#anyway PLEASE GOD ask me about stuff. history or caesar lore or anything idk. thank you for asking me this

[the-casbah-way]

Will you do me a favor and rant about anything you want?

omg ok let me tell you about andrew moray and why william wallace ended up getting credit for his military victories when moray was in fact a far better soldier and tactician who would likely be even more infamous than wallace had he survived the battle of stirling bridge. i will preface this by saying that there is very little research let alone primary sources on this man but he's been an interest of mine for a decade now and i hope to publish a book on him when i graduate. anyway

i always say that william wallace was the churchill of the scottish wars of independence. what i mean by this is that he was seen as a fantastic war time leader at home; as far as we know and can assume he apparently had a way with words and winning people over, and knew how to keep up morale among the people and the soldiers. now while churchill did have military experience, he wasn't really suited for anything other than wartime office. he didn't have what it took for anything that lay outwith being the voice and face that people needed during a war. and similarly wallace was (supposedly) a great orator and exactly what the people needed during a time of hardship, but he really didn't have what it took to do much else. in this case what i mean is that william wallace was not, in my opinion, a particularly strong military leader at all. there's no evidence that he had any military training and his tactics in battle don't always seem particularly strong or well thought out to me. in the leadup to stirling bridge he got by and did well, but i absolutely stand by the notion that this alone was just not enough. he needed a true soldier to secure him his victory at stirling

ENTER ANDREW MORAY. now this guy was born and trained to be a knight. as the son of an influential nobleman he almost certainly received formal military training when he was young. not long before the battle of stirling bridge he and his father were imprisoned by the english but moray managed to escape. the fact he was able to do this and also somehow get back to scotland is already pretty telling of his survival skills i would say. he started up a pretty successful rebellion in the north of scotland and was clearly a real threat to the english if their correspondence among each other is anything to go by. i won't go into too much detail but moray managed to get a lot more done in the north with less support than what wallace achieved in the south with the aid of the feudal leaders there. moray ended up combining his army with william wallace's to fight the english at stirilng in 1297

now we do not know every detail of this battle of course and i want to make it clear that i'm not trying to state any concrete facts here. but when you look at the tactics deployed at stirling bridge (the idea of 'trapping' the english and ambushing them rather than moving to fight in schiltron formations on open ground), we see a game plan FAR MORE reminiscent of the fighting style of a trained and experienced knight; not the usual tactics of wallace. again that's just a little theory of mine, but i think it's very notable

now here's where things go to shit. the scots win at stirling bridge, but moray is wounded in battle and dies. there's no doubt in my mind that he was the driving force behind the victory at stirling, and i think it is EXTREMELY telling that after his death william wallace's military career began to rapidly decline. he lost his first major battle (falkirk) after moray's death (surprise surprise, by using the schiltron formations that were pointedly avoided at stirling) and while this is in part due to the advantages of the english army i think it's worth noting. this loss had a profound impact for wallace and he never fully recovered, dying around seven years later or so

i am fully convinced that if moray had lived everything would've turned out entirely differently. maybe wallace himself would've survived longer too. wallace just did not have the background and skills needed to maintain his pattern of success. he and moray made the perfect double act and without moray there just wasn't enough left to keep the scots standing. moray never received any of the credit he deserves for his role in the war and the fact that almost no one has even heard of him infuriates me because he was SO MUCH BETTER as a military commander than wallace. but i have always said in regards to history that people want a good story more than they want the truth. they'd rather hear about the rebellious underdog who came from nothing and took a more unconventional path toward victory than a bog standard knight with formal training and a textbook background. but i still think moray could've been a lot more than wallace was if he'd survived at stirling, and i think the fact that he's more recently been referred to as 'the greatest threat to the english government' during his time is telling. i hope one day i can access the sources i need to be able to write more about him because i WILL become the Token Andrew Moray Historian if it is the last thing i do