember 1522 expedition to Carlisle, thus failing to fulfil the terms of the 1517 treaty of Rouen which bound him to send 1,200 men to Scotland upon the resurgence of the war with England. Although this omission is often attributed to bad faith on Francis I's part, with claims that the French king exploited the Scots for his own purposes, other reasons explain his actions. In the summer of 1522, the French were fighting English and Habsburg armies on multiple fronts.