In reality Scotland was far from cowed. Although large numbers of English troops, including armoured cavalry, were now garrisoned across the country, there was deep resentment against this English occupation from men of all classes, especially among senior members of the Scottish church, who supported two remarkable young leaders, William Wallace and Andrew Moray, in spearheading a new rebellion. Wallace was a squire and the younger son of Sir Malcolm Wallace of Elderslie near Paisley. Certainly no more than twenty-five years of age he was tall and extremely strong, and quickly demonstrated considerable powers of leadership when, in the spring of 1297, he began the fight-back by assassinating Edward’s officials. His first target was Selby, the son of Dundee’s English constable, and in May 1297 he followed it by killing William Heselrig, the English appointee as Sheriff of Lanark. Heselrig’s death caused many men from southern and central Scotland to unite with the daring guerrilla fighter, including a nobleman and professional soldier, William Douglas, former commander of Berwick Castle. Together they planned to kill one of Edward’s most senior officials, William Ormsby, his justiciar, who only narrowly escaped.
At this time another focus of revolt emerged headed by two senior figures, James Stewart, Wallace’s feudal superior, and Robert Wishart, Bishop of Glasgow. Unlike Wallace, who kept to the great forests of Selkirk, they took the more conventional decision of openly raising their standard at Irvine in Ayrshire where they were joined by the twenty-three-year-old Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick. In response an English cavalry force under Henry Percy, Yorkshire nobleman and grandson of Warenne, together with Robert Clifford, a major landowner and keen soldier from Westmorland, was rapidly despatched to attack them. Although its leaders were from the Scottish nobility, by far the largest proportion of the Scottish force at Irvine were infantry. In addition, the Scottish nobles, particularly Robert Bruce and the Balliol supporters, were unable to agree on their respective rights to command and on whose behalf they were fighting. It was a disastrous situation for any army and as a result Stewart and Douglas emerged from the Scottish lines to meet the advancing English and ask for surrender terms. These proved lenient enough although hostages were demanded to act as guarantors of the Scottish leaders’ good faith. With this shameful capitulation the remaining hopes for resistance in southern Scotland depended on William Wallace and his growing numbers of followers. Although, with supreme confidence, Wallace ordered the Scottish nobles to join him, most remained unpersuaded of a modest squire’s ability to meet the all-conquering English, and few answered his summons.
Meanwhile further north a second young man had raised his standard against the invaders. Andrew Moray, son of Sir Alexander Moray of Petty, came from one of Scotland’s great Highland families. He started out with small bodies of men loyal to his family before being joined by a burgher from Inverness, Alexander Pilché, together with other citizens from the town. Initially he ambushed small English detachments but, as his numbers rose, he went on to attack and capture a number of northern castles, including the pivotal one at Inverness.
Further south Wallace knew the English were certain to seek him out and although, after Dunbar and Irvine, much the safest course would have been to continue with his guerrilla tactics, he took the amazingly courageous decision to meet the English in open battle – if strictly on his own terms – in an attempt to regain control of central Scotland. Wallace moved northwards to Dundee while the majority of his infantry continued to be trained in the forest of Selkirk. At Dundee he besieged the castle, which as Wallace had foreseen, provoked Edward’s senior commander, Warenne, into leaving his safe haven at Berwick. Together with further military units under Hugh Cressingham, Edward’s Scottish treasurer, he decided to seek out and destroy Wallace and his rebels.
On learning of their advance Wallace broke off his siege and moved towards Stirling where anyone intending to move northwards would have to cross the River Forth. Shortly before this Wallace and Moray had met and agreed that they would work together and, equally importantly, that Moray would serve under Wallace’s command. Their joint forces, together with Wallace’s infantry from Selkirk forest, converged on Stirling where Wallace’s conduct was to mark him, despite his youth and lack of formal experience, as a gifted military commander.
The battle of Stirling Bridge was a David and Goliath contest. Wallace and Moray’s forces totalled 10,000 men at the most, against more than three times as many English. Although mainly footsoldiers, the Scots included a small cavalry element under the separate control of nobles such as Malcolm, Earl of Lennox, and James Stewart, whose earlier behaviour at Irvine had been less than heroic. The infantry, drawn from widely different backgrounds, had been together for less than a month and their experience so far was limited to irregular operations. In contrast the English footsoldiers were not only numerically superior but they included a company of the famed Welsh bowmen.7 Most importantly, the comparatively large numbers of English heavy cavalry completely outmatched its few Scottish counterparts. In the Scots’ favour their two young leaders were determined to win back their country’s freedom and they had also both enjoyed a string of successes, albeit in small-scale operations. Crucially they were given the chance to choose the battlefield.
As for the English commanders, in the absence of the king, command devolved on John Warenne, Earl of Surrey, in poor health and older than the combined ages of the two young Scottish commanders. His experience of war, however, was immeasurably greater than theirs, even though most had been gained on the battlefield thirty years before. His ability had been clearly evident at Dunbar, but such a contest had been sufficiently undemanding to give him a dangerous measure of over-confidence. Nor was Warenne on good terms with Hugh Cressingham, his vanguard commander, whose own troops despised him for being both a bastard and a vain, self-opinionated individual.
Wallace positioned his men on Abbey Craig, an isolated volcanic eminence rising a hundred feet from the flat and marshy plain where the River Forth meandered in great bends below it (see map). Abbey Craig overlooked the main road northwards at the point where it crossed the River Forth by a long and narrow wooden bridge. Despite some qualms on Warenne’s part Cressingham accepted the option of crossing by the bridge under Wallace’s full gaze, even when there were other fords downstream which could have been used to outflank the Scots’ position.
Wallace had chosen a battle site with many advantages: fronted by wet and rough water meadows it gave the approaching English no opportunity to use their cavalry effectively; equally important for Wallace’s smaller force, movement across such a narrow bridge onto the meadows was bound to be slow and would allow the Scots the opportunity of taking the offensive themselves before the English had brought a significant portion of their troops over it. Finally, it offered a good line of withdrawal if required.
However, to succeed against such superior forces required uncommon powers of leadership. Wallace needed cool nerves and sound judgement together with the ability to keep a tight control over his irregulars. For at least two hours the English cavalry and infantry clattered across the bridge and formed up on its further side within a loop of the river. Then with a blast on Wallace’s horn the Scots came running down the steep slopes in tight formation, leaping across the turf hummocks to close with the English. Their speed of movement gave their opponents no time to draw up their battle lines nor bring their bowmen into action, while the English cavalry experienced major difficulties in holding their footing on the wet and broken carseland. As the Scots crashed into their packed ranks the English gave way and being unable to fight properly they started to panic. Wallace had appointed a dedicated group of soldiers to block the bridge and Warenne was forced to watch both the destruction of his vanguard and the killing of Cressingham before he turned and fled to Berwick, leaving his army to the mercy of the Scots as it sought to follow him.
Stirling Bridge was a great victory for William Wallace and Andrew Moray, although Moray received wounds there from which he died. They had trapped as many of the English as Wallace thought he could beat within the bend of an impassable river on ground unsuitable for heavy cavalry, and he joined battle so quickly that the English were prevented from using their archers in their normal deadly fashion. His astute choice of ground avoided using his own weak and suspect cavalry, said to have