Who won the Battle of Stirling Bridge?
Scotland won a decisive victory at Stirling Bridge in September 1297, when a Scottish army under William Wallace and Andrew Moray routed an English army, destroying its vanguard as it crossed a narrow bridge over the River Forth a few men at a time. It was the first great victory of the Scottish Wars of Independence and made Wallace a national hero.
In September 1297 a Scottish army led by William Wallace and Andrew Moray routed an English army at a narrow bridge over the River Forth near Stirling and destroyed its vanguard. As the English crossed the bridge only a few at a time, the Scots swept down, seized the crossing, and cut the enemy army in two. Stirling Bridge was the first great victory of the Scottish Wars of Independence and made Wallace a national hero.2
Scotland under English rule
In 1296 Edward I of England had overrun Scotland and stripped it of its king. Within a year a rising spread across the country, led in the south by William Wallace and in the north by Andrew Moray, who joined forces to face an English army sent to crush them.3
Who were William Wallace and Andrew Moray?
William Wallace came from a minor landed family in Ayrshire or Renfrewshire and began his rising in May 1297 with an attack at Lanark. Andrew Moray, heir to a baronial family in the north, escaped from English captivity and raised the northeast. In the summer of 1297 they joined forces and commanded together at Stirling Bridge.4 › Greatest Escapes in Military History
Moray and his father had fought at Dunbar in April 1296 and were both taken prisoner. The father died in the Tower of London; the son, held at Chester Castle, escaped and by May 1297 was back at Avoch on the Black Isle, where supporters gathered around him. He went on to take control of many of the castles of the northeast. Wallace's modest rank made the great nobles wary of him, Historic Environment Scotland notes, but it was no obstacle for Moray. Undiscovered Scotland goes further, calling Moray in many ways the senior partner and observing that the only major battle Wallace ever won was the one he fought in joint command with Moray.5
Moray was badly wounded at Stirling Bridge and died of his wounds some weeks later. The exact date is unknown: letters sent in October and November 1297, among them the surviving Lübeck Letter, still carry both names, so he is usually thought to have died in November. Historic Environment Scotland's battlefield report gives November 1297 in one passage, but elsewhere says only that he appears to have died before the end of the year.6
The trap at the bridge
The English army under the Earl of Surrey reached Stirling, where the only crossing was a narrow wooden bridge over the River Forth, wide enough for just a couple of horsemen abreast. The Scots drew up on the high ground beyond and waited, letting part of the English army file across before striking.7
Where exactly was the Battle of Stirling Bridge fought?
The battle was fought on 11 September 1297 at the wooden bridge over the River Forth below Stirling Castle, in central Scotland. The English camped on the south bank, while the Scots waited to the northeast at the foot of the Abbey Craig, the hill now crowned by the National Wallace Monument.8
The bridge stood at the bottom of a great horseshoe loop in the Forth. From its northern end a causeway ran across flat, soft ground toward the Abbey Craig, so an army that crossed found the river on three sides of it and ground ill suited to armored horses under its feet. The timber bridge of 1297 has not survived; the present Old Bridge, built in stone in the late 15th or early 16th century, stands close to its site. According to Historic Environment Scotland, stone piers thought to belong to the medieval bridge were found in 1905 about 60 meters upstream, and the heaviest fighting may have taken place where the Stirling County rugby ground lies today, on the edge of the suburb of Causewayhead.9
How many soldiers fought at Stirling Bridge?
No reliable count survives. Modern estimates for the English army range from about 6,700 men, the figure Historic Environment Scotland works with, to the 8,000 to 12,000 given by Britannica, and one estimate puts the Scots at a similar size. Walter of Guisborough's figures of 50,000 English and 40,000 Scottish foot soldiers are regarded as gross exaggerations.10
Guisborough credited the English with 1,000 horse and 50,000 foot and the Scots with 180 horse and 40,000 foot, yet in the same account he describes the battle as the many delivered into the hands of the few. Modern historians start from firmer ground. In July 1297 Cressingham reported to Edward I that he had mustered 300 horse and 10,000 foot, and that army is likely to have shrunk before September. On this basis Armstrong reckons the foot could have fallen to about 5,500 by September, and Reid, following the same reasoning, puts the English at little more than 6,000 foot and 300 horse, as Historic Environment Scotland summarizes. Reid puts the Scottish foot at a similar size, most of them, perhaps 4,000 to 5,000, raised by Moray in the north, with Wallace bringing about 1,000. The English army combined knights and men-at-arms with foot soldiers, Welsh archers and crossbowmen drawn from the garrison of Stirling Castle; the Scots fought mostly as spearmen, with some archers and a small mounted force.11
Losses are just as uncertain. Guisborough counts about 100 men-at-arms and 5,000 foot soldiers killed, 300 of them Welsh, and Britannica likewise gives around 5,000 English dead. Working from the smaller figures of Armstrong and Reid, Historic Environment Scotland arrives at roughly 1,650 English dead in the battle itself, before the pursuit. No source records Scottish losses, apart from the wounding of Moray.12
The bridge becomes a killing ground
When enough of the English had crossed, the Scots charged down and seized the bridgehead, trapping the vanguard on their side of the river. The rest of the army could neither reinforce nor rescue them across the narrow span. The trapped force was cut to pieces, and Hugh de Cressingham, Edward I's treasurer in Scotland, was killed. Guisborough describes men thrown headlong from the bridge and drowned as they tried to get back, and others escaping by swimming the river, while Sir Marmaduke Thweng cut his way back to the bridge with his men. The Earl of Surrey, who had stayed on the south bank, ordered the bridge destroyed and rode hard for Berwick. As the English fled, James the Steward and the Earl of Lennox, who had been negotiating with the English, fell on the fugitives with men hidden in nearby woods and took the baggage train, Guisborough says.13 › Battle of Flodden, 1513
Why did the English lose at Stirling Bridge?
The English commanders, the Earl of Surrey and Hugh de Cressingham, sent their army over a bridge so narrow that only two horsemen could ride abreast, in full view of a Scottish army waiting on higher ground. The Scots struck once part of the army had crossed, and the rest could not reach it.14
Walter of Guisborough, whose chronicle gives the fullest contemporary account, describes a divided and hesitant council of war. According to him, a Scottish knight named Lundie who had gone over to the English warned that crossing the bridge would be fatal and offered to take 500 horse and a small body of foot over a nearby ford, wide enough for sixty men abreast (forty in some manuscripts), to fall on the Scots from behind; the council refused to split the army. Guisborough also blames Cressingham, who had earlier turned away reinforcements to save the king's money and now urged Surrey to stop wasting it and attack. He even claims that Surrey overslept on the morning of the battle, a story Historic Environment Scotland considers unlikely and probably meant to discredit him. Whatever the truth of these details, the ground did the rest: once over the bridge, the English stood on flat, soft land inside a loop of the river, with the Scots between them and the only way north.15
What happened to Hugh de Cressingham's skin?
English chroniclers say the Scots flayed Cressingham's body. Walter of Guisborough wrote that his skin was cut into small pieces as an insult rather than kept as relics, and the Lanercost chronicle claimed that Wallace “caused a broad strip to be taken from the head to the heel, to make therewith a baldrick for his sword.” The belt story is best treated as legend.16
Cressingham was Edward I's treasurer in Scotland and was hated for the taxes he raised to fund the king's war with France. English writers had little sympathy for him either: Guisborough wrote that the Scots called him not the king's treasurer but his “treacherer,” adding that this was truer than they knew, and Peter of Langtoft blamed his tight hold on the royal purse for desertions before the battle. Langtoft also reports that his skin was taken off in small pieces. All of these accounts were written by monks in the north of England, a region that had suffered from Scottish raids, and Historic Environment Scotland advises reading them with that in mind. The National Wallace Monument presents the sword belt as a legend, and Historic Environment Scotland's own blog calls it a rumor.17
Wallace ascendant
The victory cleared the English from much of Scotland. In the autumn Wallace led a raid deep into Northumberland and Cumberland, and early in 1298 the castles of Dundee and Stirling surrendered. With Moray dying of his wounds, Wallace was knighted and chosen Guardian of the kingdom, still acting in the name of the exiled King John Balliol. Stirling Bridge endures as an emblem of Scottish freedom, and the National Wallace Monument now crowns the Abbey Craig where the Scots waited.18
What happened after Stirling Bridge?
Edward I came north in person and crushed Wallace's army at Falkirk on 22 July 1298. Wallace gave up the guardianship and spent time in France. He was captured near Glasgow on 5 August 1305, condemned for treason in London on 23 August and put to death the same day.19
He had been handed over by the Scottish knight Sir John Menteith. In London he was hanged, drawn and quartered, and his head was set on London Bridge; according to the National Wallace Monument, his limbs were sent for display in Newcastle, Berwick, Stirling and Perth. Looking back, the historian G. W. S. Barrow judged, as summarized by Historic Environment Scotland, that Stirling Bridge was not decisive in the long run but was a severe shock to the English: an army of mounted professionals had been beaten by infantry, five years before the better-known Flemish victory at Courtrai in 1302, one of the battles in our guide to the greatest medieval battles.20
The road to Bannockburn
Stirling Bridge proved that the English could be beaten, but the war for Scottish independence lasted another three decades. In time, leadership passed to Robert the Bruce, crowned king in 1306, who rebuilt the cause through years of guerrilla warfare. In 1314, close to the same bridge, his army defeated Edward II at Bannockburn, and in 1328 the Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton recognized Scotland's independence. Stirling Bridge was the first great Scottish victory on that long road. To test what you know about the wars of this era, try our medieval battles quiz.21
Is Braveheart accurate about Stirling Bridge?
No. Braveheart stages the battle on an open field with no bridge at all, although the bridge was the whole point of the Scottish plan. Historic Environment Scotland calls the scene cinematic license that the contemporary chroniclers do not support, while noting that the film has kept the battle far better known than many later ones.22
Smithsonian Magazine also points out that the film leaves out Wallace's fellow commander, Andrew Moray, entirely. Nor does the Scottish tradition offer firmer ground: Blind Harry's poem The Wallace, written in the late fifteenth century, is treated by Historic Environment Scotland as a work of hero worship whose accuracy is doubtful.23
