Battle of Stirling Bridge

Background

In 1296 Edward I of England invaded Scotland, sacked Berwick, beat the Scottish nobles at Dunbar and deposed King John Balliol. He left the country to be run by English officials. The Earl of Surrey, John de Warenne, was made governor, and Hugh de Cressingham became treasurer. Their taxes and demands for military service were widely resented, and in the spring of 1297 risings broke out across the kingdom. In May William Wallace, a younger son of a minor landed family, killed the English sheriff of Lanark and gathered a growing band of followers. In the north Andrew Moray, the son of a leading baron, drove English garrisons out of castles in Moray and the north-east. A rising by several great nobles ended in surrender at Irvine in July, but Wallace and Moray fought on. By late summer the two had joined forces and were besieging Dundee. Edward himself had sailed for Flanders in August. Warenne marched north with an army to restore control and reached Stirling, the lowest crossing of the River Forth, in early September.

The Battle

The Scots took up position on and around the Abbey Craig, a rocky hill about a mile north of the river. Between them and the English lay a loop of the Forth, crossed by a narrow timber bridge that stood a little upstream of the present stone Old Bridge. Chroniclers say it was wide enough for only two horsemen abreast. Beyond it a causeway ran across soft meadow enclosed by the river on three sides.

Numbers are uncertain. Medieval writers give very large figures, and modern estimates suggest that Warenne had some hundreds of cavalry and several thousand infantry, many of them Welsh, and that the Scots were fewer, with almost no heavy horse. Two Dominican friars sent to offer terms were turned away. According to the English chronicler Walter of Guisborough, Sir Richard Lundie, a Scottish knight serving with the English, offered to lead a force across a ford upstream to take the Scots in the flank. Cressingham, anxious about the cost of a long campaign, pressed for an immediate crossing, and Warenne agreed.

On the morning of 11 September the English vanguard began to file across the bridge. Wallace and Moray waited until a large part of it, cavalry and foot, was on the north bank. Then the Scottish spearmen came down from the high ground. One body drove along the riverbank to seize the northern end of the bridge, which cut the English army in two. The men who had crossed were penned in the loop of the river with no room to form up or charge. Most were killed or drowned. Sir Marmaduke Tweng cut his way back over the bridge with a few companions, but Cressingham died in the press. Warenne, who had not crossed, had the bridge broken down and rode for Berwick.

Weapons

The battle was won by the long infantry spear later known from the schiltron formation, the Schiltron Spear. Most of the Scots were unarmored or wore padded coats and simple helmets such as the Kettle Hat. The English cavalry wore the Mail Hauberk, with the Great Helm for those of knightly rank, and fought with the Knight's Lance and the Arming Sword. On firm, open ground they would have been very dangerous to infantry. On the causeway and the wet meadow they could neither charge nor maneuver. The English Longbow, which broke the Scottish spearmen at Falkirk the following year, played little recorded part at Stirling. The two-handed Scottish Claymore often linked with Wallace belongs to a later age, and the swords of 1297 were single-handed.

Aftermath

Guisborough put the English dead at a hundred men-at-arms and five thousand foot, figures that are probably too high. Scottish losses are not recorded, but Moray was badly wounded and died some weeks later. English chroniclers report that Cressingham's body was flayed and the skin cut up as trophies. James the Steward and the Earl of Lennox, who had been with Warenne, changed sides and attacked the retreating baggage train. Stirling Castle surrendered soon afterward, and that autumn Wallace raided Northumberland and Cumberland. By March 1298 he had been knighted and was sole Guardian of Scotland, ruling in the name of King John. Edward I returned from Flanders, invaded in person and destroyed Wallace's army at Falkirk on 22 July 1298. Stirling Bridge did not win the war, but it ended the belief that the conquest of 1296 was complete.

On Screen

Braveheart (1995), directed by Mel Gibson, who also plays William Wallace, shows a battle it calls Stirling as the first great Scottish victory. The enemy and the result are right, and little else is. There is no bridge and no river. The armies meet on an open field, and the Scots stop a head-on charge of English heavy cavalry with long sharpened stakes, a scene that owes more to the later schiltrons of Falkirk and Bannockburn than to the fight at the bridge. Andrew Moray, who shared the command, does not appear at all. The Scots wear belted plaids and blue face paint. The plaid is not recorded until some three hundred years later, and body paint belongs to accounts of ancient Britain, more than a thousand years earlier. Wallace's great two-handed sword is also of a later type.