How William Wallace of ‘Braveheart’ Fame Defeated the English at the Battle of Stirling Bridge

Braveheart, Mel Gibson’s 1995 film about William Wallace, is notoriously riddled with inaccuracies, from the imagined blue face paint donned by the Scottish warrior to the anachronistic tartan kilts worn by his freedom fighters. One of the movie’s most egregious errors is its depiction of the Battle of Stirling Bridge, which ended in a decisive Scottish victory on September 11, 1297. Braveheart’s version of the battle left out two key elements: Wallace’s co-commander in battle and the eponymous bridge. Here’s what really happened in Stirling exactly 727 years ago.

The Battle of Stirling Bridge took place during the First War of Scottish Independence, a conflict that spanned 1296 to 1328. Six years before the war began, Scotland’s child queen died without an heir, leaving rival claimants to the throne embroiled in a clash for control of the kingdom. Faced with the prospect of civil war, the Scottish nobility asked England’s Edward I to choose a new ruler on their behalf. In exchange for intervening, Edward started treating Scotland like a feudal territory, asserting England’s dominance over its neighbor. In 1296, Edward formally seized control, deposing the Scottish king he’d appointed and massacring thousands of civilians.

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As Scots chafed against the new status quo, they found a leader in Wallace, who rose to prominence after killing an English sheriff in May 1297. Per History Today, this “drew the disaffected to [Wallace]. … At once, he demonstrated the vigor and military skill which were his trademarks.” By August, Wallace, whose men were clustered in southern Scotland, had joined forces with Andrew Murray, who was leading a similar band of rebels in the north. On September 11, the pair’s combined forces faced off with the English near Stirling Castle, a stronghold north of Glasgow.

Estimates of the armies’ sizes vary widely, but scholars generally agree that the English (supported by Welsh infantry) outnumbered the Scots, who also had far fewer cavalry. To reach the enemy, the English had to cross a bridge, which was so narrow that “a pair of horsemen could scarcely and with difficulty cross at the same time,” in the words of contemporary chronicler Walter de Guisborough.

Wallace and Murray allowed about half of the English soldiers to cross unimpeded before springing into action, attacking while their forces held the high ground. According to Guisborough, the Scottish commanders “sent [their] spearmen to occupy the foot of the bridge, such that from then, no passage or retreat remained open” to the English. At some point during the battle, the bridge collapsed. Thousands of Englishmen died, cut down by the enemy or drowned as they attempted to swim back across the river. Among the dead was Hugh de Cressingham, the king’s treasurer, whose corpse was reportedly flayed to make a sheath for Wallace’s sword. Murray was fatally injured, too, though he didn’t succumb to his injuries for another few months.

The Battle of Stirling Bridge represented Wallace’s only major military victory in the fight against the English. On July 22, 1298, the Scottish warrior’s forces suffered a stinging defeat at the Battle of Falkirk. Eager to seek revenge for his loss at Stirling, Edward equipped his soldiers with longbows, which enabled them to rain down arrows on the enemy from afar.

In the aftermath of Falkirk, Wallace resigned his position as guardian of Scotland and traveled to continental Europe to seek support for the Scottish cause. By 1304, he was an outlaw in his own country, wanted by the English for his efforts to oust them from Scotland. In 1305, Wallace was captured by a Scottish knight and turned over to Edward, who ordered him hanged, drawn and quartered as a traitor. It was only in 1328, under the leadership of Robert the Bruce, an erstwhile ally of Wallace, that Scotland secured recognition of its independence from England.

Though the peace agreement only lasted four years, both Wallace and Bruce remain iconic figures in Scotland to this day. As Michael Brown, a historian at the University of St. Andrews, told Smithsonian magazine in 2018, Wallace is remembered as “the disinterested patriotic hero whose only concern was the liberty and protection of his fellow Scots.” Comparatively, “Bruce is a successful politician. He achieves more, but in some ways his hands are dirtier.”

Meilan Solly | | READ MORE

Meilan Solly is Smithsonian magazine's senior associate digital editor, history.