Where the Middle Ages Begin
Wallace was a flesh and blood man who had no idea that he would one day become a national hero of Scotland and an international legend; however, in the right time and in the right circumstances, normal becomes exceptional and exceptional becomes legendary.
What Braveheart showed was a parody of an archery barrage which, in fact, would be fairly continuous until most of the arrows available, about forty to each bowman, had been shot. Nor would there be longish pauses between single flights of arrows, in perhaps a sporting spirit in order to give the Scots time to recover their spirits and dress their ranks in time for the next hail of missiles, or, in the film, to bare their arses in vulgar mockery of their enemies.
The object of this paper is to give a brief outline of the life of William Wallace, and to make references in passing to the film, Braveheart, loosely based on the life of William Wallace, starring the Australian actor Mel Gibson.
The Battle of Stirling Bridge, fought on September 11, 1297, is remembered as one Scotland’s greatest military victories and the high point in the career of William Wallace. A new article now explores the other side of that battle, seeking to understand how the English lost that day.
I use the word ritual because in cases of treachery use of a general ‘script’ as ordered by these two accounts emerges with surprising frequency in England in the late 13th and early 14th century.
In the 700 years since his death at the hands of the English, the famed Scot has served as a martyr-like icon for every generation, a pillar of remembrance to the ferocity and persistence of Scotland’s seemingly eternal fight for independence.
So our basic aim was to bring only true facts about the life of William Wallace, Robert the Bruce and the Scottish War of Independence, to compare all these facts with the film version and to enlight the mind of readers and film spectators.
Overshadowed by the better documented and more closely studied Bruce campaigns in the north east, the savage civil war which convulsed the lordship between 1306 and 1314, and again from 1332 to 1356, is a neglected area of potentially great value, as it stemmed from a failure of Bruce policies.
In the winter of 1297 William Wallace, fresh from his victory over the English at Stirling Bridge, presided over a ferocious and prolonged devastation of northern England.
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