William Wallace And All That Read online

  A chance for Heselrig to have his revenge soon arrived. According to the story, Wallace and his men were crossing the street in Lanark when some English soldiers began insulting them.

  Soon, the two sides came to blows and swords were drawn. The street battle that followed was a gruesome affair.

  According to further reports, Wallace chopped the hand off one of his enemies and blood spurted from the soldier’s arm like a ketchup bottle that’s been squeezed too hard!

  The gore splattered all over Wallace’s face and blinded him for a moment, but not long enough for the other English soldiers to get the better of Wallace and his men.

  The Wallace gang fought their way back to Mirren’s house, ran right through it, and then escaped through the back door. From there, they sprinted off and disappeared into a nearby rocky chasm called the Cartland Crags.

  Wallace was sure Mirren would be safe if she kept her front door locked and acted innocent when Heselrig and his men came knocking. But Heselrig was suspicious of anyone friendly with Wallace, especially Mirren.

  The sheriff ordered Mirren’s front door to be broken down. She was seized by English soldiers, her house was burnt to the ground and the young beauty was murdered on the spot.

  There is no gravestone or death certificate to prove that Mirren was killed by Heselrig. But if the story of her death is true, then we know that by May 1297 two of Wallace’s nearest and dearest – his dad (probably) and his wife – had been killed in cold blood by the English authorities.

  One thing we are sure of is what Wallace did next: he killed Heselrig. In fact, he didn’t just kill him; Wallace slaughtered the sheriff with such violence that it sent shivers down the spine of every English soldier in the land.

  According to the report revealed at the beginning of our story, Wallace went straight round to Heselrig’s house, kicked the door in and ran upstairs to find the sheriff in his bedroom. In an instant, the giant outlaw swung his sword down with such force that it split Heselrig’s skull in two, right down to his collarbone.

  Since Heselrig had been one of the most powerful of Scotland’s English rulers, Wallace realised that there was now no turning back. Once Longshanks found out what had happened, he would stop at nothing to ensure Wallace was wiped out.

  But that was easier said than done.

  8

  Helping hands

  By killing Heselrig, Wallace suddenly became much stronger, because he made the Scots realise that the mighty English could definitely be beaten.

  Once, Wallace had had only a small band of men, but now an army began flocking to his side. It even included some soldiers and knights who decided to leave the English army, because they admired Wallace for standing up to Longshanks.

  To help make his army strong enough to drive out Longshanks’ forces once and for all, Wallace turned to the help of some powerful Scots:

  When Wishart joined Wallace it angered the pope, who was Wishart’s boss and world leader of the Church. The pope was very pally with Longshanks, but that didn’t frighten Wishart. Instead, Wishart encouraged Wallace to join forces with another Scottish rebel called:

  If it wasn’t for Wallace and friends like de Moray, England would have conquered Scotland by now. Most of the Scots nobles were too busy bickering among themselves over who should be king now that Balliol had been booted off the throne.

  After causing a bit of trouble for Longshanks, these rich nobles were told that none of them would be king and all their lands would be taken away forever if they didn’t behave.

  Many of the nobles owned land in England as well as Scotland, so they didn’t want to upset Longshanks too much. In July 1297, they again promised to do as they were told from now on.

  Over the next few years, the Scottish nobles would bend this way and then that way – sometimes supporting Wallace, sometimes supporting Longshanks. And always thinking about what was best for themselves!

  Meanwhile, Wallace’s warriors and de Moray’s men-at-arms continued harassing the English wherever they went. Splitting up into groups of highwaymen and assassins, they robbed English convoys and splattered any English officials they could get their hands on.

  With their growing army, Wallace and de Moray soon took control of all of Scotland north of the River Forth. The town of Dundee tried to keep them out, but they slowly began crumbling it like Dundee cake. Then they set their sights on the great fortress of Stirling Castle.

  When Longshanks heard about this, he decided that enough was enough. He ordered a giant English army of 30,000 soldiers to march north and lay waste to Wallace’s warriors and de Moray’s men-at-arms. The real battle for Scotland was about to begin . . .

  9

  Bridge over troubled water

  The English and Scottish armies met a few miles north-east of Stirling Castle on 11 September 1297, on either side of the River Forth. Led by the Earl of Surrey, the English marched up to the southern banks of the river, while Wallace and de Moray’s men came down to arrive at the northern banks.

  Historians disagree with each other about what exactly happened next, but it went something like this. Wallace and de Moray got to the river first, with about 10,000 men. Then the Scots watched as the English army gathered on the banks opposite them. The English army was the most experienced and battle-hardened in all of Europe – and was three times bigger than the Scottish army.

  But the Scots on Wallace’s side hadn’t come all this way just to turn back now. Sure their leader Wallace and his sidekick de Moray were young. Sure they had never taken on an army this big before. And sure they faced almost certain death . . .

  But, hey, at least they were rebels with a cause. They would rather die as free Scots than live as English slaves.

  Besides, Wallace had a plan. According to some reports, he put his men up on top of a big rocky hill called Abbey Craig, which guarded a shallow ford where the English could otherwise have crossed the river easily.

  This meant the English had to think of a different way to get across. There was another place further upstream called the Kildean Ford, but it was a non-starter because it was so far away.

  At least that’s what the man who held the purse strings in Surrey’s army said. He was the treasurer, a plump and arrogant chap called Hugh Cressingham.

  Surely the best way to ‘get on with it’ was to just swim across? Well, you try swimming across a river when you’re dressed up in heavy armour and weighed down with lots of metal weapons. On second thoughts, don’t try that unless you’re a fish.

  Seriously, the quickest way for the English to get on with it was a narrow wooden bridge standing right in front of them. This was known as Stirling Bridge.

  According to the maps the English carried with them, Stirling Bridge was indeed the swiftest way to get from the southern half of Scotland to the northern half without getting your feet wet.

  So it must have been glaringly obvious that all the English had to do was go straight across the bridge, right? Not to Surrey. He was afraid of the bridge for two very good reasons:

  Eventually, Surrey reluctantly agreed to cross the bridge. He hoped that Wallace would wait too long before coming down off the hill to attack, because then there would be enough English cavalry and foot-soldiers across the bridge to smash the Scots.

  Except Wallace was too smart to make that mistake. He expected Surrey’s force would have to start crossing the bridge sooner or later, which they eventually did.

  Things were going just as Wallace had planned. Now he waited until only as many English as the Scots could handle got over the bridge to his side. Then he sprung his trap . . .

  10

  Flush them out!

  Spearmen rushed down at Wallace’s command to attack the English, getting in behind the enemy so they couldn’t retreat back across the bridge. Then Wallace sent in his main force of swordsmen to attack the enemy head on, skewering their horses and making haggis of their riders as they fell to the ground.

  Wallace and de
Moray led from the front as the blood and guts of hundreds of English foot-soldiers were splattered all over the place. At one moment during the fighting, de Moray was badly wounded by the enemy – but Wallace kept on fighting as the Scots became stronger and stronger.

  ‘On them! On them! On them!’ cried the Scots. ‘Off us! Off us! Off us!’ the English probably replied – but the Scots weren’t listening.

  Chased by the Scots, some panic-stricken English knights and men tried to escape back across the bridge. But this just sent them crashing into new English forces coming the other way!

  Soon the the narrow bridge became jammed. There was nowhere left to go but over the side. So men and horses jumped, fell or got pushed off the bridge and splashed into the waters below. The English had fallen into Wallace’s trap – and now they were being flushed out like a blockage from a toilet.

  On the south bank of the river, Surrey and the rest of the English force could see their chums either being clobbered or swept into the river by the small Scottish army. They began to worry that the Scots might be supermen who would swim over and slaughter them all.

  Realising that all was lost, Surrey gave the command to retreat. He ordered the bridge to be set on fire to try to keep the Scots at bay – even though that meant leaving the last of his men on the north bank to their doom.

  Surrey galloped away from the field with such haste that his poor horse didn’t eat until he got back to England. But Cressingham wasn’t so lucky.

  According to reports, Cressingham was so big and heavy that when he tried to turn his horse around, he rolled off his saddle and tumbled onto the ground. He huffed and puffed, but couldn’t get back up again.

  Then one of Wallace’s warriors ran at him with a big Lochaber axe. Cressingham shouted out in French for mercy, but unfortunately that particular Scot didn’t understand French. So he chopped Cressingham’s block off.

  According to further reports, things then got even more gruesome. Since Cressingham had been a big chap, Wallace and his men decided to make use of his fleshy body. They used his skin to make belts, scabbards, saddles – you name it. These were grisly souvenirs of the Scots’ victory at the Battle of Stirling Bridge, as it became known.

  The Battle of Stirling Bridge was certainly savage, but what a victory! It paved the way for Wallace and his men to take control of Stirling Castle and send the English packing. Scotland had won her freedom at last!

  11

  Freedom

  So Wallace won freedom for his people at Stirling Bridge. But what exactly is freedom, anyway? Freedom is being able to do whatever you want, with whoever you want, whenever you want to. Within reason, of course.

  Nowadays, apart from having to do the washing-up and tidy our rooms, or go to school or jobs, we are all pretty free. We take freedom for granted. But for Wallace to get his freedom, he had to break the yoke of slavery.

  The yoke of slavery is when somebody else bullies you, treats you like dirt and makes you do whatever they say all the time. A ‘yoke’ is also a word for a wooden frame that’s put over a person’s shoulders so they can be made to work hard all day long, without a rest, carrying heavy buckets of water for somebody else. You can see the similarity, can’t you?

  The yoke of slavery is not to be confused with the yolk of slavery, which is when somebody forces you to eat the yellow runny bit of an egg even though, behind your polite smile, you don’t really want to!

  With victory over Longshanks’ army at Stirling Bridge, Wallace well and truly smashed the yoke of slavery. Now the English couldn’t tell the Scots what to do.

  So does that mean the Scots lived happily ever after, then? What do you think!

  12

  Back in business

  Longshanks had thought it would all be so simple:

  When he found out that Wallace had won the Battle of Stirling Bridge, Longshanks hit the roof. Spluttering with rage, the king of England vowed to forget France and return to Scotland himself as soon as possible with an EVEN LARGER army to grind the Scots into porridge oats.

  When he got his hands on the upstart Wallace, Long-shanks planned to tear him limb from limb.

  In the meantime, though, Wallace was basking in glory. He and de Moray sent letters to people all over Europe, telling them that the Scots had beaten the English and were free again.

  One of their letters was taken to a place in Germany called Lübeck by two Scottish merchants called John Burnet and John Frere. It went something like this:

  Dear citizens of Lübeck,

  Since your town is the most important place for trade in the whole of northern Europe, we thought it important to let you know that Scotland is open for business as usual.

  No doubt you heard about the spot of bother we had, what with the English taking away our land and our freedom and killing anybody who tried to stop them. But that’s all ancient history now.

  So please don’t be put off trading with us. Your merchants will be perfectly safe if they come here – honest.

  Yours sincerely,

  Andrew de Moray and William Wallace, leaders of Scotland’s army

  This letter and others like it showed that Wallace and de Moray didn’t just want to win battles, they wanted to make life better for the Scots.

  If you remember, Longshanks had cut Scotland’s lifeline to Europe by seizing the port of Berwick and killing all the Scots traders there – the Lübeck letter was designed to fix that lifeline by starting up Scottish trade again. Trade with Europe meant the Scottish people could buy things that they needed, and sell things to earn more money.

  Then Wallace had a bit of bad news. The ink was barely dry on the Lübeck letter before poor de Moray died from the wounds he had suffered at the Battle of Stirling Bridge. So Wallace was left to lead the Scottish army on his own.

  Wallace decided to attack the north of England, as a warning to the English not to get any ideas about invading Scotland again. The locals in places like Northumberland and Cumbria were terrified. ‘The Scots are coming!’ they shouted as they ran from their fields and villages in panic.

  Wallace’s raids on England were horrendous, and lots of people were killed. Many Scots reckoned they deserved revenge after being made to suffer under English rule. But it was probably not a good move, because it encouraged English reporters working for Longshanks to make up stories that pretended the Scottish raids were even worse than they really were.

  Wallace was certainly no saint, but these reports were mostly lies to blacken Wallace’s name. Nevertheless, many folk believed them. The English people urged Longshanks to get back up to Scotland and whack Wallace as soon as possible.

  Longshanks was more than happy to oblige. He was already preparing his army to march north by the summer of 1298.

  Back in Scotland, Wallace was prepared for the next battle that lay ahead when he was knighted as Sir William Wallace and made Guardian of Scotland. This meant Wallace wasn’t just the leader of Scotland’s army any more – he was the leader of the country, like a prime minister or president today. Since there was no king to speak of apart from old Balliol, who was just a lame duck hiding in France, Wallace was now the most powerful man in Scotland.

  Or at least he should have been.

  Unfortunately, Wallace’s promotion made a lot of other important Scots jealous. Even though Wallace had freed Scotland from Longshanks, some Scottish nobles still thought he was just an upstart.

  But why? Well, most nobles believed that you could only be a leader of a country if you were rich and owned lots of land. The trouble was, Wallace wasn’t rich, and, according to some reports, he personally didn’t own very much land at all. Even though Wallace was not a poor peasant, many nobles thought of him as one. They didn’t think he deserved to be Scotland’s leader.

  By the time Longshanks’ army started marching north for another showdown, many of these grumbling Scots nobles decided they wouldn’t support Wallace. In fact, some of them even decided to fight for Longshanks instead.<
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  While Wallace reportedly stopped by the little village of Riggend to sharpen his sword on a boulder he must have cursed those wretched nobles. He was on his way to Falkirk to meet Longshanks’ army. Things were about to turn really nasty.

  13

  Time for another battle

  It was a misty morning outside the town of Falkirk on 22 July 1298 when Wallace spied Longshanks’ army preparing for battle. Reports say that Wallace stood on a big rock on top of a hill, so that he could get a better view of the English army as the sound of its war drums got louder and louder.

  Wallace knew which direction Longshanks was coming from, but unfortunately we don’t. The exact spot where the Scots and the English clashed for the Battle of Falkirk is a mystery. Some say it was to the north of Falkirk. Some say it was to the south. Others say the east and, you guessed it, there are those who reckoned it was to the west. Just thinking about it is enough to make you dizzy.

  Wallace must have been dizzy too when he saw the size of Longshanks’ army. After the humiliation of Stirling Bridge, the English king had decided this time that he would come up personally to Scotland to sort Wallace out, with the largest army he could muster. One report claims there were a whopping 87,000 men in it.

  So what exactly does an army of 87,000 men look like? Well, imagine watching a very wide procession of angry people marching towards you, with its tail stretching off into the distance as far as the eye can see.