THE Braveheart spirit embodied by John Smeaton, the former baggage handler who tackled suicide bombers at Glasgow airport, has been blamed for some of Scotland's biggest military disasters.

A new book suggests that historical battlefields have been littered with the corpses of thousands of Scots who died needlessly because they refused to walk away from a fight they had little chance of winning.

It claims that had common sense prevailed, famous battles such as Culloden, where the heavily outnumbered Jacobites were defeated by King George II's army in 1746, would not have happened.

Paul Cowan, the author of Scottish Military Disasters, said history was filled with accounts of Scots troops suffering casualties because they refused to back down against seemingly insurmountable odds.

He claims the heroic but sometimes reckless spirit has endured and that modern Scots will rarely back away from a fight.

Last year, Smeaton was among a number of Scots who received bravery awards after tackling two men who tried to bomb Glasgow airport. One member of the public suffered a broken leg and lost two teeth after being knocked to the ground by one of the terrorists, and another tore a tendon in his foot.

“The problem is that the Scots just don't know when to call it quits,” said Cowan, who was born and raised in Scotland, but now lives in Saskatchewan, Canada.

“My own experience growing up in central Scotland suggests that the ‘fight or flight' switch in the brains of most young Scots males is more likely to flip to ‘fight'. I guess that's down to living in a macho culture where any signs of weakness or cowardice are despised.

“After the attack on Glasgow airport, I think people around the world were surprised that some onlookers stood their ground.”

In his book, which is to be published this week, Cowan cites the bravery of the Sutherland Highlanders at the battle of New Orleans in 1815. While soldiers from other nations turned and ran in the face of the American army, the Scots regiment stood firm and was mown down by cannons and muskets.

In 1940, members of the 51st Highland Division refused to believe they had been ordered to surrender to the Germans under General Erwin Rommel at the French town of St Valéry-en-Caux. They wanted to fight on.

Historians believe the charge of the Jacobites on Drumossie Moor in Inverness in 1746 cemented the Scots' reputation as formidable opponents on the battlefield. It meant Scottish regiments were often placed on the front line to intimidate the enemy.

“From the 18th century onwards, the Scottish regiments were the military cutting edge of the British empire and were always used in a spearhead role, and that meant huge casualties,” said Professor Tom Devine, the historian and director of the Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies at Aberdeen University. “This is where, in a sense, Scotland is hoisted by its own petard, because by 1914 the Scottish soldier had an international reputation for valour and was used as shock troops in those horrendous battles on the western front.”

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