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30-474: The stone bridge was constructed on rubble foundations around 1500 and replaced earlier wooden bridges, including that on which the Battle of Stirling Bridge was fought. The bridge originally had arches at either end and a defensive gate at the end nearer the burgh. Tolls were levied on goods being taken across the bridge. In December 1745 General Blakeney , lieutenant governor of Stirling Castle , had one of

60-587: A cradle, bound on a beam, to loose the pin when Wallace let him know by blowing a horn when the time was come. No one in all the army should be allowed to blow but he himself. Hugh Cressingham leads on the vanguard with twenty thousand likely men to see. Thirty thousand the Earl of Warren had, but he did then as wisdom did direct, all the first army being sent over before him. Some Scottish men, who well knew this manner of attack, bade Wallace sound, saying there were now enough. He hastened not, however, but steadily observed

90-405: A turn that I used to strut in raptures up and down after the recruiting drum and bagpipe, and wish myself tall enough that I could be a soldier; while the story of Wallace poured a Scottish prejudice into my veins which will boil along there till the flood-gates of life shut in eternal rest. The Battle of Stirling Bridge is depicted in the 1995 film Braveheart , but it bears little resemblance to

120-516: The Battle of Stirling Bridge by an heroic escape. Over 100 English knights had been trapped, together with several thousand infantry, on the far side of the river, and were being slaughtered by the Scots. Thweng managed to fight his way back across the bridge and he thus became the only knight of all those on the far side of the river to survive the battle. Following the rout, Thweng with William FitzWarin were appointed castellans of Stirling Castle by

150-714: The Wars of Scottish Independence . The son of Sir Marmaduke Thweng of Kilton and his wife Lucy de Brus. His mother was the great, great-granddaughter of Adam de Brus, Lord of Skelton brother to Robert de Brus, 1st Lord of Annandale , Thweng was also a vassal of Robert de Brus, 6th Lord of Annandale by virtue of the latter's fief in the North Riding , ties that would have far reaching effects during his career. In 1295 he fought for King Edward I in Gascony , along with John de Thweng. In 1297 Marmaduke achieved some fame at

180-469: The Bruce ; only then was he prepared to surrender, and only to the victorious King. Robert recognised Sir Marmaduke and released him and Ralph de Monthermer , also captured, both without ransom, but not without first entertaining them at table. Thweng married Isabel de Ros, daughter of William de Ros of Ingmanthorpe , and had several children, including: His three sons each succeeded to the barony in turn;

210-464: The English infantry. They gained control of the east side of the bridge and cut off the chance of English reinforcements to cross. Caught on the low ground in the loop of the river with no chance of relief or of retreat, most of the outnumbered English on the east side were probably killed. A few hundred may have escaped by swimming across the river. Marmaduke Thweng managed to fight his way back across

240-438: The English leader John de Warenne, 6th Earl of Surrey . The castle was quickly starved into submission, and Thweng and FitzWarin were taken prisoner to Dumbarton Castle . He was summoned to Parliament in 1307, thus becoming Baron Thweng . At the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314, however, after the English defeat, Sir Marmaduke apparently made no attempt to escape. Instead he wandered over the battlefield until he located Robert

270-439: The English losses in the battle as 100 cavalry and 5,000 infantry killed. Scottish casualties in the battle are unrecorded, with the exception of Andrew Moray, who was mortally wounded during the battle, and was dead by November. The Lanercost Chronicle records that Wallace had a broad strip of Cressingham's skin, "...taken from the head to the heel, to make therewith a baldrick for his sword." The Scots proceeded to raid

300-425: The Scots. According to Walter of Guisborough , Wallace reputedly responded with, "We are not here to make peace but to do battle to defend ourselves and liberate our kingdom. Let them come on and we shall prove this to their very beards." Camped on Abbey Craig , the Scots dominated the soft flat ground north of the river. The English force of English, Welsh and Scots knights, bowmen and foot soldiers camped south of

330-729: The Scottish landholders were made to acknowledge Edward's overlordship . In 1297, Moray initiated a revolt in northern Scotland and by the late summer, controlled Urquhart , Inverness, Elgin, Banff and Aberdeen. Wallace joined Moray in September near Dundee , and they marched to Stirling. Stirling, in the words of Stuart Reid , was "traditionally regarded as the key to Scotland." Meanwhile, Surrey had joined Cressingham in July and both had arrived at Stirling by 9 September 1297. By then, Moray and Wallace had already occupied Abbey Craig . Surrey

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360-467: The advance until he saw Warren's force thickly crowd the bridge. Then from Jop he took the horn and blew loudly, and warned John the Wright, who thereupon struck out the roller with skill; when the pin was out, the rest of it fell down. Now arose an hideous outcry among the people, both horses and men, falling into the water. (...) On foot and bearing a great sharp spear, Wallace went amongst the thickest of

390-601: The bridge arches destroyed to hinder the movement of the Jacobite Army . The destroyed arch was rebuilt in 1749. In May 1833 the adjacent new road bridge was opened to traffic and the Old Bridge was closed to wheeled traffic. The bridge was designated as a Category A Listed Building in 1965. Battle of Stirling Bridge 5,300 to 6,300 men 9,000 men 100 cavalry killed The Battle of Stirling Bridge ( Scottish Gaelic : Blàr Drochaid Shruighlea )

420-484: The bridge with some of his men. Surrey, who was left with a small contingent of archers, had stayed south of the river and was still in a strong position. The bulk of his army remained intact and he could have held the line of the Forth, denying the Scots a passage to the south, but his confidence was gone. After the escape of Sir Marmaduke Thweng, Surrey ordered the bridge to be destroyed, retreated towards Berwick, leaving

450-490: The entire English army to cross. Wallace and Moray waited, according to the Chronicle of Hemingburgh , until "as many of the enemy had come over as they believed they could overcome". When a substantial number of the troops had crossed (possibly about 2,000) the attack was ordered. The Scots spearmen came down from the high ground in rapid advance and fended off a charge by the English heavy cavalry and then counterattacked

480-460: The fleeing soldiers were killed. The Stirling Bridge of that time is believed to have been about 180 yards upstream from the 15th-century stone bridge that now crosses the river. Four stone piers have been found underwater just north ( 56°07′45″N 03°56′12″W  /  56.12917°N 3.93667°W  / 56.12917; -3.93667 ) and at an angle to the extant 15th-century bridge, along with man-made stonework on one bank in line with

510-519: The garrison at Stirling Castle isolated and abandoning the Lowlands to the rebels. James Stewart , the High Steward of Scotland, and Malcolm, Earl of Lennox , whose forces had been part of Surrey's army, observing the carnage to the north of the bridge, withdrew. Then the English supply train was attacked at The Pows , a wooded marshy area, by James Stewart and the other Scots lords, and many of

540-469: The most able workman there, he [Wallace] ordered him to saw the plank in two at the mid streit [middle stretch], so that no-one might walk over it. He then nailed it up quickly with hinges, and dirtied it with clay, to cause it to appear that nothing had been done. The other end he so arranged that it should lie on three wooden rollers, which were so placed, that when one was out the rest would fall down. The wright, himself, he ordered to sit there underneath, in

570-762: The piers. The site of the fighting was along either side of an earthen causeway leading from the Abbey Craig , atop which the Wallace Monument is now, to the north end of the bridge. The battlefield has been inventoried and protected by Historic Scotland under the Scottish Historical Environment Policy of 2009. Surrey left William de Warine and Sir Marmaduke Thweng in charge of Stirling Castle, as Surrey abandoned his army, and fled towards Berwick. The contemporary English chronicler Walter of Guisborough recorded

600-660: The place until ten thousand were slain. Then the remainder fled, not able to abide longer, seeking succour in many directions, some east, some west and some fled to the north. Seven thousand full at once floated in the Forth, plunged into the deep and drowned without mercy; none were left alive of all that fell army. As well as the bridge ploy, Wallace's use of a spear appears to be a fictional element. A two-handed sword [claidheamh dà-làimh, in Gaelic, more commonly claidheamh-mòr or claymore meaning great sword], purporting to be Wallace's, which may contain original metal from his sword blade,

630-444: The press and aimed a stroke at Cressingham in his corslet, which was brightly polished. The sharp head of the spear pierced right through the plates and through his body, stabbing him beyond rescue; thus was that chieftain struck down to death. With the stroke Wallace bore down both man and horse. The English army although ready for battle, lost heart when their chieftain was slain and many openly began to flee. Yet, worthy men abode in

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660-410: The real battle. Significantly, there is no bridge in the movie (due mainly to the difficulty of filming around the bridge itself), and it replaced the tactics of the battle with ones resembling the Battle of Bannockburn . Marmaduke Thweng, 1st Baron Thweng Sir Marmaduke Thweng (or Tweng , Thwinge etc.), later 1st Baron Thweng , was an English knight from Yorkshire who fought in

690-530: The river. Sir Richard Lundie, a Scots knight who joined the English after the Capitulation of Irvine , offered to outflank the enemy by leading a cavalry force over a ford two miles upstream, where sixty horsemen could cross at the same time. Hugh de Cressingham, King Edward 's treasurer in Scotland, persuaded the Earl to reject that advice and order a direct attack across the bridge. The small bridge

720-401: The size of the participating armies. Nevertheless, his highly dramatised and graphic account of the battle fed the imaginations of subsequent generations of Scottish schoolchildren. Here is his description: On Saturday they [Moray and Wallace] rode on to the bridge, which was of good plain board, well made and jointed, having placed watches to see that none passed from the army. Taking a wright,

750-523: The south as far as Durham, England . Wallace was appointed " Guardian of the kingdom of Scotland and commander of its army." Yet, Edward was already planning another invasion of Scotland, which would lead to the Battle of Falkirk . The exploits of Wallace were passed on to posterity mainly in the form of tales collected and recounted by the poet Blind Harry , the Minstrel (d. 1492), whose original, probably oral sources were never specified. Blind Harry

780-498: Was active some 200 years after the events described in his The Acts and Deeds of the Illustrious and Valiant Champion Sir William Wallace , c. 1470. The tales were designed to entertain the court of James IV (r. 1488–1513) and are undoubtedly a blend of fact and fiction. Like most of his other episodes, Blind Harry's account of the battle of Stirling Bridge is highly improbable, such as his use of figures of biblical magnitude for

810-434: Was broad enough to let only two horsemen cross abreast but offered the safest river crossing, as the Forth widened to the east and the marshland of Flanders Moss lay to the west. The Scots waited as the English knights and infantry, led by Cressingham, with Sir Marmaduke Thweng and Sir Richard Waldegrave, began to make their slow progress across the bridge on the morning of 11 September. It would have taken several hours for

840-508: Was concerned with the number of Scots he faced, separated by a long causeway and narrow, wooden bridge, over the River Forth near Stirling Castle . Determining that he would be at a tactical disadvantage if he attempted to take his main force across there, he delayed crossing for several days to allow for negotiations and to reconnoiter the area. On 11 September, Surrey had sent James Stewart , and then two Dominican friars as emissaries to

870-597: Was fought during the First War of Scottish Independence . On 11 September 1297, the forces of Andrew Moray and William Wallace defeated the combined English forces of John de Warenne, 6th Earl of Surrey , and Hugh de Cressingham near Stirling , on the River Forth . In 1296, John de Warenne, 6th Earl of Surrey , defeated John Comyn, Earl of Buchan in the Battle of Dunbar . King John Balliol surrendered to King Edward I of England at Brechin on 10 July, and

900-542: Was kept by the Scottish kings and is displayed as a relic in the Wallace Monument . The potency of these tales can be gauged from the following statement by the poet Robert Burns , writing some three centuries after they were first related. The two first books I ever read in private, and which gave me more pleasure than any two books I ever read again, were The Life of Hannibal and The History of Sir William Wallace [a modernised version of Blind Harry by William Hamilton of Gilbertfield ]. Hannibal gave my young ideas such

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