plain where the River Forth meandered in great bends below it (see map). Abbey Craig overlooked the main road northwards at the point where it crossed the River Forth by a long and narrow wooden bridge. Despite some qualms on Warenne’s part Cressingham accepted the option of crossing by the bridge under Wallace’s full gaze, even when there were other fords downstream which could have been used to outflank the Scots’ position.
Wallace had chosen a battle site with many advantages: fronted by wet and rough water meadows it gave the approaching English no opportunity to use their cavalry effectively; equally important for Wallace’s smaller force, movement across such a narrow bridge onto the meadows was bound to be slow and would allow the Scots the opportunity of taking the offensive themselves before the English had brought a significant portion of their troops over it. Finally, it offered a good line of withdrawal if required.
However, to succeed against such superior forces required uncommon powers of leadership. Wallace needed cool nerves and sound judgement together with the ability to keep a tight control over his irregulars. For at least two hours the English cavalry and infantry clattered across the bridge and formed up on its further side within a loop of the river. Then with a blast on Wallace’s horn the Scots came running down the steep slopes in tight formation, leaping across the turf hummocks to close with the English. Their speed of movement gave their opponents no time to draw up their battle lines nor bring their bowmen into action, while the English cavalry experienced major difficulties in holding their footing on the wet and broken carseland. As the Scots crashed into their packed ranks the English gave way and being unable to fight properly they started to panic. Wallace had appointed a dedicated group of soldiers to block the bridge and Warenne was forced to watch both the destruction of his vanguard and the killing of Cressingham before he turned and fled to Berwick, leaving his army to the mercy of the Scots as it sought to follow him.
Stirling Bridge was a great victory for William Wallace and Andrew Moray, although Moray received wounds there from which he died. They had trapped as many of the English as Wallace thought he could beat within the bend of an impassable river on ground unsuitable for heavy cavalry, and he joined battle so quickly that the English were prevented from using their archers in their normal deadly fashion. His astute choice of ground avoided using his own weak and suspect cavalry, said to have been ‘lurking in the woods near the hills’,8 although it went on to play a part in the pursuit. The victory also owed much to English over-confidence and fatal differences among its commanders.
However, while Stirling Bridge was a singular victory, there was no possibility that it would end the war. What it did, on the other hand, was to buy time for the Scottish leadership to rethink its possible response towards subsequent invading armies and to help develop a greater sense of national purpose.
During the next ten months Wallace did everything possible to gather together an army capable of meeting the English, who this time would be commanded by their king. Although initially retreating before the invaders and devastating the country as he went, Wallace eventually offered battle on a relatively modest hill near Falkirk, standing on the line of the Roman Antonine wall. Why he chose such a position has puzzled commentators not fully appreciative of the conditions needed for his spearmen, although several other important factors no doubt influenced his decision. He knew, for instance, that his delaying tactics had not only caused the English supply system to break down but the army’s morale had fallen to an alarming degree. He might also have had his choices limited by the nobles among his cavalry, for whom Wallace’s tactics of scorched earth and evasion were contrary to their chivalric codes of military behaviour. They might even have threatened to desert him if he did not stand and fight.9 Such nobles, including the proud and powerful John Comyn (the Red Comyn, John Balliol’s brother-in-law), were virtually certain to have chafed against being overborne by a modest squire, however skilled he might have shown himself the year before. With the Comyns the fact that Wallace’s feudal superior, James Stewart, was a supporter and friend of their rivals, the Bruces, would not have helped either. Wallace could not risk their non-co-operation nor, worse still, their defection. Finally, he also had good grounds for doubting whether he could keep such a large army in being much longer and whether he could raise a similar one in the following year. Unless Wallace could beat the English decisively at Falkirk, Edward I’s determination to subdue Scotland would keep him in the border regions with his household troops ready to resume operations over the next campaigning season when Wallace would be less well supported.
Although such factors undoubtedly played a significant part in persuading Wallace to fight at Falkirk it was his creation of schiltrons expressly designed to counter the English heavy cavalry that was likely to have weighed most heavily in his calculations. He placed his four detachments of spearmen numbering somewhat fewer than two thousand men each in a rough semi-circle on the forward edge of Mumrills’ small rounded crest. These soldiers with their twelve-foot spears and wooden targes were aligned in circular formation at the edge of which men knelt shoulder to shoulder with the butts of their iron-tipped spears resting on the ground. Immediately in support were a further two ranks with their spears either grounded and pointing outwards or, more likely, lifted into a horizontal position to fend off attacking horsemen. Additional men waited in the redoubts ready to make good any gaps appearing as men fell.
The schiltrons, or shield rings as the chronicler Guisborough called them, were in some respects like traditional Greek phalanxes, although unlike the Greek formations they were static. In the Scottish phalanx its members’ fighting qualities were enhanced by the contemporary practice whereby a proportion of knights chose to fight dismounted with their followers. Standing alongside their clan or household superiors such as MacDuff, the Earl of Fife, or Sir Nichol de Rutherford, who brought sixty followers with him, the spearmen would not have dared let their comrades down. The ordinary levies would also have been kept up to their task by Wallace’s drill sergeants placed at strategic points within the ranks. These were given wide authority by a leader whose own determination was evident by the gallows which he ordered to be erected in every town ‘on which all without a reasonable cause absenting themselves from the army under foreign pretexts should be hanged’.10
In theory if the spearmen held firm armoured cavalry would be unable to subdue them, being literally kept at spears’ length. In practice, the cavalry enjoyed additional support from their own infantry, including the deadly longbowmen. To counter these opponents Wallace buttressed his schiltrons with Scotland’s short bowmen. While their weapons’ range and penetrative power were markedly inferior, once the English had moved onto the small hill to close with the spear circles the short bows could come fully into play.
By skilful use of ground Wallace had thereby countered the superior range of the English archers but he had no equivalent means of helping his other fighting component, the Scottish light cavalry, heavily outnumbered by their English opponents. He had tried the only way he knew how to make good this deficiency by requesting assistance from the French nobleman, Charles de Valois, along with his heavy horsemen, but this had been refused. Nonetheless while completely outmatched by the English heavy cavalry the few Scottish horsemen were still important to Wallace to help counter the English infantry and bowmen. Their presence alone prevented the English footsoldiers from ranging freely over the battlefield.
Whatever his concerns about the other arms, the essence of Wallace’s army lay with his spearmen. There is little doubt he would have known about the earlier battle of Maes Moydog (1295) where the English had demonstrated how their skilful use of cavalry supported by bowmen could defeat a Welsh infantry army. Wallace knew he had to do better at Falkirk and therefore ensured his men would also be supported by bowmen as they stood on the forward edge of Mumrills hill. He knew that they awaited an army that was not only tired and weakened from lack of provisions but whose Welsh bowmen were mutinous. In such circumstances he had reason to hope the English would expend their energies against his resolute formations and that Scottish courage and determination would cause them to lose heart as had happened with
