, and how
could there be a rising {262} without nobles? So he despatched a small
force to straighten things out. But a few weeks later, Edward himself
was in Scotland with an army. Wallace was besieging the Castle of
Dundee, when he heard that the King was marching on Stirling. With the
quick instinct of the true military leader, he saw his opportunity. He
reached the rising ground commanding the bridge of Stirling, while the
English army of 50,000 were still on the opposite side of the river.
When the English general, seeing his disadvantage, offered to make
terms, Wallace replied that his terms were "the freedom of Scotland."
The attack made as they were crossing the bridge resulted in the panic
of the English and a rout in which the greater part of the fleeing army
was slain and drowned (1297). Baliol had been swept from the scene and
was in the Tower of London, so Wallace was supreme. But in less than a
year Edward had returned with an army overwhelming in numbers, and
Wallace met a crushing defeat at Falkirk. We next hear of him on the
Continent, still planning for Scotland's liberation, then hunted and
finally caught in Glasgow, dragged to London in chains, {263} there to
be tried and condemned for treason. Had they condemned him as a rebel
and an outlaw there would have been justice, for these he was. But a
traitor he never was, for he had never sworn allegiance to Edward. He
had fought against the invaders of his country, and for this he died a
felon's death, with all the added cruelties of Norman law. He was
first tortured, then executed in a way to strike terror to the souls of
similar offenders (1304). But his work was accomplished. He had
lighted the fires of patriotism in Scotland. The power of his name to
stir the hearts of his people like a trumpet-blast, is best described
by the words of Robert Burns: "The story of Wallace poured a Scottish
prejudice into my veins, which will boil along there till the
flood-gates of life shut, in eternal rest." To be praised by the bards
was the supreme reward of Celtic heroes. What did death matter, in
form however terrible, to one who was to be so remembered nearly five
centuries later by Scotland's greatest bard?

We are accustomed to regard the name of Bruce as the intensest
expression of a Scottish nationality, and of its aspirations {264}
toward liberty. But it had no such meaning at this time. The ancestor
of the family was Robert de Bruis, a No