Most Violent Place on Earth

More battles, more blood than anywhere else. Can you guess where we are?

Stirling Castle in Scotland could well hold the title of the bloodiest place on the planet (Photo Credit: Wikipedia Commons/Stirlingcastle).

Little surprise, over the millennium of battling in Europe that great battles often happen over the same killing fields. Geography matters.

One place has had far more than its fair share of bloodshed. Stirling Castle in Scotland may be the most strategic ground in the United Kingdom. From its heights, the fortifications command the routes from England to Scotland and back again.

No surprise there having been military structures on castle rock going back to the roots of human occupation in Albion. The real highwater mark of bloodshed and mayhem, however, was the centuries of conflict between the Scots and English. By our count there were at least eight major sieges and five history-making major battles in the shadow of the castle wall (numbers vary, some count the number of total major engagements as high as sixteen).

Other battle sites might have bigger numbers. Nearby Edinburgh castle, for example, recorded 23 sieges. Others may have higher body counts (by some estimates at the Battle of Cannae in 216 BC the Romans lost 80,000 in one day). But when you add up all the fighting around Stirling and the consequences of all the slashing, stabbing and shooting, Stirling might well deserve the grim title of more bloodletting per square metre.

The Union of England and Scotland, the final collapse of the Jacobite rebellion (1746), and the evolution of artillery (which made traditional stone fortresses obsolete) brought an end to Stirling’s violent track record (conduct of local football matches not withstanding).

Still, there is a lot of history here worth remembering.

Is Stirling Castle worth a visit? Absolutely. For centuries, the castle was used as a military garrison, but the troops are all long gone and the restoration of the historic structures is impressive. TripAdvisor recently rated Stirling well more worth a visit than the more famous Edinburgh Castle.

What’s the most famous battle fought here? So many choices. There is the Battle of Bannockburn (1314) where Robert the Bruce defeated the English and secured the Scottish crown. This is badly portrayed in the recent Chris Pine movie The Outlaw King (2018). I mean, the fighting scenes are great-but not historically accurate. (Want more on movies and war? Here you go.)

Robert the Bruce, King of Scotts, 1274-1329

There is a terrific visitors center near the site of the battle. Unlike the Americans, Europeans are not as much into preserving battlefields. This is not surprising. They had centuries of a head start. Europeans tended to fight over places where people lived, worked, farmed, and traveled for millennium. For all the fighting that has occurred in the long warrior history of the British Isles, it almost impossible to find a battle sighted unmolested by centuries of human activity. Indeed, preserving battlefields is a relatively modern thing.

Where is William Wallace? Wallace fought in the nearby Battle of Stirling Bridge (1297). Contemporary Scotts are not all that keen on William Wallace, who was actually a rather modest figure in the Scotts-English wars. They cringe over the Mel Gibson movie Braveheart (1995). When a contemporary sculptor fashioned a Wallace statue with the movie actor’s face on it, it was constantly defaced and graffitied. It now sits in a football club parking lot.

There is a Wallace monument in Stirling built in the 19th century that is worth a visit. Fewer tourists go there because its a bit out of the way and the entry requires climbing a lot of stairs—a lot of stairs (a 246-step spiral staircase), and it is really more a Scottish history thing than just a Wallace monument.

Completed in 1869, the National Wallace Monument is located on the Abbey Craig hill , near the city of Stirling.

What’s the legacy of Stirling Castle? Never forget, wars are fundamentally about violence and killing as an instrument for enemies to impose their will on one another. It is always a mistake to try to divorce military history from its fundamental purpose.

True then.

True now.

Wars are about killing people.

Death and destruction are part of war. That will not change anytime soon. Suffering and annihilation are curses humanity imparts on to itself. Sadly, there will always be those willing to bathe their policies in blood.

A discussion of war without talking about killing people is about as helpful as a discourse on the Grand Old Opry without mentioning country music.

Want the latest on contemporary war? Here you go.