On the first day at Bannockburn, 23 June 1314, Robert the Bruce fought the most famous single combat in Scottish history. Mounted on a small, quick palfrey, lightly armed and carrying only a battle-axe, the King of Scots had ridden out ahead of his lines. An English knight, Sir Henry de Bohun, saw the chance to kill a king and couched his lance and charged. Bruce did not flinch. At the last instant he swerved aside, rose in his stirrups, and brought the axe down so hard it split de Bohun's helmet and skull to the brain. His only complaint, the chroniclers say, was that he had broken the shaft of a good axe. The next day his army destroyed the host of Edward II.

King & Country model Bruce after Charles Pilkington Jackson's great equestrian monument at Bannockburn — the king mounted and armoured, a gold circlet on his helm, his surcoat and his horse's caparison bright with the red lion rampant of Scotland, the axe still in his fist. Stand him with Sir William Wallace, the other hero of the Wars of Independence, and the two-handed Axeman, whose weapon Bruce made legendary that day. Bruce asked, dying, that his heart be carried on crusade — a charge taken up by the Douglas, Knight of the Crimson Heart. In a diorama he is the lone rider before the lines, axe raised, the instant before de Bohun's charge meets nothing but air.

Model: MK200 / King & Country / 1/30 (60mm) scale / matte finish / 1 piece set