5 little known facts about William Wallace
Hollywood may have made William Wallace a household name – but it also played hard and fast with the truth. Here are a handful of facts about the real man.
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Made famous by the 1995 Hollywood blockbuster Braveheart, William Wallace was a knight and freedom fighter who could be said to have launched the Scottish independence movement as far back as the late 13th-century.
After the death of Scottish king Alexander III without heirs, the country was plunged into internal turmoil as various claimants to the throne jostled for position. The English monarch, Edward I, was approached to mediate, but it wasn’t long before Edward dispensed with the niceties and sent an army north to crush any resistance to an English invasion.
While the majority of the Scottish nobility bowed to his demands, one man refused. This man is William Wallace. Learn more about his real-life story below.
1. Origins uncertain
In Braveheart, Wallace is depicted as a mere peasant. We know for a fact that this is not true, since he certainly belonged to the lower ranks of nobility. Beyond that, however, his origins are not quite clear.
According to the 15th-century historian Blind Harry, William was the son of Sir Malcolm Wallace of Elderslie in Renfrewshire. However, a seal on a letter sent by William himself in 1297 suggests that his father was in fact Alan Wallace of Ayrshire.
Given that Blind Harry has developed something of a reputation for embellishment and invention, and given that he lived well over a century after Wallace had died, the latter account is perhaps more likely – but we can never really be sure.
2. A master tactician
Wallace’s reputation as a medieval military general was forged at the Battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297, where he faced an English army that outnumbered his own by as many as three to one.
Knowing this, Wallace chose the battleground carefully. He selected a field lying just beneath Abbey Craig hill and close by the Forth River, which he knew the English would have to cross using a single wooden bridge wide enough only for two cavalrymen to cross at a time.
When around a third of the enemy made it over the bridge, Wallace ordered the charge with sudden and intense ferocity. This gave those who had made the crossing no chance of escape and inflicted an embarrassing defeat on the English.
3. Not immune to missteps
When Edward I learned of his defeat at Stirling Bridge, he returned from France where he had been busy trying to subjugate yet another foreign power. He brought an even larger army to Scotland the following year to deal with Wallace once and for all.
To begin with, Wallace responded with his characteristic shrewdness by retreating slowly, razing the land behind him to ensure the English could not sustain their bloated ranks. But just as Edward I was on the point of retreat, Wallace got too cocky and made it known he would face his nemesis at Falkirk.
Wallace’s use of schiltrons was effective in holding the English cavalry at bay, but Edward I is not regarded as one of the finest warrior kings in history for nothing. His deployment of Welsh longbowmen decided the outcome of the battle and sent Wallace into hiding in France.
4. Betrayed – but not by the Bruce
After several fruitless years across the English Channel, Wallace was back in Scotland by 1305 and took up the fight once more. However, not long after his arrival in the country he was betrayed by one of his own men.
In Braveheart, this traitor is none other than Robert the Bruce (albeit unwittingly; the real treachery is performed by Bruce’s father). In real life, the actual turncoat is a man named John de Menteith, but Mel Gibson and his scriptwriter weren’t likely to let the facts get in the way of a shocking twist in their Hollywood tale.
In any case, Wallace was captured and transported to London, where he suffered a mock trial and was subjected to one of the most brutal forms of execution in human history; he was dragged through the streets by horses, hanged until almost dead, disembowelled and finally decapitated and his body cut into four pieces. Yikes.
5. He is not Braveheart
While Wallace is undoubtedly an important figurehead of Scottish independence, he is not the Braveheart alluded to in the 1995 film. Shock horror!
That particular epithet was actually attributed to Robert the Bruce, who took up the fight for Scotland’s freedom after Wallace’s death. This long and gruelling guerrilla warfare campaign culminated in the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314, followed by the penning of the Declaration of Arbroath in 1320 and English acceptance of Scottish independence in 1328.
The Bruce lived long enough to see this milestone, but not long enough to fight in the Crusades, which had been a lifelong ambition of his. After his death in 1329, his most loyal supporters carefully removed his heart from his breast and placed it inside a silver casket to take with them to the Holy Land, so he could symbolically achieve his long-held goal.
For this, he is known as the Braveheart, not Wallace.
