Battle of Falkirk Flashcards
Why did Wallace lose at Falkirk?
At Stirling, Wallace had placed his soldiers in large, tightly-packed groups called schiltrons.
The men had been armed with long pikes and the groups looked like hedgehogs and the English knights couldn’t fight their way past them.
At Falkirk Edward I had learned this was how Wallace would fight.
Rather than fighting the schiltrons close up with knights on horses, he used archers armed with longbows to attack them from a safe distance.
The Scottish archers used much smaller bows that could only be used close up. This gave the English archers a big advantage.
Why did the English win at Falkirk?
Outnumbered
The two armies met at Falkirk on 22 July 1298. The Scottish army was led by William Wallace and had 6,000 men. The English army had 15,000 men and was led by King Edward
Why the English won at Falkirk….
Schiltrons:
Wallace arranged most of his soldiers into four large ‘hedgehog’ groups of men with pikes and spears called schiltrons.
Why the English won at Falkirk
The Scots charge:
The Scottish knights on horses charged at the English knights but there were too many of them and they were forced to retreat
Why the English won at Falkirk
Edward ordered his knights to charge at the Scottish archers. With no Scottish knights to defend them, they had to run for their lives
Why the English won at Falkirk
Edward ordered his Welsh archers to fire on each of the schiltrons. The archers were armed with longbows. Longbows were around six feet long and could fire arrows a great distance.
Why the English won at Falkirk.
Once the longbows had killed enough of the men in the schiltron, Edward ordered his knights to charge. Wallace and the Scots army had to run!
