After throttling Wales, Edward I turned his attention to Scotland, where Gaelic tribes had resisted external control for a thousand years, since the days of the Roman Empire. In 1297, Edward's army - without him in command - marched north to crush Scottish rebels led by Wallace.
That campaign brought the English army to the strategic Scottish town of Stirling. There, English commanders, including Edward's treasurer for Scotland, Hugh Cressingham, rashly decided to cross a narrow bridge, giving Wallace his opportunity.
Though outnumbered, the Scottish soldiers charged down a slope and set upon the half of the English army that had made its way across the bridge. Amid the chaos, the rest of the English force couldn't cross and the wooden bridge collapsed.
The rout at Stirling Bridge forced the English into retreat. Wallace's army marched south after them, taking the war to towns in northern England before withdrawing back to Scotland as winter weather set in.
The next year, Edward personally led a fearsome new campaign against the Scots. Aided by dissension within the Scottish ranks and using the devastating longbow developed by Welsh archers, Edward crushed Wallace's army at the Battle of Falkirk. Gradually, Edward tightened his grip on Scotland as Wallace went into hiding and exile.
Seven years later, after Wallace returned to Scotland, he was betrayed by a fellow Scot, taken prisoner by Edward's forces and paraded before mocking crowds in English towns en route to his grisly fate in London.
A Warning
After Wallace was drawn and quartered, Edward ordered Wallace's head put on a spike on London Bridge and his severed limbs displayed over the sewers in the Scottish towns of Newcastle, Berwick-upon-Tweed, Perth and Aberdeen.
Edward's goal was to make Wallace's suffering and humiliation a warning to the Scots. Instead, Edward created a martyr who has inspired the Scottish independence movement to this day. After actor Mel Gibson portrayed Wallace in the 1995 movie "Braveheart," new impetus was given to the cause of Scottish nationalism.
In the decade since the movie, the Scots have pursued what they call the "devolution" of their ties to England. With their own parliament and control over many domestic policies, many Scots now regard their land as an independent country only in loose confederation with Great Britain.
On July 4, 2005, our "Wallace/Edward tour" brought us to Stirling, where we met Colin and David, who were drinking beers at the bar after finishing their day's work as guides at Stirling Castle. It was hard to tell if they were more bemused or impressed that some Americans had bothered to visit the site of Wallace's execution in London.
Colin especially held Wallace in deep reverence as the archetypal Scottish hero who never bent to the will of England, even in the face of a horrible death. There were other Scottish heroes, Colin said, but none measured up to Wallace.
After Edward I's own death in 1307, as he was preparing another military campaign against Scotland, Robert the Bruce led the Scots to a major victory over Edward II at Bannockburn in 1314. But Colin said the memory of Robert the Bruce was tainted by his on-again-off-again collaboration with Edward I.
Colin leaned toward me at the bar. "You know a bunch of us Scots are going down to London on the 700th anniversary of Wallace's death," he said. "We're going to follow the route that Wallace took through London, to where he was executed in Smithfield."
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