Randall Wallace - Braveheart

Longshanks and his generals sat in their saddles, arrayed for battle, banners flying, pikes at attention, faceplates lowered, all ready for battle. And yet they waited. There was no hurry at all. Longshanks was anxious to see the battle begin, but he waited — precisely because he wised to see it. Until the mists lifted, he would not begin.

It was not long before the winds began to rise. Banks of fog, like low clouds, drifted before their eyes, then opened to reveal the Scots streaming into the plain before them. Longshanks studied the schiltrons that had so decimated his last army. He marveled at them. Fourteen-foot spears. Such a simple idea. Yet no one had ever tried it before. Because it took courage to stand there before the charge, stand and believe the idea would work when no one had ever seen it work before.

He stood across the field and in the lifting mists he saw the man who had lit the fire of faith and courage and had spread it among his people: William Wallace, alone now on his horse, watching his army move forward.

Longshanks lifted his visor so that his voice could be heard by all around him. “Whatever else happens today, I want William Wallace. Dead or alive. But I want him.”

With a wave of his royal hand, Longshanks sent his army forward.

Wallace saw Longshanks through the break in the mists, saw him stretch forth his long thin arm and wave his troops forward. Longshanks, his enemy, within sight. He could see the king’s cold hatred in the slow, almost languid deliberateness of the gesture. So many men on both sides being sent to their deaths with a dispassionate wave that said, “I am king; it is my will that you give your lives to my purposes, so let us get on with it.”

Wallace spurred his horse down to join Stephen among the ranks of the Scottish swordsmen, behind the schiltrons. “Do you see them yet?” he called, reining to a stop besides his Irish friend.

Stephen was scanning the mists all around the edges of the field. “No, I….. Wait, there!” Wallace looked in the direction Stephen pointed, and sure enough, Stephen was right: moving up toward the schiltrons were blocks of crossbowmen.

The bowmen were still far out of range, even with their new weapons. Stephen shouted for his men to hold their positions; the cavalry would charge them first, then the infantry, hoping to confuse the crossbowmen and diffuse their fire. With Scots bearing down on them from two directions, the Englishmen with their unfamiliar weapons would surely break and run.

But as the crossbowmen marched nearer and the stillness of impending battle descended upon the fields Wallace heard a haunting noise. “Do you hear that?” he said to Stephen.

Stephen nodded and strained harder to peer through the veil of mist. There, behind the bowmen, he saw the blocks of Longshanks’s infantry, wearing kilts and marching to bagpipes. Irish troops.

Stephen of Ireland stared at the approach of his countrymen. Wallace spurred his rose up beside him. Stephen lowered his eyes, ashamed. “So that’s where Longshanks got his solders,” Stephen said. “Irishmen, willing to kill Scottish cousins for the English.”

“Their families are starving, Stephen. They’ll feed them however they can. If you don’t want to fight them –”

“No, I’ll stand with you.”

Stephen raised his eyes. They were bright with tears. He drew his sword and walked to the head of the Scottish infantry. Wallace was sue he would never see him alive again.

“Hamish!” Wallace shouted toward the schiltrons. “Do you see them?”

“Aye!” Hamish shouted back. Then he called to his father, and the two Campbells stepped in front of the formations of spearmen. They gave a signal; the long pikes bristled into the air, and the formations started forward toward the enemy. Hamish glanced back at Wallace; both men knew the spearmen were the bait here. When they had discussed their strategy around the campfire the night before, Hamish had said, “As soon as we move forward, William, you must ride to the rear of the battlefield. If this feint with the schiltrons doesn’t work, we will be butchered and there is not one thing you could do about it. So at least let me know, know, when we try it, that if it doesn’t work, you’ll still be alive. For our hopes will live only as long s you do.” Wallace had nodded even while feeling he could never deserve such a fiend. Now, as he saw Hamish and his father lead their most loyal Highlanders into battle, William dismounted from his horse and drew his broadsword. He took a place among the Highlander swordsmen, looked back at Hamish. Hamish’s blue eyes were burning bright. His brows knotted into a furious knot. Then he threw back his head and laughed.

He was still laughing as he quickened his step and marched toward the awful weapons of their enemies.

Wallace watched it all unfold in the slow ballet of the battle, the schiltrons moving forward like great lumber animals, the crossbowmen still as coiled serpents, waiting to strike wit their deadly fangs, it was mesmerizing….

But the bowmen were holding their fire.

Wallace scanned the enemy lines and ran to Stephen. “Look just there, riding in from the left!” It was the English heavy cavalry advancing as they had done at Stirling.

“The cant be that stupid to attack the schiltrons again,” Stephen said.

And yet the English heavy cavalry had begun to charge, their heavy horses thundering, shaking the ground. Hamish and old Campbell saw them coming, too, and halted the schiltrons. They jabbed their spears into the earth, bracing them into their deadly trap.

“The charge is a distraction!” Wallace shouted.

“Look at the crossbows!”

Hamish and Campbell could not her him, but Stephen did, and he saw that Wallace was right. The crossbowmen had begun to run forward, intending to close the distance between themselves and their targets as everyone watched the horsemen. And even now the English knights, having learned the lessons of Stirling, were pulling up their mounts before they reached the forest of spears. The horses wheeled and raced back toward the English lines as the crossbowmen stopped, closer than they had been before, and fired their first volley.

They fired hurriedly. The hailstorm of bolts slashed through the air in unison. The bolts fell just short of the front ranks of the schiltrons.

Wallace was waving frantically to Mornay with the Scottish cavalry. Mornay was looking right toward the action, and yet he did nothing! The crossbowmen were reloading; Wallace was screaming. “Charge! Charge them!”

Mornay tugged his reins and led his cavalry away. One by one, like a necklace of gemstones falling from a jilted lover’s hand into a depthless loch, the cavalrymen vanished from the hilltop.

Wallace and Stephen watched in silence as they were abandoned.

Beneath the cluster of royal banners at the center of the English army, Longshanks and his officers saw Mornay and his cavalry melt away. The English general, surprised himself at this development, looked at Longshanks. “Mornay?” the general asked.

“For double his lands in Scotland and matching estates in England,” Longshanks told him.

Wallace and Stephen looked on in agony as the crossbowmen unleashed another volley. The Scottish spearmen, bunched in a tight group, were helpless. The bolts cut through their helmets and breastplates like paper. The Highlanders who has seen Mornay ride away now looked to Wallace. With rising panic, through the wide eyes of the betrayed, they watched as he ran to his horse, leaped up onto its back — and charged alone toward the enemy.

With wild screams, Stephen and the Scottish swordsmen raced behind him.

The English heavy cavalry surged to meet them. Desperate to reach the bowmen, Wallace wove through the cavalry, first steering his horse at an angle across their line of charge, then cutting back before they could shift their heavy lances; he dodged in, slashing with his broadsword, cutting down one knight, then another. The Scottish infantry clawed in after him, dragging down the horses, hacking their riders then running on, following Wallace.