Fact or Fiction E01 Braveheart

anyone who's ever read a detective story knows that appearances can be deceptive just over 700 years ago this innocent piece of land was witness to a brutal murder that changed the course of Scottish history forever in May 12 97 the sheriff of Lenox of William Hester rig was hacked to death here by young Scottish Patriot his name William Wallace or as we've come to know him Braveheart Wallace was a legend a national hero but I've come here to try to find the man behind the legend if you've ever watched the movie Braveheart forget it it's a great piece of entertainment but not an accurate guide I've come to Central Scotland to find the truth about wallace underneath schools and factories housing estates lies a trail of blood but whether it leads to a hero or a villain depends on where you come from Wallace was the first Scottish champion in the vicious Wars of independence from England he's a Scottish icon to this day but he was certainly no saint Wallace was a freedom fighter par excellence and was there for his country when he's contributed them he is accused of getting choirs or naked Englishmen and women singing for them this was this was particularly dreadful he was an underdog a second son or an unimportant knight and yet he had something in him which people responded to he must have been an extraordinary man he we should never have heard of William Wallace and we might not have done except for an accident of history when Wallace was born there was no war with England Scotland was prosperous life was good then disaster struck the night of the 19th of March 1286 was storming the Scottish King Alexander the third had been causing the function in edinburgh castle late at night and probably the worse for wear he ignored his courtiers advice and insisted on returning home to King Hall on the other side of the Firth of Forth he just married a beautiful French princess half his age in driving rain as its darkness he set off along the coastal path but whether it was a midlife crisis or a noble desire to perform his kingly duties it was the death of him somewhere along the way it's been lost him his horse stumbled and fell later on he was found here with his neck broken 600 years later the Victorians put up this monument to mark the event it says without a hint of irony that it was erected on the sexton scenery of his death seldom as libido proved so costly when Alexander's only heir also died Scotland was thrown into crisis powerful rival factions took to arms and the country slid towards civil war without a leader it was gonna be chaos a king is gonna have to be chosen there's nearly God choose kings but in this case is gonna have to be some sort of earthly intervention it couldn't happen within Scotland cuz that would imply the Scottish nobility or superior to the King it's got to be a great international figure and Edward the first Scotland's nearest neighbor great reputation in Europe he's the man to do it they'd asked the wrong man Edward the first was a ruthless expansionist he'd already annexed Wales and Ireland the crisis gave him the chance to bring Scotland into his empire under the pretext of preventing civil war Edward took control of Scotland at NorAm castle he made the Scottish Nobles acknowledge him as their feudal overlord the medieval equivalent of Mafia dons acknowledging a supreme boss it meant that when John Bailey was named king he was Edward puppet the wild Scottish Nobles caved in common people remained defiant resistance leaders emerged from nowhere throughout Scotland there the spontaneous attacks and behaviour occupying forces it's about this time the tales of a fierce young Scot called William Wallace began to circulate one typical story has Wallisch fishing in a river when suddenly five English soldiers turn up and demand his catch and while it says you must be joking but offers them half anyway one of the English soldiers is so furious but the mere jocks should give him cheek he draws his sword and lunges at Wallace Wallace immediately parries with his fishing pole snatches the man's sword and locks his head off then he kills two of the other soldiers before the others escape who was this Wallace everyone was asking we still don't know what he looked like these pictures are from much more recent times the only clues we have to his appearance are the accounts which tell of an arrow scar and his neck and a general agreement that he was enormous perhaps six foot six or more he was also much younger than this about 26 but where had he come from well a Scottish chronicler called blind Harry tells us that the de Wallis family which means they were originally from Wales settled in Elders Lee just south of Glasgow on the flimsiest of evidence the good old Victorians did what they do best and erected a monument but now archaeology has backed up tradition so what would have been on this side when Wallace was alive well this is the site where Wallace Faso the lay of day and there would have been our fortification here there was an archeological dig done in 1998 there's a hedge that runs right during the site here and it shows the outline of the original wooden palisade that would have surrounded the fortified property when you say fortified property what would it have looked like a there would have been a whole host of some sort either made of timber or stone it's surrounded by a wooden palisade and this path that but actually walking on it this movement actually is on the site of the ditch as I see there was a dig done here in 98 which I saw and the ditch still actually exists it's carved out of solid stone and it's right under this path and which we're walking right now so what does that mean about Bruce's family and behalf of Alice's family and middle class I would see you were looking at it in a more than theorem you would see middle class up on middle-class perhaps so in 1270 it would have looked something like this on the raised ground was the northeastern corner of a fortified hamlet run by the Wallace family they were minor Nobles descended from the Norman aristocracy and although they would have thought of themselves as Scottish they would probably still have spoken French within the family but here's the weird thing the only record of Wallace's youth tells us that he was taught by monks and was going to be a priest it's possible because the church was a traditional option for minor nobility without land to inherit but the only physical evidence we have suggests Wallace was embarked on a less pious career we know from the seal that was discovered a few years ago that has a ball in the middle of it that Wallace probably saw himself first and foremost as an archer now that probably didn't mean he was a soldier necessarily it may have been a bit on the porch Inge side of things on the on the hunting of of deer but yeah he had he would have had to make his his own way he wouldn't have any lands given to him and I don't think there's any evidence in fact pretty clear he didn't have any lands himself so he's got to make his own way it's likely then the Wallace was a bit of a tearaway who came good when history gave him a cause once Edward the first had his hooks into Scotland he never gave up in 1296 after repeated humiliations his puppet King John Balliol rebellion the Scots assembled an army and raided northern England it was just the excuse edward was looking for he marched north this is barek on tweed today it's in England of course but 7 centuries ago it was one of the most important and prosperous towns in Scotland as it would move forth spoiling for a fight with the rebellious Scots the people of beric gave him the perfect opportunity for one some English merchants had been murdered here and their goods pillaged by the locals Edward decided to make an example of them the massacre that followed shot even the partisan English chroniclers of the time it word unleashed thousands of trained killers on an unsuspecting band of lightly armed civilians it wasn't much resistance you see that land rover over there we'll just beyond it it was a building called the red tower and some Belgian merchants hold up their firing arrows and they killed Edwards cousin so eventually he personally ordered their deaths by having them burnt alive but it wasn't just Edward who wanted blood soon the cry rang out from the whole army a vamp havoc which means plunder plunder that's where we get our word have up from it would have been mayhem the men would have been automatically killed the women raped first The Chronicles say the slaughter lasted three days and only stopped when Edward saw one of his men hacking a woman to death she was actually in the process of giving birth they say that half the population of beric was slaughtered and that the River Tweed ran red as the bodies piled in the massacre at barrack was just the beginning Edward crushed the Scottish army shut up John Bailey L in the Tower of London and took the Stone of Destiny the symbol of Scottish kingship back to Westminster where it remained for 700 years it seemed like total capitulation the story goes that when Edward was leaving Scotland he turned to the Earl he was about to put in charge and said to him Bombay's well fete Keaton made the delivery in other words the guy who gets rid of is doing a really good job edwards thought that he got rid of the problem of scotland he thought that by conquering the nobles he was conquering the people but he was wrong as william wallace was about to make very clear edward the first thought he'd taught the Scots a lesson but the slaughter of beric had exactly the opposite effect all over the country spontaneous opposition broke out then in 1297 william wallace burst onto the scene but according to the chronicles it wasn't the public atrocities at barrack that brought him into the limelight but a private grudge here at Lana The Chronicles tell the story of how Wallace fell in love he saw a maiden at mass here instant Kent against church and was instantly smitten she was marrying Bradford from nearby lamington the story goes the Wallace carried on a clandestine love affair and eventually married Marian but the English sheriff of lanit William Hessel rig also had his eye on Wallace's girl when Wallace got into a skirmish with Hessel rich men before they could arrest him Marian helped him escape into the hills in revenge and full of lustful hate Hessel rig had Marian killed hearing of the slaughter Wallace returned under cover of darkness to wreak his revenge there's hardly anything left of Lanna castle today Lana thistle bowling club occupies the site of Hessel Riggs stronghold Ethel read wouldn't have expected Wallace to return but he did in May 12 97 he and his men probably slipped into town in ones and twos and then joined up ready for their revenge the attack was Swift and terrible Wallace went straight to the sheriff's house surprising him in his bed one blow of his enormous sword went straight through the sheriff's skull down to his collarbone death would have been instantaneous the young follower made sure by stabbing the inert body three times then the Scottish Raiders went on the rampage killing the English at will sparing only women and priests the killing of Hester rig is the first documented reference we have of Wallis but the love story may well be fiction after all Wallis was now Laurent the sheriff was the local judge maybe Wallace simply killed him to avoid prosecution for some other crime it could be that he was already beyond the law that he was a kind of an outlaw he'd been poaching he may even be on the beam beyond Scots law and and maybe he was someone on the wrong side of the tracks who sort of made good because war broke out and because of his success legends stick to Wallace like glue he's an archer and he kills the local sheriff now at that time stories of other fugitive noblemen like Robin Hood were hugely popular we know that Wallace's Maid Marian only appears in later versions of the story maybe the chroniclers wanted to turn Wallace into a Scottish version of Robin Hood and so they gave Wallace his Maid Marian too while we're on the subject of myths and legends this is probably a good time to admit that Wallace was never called Braveheart that's the name that belonged to that other Scottish hero Robert the Bruce after he died when his Braveheart was put into a casket and carried into battle sorry Wallace's slaying of the sheriff of lanark made his reputation people started flocking to his cause the outlaw band became a militia and then an army and at its head and nobody from elders Lee well that's it that's the key to it isn't it is the personality of Wallace and he must have been an extraordinary man he we should never have heard of William Wallace and we wouldn't have done if it wasn't for this war he obviously had leadership qualities but I think he also had that single mindedness that devotion to a cause one cause which in this case was Scottish independence that meant that he would you know there was no other way for him and I think he's just one of these extraordinary people in in history that that do extraordinary things by their own personality not by the situation that they find but Wallace wasn't alone in the highlands a young nobleman called Andrew Murray had been fighting an equally successful guerrilla campaign when Wallace join forces with Murray the rebellion became a revolution the English had to act Edward the first who was way fighting in France ordered a formidable army north to sort out the rebels firing their way to the highlands was the Mighty River forth Wallace and Marie decided to take the English on at the crossing point its name was to echo in history sterling bridge in 1297 the bridge held the key to the strongholds in the highlands graphically demonstrated by this 13th century map if the English were going to take Scotland they had no choice but to cross woloson Murray decided that a battle at Stirling Bridge was their best chance of defeating the mighty English army but it wasn't this Stirling Bridge amazingly the exact location of Wallace's greatest triumph was a mystery until recently nobody could find the foundations of the original bridge find them and you find the battleground then amateur archaeologists decided to test a local tradition that the bridge lay upstream from today's with some homegrown technology I don't understand how you ever managed to see those pillars under this water pretty murky isn't it well it is pretty mucky but dark times of the year when the fresh waters coming down and we can see and we used an old method that the pedal fish is used which was to make a bucket out of wood with a glass bottom and they could see that the freshwater mussels on the bed of the river and if you like to have a little look over the side this is issue so this is it this is a high-tech isn't oh it is it is it is but it's very effective and our son Edie if you put your head right and exclude the light here and the edge it so you can get a marvelous vision of the riverbed I should be able to see one of the piers down here somewhere yes yes yes it I've got it I think this is it yep very effective a simple solution to a frog mind rulings and it is it is it it's a not very easy to use but river vision mark - I should play some this you might make a fortune yes my never thought of that the ancient town seal from Wallace's time shows a flat wooden platform on top of eight stone piers everyone had been looking for a bridge that went straight across the river but you don't need eight piers for a straight bridge what they discovered was that the piers went across the river diagonally no one knows why but it means that the number of piers fits perfectly for a bridge that looks something like this this narrow structure was a key part of Wallace's plans the Scots had positioned themselves on the high ground on the north side of the river in 1297 this is what Wallace might have seen he and his lightly armed foot soldiers would have had a clear picture of the task that faced them looking south to the river they could see the English as they prepared for battle in the shadow of Stirling Castle accounts say that the English had brought a thousand cavalry and fifty thousand infantry to face the spears and Dirks of the rebels they outnumbered the Scots by as much as ten to one Wallace's men knew it was make-or-break English army at that time was together there's a meatiest fighting machine in Christendom Wallace must have been a dynamic leader toughing still then his men the belief that they could win and not just against superior numbers but against much more superior almonds a horse's weaponry even money and it comes down to and even although they were outnumbered Wallace used the land of Scotland itself to help the fourth looped round leaving an area of boggy ground between the English and the Scots this was crossed by a single raised causeway that followed the same course as the road does today the bridge and this narrow road caused a bottleneck the logistics of getting the sheer numbers onto the field of battle would have made for a scene like the start of the London Marathon it made some of the English Knights nervous as the nobles discussed tactics the tithe rose making the marshland even buggier delays and indecision were to prove fatal three times the English started across the bridge and three times they drew back Dominican friars were sent across to offer Wallace peace terms but the message came back we have not come for peace but to avenge our country the upstart was spoiling for a fight and the English were happy to oblige Wallace and Marie couldn't believe their luck the enemy was about to fall into their trap the narrow bridge could only take two horses at a time as the heavily armored mounted Knights rode off the causeway to form a battle line the ground became too buggy for an effective charge the English were probably expecting the Scots to wait till they'd all processed across the bridge and lined up nicely that was the etiquette of chivalry but Wallace and Marie weren't like that they were Street fighters engaged in a last-ditch attempt to save their country they waited until just the right amount of Englishmen had crossed enough to fight and enough to kill and then Wallace gave a single blast of his horn the Scots rushed out from their stronghold on the high ground beyond where that white bungalow is they attacked on both flanks and they cut off the English retreat back to the bridge with no room to form up and completely unable to maneuver the English was stuck the Scots / to the handfuls of their horses stabbed at their underbelly's and as the horses fell the english was dead meat it was the college The Chronicles report 5000 English dead the victory was against all odds native cunning and spirit had defeated numbers money and equipment the English retreated in disarray to this day Stirling Bridge is symbolic of an unbreakable sense of national pride whatever the southern neighbors may do and on the very turf where Wallace's men splashed through the mud to bring down the English cavalry a new generation of warriors struggle for pride and glory Oh vegetables makeup makeup where's the mat there is a sense of of history here I mean I believe it because I'm also the history teacher as well as the rugby coach but I sense and I think the boys feel to that this is a an ancient place it's surprising when you tell this story of the battle you could hear a pin drop because there's a sense of pride as a sense of achievement that you can sense about among the pupils sure the you know you lose the atmosphere a bit later but for that moment there are just there's something in them that they just feel yeah yeah we did this here William Wallace was a national hero but he was now on his own his partner Andrew Murray had been one of the handful of Scottish casualties nevertheless the Scottish tales were up Wallace decided to take the battle to the English the next time they saw the avenging Scott it was going to be on their own turn what was William Wallace really like well to the Scots he was the hero of Stirling Bridge the 27 year old Victor of the hated English with his partner Andrew Murray dead Wallace got all the glory and that success makes the real man harder to find the ballads and myth started almost at once the Scottish chronicles are more celebrations of a legend than objective histories I think that of various reasons why Wallace is a legend Wallace represents Scottish national resistance in a most extraordinary way I mean this this was a man who absolutely turned the tide the English seem to seem to dealt with Scotland in 1296 the Scottish nobility had capitulated John Bailey ill the King had miserably abdicated and you know there's nobody arose and Scotland rose with him and you know that that is a tremendous achievement there's no doubt of that but anyone who's ever watched a football match with rival fans knows there are always two ways of looking at any incident the English hated Wallace to them he was a terrorist who have broken the chivalrous rules of war in football terms he'd taken the penalty before the people was ready and what happened next seems to confirm that Wallace had a much darker side Boyd with his success of sterling Wallace swept into northern England it was time for the Scots to vent their fury the English chronicles are full of stories of Wallace's savagery he put monasteries to the torch and laughed as monks were drowned in front of him he slaughtered women and burnt schools with the schoolchildren inside rape torture and atrocity marked his progress through the borders he shocked an aged hardened to brutality the stories evoke contemporary parallels the English accused Wallace quite explicitly of effectively ethnic cleansing that his intention was to get rid of everyone that spoke English from the north England even the Scottish chronicles realized there was a problem they said he tried to prevent the excesses of his men defending priests at the altar on the other hand they made no bones about his hatred of all the English so was malice a national hero or a war criminal the National Wallace Monument is the great Victorian expression of his legendary status it dominates the landscape of Wallace's great triumph at Stirling Braveheart fans and Scots from all over the world including the South Florida branch of the Stewart clan come to pay homage but even here there's a grim recognition that there was little room for compromise in medieval warfare and the stated provenance executioner's would then put this through the back or the front of the head and that is your cranial spike if you knew Wallace as a person it probably wasn't the sort of guy you would like to get on the wrong side of it was probably terrifying it was probably an awful lot of people in Scotland but either feared them or hated I like the time we see him as a national hero and we see him differently but Wallace is one major inherent strength was he killed Englishmen wherever and whenever he found them that is that was his job and that's what he did not to be confused with your dispatching dagger which has two sharp edges one to the left and one to the right essentially Wallace was a man of his day the mortally wounded out of the misery by in pinching there's no doubt that he was a very bloody violent man living in a violent age and he stood no nonsense at all from enemies and butchered them soon as look at them but at the same time here's a man that was a leader people he was an underdog a second son of a an unimportant knight and yet he had something in him which people responded to and he led them he had a vision he was true to his king he was fighting for join Belial he had loyalty he had a sense of purpose a sense of achievement he had a brain that could think of strategy no I think there are many good aspects of Wallace's personality and character which you can focus on but we tried to serve them see that those days are gone now and we want to slaughter the English on his return from his campaign of terror along the English borders Wallace was knighted possibly by Robert the Bruce then Sir William Wallace was made guardian of Scotland in the absence of the King he'd been given absolute power Wallace knew the English weren't beaten he began preparations at once for the defense of the realm he put a jibbety in every major town to deal with backsliders another sign of his ruthlessness perhaps or just a desperate recognition of the scale of the expected English response pretty soon the King realized that if you wanted a job done properly he was gonna have to do it himself next time Wallace met the English army it would be led by King Edward the English wouldn't be fooled by another surprise attack so to prepare for a clash with the heavily armoured English cavalry what is invented a battlefield tactic called the shield from the outnumbered ranks of infantry would form an enormous circle of Spears so that the charging Knights would be met by a deadly giant Hedgehog as a massive English army advanced from the south while it's retreated burning fields and crops as he went his plan was to use a scorched earth policy to break the English lines of supply it nearly worked as the English army lumbered on getting hungrier there was no sign of the enemy then at Edinburgh a scout reported that Wallace was just 20 miles away in Falkirk ready to pounce if the English retreated Edward ordered a forced march at dawn on the 23rd of July 1298 the English luck changed the Chronicles tell us that as the English army was advancing up the forth they saw a flash of armor up here on the hill it was Wallace spying on his enemy but by the time an advance guard had raced up here he was gone instead down there in front of the town of Falkirk they could see the entire Scottish army preparing at last for battle no one knows why Wallace chose to stand and fight the English were almost out of food and ready to retreat perhaps he thought he might be overtaken and preferred to choose the battleground what hap Stirling have made him overconfident either way the Battle of Falkirk was to be crucial and yet incredibly no one sure where it took place the scraps of information we have from the Chronicles just refer to a hilly area overlooking boggy ground and the water course it could have been the town centre side where the park is today the rise just beyond the supermarket the farmland under calendar woods or here the memorial sites near the main Edinburgh Falkirk Road whatever the location we know the story of the day Wallace had his men arranged upon the high ground with four large circles of spearmen and in between them he had his short bowmen and behind his cavalry man ready to charge I've brought you to the ring he said to his men now dance as best you can the English cent wave after wave of cavalry across the boggy ground up the slope and onto the waiting Scottish Spears but then two things happened that changed the course of the day and the future of Wallace's reputation firstly the Scots nobility who made up their cavalry suddenly upped and left and secondly the English brought on their new secret weapon the longbow the longbows range was deadly some thought it went against the rules of war as horrific in its time as napalm as effective as a machine gun Wallis escaped with his life 10,000 of his men didn't to be feared Wallace he had planned a strategy around what the English normally do which is a major cavalry charge and that's why you got the shell terms is this Hedgehog of Spears and he had trained his men well unless and they'd been practicing for it for quite a while but what he couldn't have foreseen really was that Edward would deploy the archers in the way that he did and this is the beginning of the rise of the English Archer to such our preeminent position in the hundred years war against France in the next century they're going to win win battles and paroled Wallace got was on the receiving end of that he has planned is just that technology took over for people who know the movie it may come as a shock to know that Falkirk wasn't the end for Wallis he was to carry his fight on for seven more years before his horrific betrayal and death Falkirk was anihilation wallace escaped with his life but a reputation in tatters his loyal foot soldiers had been slaughtered by English bowmen and if blind hair is to be believed his cavalry had simply deserted him Sir John Graham was one of the few Nobles who stayed at Wallace's side his remains lie in full Kirk graveyard one of only three marked graves from 10,000 dead Wallace didn't just fight the English she also fought the threat from his own nobility possibly because of his little born status at labahn compared to the degree arrows of Scotland who were jealous of Wallace's sudden high standard in the community what are you gonna do you stay there and die are you gonna go away and live to fight again I mean it's already for us seven hundred years obviously oh it's a dreadful thing I don't think the Scottish cavalry could won that battle under not no they couldn't have done it and so I think they very wisely said let's go regroup try and think again so don't think the cavalry betrayed no I don't I think they very sensibly saw the way things were going I mean what could they hit what there's nothing we could have done what they're gonna do right down that hill into the Calvary and be and be completely massacred we've got to remember was himself survived the Battle of Falkirk unlike a lot of the men in this shelter demoted from his role as guardian of Scotland and with his troops decimated it seems Wallace returned to the land he knew best hiding out in the forests of Selkirk while he regrouped Edward the first had battered the Scots into military submission when Wallace Ria's it isn't as a soldier but as a diplomat while he was Guardian Wallace had been used to playing on the international stage while so much else has been lost incredibly we have one of Wallace's own letters he was writing to the merchants of Lubeck in Germany basically saying that Scotland was open for business now in the wake of military disaster it seems Wallace took the political initiative against the hated Edward another letter which has since been lost shows the Wallace made journeys to the king of France into the Pope to try and win political support it was the equivalent of an appeal to the United Nations at the time it was a unilateral action not backed by the nobles who were trying to appease Edward while they consolidated their position so do you think that in his later years Wallace would have been a bit of a political loose cannon like Edward Heath or Arthur Scott I think this cannon is exactly the way to describe Wallace although he does when he comes back from the continent in 1303 he does join with the rest of the Scottish nobility he's one of the leaders of the Scottish army and that's that's quite interesting he's one of many but when Scots decide when John Comyn of badness the sole guardian at that period that Scotland has had enough and that perhaps they should submit to Edward whether they thought this was only a temporary measure or not Wallis could not would not submit he's not the only one but he's the main one and and I think most of the Scottish nobility and the Scottish people it's not just the nobility a lot of the Scottish people it had enough as well and they would have thought shut up but Wallace wouldn't shut up he fought on in the way he knew best as an outlaw while everyone else including Robert the Bruce went with the flow Wallace kept one step ahead of the law he went straight to the top of Edwards most wanted list the shocking thing was when the end came that wasn't an Englishman that captured Wallace he was actually betrayed by a Scot who was an English pea but an awful lot of the problems in Scotland don't essentially was succinctly summed up by Robert bonds who said we had bought and sold for English gold in 1305 Wallace was finally betrayed to the English by this time most of Scotland's nobles were back under Edwards rule again and one of his tests of their loyalty was whether or not they were prepared to try to capture Wallace but eventually the betrayal wasn't just political it was personal the man chosen to close the trap round him was to John Menteith a particular friend of Wallace's who was godfather to his two children they surprised Wallace here at Robb Royston just outside Glasgow there was a struggle eventually Wallace was subdued and dragged south of the border to avoid any possibility of rescue 17 bruising days later he arrived in London on the 23rd of August Wallis was brought before the King's Bench at the Royal Palace of Westminster this was once the largest freestanding building in Europe in 1305 it was the intimidating setting for a show trial Wallace stood silent facing his accusers as charge after charge was read out he only spoke once when accused of treason against Edward he shouted out that he could never have committed treason as he had never given his loyalty to anyone but the rightful king of Scotland but in the end the odds were stacked against Wallace the trial was more about humiliation than justice as he stood on this spot the sentence for treason was declared Wallace was to be hung drawn and quartered strip naked and with his feet tied to the tails of two horses he was dragged through the city of London his head banged against the cobbles the London crowd pelted him with filth miraculously when he arrived here he was still conscious in those days this was known as smooth field it was just outside the city walls today we know it's a Smith field the site of the famous London meat market and here just around the back of some vast hospital they butchered William Wallace now in Wallace's case of course in in his hanging he'd be dangling there suffocate and then pack the body oh the poor thing probably using an axe take out the heart cut it up show it to the crowds now the heart would still be beating Wallace by now would be brain dead crowd is that see the heart beating because the heart will go on after brain death will go on beating for several minutes I've seen after half an hour well-known phenomenon Wallis's head was displayed on London Bridge the four parts of his dismembered body was sent to barrack Edinburgh Aberdeen and Stirling the scene of his greatest triumph to warn the Scots and that should have been that and thirty-five Wallace had died a failure his reputation as a military genius had been smashed after just nine months then for the next seven years he'd been powerless to stop Scotland falling under Edwards rule but like many heroes who died young his death sealed his immortality it's Wallace's legacy that's his lasting achievement while is his execution inspired Robert the Bruce to take on his mantle nine years later Bruce invoked Wallace's spirit before the decisive Battle of Bannockburn which established the independence the Wallace had so long Ford forms almost five centuries later Robert Burns was brought up in the same forests where Wallace used to hide out was inspired by Bruce's tribute wrote Scots where hey it's become Wallace's anthem a symbol what he represents when the foundation stone of the Wallace Monument that Stalin was led 70 or 80 thousand people turned out nadir Tasya so it meant something to people even back in the days when Scotland was seen as North Britain and anytime that Scotland's future has been called into question Wallace's shadow is there a lesser man might have simply given up but Wallace went on trying admittedly not very successfully but he remained absolutely consistent to that that Scottish cause and I think therefore it's hardly surprising that this man has become a symbol of Scottish nationalism in an utterly justifiable way he is crucial to the Scottish psyche and to to how the Scots have felt about themselves and he is the symbol of unadulterated Scotland if any mat2 symbol after see the sometimes wonder what we women really feel about Wallace but but he's very important as being somebody that we can look up to with no trace or having had any chalk with England but as a man of the people Wallace came to represent personal freedom as well as Scottish independence this is the Wallace stone at Falkirk where Wallace is said to have spied on the English miners in Scotland used to be bondsman 200 years ago the local miners released from their serfdom started a tradition which lasts to this day of marching here in the name of Wallace to affirm their status as free men I came to Scotland in search of a national hero but the man I found was much more complex and ambiguous than the well-known legendary character with his deeds of derring-do of course Wallis was a man of his time it was brutal man in a brutal age but his absolute insistence that no man or group should be able to dominate any other against their wishes makes him for me not just a Scottish hero but a universal one the information on this program or related educational resources please go to channel 4.com slash learning

Channel: Reijer Zaaijer

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Length: 48min 3sec (2883 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 05 2013