History Buffs: Braveheart

Hello and welcome

history

lovers, my name is Nick Hodges and I'm excited to give you the review you've all been waiting for on Braveheart. If there's one movie that can make a

history

buff absolutely furious, it's this one, it's incredibly accurate and it hurts. That I say this because I love this period of history and to see almost everything stripped down and condensed into Hollywood nonsense is simply outrageous and I'm not talking about a few inaccuracies here and there, almost all of the information provided is completely false, which is why I had I have to make an extra long review to cover as much as possible unfortunately, although I couldn't cover them all so I apologize if I left out anything important, so without further ado, I think this is Braveheart.

To be honest, I'm one of the only people who isn't a big fan of this movie. I'm actually surprised why it won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, because it's a pretty generic, run-of-the-mill action-adventure story. We've all seen it time and time again, I mean, we start with the protagonist who simply wants to live a quiet life on his farm, in peace and harmony, insisting on being a reluctant pacifist while his country is on the brink of collapse. war. cultivate and, God willing, a family, actually, what am I talking about? This is a generic, run-of-the-mill Mel Gibson movie.

If you ask me if I am willing to go to war with England, then the answer is definitely no. it's because the next thing that always happens is the English come in, kill your family and therefore force you to take up arms against the English in the name of freedom, he is literally a precursor to the patriot, he even shares some of the same bloody dialogue. when I had a chance to kill Englishmen, let's be honest, do I get a chance to kill some redcoats? In that case, you can forget about this movie, even if you try to be precise, here we go again with another case of classic Hollywood making concessions with history.

To drive this stupid cliché plot he was a man of peace who lived on a quiet farm in North Dakota until one day all hell broke loose. We need you. I am a man of peace. I'm done killing. I want to raise a family. It's just that Tim, they have your family. I can't be the only one getting tired of these over-the-top movies that play fast and loose with historical facts and by fast and loose I mean totally making things up after all, it's not enough to just stick it to English Mel Gibson also had to stick it to the Englishman's wife and yes, I am totally justified in making fun of my romantic subplot because Princess Isabella could have been having an affair with William Wallace since she was nine years old at the time of his death and was still living in France, so, a unless William Wallace was a teleporting pedophile, then I struggled to see how this is possible.

Seriously, this movie is so full of inconsistencies, in my eyes, what we set up in a magical kingdom with dragons. and things out there and it probably would have made more sense the question of historical accuracy of Braveheart is something that always makes me laugh when we are creating something, when we are in the business of telling stories, we are in the process of creating myths for which the audience the listeners are as crucial as the speakers respond to the story in a certain way I wasn't looking to describe facts or numbers or quantify William Wallace I wanted to capture a spirit and a feeling I had had when movies had changed my life oh really so why Why didn't you use that same approach when you wrote and directed We Were Soldiers for real?

How come that film was handled in a respectful and mature way with its historical source material, but in Braveheart he? he wanted to capture a spirit or a feeling or some other nonsense, what I find funny is that he was totally aware of this when he wrote the script from the beginning of the film, one of the first lines defends Braveheart from ridicule, almost as if was bait. Let him try, the historians of England will say that I am a liar, but history is written by those who have hanged heroes. Well, I accepted the challenge, my friend, because I certainly do.

I'll give you my reasons. Oh, before I leave you. They said I'm only picking on this movie because I'm English, I just know that my paternal side of the family descends from the Inch Robertson clan, one of the oldest clans in the Scottish Highlands, so as you can see here on this. and, terribly embarrassing, photographing me when I was 14 years old. I now wear my clan's tartan. I certainly take my Scottish roots very seriously, but you'd have to be a special kind of stupid if you think this movie does too, so it starts in 1280 after the death of the Scottish king Alexander III and no way, wait, that doesn't sound right, sorry guys, let me look this up real quick.

King Alexander's Shower from 6 July 12 39 to 19 March 12 86 are You're kidding, they couldn't even get the bloody dates right, you know, for a film that's supposed to celebrate Scottish history. They severely lack credibility so far, what excuse could they have for screwing up so early in the movie? Historians of England. I'll say I'm a liar oh shut up in 1286 the future of the kingdom of Scotland became uncertain under King Alexander the thirds died in a riding accident the problem was that he died leaving no male heirs and things only got worse when his granddaughter Margaret of Norway died in 1219, as he was Alexander's last heir.

A stiff competition arose among Scottish nobles over who would be the next king of Scotland and 14 of them claimed the throne when things began to look like they could escalate into war. civil war the Scots made a terrible mistake asking the English king Edward the first to mediate had now been watching the situation in Scotland develop like a hawk looking for any sign of weakness nobles The nobles are the key to the door Oscar now in the movie King Edward is portrayed as a brutal man and that is really a fair description. I mean, he was a conqueror.

He had Fortin a pin from the English Civil War on crusades and military campaigns in Wales and France and here arose this perfect opportunity to expand his kingdom with Scotland. King Edward graciously accepted this request for arbitration and between the two most popular claimants to the crown, who were Robert the Bruce and John Balliol, John Bailey OBE was chosen as the new king of Scotland, but on the condition that he recognize the king Eduardo and will swear loyalty. him as Lord High, the feudal superior of the Scottish kingdom, the Scots reluctantly accepted in 1292, but it was not long before they regretted that decision because King Edward began to take advantage by demanding homage to have legal authority over their king. and charging heavy taxes. them and requiring the Scots to provide military service for England's war with France to the Scots, this was unacceptable and they pressured King John Balliol to make an alliance with France instead.

The Scots then launched a pre-emptive attack and invaded England attacking Carlisle Castle on 12 March. In 1296, unsuccessfully, I might add, in response, King Edward invaded Scotland and made the people of the barracks on the tweed an example for the Scottish attack on Carlisle. He sacked the city and massacred about 8,000 people, almost the entire population of the city. Edward's army pushed further into Scotland taking Dunbar Edinburgh and eventually agitated at the castle. King John was eventually captured, stripped of his titles and imprisoned in the Tower of London. King Edward installed English viceroys to rule Scotland and just over a year later William Wallace's rebellion began in 1297.

Now you may be wondering. Hey, wait a minute, that doesn't make sense because the movie implies that the English had occupied Scotland for decades. Now is our chance. If we unite, we can win. If we win well, then we will have what none of us have. We've never had a country of our own before, either this is sloppy writing or William Wallace is being melodramatic. I like to think it's the former, as I wouldn't like to imagine William Wallace, Scotland's hero, being too stupid to tell the difference between 2. After years and two decades, not much is known about William Wallace.

I can honestly say that he has been one of the most difficult historical figures I have researched so far. He's almost like he's the Scottish version of Robin Hood, as he's been built up over the centuries. as a mythical figure and this movie certainly doesn't give us an idea of ​​who William Wallace really was because the story was largely based on a poem called Wallace written by a man called Blind Harry in 1470, he wrote about William Wallace 165 years later of his execution, the problem is that this was not written to be a historical record, but to intentionally romanticize William Wallace to make him larger than life, literally and figuratively, even describing William Wallace as a giant.

I owe. Wallace is six feet tall. tall, yes a man kills men was 100 and if you want, he consumed the English with fireballs from his eyes, involved some lightning bolts from his ass, although the movie ignores this, you should know that blind Harry actually described William Wallace as seven. feet tall and that is not the only inaccurate exaggeration he made and this was because Blind Harry's poem is written as a piece of propaganda and was commissioned by Scottish nobles at the time of the disturbed conflict between England and Scotland to stop to the Scottish king James III. for making peace with England, so combine that with Randall Wallace, the screenwriter of Braveheart, and you have a movie based more on fantasy than truth, so let's start with who William Wallace really was in the movies, portrayed as a commoner or a farmer, someone who is basically very poor and lives off the land, however, he was actually the son of a minor nobleman named Alan Wallace who never spent a day of his life doing farm work or any other type of manual labor, most He likely spent his childhood training to be a man-at-arms and received military training, these skills proving extremely important even before Scotland's war for independence.

Records show that he was a younger son and in those days the eldest son would inherit the father's estate, so William Wallace's career options would have been very limited. He could join the church or go serve in the army and there was a strong theory that he may have served as a mercenary in King Edward's war in Wales. His personal steel had an archer's badge, so now he could have been an archer. Again, this is just a guess, but this military experience helps explain how Wallis was able to lead a successful resistance movement against the English, much more than just taking some sword fighting lessons from his uncle.

Learn how to use this little master to use this. What you need to know about William Wallace is that he may also have been an outlaw before the war began in 1296. There is a record of him and an English soldier stealing a barrel of ale from a lady's house. Typical behavior of the saying. I know, but I wanted to know. Point out the difference between the real Wallis and the infallible version that we see in the film but it is faster, you can see how he goes from being a common thief to the savior of Scotland in just one year and this takes us to the Atlantic rebellion in the film William Wallace secretly marries a Coumarin peasant girl and the reason for this is to prevent the English from imposing a medieval custom called prima nocta from coming to claim the rights of prima nocta as Lord of these lands.

I will bless this marriage by accepting the bride. my bed on the first night of their union, first of all I just want to let you know that prima nocta never really existed, at least there is no evidence that the English ever enforced this, most likely it is just a myth medieval similar to chastity. The belt can marry a chastity belt, it's on everline, so the next thing that happens is that English Captain Wallace's wife was abandoned for assaulting the King's soldiers and the sheriff of Landok slit her throat to provoke William. Wallace will attack. Now this gets a little complicated, but I.

We will try to keep it as simple as possible in the Blind Harry poem, it is mentioned that William Wallace's wife was called Marian Braids Foot and not Marin as in the movie and when she died at the hands of Sheriff William de Hessel rig was what caused William Wallace's uprising in the first place and motivated him to fight now it is true that this uprising actually took place and Wallace along with his supporters attacked the English garrison and killed the sheriff, however, the reason why it is actually a little mysterious since Marian Bradford never existed. and Wallace never had a wife in the first edition of Blind Harry's poem, there is no mention of Mary and Bradford, but she somehow appears in the later edition of the Wallace written a hundred years later, the reason for this was because Anne rests inthe Bailey aquatic family. de Lamington paid someone to include Marion's cerebral foot in the poem so they could claim to be her descendants.

This was quite common practice at the time and it's this version that seems to have inspired Braveheart, so if there wasn't a braided Marion foot, why? Did William Wallace attack the English garrison like I said? No one really knows for sure, but there are a few theories, one of which is that Wallace was actually under the orders of another man named Richard de Lundy, who organized the attack. Another being there could have been on a land. he disputes when the English confiscated the Wallace family's lands and doing so would effectively make them outlaws if that were the case.

I'm sure William Wallace felt that he had nothing to lose against the country and now his family was under the threat of English oppression. So after his attack on LAN ik, the Scots began to flock to him and hoped that the time had finally come to fight for their freedom, the Angus, how do you raise an army with your stomach through the normals? Raleigh Road, build momentum but most others won't compromise the battle but spread further and the Highlanders are facing their own challenges and high and low bogies are you ready for a war so now we?

We're in the Battle of Stirling, okay, so let's get the obvious stuff out of the way before we get to what's really wrong with this battle. I just want you to know that Scott until the 13th century did not wear blue face paint in this era. It is obviously taken from a fierce tribe called the Picts who lived in Scotland and fought the Romans over a thousand years before Stirling when they paint their faces in the blue world it is more than just a decoration it is a sacred right for pigs it means they would rather die rather than fail.

I seriously doubt that the strongly Catholic Scots would want to affiliate themselves with their pagan ancestors in any way. Another thing I should obviously mention is the Scottish twinbee kilts who wear kilts and sterling or in fact anywhere up to the 17th century they would actually wear very similar clothing and armor to their English counterparts but here they are wearing kilts with little to no armor against a fully armored English army and by some miracle they realize they are wearing practically nothing and something. Many of them don't even carry real weapons, honestly, what is that? It's a stick, look friend.

I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I don't think you're taking this very seriously, okay? I'm not dying for these possums, come on. Glad to see this guy has some common sense, at least far away, hope you know him well enough. Gibson has to give a speech first. This should be good, then they can take our wife, but they will never do it despite having no armor, being outnumbered, and being in bad shape. being ill equipped it is through the power of freedom for us scots to win the day if only the native americans believed in freedom then maybe they would have won I guess they didn't believe in freedom enough let me see this there is no tact whatsoever In this battle , the Scots against the English meet in an open field and just crash into each other and finally somehow the Scots win, okay enough of that crap, how did the Scots win really well?

The biggest inaccuracy that still needs to be mentioned is that the Battle of Stirling is actually called the Battle of Stirling Bridge and yet no bridge is found even though this bridge played an extremely important role in the victory of this battle. Unlike the movie, the Scots actually use smart tactics instead of smart speeches and They chose to fight at Stirling because of its strategic importance if they wanted to conquer the highlands and had to cross the Stirling bridge, which was wooden and extremely narrow, only wide enough to allow the English to cross two by two on September 1.

On the 11th of 1297, an English army of 10,000 men began the excruciatingly slow process of crossing the bridge without realizing that the six thousand Scots hid in the woods to the north and waited until 1/3 of the army crossed the bridge before attack, taking the English completely by surprise. The knights and their heavy armor were confined and had no freedom of movement on the slippery mud. The Scots were able to pull them off their horses and cut them into pieces. William Wallace's men were also able to take control of the bridge, blocking access to The English escaped and received reinforcements, having nowhere to go, they attempted to swim across the river, but due to their heavy armor many of them drowned, the battle It ended within an hour and William Wallace and the Scottish rebels were victorious after the Battle of Stirling.

The film shows William. Wallace is knighted and declared guardian of Scotland, he is the de facto leader, second only to the king, and then declares his next move to gain his country's independence. We have defeated the English, but they will return because they will not unite, what will they do? will invade England and defeat the English on their own ground, he was actually knighted and became a warden only after his invasion of England and I should also mention that during his invasion he never came close to York, the reason for this is because It was hundreds of miles away from Scotland and without constant supplies and professional siege equipment, he would have had no chance of taking the city, so he began a looting and burning campaign attacking English towns just south of the Scottish border.

Eventually, King Edward returned from his campaign in Flanders to deal with William Wallace by personally leading an army of 12,000 men and 2,000 mounted knights against Wallace's army of 8,000 men and only a few hundred nobles as his cavalry. Oh, by the way, I just want to quickly point out before we get into In the actual battle there was no incident of the Irish recruits shaking hands and switching sides to the Scots. I can't think of any other reason for this to be included in the movie other than the filmmakers wanted to give the English the finger anyway during the English heavy.

Cavalry Wallace had his men adopt a new formation called shelter in their pikemen were arranged two to four giant circles for their long pikes extended outward bristled like a hedgehog if any cavalry charged them, this is what would happen for a while, this The tactic worked by forcing the English knights to keep their distance, but at some point during the battle the Scottish nobles fled, leaving William Wallace and his men in their faces. Now in the film this is presented as a sinister betrayal involving a bride of King Edward, but most likely they simply saw this battle as unwinnable.

I mean, there were only two to three hundred mounted nobles facing two thousand English knights, so they probably just didn't see the point in fighting for a lost cause. Hey, I mean the noble death. Useless nobleman. death on the other hand, yes I'm sure they saw the same thing too, so once the Scottish nobles fled was when King Edward unleashed his new secret weapon, the longbow with Wallace's Shelton exposed and vulnerable that our cavalry supports, the English archers could. to advance at almost point blank range and unleashed a hail of arrows that decimated the Scots, the boys finally collapsed and as the Scots fled, the English heavy cavalry charged and cut them down.

Kirk was a total defeat and the Scots were wiped out and One last thing to mention was that when William Wallace fled the battle, there was no big reveal of Robert de Bru's portrayal of William Wallace as he wasn't even in the battle To be fair, although in the movie Robert Bruce was known to switch sides, he never betrayed William Wallace directly because if he had, why would William Wallace give up his Guardian of Scotland in September 1298 in favor of Robert Will the Bruce take his place? So the next thing that happens in the movies is that we see Wallace go on a revenge killing spree. of the Scottish nobles who betrayed him in the filthy Kirk and I think it's pretty obvious by now that that didn't happen either because William Wallace had more important things on his mind, like liberating his country, rather than taking a little revenge that he didn't did it.

It solves nothing, so William Wallace leaves Scotland on a diplomatic mission to France to meet with King Philip and ask for French support. This continues for years, but ultimately proves fruitless in the end, in 1304, Wallace returns to Scotland to continue the fight until he is finally captured by the English and taken to London in 1305. You are tainted with high treason against whom against your king. Do you have anything to say in my entire life? Did I swear loyalty to him? Isn't it metal? He is their king shortly after William Wallace was found. guilty and was sentenced to death it was quite notable that this is the part of the movie they actually toned down how horrible his execution really was.

You said the guy who would go on to direct one of the most gruesome torture movies of all time would jump at this opportunity, so I'll tell you, but keep in mind that this is pretty graphic: First he was dragged naked through the streets behind a horse, he was then hanged almost to death before being freed, then his genitals were cut off and his belly was cut open and his entrails were removed before finally being decapitated when his arms and legs were cut off and each limb was shown standing in Newcastle Barrack and in Perth, his head got caught on a pike on London Bridge, so with all this they did to him.

Do you really think he was capable of shouting this stupid line? I'm a little dubious of everything I have to say that Braveheart does a terrible job of betraying Scottish history and I personally feel that its countless inaccuracies actually demean what William Wallace was, in my opinion, the real man and his great deeds. interesting than the infallible figure of Jesus that is presented on screen and it disheartens me to think that there are some people who will walk away from this movie thinking that all this actually happened well, that's all, my name is Nick Hodges and thanks for watching the history fans and remember if you like the show it helps the channel grow, don't forget to hit the like button and subscribe and let me know in the comments section what you thought of Braveheart and of course what historical movie I will be reviewing next.

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