The Badass Chronicles, Pt V (Speaking of Claymores...)

...Who else?



Braveheart, The Guardian of Scotland, The Highland Terror, the man who inspired a revolution and took back a nation, paving the way for a brief and glorious time when it was free and independent. Hollywood tried valiantly to portray him and did a decent job, mostly thanks to Mel Gibson who actually tried to understand his role. But still, Hollywood in all its special effectual glory could capture the true, sheer Chuck-Norris-like qualities of this hairy Highlander.
The story starts at William's birth in Elderslie, Scotland. His exact birth date is unknown. He was the son of Malcolm Wallace, a knight and landowner in Scotland. Malcolm had fought in many wars and taught young William about courage, respect, honesty and charity among other things. Malcolm had been a linebreaker in the Scottish army, meaning he would dress in heavy plate armor and run at sheer walls of enemy pikes, breaking the spears with a two-handed sword so that the rest of the infantry could charge without being gutted. The survival rate for linebreakers was under 10%, so Malcolm was quite a man himself. I suppose it takes someone like that to raise someone like THAT. William spent the first part of his life in relative quiet, working physical labor peacefully at his inherited farm near Elderslie.
Fairly recently Edward I had brutally overthrown Scotland's government through a combination of arms and political maneuvering (hooray for politicians), and forced every Scot to sign the 'Ragman's Roll,' a declaration of fealty to him and to the Government. Wallace refused to sign, a fact that should have come into play later.
The first account of Wallace metaphorically making large men cry took place 5 years before his open rebellion. According to Blind Harry, the first bard to put Wallace's actions into words, Wallace had been fishing along the River Irvine when a squad (six) English soldiers approached him and demanded the entire catch. Wallace offered them half. Their leader raised a steel gauntlet to strike the fisherman. Bad bloody idea. Wallace struck him with the fishingpole, then took his sword and killed the other five. When he was done, he sat back down and continued fishing. There is no record of any disciplinary actions toward Wallace, meaning he buried those bodies deep.
Something happened in May of 1297. Exactly what set Wallace off like a spark on gasoline is unclear. Most scholars think that it was either the execution of his wife, or the wife of a friend, under the orders of the local English Sheriff, a man named William Hesselrig. Every romanticist on earth loves to think that it was his wife, Marion Braidfute, and I have to say that is a lot more fun. Whatever caused it, it was bad. Very bad. After taking his father's old two-handed claymore from storage in a cottage thatch roof, he began by performing what was called 'Wallace's Larder,' in which he took the soldiers in the town of Elderslie, and, one at a time, Rambo-like, killed them silently. There were probably around a dozen of them.
Step two was simple. In the early hours of the morning Wallace scaled the walls of the English castle garrison with his bare hands and single-handedly killed every English soldier within the walls of Lanark Castle. There were probably somewhere from 20-30 armed men. He found the sheriff, the man supposed to have killed his wife/friend's wife, and put him at blade's edge. He is recorded to have said "I am Wallace, die, Hesselrig." before running him through and lobbing off his head. He then lit the castle on fire, and walked out the front gates, leaving a blood-soaked courtyard behind him.
After this came the real question: "Well, that was fun. What now?" So Wallace elected to take back his home country from the greedy imperialists' hands. Taking everyone he could to him, Wallace fled to the woods where he and his small band set up camp and began a guerrilla warfare campaign. The hit-and-run tactics of the Viet Kong, Mongols and early Picts before him served well. Wallace's band would cut a single squadron of English soldiers to pieces, disappearing into the thick Highland mist before reinforcements could arrive.
Recruits came in droves, hundreds flooding into the woods to join the man they percieved as their savior, and if ever there was a man to be idolized as a hero, it would be Wallace. Standing above 6'6" tall, broad as a barn and hairy as a goat, wielding a two-handed broadsword with one hand like a fencing foil, he was really quite imposing.
Their first real battle came at Stirling Bridge. Wallace advanced up from the south, where he met Andrew Murray, another Scottish freedom fighter, from the north. The two joined forces, creating a small but daunting army for the advancing English. Wallace was a smart man and, though not brilliant, a decent tactician. He ordered the cutting of thousands of simple pikes, long spears of twelve, fifteen feet and by destroying several bridges, forced the English to meet him on Sterling Bridge, a small but sturdy wooden bridge, wide enough for two horses to walk abreast, no more. This was a brilliant move as the English relied heavily on their cavalry, which could no longer charge.
When the two armies faced each other, however, that is exactly what Edward I tried to do. He ordered a charge of heavily armored horsemen, the backbone of the army, their tanks. Wallace's men stood several hundred feet from the bridge, their pikes on the ground.The chargers formed as best they could once across the bridge and charged the Highlanders. "Hold," Wallace yelled, keeping the men from snatching up their spears for the security of arms. The chargers grew closer, gathering more speed. "Hold!" he yelled a second time. "Hold!" he yelled once more, and when "He could see the fear in their eyes" he yelled the command to raise spears. All men reached down and held their pikes in front of them, digging in their heels and forming an impenetrable wall of steel and ashwood. The horses and men were impaled like kabobs, and the main force of the English army was desecrated. The Scottish pushed toward the bridge, cutting down what was left of the knights and riders and taking the main battle to the center of the bridge. There they were commanded to hold as the English forces charged them as best they could. The fighting was close and dirty. Pikes thrust at the English ranks from the Scottish side, and arrows whipped at the Scots from the other bank. Wallace fought in the thick of it, wielding "A sword that seemed fit for archangel, light in his terrible hand." Finally, as he had predicted, the bridge collapsed and the pikes were able to work more fully. By the end of the day the English had thoroughly sore rears.
The Scots took casualties as well, nearly a third of their forces were gone, and Andrew Murray had been killed in battle, but they had forced the English to retreat back to where they had come from, and now the job of securing borders, castles, docks, villages etc. fell to the rag-tag army.
And this is where the story turns from triumph to "tactically not-so-bright." Wallace, having reclaimed Scotland, pushed father south into England, far into England in fact, intent on besieging London, some say. The English pushed back until Wallace was backed deeper into his homeland. Wallace decided to meet them at Falkirk moor, where the English could more effectively use their heavy mounts. Two divisions of cavalry circled around the Scots, who were keeping their pikemen at the center of formation. The cavalry drove off the Scots' archers and what few horsemen they had, but could not break the spearmen. Finally the pikes were cut to ribbons by the English archers and the battle was lost.
Wallace himself retreated into the woods as he had done before, then went to France to rally support. He returned to Scotland and was betrayed by a member of his band and captured. He was transported to London, where one of the five greatest trials the world has ever seen, according to one author, was preformed. Wallace was charged with treason, along with a thousand and one other rediculous charges that only the English could trump up.
"...did burn old women inside of churches and eat children alive, did slay priests and murder infants... a runaway from righteousness, a robber, a committer of sacrilege, an arsonist and a murderer, more cruel than Herod and more debauched in his insanity than Nero".
But chief among his charges was that of treason. In reply, he said:
"I could not be a traitor to Edward, for I was never his subject." (He never signed the Ragman's Roll, and otherwise considered himself a free man) "Freedom is true, and we shall not live like slaves." And although not all of the speech survives, it is reported to have been a heartbreaking ode to freedom and the rights of men.
Freedom from the tyrannical government, the rights of men above the law...sounds almost, revolutionary, don't it?
He was executed painfully in a drawn out, public ceremony. I shall not go into detail for the sake of innocent eyes and squeamish stomachs.
And that was the end of William Wallace, and the Scottish Revolution. The end, that is, for a few years, until Robert the Bruce took up the fallen standard of Saint Andrew's Cross and freed Scotland more permanently. Scotland's fighting clans resurfaced like a swimmer emerging from suffocation water, the revolution was reborn more furious and determined than ever, pipes blaring, swords waving. Bruce drove a dying Edward I out of Scotland. Edward died gasping with his last breath that "Scotland was his" although it had just been proven that no, Scotland belonged to the Scots.
Before Bruce's greatest battle, Bannockburn, he gave no great speech, merely turned to his men and said "You bled with Wallace, now bleed with me."