Battle of Stirling Bridge - The Battle in Fiction

The Battle in Fiction

The heroic exploits of Wallace were passed on to posterity mainly in the form of tales collected and recounted by the poet Blind Harry, the Minstrel (?-1492) whose original, probably oral sources were never specified. Blind Harry was active some two hundred years after the events described in his The Acts and Deeds of the Illustrious and Valiant Champion Sir William Wallace, c.1470. The tales were designed to entertain the court of James IV (r.1488–1513) and are undoubtedly a blend of fact and fiction. Like most of his episodes, Blind Harry's account of the battle of Stirling Bridge is highly improbable, for example his use of figures of a biblical magnitude for the size of the participating armies. Nevertheless, his highly dramatised and graphic account of the battle fed the imaginations of subsequent generations of Scottish schoolchildren. Here is his description:

On Saturday they rode on to the bridge, which was of good plain board, well made and jointed, having placed watches to see that none passed from the army. Taking a wright, the most able workman there, he ordered him to saw the plank in two at the mid streit, so that no-one might walk over it. He then nailed it up quickly with hinges, and dirtied it with clay, to cause it to appear that nothing had been done. The other end he so arranged that it should lie on three wooden rollers, which were so placed, that when one was out the rest would fall down. The wright, himself, he ordered to sit there underneath, in a cradle, bound on a beam, to loose the pin when Wallace let him know by blowing a horn when the time was come. No one in all the army should be allowed to blow but he himself.

The day of the great battle approached; for power, the English would not fail; they were ever six to one against Wallace. Fifty thousand made for the place of battle, the remainder abiding at the Castle; both field and Castle they thought to conquer at their will. The worthy Scots upon the other side of the river, took the plain field on foot.

Hugh Cressingham leads on the vanguard with twenty thousand likely men to see. Thirty thousand the Earl of Warren had, but he did then as wisdom did direct, all the first army being sent over before him. Some Scottish men, who well knew this manner of attack, bade Wallace sound, saying there were now enough. He hastened not, however, but steadily observed the advance until he saw Warren's force thickly crowd the bridge. Then from Jop he took the horn and blew loudly, and warned John the Wright, who thereupon struck out the roller with skill; when the pin was out, the rest of it fell down. Now arose an hideous outcry among the people, both horses and men, falling into the water. (...)

On foot, and bearing a great sharp spear, Wallace went amongst the thickest of the press. he aimed a stroke at Cressingham in his corslet, which was brightly polished. The sharp head of the spear pierced right through the plates and through his body, stabbing him beyond rescue; thus was that chieftain struck down to death. With the stroke Wallace bore down both man and horse.

The English army although ready for battle, lost heart when their chieftain was slain, and many openly began to flee. Yet worthy men abode in the place until ten thousand were slain. Then the remainder fled, not able to abide longer, seeking succour in many directions, some east, some west, and some fled to the north. Seven thousand full at once floated in the Forth, plunged into the deep and drowned without mercy; none were left alive of all that fell army.

As well as the bridge ploy, Wallace's use of a spear appears to be a fictional element. As the son of a minor laird, he would have been trained in arms, and as a commander it is unlikely he would have wielded the weapon of the common footsoldier. It cannot of course be ruled out that he would have used one in the heat of battle. A two-handed claymore, purporting to be Wallace's, which may contain original metal from his sword blade, was kept by the Scottish kings and is displayed as a relic in the Wallace Monument.

The potency of these tales can be gauged from the following statement by the poet Robert Burns, writing some three centuries after they were first related.

The two first books I ever read in private, and which gave me more pleasure than any two books I ever read again, were The Life of Hannibal and The History of Sir William Wallace . Hannibal gave my young ideas such a turn that I used to strut in raptures up and down after the recruiting drum and bagpipe, and wish myself tall enough that I could be a soldier; while the story of Wallace poured a Scottish prejudice into my veins which will boil along there till the flood-gates of life shut in eternal rest.

The Battle of Stirling Bridge is depicted in the 1995 film Braveheart, but it bears little resemblance to the real battle, there being no bridge (due mainly to the difficulty of filming around the bridge itself) and tactics resembling the Battle of Bannockburn. The main strategic events of the battle (but obviously not the detail) are followed in Robyn Young's novel Requiem.