Wake Up With The Battle Of Stirling (BRAVEHEART)

Pound for pound this is my favorite battle scene in any movie. Probably because I lost my Major Battle Scene virginity to this one and it's always special to me. But it's also because this one is completely bad ass. The gold standard of open field combat, if you will. It's also extremely fucking long. Although some people would say the Battle of Helms Deep is also very long, there's a lot of interspersed editing of Merry & Pippen with the ents. This is just balls to the walls combat and that's what I love about it. 

In reality, the battle fo Stirling was significantly different that what's portrayed here on the big screen. In reality, there was a large bridge separating the Scots & the English forces near the town of Stirling. The Scots were on the north side of a river, the English on the south. To fight, one force had to cross this large but narrow bridge bridge to get to the battle field. And because the English were such arrogant stupid fucks, they just thought they'd cross the bridge and steamroll the Scots when they got to the other side. This seemed easy because the Scots were downplaying their size and force during the negotiations. After about a week or so, the English were like fuck it, we're crossing that bridge and murdering those damn Scots. 

Only problem is the bridge was only wide enough to fit 2 horses at a time. So it literally took hours for the English to try to cross the bridge and this is how the Scots absolutely murdered them. They waited til about 2,000 of the 9,000 total soldiers made it across the bridge, and then they came down in droves and absolutely slaughtered the English. The remaining thousands on the other side of the bridge started freaking out. There's some rumors that the bridge was destroyed in parts, making it impossible to retreat or advance. The end result = over 60% of the English forces were KILLED. Not captured or turned away or anything. I'm talking fucking killed in close quarter combat with swords and axes and shit. 

They couldn't figure out how to film the bridge scene in Braveheart and figured it would be too hard to explain so instead we get them using the shaved wooden spears to murder all those horses. That was really sad but like I said this scene is fucking awesome. 

Let's have a week.