You've actually seen this battle, halfway through Braveheart. But contrary to whatever you think Mel Gibson taught you, William Wallace was not five-foot-nine, the Scots did not fight in kilts and the Battle of Stirling Bridge was actually fought on a bridge.



Mel had the bridge cut from the scene, claiming it was too "Jew-y."

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The Battle of Stirling Bridge was fought on Sept. 11, 1297, we're guessing to the full knowledge of King Edward's equivalent to Dick Cheney. England expected Scotland to be such a pushover that they only bothered to outnumber them five to one -- 8,000 to 10,000 soldiers against 2,000 Scottish infantry, and 1,000 to 2,000 cavalry units against 300 Scotsmen on horses.

Please note that we said "Scotsmen on horses" as opposed to actual cavalry, since Scotland didn't have the expensive, quilted armor that made heavy cavalry the Sherman tanks of their time. All the worse for the Scots, they were up against English longbows, literally the most feared weapon in the world until the arrival of the goddamn repeating rifle 600 years later. All the Scots really had going into this battle was the that fact they were Scotsmen.



And that was enough.

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Oh, and William Wallace, who by the way is described in the chronicle Scotichronicon as "a tall man with the body of a giant." Wallace knew there was no way his men could face the English cavalry on even terms, but his solution was as crazy as it was brilliant: They stood in a square formation, the best for minimizing the impact of the feared longbows, and forced the English into a choke point -- the narrow Stirling Bridge.

The bridge was only wide enough for two mounted units to cross at one time, so the Scots effectively forced the English into the tactic that bad guys always use against Batman -- line up and attack one or two at a time.