His version of the appearance of Wallace is summed up in one line, Proportionyt lang and favr was his wesage. He becomes rather more detailed as to the “wesage” by declaring, Bowand bron haryt, on browis and brois lycht, which means “wavy brown hair on brows and eyebrows light.”
Historians and antiquarians are disposed to accept little of the old minstrel’s story, knowing that so much of it is spurious; and that leaves them with the barest of bones from which to construct a figure of this heroic man. It is generally assumed that he was born at Elderslie near Ayr, that his father held his land of James the Steward, that his mother was a daughter of Sir Hugh Crawford, sheriff of Ayr. He had two brothers, Malcolm the elder, and John the younger. William is supposed to have gone with his mother at some crisis to find protection in the household of a powerful relative at Kilspindie in the Carse of Gowrie and to have completed his education, such as it was, at the seminary attached to the cathedral of Dundee. Blind Harry’s story that the boy stayed with an uncle in holy orders at Dunipace is not accepted now, which throws doubt on one of the most popular anecdotes: that he had one Latin verse dunned into his head by this uncle which went as follows:
My son, I tell thee soothfastlie,
No gift is like to libertie:
Then never live in slaverie.
There were countless valiant souls in Scotland not content to live in “slaverie” after Edward left the country, convinced that he had stamped out all resistance. They began to manifest themselves in Galloway, Ross, Argyll, and Aberdeenshire. In the spring of the year following Edward’s departure, a stout knight named Andrew de Moray led an outbreak which threatened to weaken the English hold on the north of Scotland.
Had the spirit of Wallace been less resolute, he might have been daunted by the strength with which the English held that part of the Upper Plain where so many hundreds of small streams feed the volume of the Clyde. A discerning eye on Tinto Top might see Dumbarton Castle and the castle at Ayr, swanriing with English soldiery, and the town of Lanark, where one William de Heselrig held down all resistance with an iron hand. There was nothing here of the majestic aloofness and strength of the mountains in the Highlands, nothing but sloping plain and moor and a few hills which were rounded and accessible; no country, this, for the only type of warfare open to patriotic Scots, the kind that later would be called “guerrilla.” Nevertheless, Wallace soon became known as the daring leader of a small band of patriots who struck here and there at unexpected times, who appeared and disappeared and led the occupying forces a wild and unprofitable chase. His most spectacular feat was an attack with thirty men on the headquarters of Heselrig in Lanark, in which the English sheriff was killed. It was long believed that in retaliation the English destroyed the home of Wallace and killed his wife, whose maiden name was Marion Broadfute. Blind Henry was the sole authority for this anecdote. Wallace did kill William de Heselrig, but he did not possess a home and he was not married.
That Wallace quickly won a nationwide reputation is proof that he possessed a genius for warfare. He was not as favored as an earlier guerrilla fighter in the first stages of the French invasion of England to unseat the hated John, the colorful Willikin of the Weald. Willikin kept a large part of the French army in continuous alarm; but he had the dark, thick forests of the Weald into which he could disappear and from which he could emerge at the most unexpected times. Wallace was ringed about by the strongly held castles already mentioned and he operated in a country which was better suited to farming than to the strike-and-run-and-strike-again tactics of the guerrillas. As he lacked the thickets, deep gorges, and high wooded hills for concealment, it must have been that his safety was assured by the silent aid of the country folk. Even this would not have sufficed entirely, for the shepherd seldom left his sheep run and the farmer’s feet were chained to his tilled fields. There were many wandering friars in the Lowlands, particularly the Culdees, the Allies of God, who had left the monastic life of their round bare towers for a secular addiction to the care of the sick and the poor. These lowly friars, moving about so quietly, may have supplied the eyes for the irregular troops fighting so successfully under Wallace.
Wallace, for some such reason, seemed to have a charmed life. The alien governors of the country angrily demanded that an end be made to the raids of de Waleys, and word of his activities reached even to the ears of Edward, stalemated in an abortive campaign against the French in Flanders. It followed that when a few of the Scottish nobility decided the time was ripe to organize the forces of revolt, they turned to William Wallace as one of the leaders.
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The hills of Lanark were yellow with the mountain pansy and the tormentil when Wallace gathered his men about him and started north to answer the summons. At Perth he met Sir William Douglas, the first man of real consequence with whom he had come in contact. Sir William had commanded the garrison at Berwick and had been held a prisoner in irons for some time, gaining his release on taking an oath of obedience. It seems that oaths sworn under pressure were not regarded seriously, for here was the head of this great family, which through long centuries would be the proudest and most spectacular in all Scotland, in open rebellion again, his sword at his side and his heart filled with zeal for the cause. It was at a later date that the Black Douglas, as the head of the senior branch of the family was known, took as a motto:
Let dog eat dog:
What doth the lion care?
But Sir William had all the pride and the courage which were the distinguishing traits of the Douglases and had already earned for himself the sobriquet of The Hardy. The Douglas castle and estates were in Lanarkshire, so in a sense he and Wallace were neighbors, but it is doubtful if they had ever laid eyes on each other until they met on this occasion. They must have conceived a mutual respect, for they proceeded to work in concert with the best of results. They decided on an operation which appealed mightily to both of them; they would march on Scone, which lies close to Perth, and pay their respects to William de Ormesby, who was acting as justiciar of the country.
Scone was holy ground to all Scots. It was only a small village, but far back in history it had been the capital of the Picts. The legislative meetings which corresponded in Scotland to the English Parliament had met there on Moot Hill. The abbey still stood, despite Edward’s threat to destroy it after carrying off the Coronation Stone. William de Ormesby may have thought that his presence at Scone would lend validity to his actions. In any event, he had set up his courts there and was making himself the persistent gadfly which stung most deeply the pride of the Scots and lightened their purses at the same time. His specialty seems to have been the levying of fines. If a man of any consequence refused to come to Scone and swear fealty to the English monarch, he was either outlawed or fined.
The combined forces of Wallace and Douglas marched to Scone but encountered no resistance there. The justiciar, considering himself too weak to oppose such a determined thrust, had gathered up his records and documents and taken flight.
This was the first substantial success for the insurgent forces, and all Scotland rejoiced at the freeing of Scone, even though the stone on which the head of the dying Columba had rested was no longer there. It proved a costly exploit for Douglas. The English king confiscated all of his estates in England and put his wife and children under arrest. Later Douglas himself became a prisoner and was sent back to Berwick, to the familiar cell he had occupied before and the same irons in which his wrists and ankles had been clamped. He died there within the year.
After the success at Scone, Wallace proceeded to sweep like a new broom of rebellion through the country as far north as the circuitous Tay. His forces had been augmented by many of the leaders of dissent, and this gave him a greater prominence in the eyes of the nation; but it would prove a weakness in the end. The Scottish leaders had absolute power in their own clans and they could not be brought to accept the theory of united command. They would fight in their own good time and wherever they saw fit,
but they would accept orders from no one. The result of this pigheadedness was a defeat in which Wallace had no part.
Under prodding from the impatient Edward, the English officials in Scotland put together an army and marched unopposed through the Lowlands to a point beyond the Forth. The Scottish leaders could not agree on any plan of military action, and when the two armies met at Irvine no serious opposition was offered the English. The proud Scottish lords, who would not yield an inch in place or precedence to one another, yielded everything to the invaders. After the merest tiff, they laid down their arms and capitulated.
Wallace had played no part in this humiliating farce. While the noble lords were submitting themselves to whatever punishments might be devised for them he was attacking the rear guard, succeeding to the extent of destroying the baggage of the enemy and most of the guard.
For a time after the farce at Irvine, Wallace continued to lead the only band in open resistance in the Lowlands, and word of his activities finally reached the royal ears. In the insistent notes which Edward dispatched to his lieutenants he began to refer to the knight of Elderslie as “the king’s enemy.” In the Highlands the fire had not been extinguished. Andrew de Moray, who alone seemed to share the military skill and the full fighting spark which animated the youthful Wallace, had a series of successes in the reduction of castles garrisoned by the English. One of the most colorful exploits of Wallace was chasing Anthony Bek, Bishop of Durham, from the house of Bishop Wishart in Glasgow.
The treasurer, Hugo de Cressingham, seems to have taken too seriously the English triumph at Irvine. Believing that this absurd exhibition meant that the back of the resistance had been broken, he sent optimistic reports to Edward. This may have persuaded the king to devote his full personal attention to his French concerns. Toward the end of August he sailed again across the Channel, leaving the responsibility for subduing the recalcitrant Scots in the hands of the governor, the Earl of Surrey.
The treasurer had said in one of his letters to the king that “William Wallace holds himself against your peace.” It would have been well for Edward had he given heed to this particular information. Wallace was indeed holding himself against the king’s peace, and the hearts of all the common people of Scotland were with him.
CHAPTER XI
The Miracle at Stirling Bridge
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THE English leaders, fortunately for the Scottish cause, displayed a lack of energy in following up their success. Wallace took advantage of this breathing spell by gathering under his banner the common men of Scotland who had been left leaderless, and so he found himself for the first time with an army under his command. Moving rapidly, he laid siege to Dundee, at the same time sending a large part of his forces to a strong position near Cambuskenneth Abbey, where they threatened Stirling Castle, the gateway to the Highlands. This forced the English command to take action, and an army of fifty thousand foot and a thousand horse marched north under the command of the governor himself, John de Warenne, Earl of Surrey. Warenne was in the late sixties and had been fighting all his life. He had grown weary of warfare and he sat his saddle in bone-stiffened discomfort. He advanced to Stirling by slow stages.
What followed can only be described as a miracle. The military experience of Wallace was limited to his own guerrilla operations. The army he commanded consisted of forty thousand foot (at the most optimistic reckoning) and 180 horse, made up largely of the men who had lost their clan leaders at Irvine but who still wanted to fight. They were brave but they were not trained soldiers in any sense of the word. Their equipment was of the crudest nature. Few of them wore a habergeon, the shirt of iron rings which had been brought back to Scotland by crusaders, and they depended instead on tunics stuffed with wool, tow, or old cloth to soften the edge of a sword thrust. Their weapons were long spears or Lochaber axes. Only a few could be classed as gall-oglauch, the pick of the levies from hill and valley, who fought in the front rank when the clans went into battle. Their spirits were high enough, but how far would courage go in opposing the well-trained and well-armed English?
BATTLE OF STIRLING BRIDGE 1297
The most serious weakness, however, was the army’s lack of organization. The best fighting force in the world would be helpless if it lacked authority behind it to supply arms and food and scouting facilities to keep an eye on enemy movements. Wallace lacked everything but men. The absurdity at Irvine had paralyzed the efforts of the high authorities who were supposed to direct the Scottish defense. No arms or food was forthcoming. The wild clansmen drew in their belts and subsisted on a few scraps of dried oatmeal. The few mounted men were quite inadequate to do the scouting thoroughly.
It is clear, however, that Wallace had been born with military genius. Never having heard the word strategy, perhaps, he selected nevertheless the ideal place for the test of strength. The plan of battle he followed showed him to be a master tactician as well. The strength of his army was concealed in the thickets at the base of the Ochils, a steep ridge of hills on the north of the Forth. That river, curling slowly through Stirling except when tidewater enhanced its flow, was crossed by one bridge only, a structure of wood which allowed no more than two horsemen to cross abreast. The Scots were in a position here to swoop down on the English, if they attempted to cross the river, and thus catch them on the Links in a bend of the river where the ground was too swampy for cavalry action. If the tide of battle went against the defenders, they had an easy line of retreat over the rocky Ochils behind them. Here, then, the followers of Wallace, as skillfully disposed as any army could be, watched and waited.
Warenne hugged the delusion that the Scots could be persuaded to give up the struggle and return to their homes. He made several efforts to persuade them and finally sent a pair of itinerant friars as emissaries to Wallace.
“Carry back this answer,” said the Scottish commander. “We have not come for peace but to fight to liberate our country. Let them come on when they wish. They will find us ready to fight them to their beards!”
This precipitated a division of counsel in the English high command. Warenne was not an inspired general, but he was wise enough to distrust the situation. How could they tell how many wild clansmen were concealed at the base of the Ochils? It would take a full day for the English army to cross by that solitary bridge. Was it a wise operation to undertake in the face of a foe of unknown numbers? His inclination was to wait and see if a better way of crossing the tide-fed river presented itself. Some Scottish turncoats spoke of a ford farther up which could be used to turn the flank of the Scots. But Cressingham, the treasurer, had come with the English army and he was all for prompt measures. This ambitious and avaricious churchman, described in one of the chronicles as “handsome but too fat,” was the evil genius of the English. His parsimony had handicapped the king’s forces at the same time that his overbearing attitude had won him the hatred of the Scots. A time-server in his relations with the king, he was thoroughly distrusted by the other high-ranking officials. When a churchman charges soldiers with overcaution and even hints at cowardice, he puts them at a disadvantage.
“There is no use, Sir Earl,” he said, “in drawing out this business any longer and wasting the king’s revenues for nothing. Let us advance and carry out our duty as we are bound to do.”
The decision reached was to cross the bridge and attack the Scots on the other side. It has already been stated that the men Edward had left behind to finish his work were not great soldiers. Nothing could make this clearer than the course they had decided upon. A single glance at the bridge spanning the Forth at one of its deepest parts should have been enough to make them change their minds. Why was the bridge standing?
Wallace had been first on the ground, and there had been plenty of time to destroy this convenient method of crossing the river. A half dozen strong-armed, broad-backed Highlanders, armed with their Lochaber axes—a long-handled type of ax with a hook on the back to yank and draw with—would have had the structure down in
no time at all. But there it stood, unharmed, comfortable to cross, with a wide stretch of land left open on the other side, and no enemy in sight, even though the English felt that thousands of hostile eyes watched them from the thickets.
Successful strategy consists in fighting your battles at the time and place which offer the surest promise of a favorable issue. Wallace was a self-made soldier, with only brief experience in a small way to draw upon, but he was an instinctive master of strategy. He had decided, quite obviously, that this was the time and the place to offer battle to Governor Warenne and his large army. The bridge had been left intact as bait, to draw the attention of the enemy from the ford farther up the river where six men could cross abreast safely and where the terrain was not as favorable for defense. Fording a stream as variable and strong as the Forth was not an easy matter. How much simpler to take advantage of this bridge which the stupid Scots had neglected to destroy! Wallace had guessed right. He had gambled that the enemy would elect to use the bridge and had made his dispositions accordingly.
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