This is the text of a talk given 23 August 2008 by Charles Randolph Bruce and Carolyn Hale Bruce before members of the Scottish Society of Tidewater (Virginia), who gathered to observe the organization's 3rd Annual William Wallace Day on the 703rd anniversary of the death of the famed Scots patriot, William Wallace.

"Tell your commander that we are not here to make peace but to do battle to defend ourselves and liberate our kingdom. Let them come on, and we shall prove this in their very beards."

William Wallace before the Battle of Stirling Bridge,

September 10, 1297

Wherever we go, people ask us about the movie Braveheart, and whether it was a true representation of William Wallace.

We usually tell them that the movie was a rousing story about a great Scots patriot set in historical Scotland, but that the “history” was very poor to totally fictional.

One of the most egregious examples of Hollywood’s poor history in the Mel Gibson film was the great battle of Stirling Bridge… which in the movie was shown as being fought in a broad meadow… sans river, and sans bridge.

William Wallace and his compatriot Andrew Murray had each risen in his own vicinity to wreak havoc on the English invaders… Wallace in the midlands and southwest, and Murray in the north of Scotland. Both men had been successful in reclaiming Scotland’s towns and castles, Urquhart, Elgin, Inverness, Banff, Ayr, Lanark, and Dunnottar, among others.

Having joined forces, Wallace and Murray headed to Dundee to lay siege to the English-occupied castle. All through the month of August 1297, they starved the castle and waited patiently… until word reached them of the vast English army moving north toward Castle Stirling under Robert Clifford, Henry Percy, John Warenne (Earl of Surrey), and Hugh Cressingham, the hated exchequer.

Leaving the business of the siege to Alexander Scrymgoer, the two stalwart commanders led their army of about 10,000 Scots to head off the invading host.

The Scots had two things that worked especially in their favor:

They arrived near the castle earlier than the English, and

Their Scots troops were fighting to free their homeland.

To the English expedition, this was just another battle the feudal troops had to present themselves for… and expected that:

The Scots would either run away, negotiate a surrender,

or be crushed by England’s might. Anything else was inconceivable.

Having their choice of battlefield positions, Wallace and Murray encamped on the higher ground of the Ochil Hills and Abbey Craig northeasterly of… and across the River Forth from… Castle Stirling. From their vantage point they could see their enemy approach from the south, and lesser men might indeed have fled at the sight.

Some estimates put the number of King Edward’s troops at as many as 60,000, including 1,000 armored cavalry and hundreds of Welsh archers with their longbows. The first of them arrived September 9^th.

The Scots had few mounted warriors, led by James the Stewart and the Earl of Lennox, and many of them were committed to keep the peace, having pledged to do so when they surrendered at the disastrous defeat at Irvine… to Henry Percy and Robert Clifford, whom they now faced again.

While the English troops amassed along the south bank of the Forth beneath Castle Stirling’s mount, the Scots waited.

Stewart and Lennox, who were not fully committed to the idea of combat against the English host, rode across the narrow wooden bridge on September 10th to confer with Warenne, possibly investigating terms for the Scots’ surrender.

Such thoughts were alien to Wallace and his fellow commander. They had no intention of running from Warenne and his bunch, a fact that the English general couldn’t believe.

Thus it was that later in the day Warenne sent two Dominican friars to talk to the Scots and convince them that surrender was the only way to survive, and in the meantime the clerics could assess the Scots’ military preparedness.

Wallace deliberately sent them back with a direct challenge that could only irritate his foe and serve to allay all English doubt as to the Scots’ intentions:

"Tell your commander that we are not here to make peace but to do battle to defend ourselves and liberate our kingdom. Let them come on, and we shall prove this in their very beards."

The Scots knew that the English would be inflamed by the rhetoric and soon would attack. But instead of ordering immediate battle, Warenne called a war council with his officers, having been surprised by Wallace’s response and by the friars’ report of the Scots’ troop estimates. It was their observation that the enemy had perhaps as many as 40,000 warriors ready to do battle.

Sir Richard Lundie, a Scot who had gone over to the English at Irvine, proposed that… since he was entirely familiar with the terrain around Stirling, he could take a half thousand horsed knights upriver where… at Kildean there was a place that could be forded at low tide. He could then attack the rebelling Scots from behind while the main force of the army crossed Stirling Bridge as expected.

Already a proven traitor, the Scot was suspected by the English of planning a double-cross. Then the exchequer Cressingham dove into the discussion. He who had already sent home reinforcements because they were too expensive to maintain, now harangued the others about the delay Lundie’s foray would cause and the added expense to the treasury.

After all, Wallace was a common criminal and could undoubtedly be conquered by those who had already trounced the Scots at Dunbar when they were led by better men than he!

It was decided. Warenne ordered that the next day, September 11^th, his army would proceed across the bridge over the River Forth, with Cressingham leading the vanguard.

At dawn, Wallace climbed Abbey Craig to observe the actions of the enemy across the way, leaving Murray and their army below in the Ochil Hills. As he watched, the English knights began their movement across the bridge, a slow process since the bridge was so narrow that only two knights could ride abreast.

Still, the mounted warriors had managed to accumulate a fair number on the north side, when they suddenly turned and rode back across the bridge to the Stirling side! Had the English commander changed his mind about accepting the challenge Wallace had issued the previous day?

The Scots only found out later that Warenne had overslept and had not given the order to move over the bridge, and so the advance was called back! After knighting a group of young prospective warriors, and after inspecting his troops to his satisfaction, the English commander at last gave the order and his knights again started across Stirling Bridge.

Wallace kept a tally of the troops Cressingham was bringing across the span, and watched as they crowded the causeway. No doubt he smiled to himself at the sight.

It’s estimated that the transfer of troops to the north side of the bridge had reached a fraction of their intended strength, when Wallace sounded his horn and instantly sprung his trap.

At the distant horn’s echo, the well-disciplined and battle-ready Scots rose up from their positions in the Ochil Hills and started running at full speed downhill toward the unprepared English.

Seeing the onslaught of foot soldiers screaming and running in their direction, the English knights, swiftly endeavoring to form a battle line, moved from the causeway onto the lower and softer ground alongside. But they soon realized that their heavy steeds were sinking up to their fetlocks in the grassy marshland, making it nearly impossible for them to maneuver.

The Scots attacked, slaying the horses to get at their riders, and English casualty counts swiftly rose. Some attempted to flee across the Forth by hurling themselves into the cold water, only to sink into its depths, weighted down by their armor. On the south side of the river, appalled English soldiers watched the outright slaughter of their compatriots and struggled to go to their aid by piling onto the bridge.

The Scots axmen, meanwhile, attacked the bridge itself on the north side, sealing it off and weakening the wooden span to the point that it broke apart under the weight of those trying to complete their crossing. Men and horses sank beneath the surface as the once stout bridge collapsed under them.

Aghast, the earl of Surrey watched from his position south of the battlefield. His bowmen, as well as his exchequer, Cressingham, were among the hapless vanguard forces being cut down beyond the river… and a dash upriver to the ford at Kildean was no longer an alternative route to the battle… the tide had come in and the water had risen to an unfordable depth.

He stood helpless and watched the carnage as his best cavalry fell to the sanguine blades of Scots commoners, fighting for their lives and freedom.

The Stewart and Malcolm, the earl of Lennox, then flung themselves and their forces into the panicked and demoralized English below the bridge. Realizing that he could not salvage the battle, Warenne hastened away from the scene, hieing to Berwick in such desperate fashion that he didn’t stop to feed or water his horse for the whole way, causing the poor beast to founder and die.

It was said that the Scots flayed Cressingham’s body and sent pieces of his skin to various parts of the country. It was also said that a length of it was made into a belt and given to Wallace.

Before we dismiss the idea as being too horrible, there are other, similar incidents of more recent times that gives us ample cause to believe it may be true, though some authors write it off as “propaganda”, an attempt to “psyche” out the opposition. We will of course never know.

But then, look at the death suffered by William Wallace at the hands of the “civilized” English king, Edward I.

After the Scots victory at Stirling Bridge, the whole country was elated. It was held by the Scots to have been a great achievement. Andrew Murray died before the end of the following month, ostensibly from wounds suffered that day.

But not before the two commanders from the battle of Stirling Bridge had started the process of their country’s recovery from having been subjugated by their southern neighbor. On October 11^th, William Wallace sent a letter from him and Andrew Murray to the city of Lubeck, Germany, declaring that:

“Andrew de Moray and William Wallace, leaders of the army of the kingdom of Scotland, and the community of that kingdom to… the mayors and citizens of Lubeck and Hamburg, greeting… we request that it be made known among your merchants that they can have safe access to all the ports of Scotland, as the kingdom, God be thanked, has been recovered by war from the power of the English. Farewell.”  

According to Sarah Crome in her work Scotland’s First War of Independence, that same letter was discovered in the archives of Lubeck in 1829. It then disappeared during World War II. However, it was found to be in Russia’s archives in the 1970s and was returned to Lubeck in the ‘90s, "it has since been displayed at the National Museum of Scotland".