40 Fun Facts About Battle of Stirling Bridge

What did the Lanercost Chronicle say William Wallace had made from an English treasurer's skin after Stirling Bridge?

A sword belt, or baldrick, was cut from a strip of skin running from head to heel, the chronicler wrote. Other accounts say the Scots simply shared the hide out in small pieces.

Which Oscar-winning film stages the Battle of Stirling Bridge on an open field with no river crossing in sight?

Braveheart left the bridge out because filming around one proved too awkward. The film still won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

By the chronicler Guisborough's account, how many horsemen could barely cross Stirling Bridge side by side?

Two riders abreast was the limit, so the whole army would have needed most of the day to file across while the Scots watched from the high ground.

According to the chronicler Guisborough, why were the first English troops over Stirling Bridge called back at dawn?

Their commander overslept, the chronicler claims, so the men who had crossed at first light had to march back. Historians doubt the tale and suspect it was told to blacken his name.

A much-vandalised statue of Wallace, once sited near the Stirling Bridge battlefield, bore which actor's face?

Mel Gibson's face, from his 1995 film role, looked out over the car park below the Wallace Monument until 2008. The statue was so disliked that it had to be kept in a cage.

The letter Wallace sent to Lübeck's merchants weeks after Stirling Bridge was hidden where during the Second World War?

In a salt mine, where Lübeck's archives were sent to escape Allied bombing. Soviet troops then carried the letter east, and it did not come home until 1990.

Which English king, later nicknamed Hammer of the Scots, was abroad when his army was routed at Stirling Bridge?

Edward I was busy with a war across the Channel and had left Scotland to his deputies. He marched north in person the following year to take his revenge.

Which Scottish leader shared command with Wallace at Stirling Bridge and died of wounds suffered in the battle?

Andrew Moray had already won back the north of Scotland before joining forces with Wallace. His early death left him only a sliver of the fame.

The main fighting ground of Stirling Bridge probably lies beneath a club ground used for which sport?

Rugby pitches cover the flat riverside ground where the English vanguard was trapped. Being playing fields may have saved part of the battlefield from being built over.

How did a few hundred English soldiers trapped on the far bank at Stirling Bridge manage to escape the slaughter?

They swam the river, about 300 of them by one modern count. One knight is said to have crossed on horseback with man and mount both in full armour.

Stirling Bridge spanned which river, at a crossing long regarded as the key to Scotland?

The Forth widens to the east and gives way to bog in the west, which made the bridge the safest place for an army to cross. Whoever held it controlled the road north.

What title did William Wallace hold after the victory at Stirling Bridge, governing on behalf of an exiled king?

Guardian of Scotland made a younger son of the minor gentry the kingdom's ruler in all but name. He gave the office up within a year, after a heavy defeat in open battle.

Which English commander at Stirling Bridge had earlier gone home claiming Scotland's climate was bad for his health?

John de Warenne, Earl of Surrey, was the king's warden of Scotland yet preferred to stay in England. He watched the disaster from the south bank and never crossed.

The Scottish knight Richard Lundie urged the English to bypass Stirling Bridge by sending cavalry across what?

A ford nearby would have let sixty horsemen cross at once and strike the Scots from behind. The English turned the plan down, unwilling to divide their army.

On which hill, now topped by the Wallace Monument, did the Scots traditionally camp before Stirling Bridge?

Abbey Craig takes its name from Cambuskenneth Abbey on the river bank below. From its top Wallace is said to have watched the English army gather.

At which battle, ten months after Stirling Bridge, did the English king's archers break Wallace's spearmen?

Falkirk, fought in July 1298, ended Wallace's run as a general. Massed volleys thinned his packed rings of spears until the cavalry could ride through them, and he resigned his office soon after.

Which medieval minstrel's poem claims Wallace rigged Stirling Bridge to collapse by having a carpenter saw through it?

Blind Harry wrote some 200 years after the battle and gave the armies numbers of biblical size. His bridge trap is fiction, but it shaped how generations pictured the fight.

The English commander reportedly fled Stirling Bridge so fast his horse never fed before reaching which town?

Berwick was his goal, an English chronicler sneered, and the earl left the castle garrison behind with a promise of relief that he never kept.

After his capture near Glasgow, in which city was the victor of Stirling Bridge tried and executed for treason?

London saw Wallace tried in Westminster Hall, where he argued he could not be a traitor to a king he had never sworn to obey. He was executed the same day.

Which hated English treasurer of Scotland pressed for a direct attack across Stirling Bridge and died in the fighting?

Hugh de Cressingham was a royal clerk who had been sent north to tax the Scots. English chroniclers despised him almost as much as the Scots did, and blamed him for the defeat.

In the name of which deposed Scottish king, mocked as Toom Tabard, did Wallace fight at Stirling Bridge?

John Balliol had been forced off the throne the year before, when the royal arms were torn from his coat. He was still a captive during the battle and never saw Scotland again.

What name is given to the tight formations of Scottish spearmen that drove back the English at Stirling Bridge?

Schiltron formations were dense blocks of men bristling with long spears. At Stirling Bridge they wheeled into the loop of the river and sealed the bridge end behind the English.

Which poet said reading the story of Wallace, victor of Stirling Bridge, set a Scottish prejudice boiling in his veins?

Robert Burns met the tale as a boy, in a modernised version of a medieval minstrel's poem, and called it one of the first books he ever read in private.

Scotland's Auld Alliance with which country provoked the English conquest that Stirling Bridge undid?

France and Scotland agreed in 1295 to stand together against England, and the invasion followed within months. In the end the pact brought Wallace no troops at all.

Why did the English treasurer turn away thousands of reinforcements offered before Stirling Bridge?

To save money: he thought the army was big enough already and would not spend more of the king's treasure. Some of his own side were said to be angry enough to attack him for it.

Hundreds of the foot soldiers killed on the English side at Stirling Bridge had been recruited from which land?

Wales had been conquered by the same English king in the 1280s, and its men now marched in his armies. About 300 of them are recorded among the dead.

The English knight who cut his way back over Stirling Bridge later surrendered to Robert the Bruce at which battle?

Bannockburn, fought close to the same castle seventeen years on, was another English disaster. The veteran sought out the Scottish king to surrender in person and was freed without ransom.

Wallace's seal on the letter he sent to Lübeck after Stirling Bridge shows which weapon, a hint at his own skills?

A bow and arrow, drawn back by a pair of fingers, suggests the future general had trained as an archer. It is the only impression of his seal known to survive.

What survives on the riverbed just upstream of Stirling Old Bridge, marking where the bridge of the 1297 battle stood?

Stone piers, four of them in a line across the riverbed, were first located in 1905. No weapons or armour from the battle have ever been found with them.

At which battle the year before Stirling Bridge had the same English commander scattered a Scottish army?

Dunbar in 1296 was over quickly and handed Scotland to the English for a year. The Scottish nobles captured there were sent to prisons across England.

In which region across the Channel was the English king campaigning when his army lost at Stirling Bridge?

Flanders held the king and more than 9,000 of his paid troops that summer. He came home the next spring to lead a new invasion of Scotland himself.

Wallace's rising began four months before Stirling Bridge when he killed the English sheriff of which town?

Lanark's sheriff, William Heselrig, was cut down in May 1297 after a brawl at his own court. The story that Wallace was avenging a murdered wife appears only in a much later poem.

Which prize did James Stewart and the Earl of Lennox seize from the fleeing English after Stirling Bridge?

The baggage train fell to them in the boggy woods south of the river. Both lords had been in the English camp as go-betweens and changed sides when they saw how the fight was going.

Which town's castle were the Scots besieging when they broke off to march on Stirling Bridge?

Dundee had the last castle north of the river still in English hands. Wallace left the townspeople to carry on the siege while the army marched to meet the English.

Which Yorkshire knight won fame at Stirling Bridge by fighting his way back across to the English side?

Sir Marmaduke Thweng cut a path to the bridge with his men when the rest of the vanguard was already lost. He was then left to hold the nearby castle, which the Scots starved into surrender.

Friars of which religious order carried the English commander's last peace offer to Wallace before Stirling Bridge?

Dominicans, a pair of them, were sent across on the morning of the battle. Wallace told them his men had come to fight for their kingdom, not to make peace.

From which English castle did Wallace's co-commander at Stirling Bridge escape during the previous winter?

Chester held him after his capture in battle in 1296. His father, a more valuable prisoner, was locked up elsewhere and never freed.

Stirling Bridge is said to anticipate which famous rout of mounted knights by town militia five years later?

Courtrai, the Battle of the Golden Spurs, saw militia with pikes rout an army of knights in 1302 and collect some 500 pairs of spurs from the fallen.

At which Ayrshire town did nobles including Robert Bruce submit to the English the summer before Stirling Bridge?

Irvine was where the great lords gave up without a fight in July 1297. Wallace and his future co-commander took no part and fought on.

Which town did Wallace and William Douglas raid before Stirling Bridge, putting the English chief justice to flight?

Scone was where Scotland's kings were inaugurated. Douglas was soon a prisoner of the English, but Wallace kept his men in the field.