Dumbarton Castle has the longest recorded history of any stronghold in Great Britain. It overlooks the Scottish town of Dumbarton, and sits on a plug of volcanic basalt known as Dumbarton Rock. From at least the fifth century AD until 1018 it was the centre of the independent British kingdom of Strathclyde. In 870 its inhabitants endured a four-month siege before surrending to the Vikings. Scotland (Scottish Gaelic: Alba) is a country in northwest Europe, occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain. ... Dumbarton is a town in Scotland, lying on the north bank of the River Clyde. ... Strathclyde was one of the regional council areas of Scotland from 1974 to 1996. ... The name Viking is a loan from the native Scandinavian term for the Norse seafaring warriors who raided the coasts of Scandinavia, the British Isles, and other parts of Europe from the late 8th century to the 11th century, the period of European history referred to as the Viking Age. ...

In medieval Scotland, Dumbarton (Dun Breatann, which means 'the fortress of the Britons') was an important royal castle. It sheltered David II (Robert the Bruce's son) and his young queen Joan after the Scottish defeat at Halidon Hill near Berwick in 1333. In 1548, after the equally disastrous battle of Pinkie, east of Edinburgh, the castle protected the infant Mary Queen of Scots for several months before her safe removal to France. Scotland (Scottish Gaelic: Alba) is a country in northwest Europe, occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain. ... David II (March 5, 1324-February 22, 1371) king of Scotland, son of King Robert the Bruce by his second wife, Elizabeth de Burgh (d. ... David I, known as the Saint, (1084 - May 24, 1153), king of Scotland, the youngest son of Malcolm Canmore and of Saint Margaret (sister of Edgar Ætheling), was born in 1084. ... Battle of Halidon Hill (July 19, 1333) was the last of the Wars of Scottish Independence, ending that forty year struggle. ... Mary I of Scotland (Mary Stuart or Stewart) (December 8, 1542 – February 8, 1587), better known as Mary, Queen of Scots, was the ruler of Scotland from December 14, 1542 – July 24, 1567. ...

The castle's importance declined after Oliver Cromwell's death in 1658. But threats posed by Jacobites and the French in the eighteenth century caused new structures and defences to be built and the castle continued to be garrisoned until World War Two. Unfinished portrait miniature of Oliver Cromwell by Samuel Cooper, 1657. ... This article is not about the Jacobite Orthodox Church, nor is it about Jacobinism or the earlier Jacobean period. ... German soldiers at the Battle of Stalingrad World War II was the most extensive and costly armed conflict in the history of the world, involving the great majority of the worlds nations, being fought simultaneously in several major theatres, and costing tens of millions of lives. ...

Today all visible trace of the Dark-Age Alcluith (Clyde Rock), its buildings and defences, have gone and precious little survives from the medieval castle. The most interesting structures today are the fortifications of the seventeenth and eithteenth centuries, which illustrate a painful struggle by military engineers to adapt an intractable site to contemporary defensive needs. The splendid views from the twin summits of White Tower Crag and The Beak remind us why this rocky outcrop was chosen as 'the fortress of the Britons' all those centuries ago.