Battle of Stirling Bridge
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40 free Battle of Stirling Bridge trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
In September 1297 a Scottish army of foot soldiers destroyed a far better equipped English force at a narrow wooden bridge near Stirling. It was the high point of William Wallace's rising and a shock to an English crown that thought Scotland already conquered. The battle has been retold ever since, in chronicles, poems, songs and on film, and the legend has drifted a long way from what happened on the day. This quiz covers the real battle and the stories around it. There are questions on the commanders and the choices they made, the ground that decided the fight, the grim fate of the losers and what the victory did for Wallace. Others follow the battle's afterlife: the monument that overlooks the field, the surviving documents, and the versions told by poets and filmmakers. The questions run from easy openers for anyone who knows the outline of the story to deep cuts for readers of medieval Scottish history. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will pick up something new even when you guess.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What did the Lanercost Chronicle say William Wallace had made from an English treasurer's skin after Stirling Bridge?
A sword belt
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.
Q 02Which Oscar-winning film stages the Battle of Stirling Bridge on an open field with no river crossing in sight?
Braveheart
Braveheart left the bridge out because filming around one proved too awkward. The film still won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
Q 03By the chronicler Guisborough's account, how many horsemen could barely cross Stirling Bridge side by side?
Two
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.
Q 04According to the chronicler Guisborough, why were the first English troops over Stirling Bridge called back at dawn?
Their commander overslept
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.
Q 05A much-vandalised statue of Wallace, once sited near the Stirling Bridge battlefield, bore which actor's face?
Mel Gibson
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.
Q 06The letter Wallace sent to Lübeck's merchants weeks after Stirling Bridge was hidden where during the Second World War?
In a salt mine
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.
Q 07Which English king, later nicknamed Hammer of the Scots, was abroad when his army was routed at Stirling Bridge?
Edward I
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.
Q 08Which Scottish leader shared command with Wallace at Stirling Bridge and died of wounds suffered in the battle?
Andrew Moray
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.
Q 09The main fighting ground of Stirling Bridge probably lies beneath a club ground used for which sport?
Rugby
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.
Q 10How did a few hundred English soldiers trapped on the far bank at Stirling Bridge manage to escape the slaughter?
They swam the river
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.
Q 11Stirling Bridge spanned which river, at a crossing long regarded as the key to Scotland?
The Forth
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.
Q 12What title did William Wallace hold after the victory at Stirling Bridge, governing on behalf of an exiled king?
Guardian of Scotland
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.
Q 13Which English commander at Stirling Bridge had earlier gone home claiming Scotland's climate was bad for his health?
John de Warenne
Q 21In the name of which deposed Scottish king, mocked as Toom Tabard, did Wallace fight at Stirling Bridge?
John Balliol
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.
Q 22What name is given to the tight formations of Scottish spearmen that drove back the English at Stirling Bridge?
Schiltron
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.
Q 23Which poet said reading the story of Wallace, victor of Stirling Bridge, set a Scottish prejudice boiling in his veins?
Robert Burns
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.
Q 14The Scottish knight Richard Lundie urged the English to bypass Stirling Bridge by sending cavalry across what?
A ford
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.
Q 15On which hill, now topped by the Wallace Monument, did the Scots traditionally camp before Stirling Bridge?
Abbey Craig
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.
Q 16At which battle, ten months after Stirling Bridge, did the English king's archers break Wallace's spearmen?
Falkirk
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.
Q 17Which medieval minstrel's poem claims Wallace rigged Stirling Bridge to collapse by having a carpenter saw through it?
Blind Harry
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.
Q 18The English commander reportedly fled Stirling Bridge so fast his horse never fed before reaching which town?
Berwick
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.
Q 19After his capture near Glasgow, in which city was the victor of Stirling Bridge tried and executed for treason?
London
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.
Q 20Which hated English treasurer of Scotland pressed for a direct attack across Stirling Bridge and died in the fighting?
Hugh de Cressingham
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.
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.
Q 24Scotland's Auld Alliance with which country provoked the English conquest that Stirling Bridge undid?
France
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.
Q 25Why did the English treasurer turn away thousands of reinforcements offered before Stirling Bridge?
To save money
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.
Q 26Hundreds of the foot soldiers killed on the English side at Stirling Bridge had been recruited from which land?
Wales
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.
Q 27The English knight who cut his way back over Stirling Bridge later surrendered to Robert the Bruce at which battle?
Bannockburn
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.
Q 28Wallace'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
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.
Q 29What survives on the riverbed just upstream of Stirling Old Bridge, marking where the bridge of the 1297 battle stood?
Stone piers
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.
Q 30At which battle the year before Stirling Bridge had the same English commander scattered a Scottish army?
Dunbar
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.