![]() ![]() William Wallace may have been a realperson, but "Braveheart" owes more to Prince Valiant, Rob Roy and MadMax. Gibsonis not filming history here, but myth. Gibsondeploys what look like thousands of men on horseback, as well as foot soldiers,archers and dirty tricks specialists, and yet his battle sequences don't turninto confusing crowd scenes: We understand the strategy, and we enjoy thetactics even while we're doubting some of them (did 14th century Scots reallyset battlefields aflame?). Just from a technical point of view, "Braveheart" does abrilliant job of massing men and horses for large-scale warfare on film. It fits in with the whole glorious sweep of "Braveheart," whichis an action epic with the spirit of the Hollywood swordplay classics and thegrungy ferocity of "The Road Warrior." What people are going toremember from the film are the battle scenes, which are frequent, bloody andviolent. Robert the Bruce, meanwhile, may have been hesitant to wage war against the English, but he never betrayed William Wallace, and certainly not in battle.Wallace'sdying cry, as his body was stretched on the rack, was "freedom!" Thatisn't exactly based on fact (the concept of personal freedom was a concept notmuch celebrated in 1300), but it doesn't stop Gibson from making it his dyingcry. The Scottish cavalry did indeed desert during that unexpected conflict, but there's no evidence the nobles were bribed rather, it's likely they were demoralized, and simply abandoned the battle rather than face inevitable defeat. The Battle of Falkirk is more interesting, however, with some of the details in Braveheart matching up. ![]() That particular figure never even appears in Braveheart. Ironically, this wasn't Wallace's strategy it's credited to Andrew de Moray, another Scottish military leader who died shortly after the Battle of Stirling Bridge. The bridge served as something of a funnel, neutralizing the superior numbers. Wallace's army was positioned at one side of a bridge, with the English forced to stampede across it. In the real world, the genius of William Wallace's tactics lay not in the use of long spears-a common tactic-but rather in the choice of battlefield. The most egregious is the Battle of Stirling Bridge for one thing, there's no sign of a bridge in the film. The Wallace Sword may not be genuine, but it is of huge symbolic importance.īraveheart even gets its battles wrong. This is the first time the sword is known to have been associated with the Scottish hero - was the soldier deliberately telling a tale for these English visitors?" In truth, though, this particular element of historical inaccuracy is entirely understandable. One of the soldiers in the garrison told them it was Wallace's. ![]() This sword was seen at Dumbarton Castle by the famous poet William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy when they toured Scotland in 1803. As historian David Caldwell told the BBC, " The so-called Wallace Sword is actually a type of Scottish sword that dates to the late 16th century. ![]() Wallace would never have worn blue face-paint it's associated with the Picti, and would have fallen out of fashion roughly 1,000 years before his time.Įven William Wallace's legendary blade is wrong, albeit inspired by the Wallace Sword that's on display in the National Wallace Monument in Stirling. English soldiers wouldn't have worn the kind of standardized uniforms seen in Mel Gibson's Braveheart for centuries, while the Scots' kilts are equally ahistorical. Braveheart is no more historically accurate when it comes to portraying the clothing and weapons of either the Scots or the English. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |