The 'Auld Alliance' and the Betrothal of Mary Queen of Scots: Fact and Fablel

On the 23 October 1995, 700 years had elapsed since the Scots signedtheir first formal alliance with France. The origins of the Anglo-FrancoScottishrelationship were established in 1295 when the Scots formed the firstdefensive/offensive alliance with France against England, in order to curtailthe incursions and hegemonic ambitions of the English king, Edward I 'Auld Alliance',2 as the Scots referred to their relationship with France, wassigned by every Scottish and French monarch (with the exception of Louis XI)from 1295 to the mid-sixteenth century. But by this time fact had becomeenmeshed with the fable of the ancient Scottish kings, engendered by earlyScottish historians. The fabulous story of the Scottish alliance withCharlemagne was shown to be without foundation in the eighteenth century byFather Thomas Innes, but in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Scotsfirmly believed in the antiquity of their alliance with Charlemagne. Thisbelief was also readily accepted by the French and was used in preambles ofdocuments of state, or as a justification for action, in a number of not onlysixteenth-century French documents, but also in Scottish ones