Battle of Stirling Bridge - The Main Battle

The Main Battle

John de Warenne had won a victory over the aristocracy of Scotland at the Battle of Dunbar and his belief that he was now dealing with a rabble proved that he had greatly underestimated the Scottish forces. The small bridge at Stirling was only broad enough to allow two horsemen to cross abreast. The Scots deployed in a commanding position dominating the soft, flat ground to the north of the river. Sir Richard Lundie, a Scots knight who joined the English after the capitulation at Irvine, offered to outflank the enemy by leading a cavalry force over a nearby ford, where sixty horsemen could cross at the same time. Hugh Cressingham, King Edward's treasurer in Scotland, was anxious to avoid any unnecessary expense in prolonging the war and he persuaded the Earl to reject this advice and order a direct attack across the bridge.

The Scots waited as the English knights and infantry made their slow progress across the bridge on the morning of 11 September. The disorderly Scottish army of 1296 was gone: Wallace and Moray's hold over their men was tight. They had held back earlier in the day when many of the English and Welsh archers had crossed, only to be recalled because de Warenne had overslept. The two commanders now waited, according to the Chronicle of Hemingburgh, until "as many of the enemy had come over as they believed they could overcome." When the vanguard, comprising 5,400 English and Welsh infantry plus several hundred cavalry, had crossed the Bridge, the attack was ordered. The Scots spearmen came down from the high ground in rapid advance towards Stirling Bridge, quickly seizing control of the English bridgehead. De Warenne's vanguard was now cut off from the rest of the army. The heavy cavalry to the north of the river was trapped and cut to pieces (due, in part, to the strewing of caltrops to unseat the cavalry making them easy targets for the Scottish forces), their comrades to the south powerless to help Hugh de Cressingham, whose body was subsequently flayed and the skin cut into small pieces as tokens of the victory. The Lanercost Chronicle records that Wallace had "a broad strip ... taken from the head to the heel, to make therewith a baldrick for his sword". Losses among the infantry, many of them Welsh, were also high. Those who could throw off their armour swam across the river.

De Warenne, who still had a formidable contingent of archers, had remained to the south of the river and was still in a strong position. The bulk of his army still remained intact and he could have held the line of the Forth, denying the triumphant Scots a passage to the south; but his confidence was gone. After the escape of Sir Marmaduke Tweng, an English knight from Yorkshire, de Warenne ordered the bridge's destruction and retreated towards Berwick, leaving the garrison at Stirling Castle isolated and abandoning the Lowlands to the rebels. James Stewart, the High Steward of Scotland, and Malcolm, Earl of Lennox, whose forces had been part of Surrey's army, observing the carnage to the north of the bridge, withdrew. Then the English supply train was attacked at The Pows, a wooded marshy area, by James Stewart and the other Scots lords, killing many of the fleeing soldiers.

The location of Stirling Bridge at the date of the battle is not known with certainty, but four stone piers have been found underwater just north (56°07′45″N 3°56′12″W / 56.1290916°N 3.936764°W / 56.1290916; -3.936764) and at an angle to the extant 15th century bridge, along with man-made stonework on one bank in line with the piers. The site of the fighting was along and either side of an earthen causeway leading from the Abbey Craig, atop which the Wallace Monument is now located, to the northern end of the bridge. The battlefield has been inventoried and protected by Historic Scotland under the Scottish Historical Environment Policy of 2009.