Original subtitles

[music playing]

NARRATOR: Scotland, the end of the 13th century,

a country under attack, invaded by the greatest army

in Christendom.

Defeat seems inevitable.

But from nowhere emerges a man who will become Scotland's

greatest hero.

AMANDA BEAM: He's someone who rises from obscurity

and becomes this national symbol of patriotism,

of survival, and of Scotland.

NARRATOR: William Wallace, later known as Braveheart.

He is an inspirational leader who will give his life

for Scotland's freedom.

And he will always be there because he seems to be in-built

into the very psyche of what it means to be Scottish.

NARRATOR: New research allows us to journey back

to the lost world that Braveheart fought

for, a violent age when magnificent castles were built

to withstand a new generation of weapons, where kings built

heavily fortified towns.

This is also a golden age of culture and sophistication.

Traveling down secret pathways that still

lie beneath modern Scotland, we reveal a world that has not

been seen for 700 years.

And this is where we got this fantastic wealth of material.

This is the "Lost World of Braveheart,"

the world he died to protect.

[theme music]

Sterling, Central Scotland, September 11, 1297.

Two armies face each other across a valley.

In the shadow of Stirling Castle stand the English, the finest

army in Europe, sent by King Edward I.

On the other side, the Scots, a rapidly assembled collection

of clan armies.

Their nation's independence rests

on the outcome of this battle.

The Scots are outnumbered 5 to 1.

Their cause seems hopeless.

Now, one man steps from obscurity and into the fray.

He is William Wallace, Braveheart.

FIONA WATSON: He's come out of nowhere.

He's not a man that the history books would ever really

have known, were it not for what happened in 1297.

NARRATOR: This is his country.

He has the will to win.

He also has local knowledge on his side.

FIONA WATSON: The reason why Wallace knew to come here,

at Sterling, to meet the English army

is because this bridge, the Stirling bridge,

is the main crossing point in Scotland.

And the River Forth cuts central Scotland almost in half.

And this bridge, the Stirling bridge,

is the way that you would go North or South.

NARRATOR: The river crossing is key.

Whatever happens here will decide the battle

and ensure Braveheart's place in history.

But this stone bridge was built long after his death.

The bridge he knew is long gone.

And to understand the crucial role it played,

we need to know what the original structure looked like.

A team of historians has been trying to uncover it.

Armed with simple equipment and stories that have been handed

down through local folklore, they

have found a series of clues.

First, stone foundations long hidden

by the Forth's peaty waters.

Once you know where they are, you

can even spot telltale signs at the surface.

If you just look over there, you'll

see the ripples coming from the massive pier

that we discovered, here on this point.

This pier is one of two large piers equally spaced

across the river.

This is the actual route which the ancient bridge would take

across the river.

NARRATOR: This appears to be the remains

of an eight-pier structure.

It matches the bridge depicted on Stirling's town seal,

an emblem dating back to the time of the battle.

Records reveal that it was built by the Romans,

and their engineering techniques are well documented.

For each pier, they built a watertight cofferdam

and lined it with large stones mortared together.

They then filled the hollow core with rubble.

By making the piers taper towards the top,

they gain stability.

The image on the seal shows clearly that the spans

were made of wood.

To accommodate heavy traffic, a huge quantity of timber

would be needed.

And in medieval Scotland, wood is a scarce commodity.

The shape of the piers and the cost of the wood

meant that the bridge between the two armies

had to be narrow.

This narrowness is fundamental to Braveheart's tactics.

Because the English expect him to follow the ancient code

of chivalry, they expect him to wait,

to let them cross the bridge and form up for battle.

They're wrong.

He won't play by their rules.

All the scouts have to do-- but this is going to be hard--

is allow enough horsemen to come over

this narrow, wooden bridge.

Only two can get across at a time.

The Scots basically are playing a waiting game at this point.

NARRATOR: Braveheart allows an advance guard

to cross, 2000 infantry and hundreds men on horseback.

Then, he makes his move.

Summoned by the blast of a great horn,

the Scots stride grimly into battle.

They're deployed in tight units called schiltrons.

Each one forms a moving wall of iron pikes.

They drive into the English vanguard.

FIONA WATSON: Scots start to push the horseback.

There's nowhere for them to go, so every knight had the choice.

He could either be impaled on a Scottish spear,

or he could drown in the River Forth.

NARRATOR: Braveheart leads from the front

with his mighty sword.

The battle is brutal and swift.

The Scots cut a bloody swathe through the panicking English.

FIONA WATSON: So it became absolute carnage and hell.

And it must have been appalling for their comrades

on the other side, helpless, watching them die.

NARRATOR: What's left of the English army flees.

They are so shocked by the defeat

that they abandon Scotland altogether.

The battle is not entirely one sided.

Braveheart's co-commander, Andrew Murray,

is fatally wounded.

He dies soon after.

But Stirling Bridge is a major victory, a turning point

in the history of Scotland and in the life of its champion.

William Wallace is declared guardian of Scotland, leader

of his country.

Wallace was clearly an extraordinary man.

I mean, he gave back the Scots the confidence

to believe that they could beat the English

and get them out of Scotland, and Scotland would

be free and independent again.

NARRATOR: The centuries of mythmaking that turned Wallace

into Braveheart have obscured the truth,

and many important historical accounts detailing his life

have disappeared.

During the Wars of Independence,

a lot of the documents were taken to London.

And then during the 17th century,

one of the ships that was taken documents back to Edinburgh

sank.

And so all of these documents are at the bottom of the sea

somewhere.

NARRATOR: Without this key evidence,

researchers have had to delve deep into history,

and even underground, to find clues to what life was

like in medieval Scotland.

Years of investigation are finally

yielding a clearer picture of Braveheart's lost world.

The first step is to discover where he was born.

According to legend, this is Braveheart's birthplace,

Elderslie.

It is now a suburb of the sprawling city of Glasgow.

Archaeologist Derek Alexander keeps returning here, hunting

for clues to the hidden world of Wallace's childhood.

He needs evidence that will date the site to the right period,

around 1270.

What we really need to do is we

need to go behind this house over here and into the garden,

and have a look at the evidence there.

NARRATOR: Several historical maps marked this plot

as Wallace's house.

Each one shows a distinctive boundary line.

Derek thinks that this corresponds

to a ditch that runs behind the modern day house.

DEREK ALEXANDER: And we think that the remains

of the enclosure might still survive in bits of it,

but we don't know exactly where.

But the best we find out about the date of this site

would be actually to look in the ditch.

So we're going to have a look.

NARRATOR: Since Braveheart's time,

there have been seven centuries of construction and development

here.

Just one small corner remains untouched,

and this is where Derek began his search.

Now, these stones are part of a modern sort of garden wall

feature.

So we excavated a trench right across here.

But we got down quite quickly through sort of modern rubbish,

lots of pottery and glass and things like that.

But down underneath was an earlier wall,

which is running along in the same line.

NARRATOR: At its base, Derek has uncovered a broad trench.

It's lined with waterproofing clay.

DEREK ALEXANDER: It goes all the way across the full width

of the ditch, so it would have effectively been a moat.

NARRATOR: He's also found signs of a wooden fence.

Together with the moat, this suggests

a defensive fortification.

But crucially, there's one tiny clue that enables Derek to date

the settlement.

DEREK ALEXANDER: What we found was one single piece

of pottery, and it was a 13th century piece

of medieval pottery, which is obviously the time of William

Wallace, which is what we're looking for.

So that was fantastic.

NARRATOR: This, and evidence from other sites,

reveals a major part of the world that Braveheart knew.

This was a large, fortified settlement,

known as a [inaudible].

Several families shared living quarters, halls, forges,

and stables.

There were smaller cottages for farm laborers.

All were constructed using well-established techniques.

The quality of carpentry, of joinery,

generally, is very, very high.

These are people who are master craftsmen in using wood.

The roofs, what you could see as you approach it,

would probably be largely thatch,

and birch bark, and things like that.

There may be tiles, because they're already starting to use

tiles, especially around the areas like the smoke holes,

because you can imagine sparks coming up out of these

from the cooking fires and heating fires falling

onto the roof.

Next thing is, the whole thing's gone up in smoke.

NARRATOR: Vertical poles slot into a sill beam

to form the framework of the building.

Woven twig panels called wattle are smeared with mud, known

as daub.

These walls offer an efficient insulation

against the cold Scottish winter.

Another feature reinforces Derek's idea

that the Wallace family lived in a well defended settlement.

At the end of the moat is an intriguing stone circle,

nine yards in diameter.

Derek thinks it's the foundation of a tower.

So we would have had the ditch running that way, ditch running

that way, and right at the corner here,

we would have had the circular tower feature.

NARRATOR: These towers would give extra protection

against both outlaws and the wolves that

roamed medieval Scotland.

Derek believes the [inaudible] was a farm headquarters.

It's a clue to the Wallace's wealth.

RICHARD ORAM: There's a tendency to think of wooden buildings

as somehow primitive or inferior,

but wood building is something that is actually

quite high status.

So the Wallace family--

these are people who are actually demonstrating

that they've got access to what's becoming a very, very

scarce resource.

NARRATOR: So this contradicts tales that Braveheart

was a lowly commoner.

Instead, it seems he came from a family with land and money,

aristocrats.

To discover how these aristocrats lived,

we follow clues underground and discover the golden age

in which Braveheart was raised.

Hollywood portrayed William Wallace as Braveheart,

a man born to fight.

But he had another past.

His family had intended that he would join an order of monks

under the protection of the pope.

When he left his childhood farm, the way

ahead must have seemed clear.

Yet his life would follow a violent path he could never

have imagined.

By investigating this journey, we can uncover a window

into Braveheart's lost world, and it revolutionizes our view

of medieval Scotland.

The journey takes us just a few miles from his childhood home

to Paisley Abbey.

Much of the Abbey's centuries old stonework

can still be seen.

In Wallace's time, this was part of a Cluniac monastery.

And the Cluniac order had a reputation

for wealth and splendor.

Their buildings were famed for their magnificence.

RICHARD ORAM: The abbey at Paisley

here, it's funded by the Stewart family

back in the 12th century.

And the Stewarts are the patrons of the Wallace family.

So it's a kind of place that Wallace and this family

generally would have been quite familiar with.

NARRATOR: Wallace's education would

have been funded by his lord, the head of the Stewart clan.

It's likely that it would have been here at Paisley,

and that Wallace would have become

part of the monastic order.

RICHARD ORAM: The lifestyle there is very, very much that

of the monastic regime.

It means getting up before dawn in the morning, services

in the church.

But they would also have a fairly heavily

regulated routine of lessons.

They'd have to be trained in scripture,

they'd have to be trained in theology,

and just generally getting the all round education

of a literate person in the Middle Ages.

NARRATOR: Back in the 13th century,

Paisley Abbey was a wealthy and influential place,

its monks answerable only to the pope in Rome.

The Abbey stood at the center of a large monastery.

With cloisters attached, it was surrounded by a great complex

of buildings.

There were barns, stables, and storehouses.

They were ringed by a precinct wall.

But the monks didn't live in isolation.

Beneath this building, an elaborate sewage system

has been discovered.

Research has revealed that it serviced

all of the major buildings.

All the waste of everyday life flowed through here.

The sewer demonstrates this place

had extraordinary connections with the outside world.

It provides evidence of a sophisticated society that

has been hidden for 500 years.

RICHARD ORAM: Originally, we'd have had a stream of water

running through it to flush the drains from the latrines

up in the abbey.

NARRATOR: When the drains were first re-opened,

they were blocked with around 550 years of compacted silt.

Over the course of a few weeks, this silt was pumped out.

A team of archaeologists spent three months

sieving through it.

They discovered hundreds of artifacts,

from belt buckles to tuning pegs.

RICHARD ORAM: So here, we got one only slightly

used chamber pot, survived complete,

having been dropped down there by a monk

in middle of the night, probably.

They're also collecting human urine because they use it

for a variety of things.

It's used, for example, as a cleanser, believe it or not,

and a disinfectant for clothing.

NARRATOR: Evidence here even reveals what Wallace heard when

he came to the monastery.

This is handwritten notation of the choir's music.

RICHARD ORAM: It's a piece of multipart music.

In fact, it's the earliest known surviving piece

of multipart music in Scotland.

It's for three voices.

And I think what's really most interesting about this, what's

wonderful about this, is this is the genuine voice

of the medieval monastic choir.

NARRATOR: These lead seals once secured bales of cloth

brought from mainland Europe.

It's proof that medieval Scotland was no isolated

backwater.

The remains of spices and plants suggest access

to international trade routes.

This is where evidence for the connections with the wider

world, far beyond even Europe, some of these things

coming from the near East, some of them coming from Indonesia

and places such as that.

NARRATOR: All the silt and artifacts have now

been pumped out, but experts are still astonished

by what has been left behind.

The drain itself.

Protected from the elements for five centuries,

it's a beautifully preserved piece of engineering history.

RICHARD ORAM: This is high quality stonework,

first-class engineering.

NARRATOR: The designs were carried out

by master masons, the elite of the construction industry.

The quality of each individual block here,

this is the craftsmanship of individual masons.

And just to show who did it, they put their own marks

onto the stones so that they would

be paid for the pieces of work that they had actually done.

NARRATOR: Hollywood's portrayal of medieval Scotland

was as a primitive, savage place.

But from what investigators have discovered here in the sewer,

we know Braveheart lived in a rich culture.

RICHARD ORAM: The material from the drain is fantastic.

It's just completely revolutionized our whole way

of looking at aspects of medieval life in Scotland.

NARRATOR: In medieval Scotland, the church

was a powerful force.

Its main stronghold was here, Glasgow Cathedral.

This is where the scholar Wallace

would begin his transformation into the warrior Braveheart.

Here, he would come into contact with one of the country's most

important men, the Bishop, Robert Wishart.

Wishart had been appointed to the Scottish government.

It was from him that Wallace learnt of his

country's worsening political and military situation.

In turn, Wishart came to see Wallace

as the man who'd carry the church's banner into battle.

Glasgow Cathedral is the most magnificent Gothic structure

surviving in Scotland.

Building it presented an extraordinary challenge.

RICHARD ORAM: What they're trying to do

is emphasize the height as much as possible.

A high building is a sign of importance, sophistication,

the money that's been spent on it.

They're making a statement about the power of the church

and the glory of God.

NARRATOR: The cathedral's construction

would span three centuries, a daunting task for stonemasons

with limited tools and materials.

RICHARD ORAM: They didn't really have paper,

and so what they're doing is they're tracing out the designs

maybe in sand trays.

And they're laying out the design

so they can express it to the others

and show them what they are going

to be cutting and constructing.

And even the tools for cutting the stone are fairly simple.

Large, wooden nails, the hammers are

used for driving the chisels.

NARRATOR: They have to find a way of lifting stone

blocks more than 100 feet.

RICHARD ORAM: They've also got cranes powered by what really

looked like giant hamster runs powered by people.

NARRATOR: The main engineering challenge

is how to support the immense weight of the cathedral's

soaring tower.

The masons solved this with a series

of vaults, stone arches that join together and carry

the load above.

RICHARD ORAM: Columns that support the vaulting, they rise

up through the floor.

And it contains and carries the weight of the superstructure

of the church above.

The whole thing, it's to maximize

the spiritual experience in the people who are visiting it.

NARRATOR: 500 years ago, this place

looked radically different from what we see today.

The inside was lime-washed, with details picked out

in garish color.

It was in this striking setting that Braveheart would seek

and win his Bishop's backing.

RICHARD ORAM: The bishop is one of the richest men in Scotland.

He controls the revenues of the Diocese.

He is able to provide material support for Wallace

and his army.

NARRATOR: The bishop's concern will always

be to defend the independence of the church.

He knows that independence is under threat.

There will soon be war with England.

And he sees in Braveheart a man who will take up

the cause of freedom.

In the spring of 1296, the English army

masses on the Scottish border.

The country and its church is at risk.

In the royal town of Lanark, two murders

will change the course of Scottish history forever.

In the spring of 1296, Braveheart

sees the English army sweep across the Scottish border.

The Wars of Independence have begun.

The English target the wealthy merchant towns and castles

being built across Scotland.

RICHARD ORAM: The English crown is in debt up to its eyeballs,

and Scotland's perceived as being a wealthy society that

can be taxed.

NARRATOR: England's King Edward is also

fighting a war in Europe.

As well as money, he needs men.

And you can imagine the kind of rumor

that would be going around.

What Edward is actually trying to do

is get all the cream of Scottish society,

all the best men in Scotland, out of the country,

send them overseas, where they will

be killed fighting in his war.

NARRATOR: Town after town falls to Edward's army.

The Scots barely put up a fight.

RICHARD ORAM: What we've got, bear in mind,

is that this occupation came on the back of a very, very

short war.

There'd been a brutal and bloody sack of Berwick,

when Edward I of England had taken it.

But that was intended as a terror tactic.

And so it worked.

No other Scottish borough resisted Edward's army

as it advanced around the country.

NARRATOR: Then, the English set their sights

on the thriving town of Lanark.

New research enables us to construct what this settlement

looked like in Braveheart's time.

It's the stage for not one, but two murders.

The events that finally triggered his rebellion.

DAVID ROSS: It hasn't changed much since the time of Wallace.

There was originally a stream ran right down the middle.

And the reason it's set back like this is this

was the old marketplace of the town.

Now, although the buildings are modern,

the outline hasn't changed very much.

And the street was wide like this

because there would have been stalls of people selling things

on market day.

NARRATOR: Lanark was given the special designation

of being a royal borough.

This meant that it was planned and laid out

on very strict guidelines.

Side streets, known as vennels, led away from the marketplace,

making a uniform grid.

RICHARD ORAM: The king or the king's agent

would have come along and actually marked out

on the ground, cutting small ditches for example,

or marking out with ropes, the dimensions

of these individual burgages, as they're referred to.

NARRATOR: The creation of royal towns like Lanark

was a huge success.

They attracted merchants and craftsmen from across Europe,

bringing large revenues to the king.

RICHARD ORAM: So it's a crowded, noisy, smelly, vibrant,

dynamic environment.

NARRATOR: At the top of the main street,

beyond the old town wall, stands the Church of St. Kentigern.

According to folklore, this is where William Wallace

met his sweetheart, Marion Braidfute.

And legend has it they were married here.

Wallace's marriage and his coming to Lanark

to be with Marion marks a very important time

in the history of Scotland.

And basically, the struggle to regain Scotland's independence

was started in this town by Wallace.

NARRATOR: According to one source,

Marion was murdered by the English soldiers,

and this is what spurred Wallace into action.

RICHARD ORAM: This is where the legend and history mixes

together very, very neatly.

There's a powder keg waiting to explode,

and some circumstance, perhaps the death of Marion,

and perhaps just the way in which he was pushed around once

too often by a member of the garrison,

triggers something in Wallace.

NARRATOR: Wallace heads straight for Lanark's castle

and its garrison of English soldiers.

The actual location of the castle has long been uncertain,

but historian David Ross believes this conical mountain

was the site where Braveheart took his revenge.

Down in a ditch here.

And this ditch was actually part of the defense

of the old castle of Lanark.

The castle was actually built on top of this mound that runs up

behind me here.

It would have been wood, mostly.

NARRATOR: The castle was sited on a motte, a natural mound

built up with earth taken from the defensive ditch dug around

it.

A timber palisade was built around the top,

and lined with fighting platforms.

Inside was the sheriff's tower.

A flying bridge connected the motte to the courtyard below,

known as the bailey.

This area contained the soldiers' accommodation,

stables, and storehouses.

Timber castles can be very quick to build.

It's one of the great attractions of them.

And although they're very quickly built,

they're actually very strong.

NARRATOR: Overlooking the town, the castle's 70-foot mound

was more than just a defensive feature.

DAVID ROSS: It would have been quite imposing, this place,

because it can be seen for miles around up here,

on top of the mound.

And of course, the English would have been flying banners

to show that the place was under English occupation.

NARRATOR: It may have looked impressive,

but Lanark's timber fort was by no means impregnable.

On a summer night in 1297, Braveheart did the unthinkable.

Somehow, he entered the castle and took

on the English commander, Sheriff Heselrig.

DAVID ROSS: And Wallace came here in retaliation

for the murder of his wife.

And somewhere within the building that stood here,

he came face to face with her murderer.

And he said, I am Wallace.

Die, Heselrig.

NARRATOR: As he fled the timber fort,

he set it on fire, burning it to the ground

and destroying it forever.

The murder of Sheriff Heselrig was the first of Braveheart's

deeds to be recorded as fact.

DAVID ROSS: This misty man of legend suddenly steps fully

grown onto the pages of our history books.

NARRATOR: News of Braveheart's uprisings

spread like wildfire across Britain.

Young men of a like mind started to flock

to Wallace's banner.

The Scottish War of Independence was about to begin.

NARRATOR: During the summer of 1297, William Wallace,

Braveheart, wages a guerrilla war

against the occupying English forces.

Then, in a pitched battle at Stirling Bridge,

he stops them in their tracks.

AMANDA BEAM: It was a great victory for the Scots.

Politically, the Scottish government

was able to expel the Edwardian administrators.

And Scotland, an independent Scotland, seemed in their grasp

at that point.

NARRATOR: The nature of the war has changed.

It is no longer about halting the invaders' advance.

It is about driving them out.

FIONA WATSON: Obviously, winning the battle was very, very

important.

But what Wallace had to do now was to re-secure Scotland

for the Scots.

And to do that, he needed to get the English out of Scotland's

castles.

NARRATOR: Castles dominated the Scottish landscape, strongholds

of military power, wealth, and government.

Time has taken its toll on these once great fortresses,

but now we find the clues to how they looked

in the age of Braveheart.

Taking castles would be crucial to his strategy.

Each would present its own challenge.

The first, Loch Leven, may not appear to be a mighty fortress.

But since 490 AD, builders have chosen this site

for its natural defenses.

It sits on an island in the middle of a lake.

Legend has it that its capture took all the courage for which

Braveheart would become famous.

He leads his men from the front.

DAVID ROSS: And Wallace himself swam out to the castle

and managed to take the garrison's boat, no mean feat

because the water here is deep and very cold.

He managed to row back to shore, he took his 18 men on board,

and they came out here.

The water came right up to the walls in these days.

And obviously, you could be picked off by archers.

NARRATOR: The walls surrounding the castle are just 15 feet

high.

The English garrison relied too heavily

on the protection of the lake.

They simply weren't prepared for Braveheart's guerrilla tactics.

DAVID ROSS: We're told they slaughtered 30 of the garrison,

but they did spare the women and children.

But the extraordinary thing for me

is to be able to come here, seven centuries on, and touch

the stonework, the very stonework

that Wallace and his men scrambled over.

NARRATOR: Building this stonework would have presented

a huge challenge.

I suppose most people must look at old castles like this

and just look at the strength of them

without actually thinking about how they were constructed.

NARRATOR: The walls are eight feet thick,

a double layer of mortared stone filled with rubble.

Clearly, a huge weight of rock was transported

across the lake, cut to shape, then lifted into place.

But all records relating to the castle's construction

have been lost, and seven centuries of Scottish rain

have eroded away any physical clues.

The mind boggles at just the engineering problems

they've overcome to build somewhere as complex as this.

NARRATOR: To understand these problems,

we need to investigate another castle, the best preserved

of Braveheart's time.

It's called Bothwell.

Bothwell was only half-built when the invading English

overran it in 1297.

But a year later, awesome stone defenses

would present Braveheart's army with their greatest challenge.

Today, these same defenses provide us

with the clues to how Scotland's great castles were built.

This is Bothwell Castle, probably the most spectacular

13th century castle ever to be built in Scotland.

It was built by William Murray, and it's an absolutely

magnificent sight.

NARRATOR: William Murray, known as The Rich,

was the uncle of Andrew Murray, Braveheart's co-commander

killed at Stirling Bridge.

This meant that Braveheart would have had a personal motive

for wanting to recapture the castle from the English.

ALLAN RUTHERFORD: As you can see,

the castle literally grows out of the bedrock.

The castle's built of this absolutely beautiful

red sandstone.

NARRATOR: From these surviving structures,

we can now recreate this medieval world.

The castle's centerpiece was a mighty tower

known as the donjon.

It was a massive piece of engineering, split into four

levels.

The basement stored food and weapons.

The ground floor was taken up with a majestic banqueting

hall.

And above that was the common hall, for the servants.

Murray's private chamber was at the top.

This was a medieval penthouse with en suite bathroom

and a large window offering a magnificent view.

Proof of Bothwell's sophistication

still survives on the outer wall.

ALLAN RUTHERFORD: What we're looking at,

a couple of medieval toilets.

They took sewage and excrement away

from the interior of the castle and shot it out.

NARRATOR: But it's on the inner wall

that we find the evidence of how these medieval castles were

built.

High up on the walls, we can see some indentations, which

were used when they were constructing the castle.

NARRATOR: Known as putlog holes, these

indicate where the scaffolding was actually

built into the thick walls.

Just below them are smaller dimples.

These show where the masons used calipers or cramps

to lift the heavy building blocks nearly 90 feet.

ALLAN RUTHERFORD: There was probably

a master mason, who was in overall charge of work on site.

But he may have been taking a lot of his instructions

from his patron.

NARRATOR: Murray employed the best masons in Scotland.

They took their inspiration and techniques from across Europe.

Each mason carved his personal mark into the work

that he completed.

They built an enormous 60-foot wall up to 15-feet thick,

adorned with arrow slits and topped

with defensive battlements.

It was intended to withstand bombardments from new siege

weapons like the trebuchet.

As the wall was completed, the courtyard

filled with chapels, kitchens, sleeping halls, and stables.

In effect, it was a self-contained, fortified town.

When Braveheart came to take it, Bothwell presented

a formidable challenge.

But we now know that William Murray's dream

was to build a fortress even more impressive.

ALLAN RUTHERFORD: Out in front of the castle,

we have these grass covered remains.

They look a bit like another part of the castle that was

ruined, purposely destroyed.

But actually, excavation has shown

that they were never completed.

And what was intended at this point--

this would have been a massive, double-towered gatehouse.

NARRATOR: Using these foundations,

we can bring Murray's dream to life for the first time.

This massive pentagonal castle would

have covered almost two acres.

It would have been the most magnificent castle ever built

in Scotland, large enough to house a powerful garrison.

But Murray didn't survive to complete his vision.

He was killed in the first wave of English invasion.

Even so, the partially completed Bothwell

was so well built that Braveheart's army founders

against its mighty defenses.

They fall back on the one surefire

way of taking a castle, siege.

They cut off the supply lines and surround Bothwell,

and spend 14 long months starving the English out.

Bothwell was so important to the war effort

that it was won and lost several times over the next few years.

Capturing and keeping the castle was such a drain on resources

that it became a liability.

The Scots were driven to take desperate and extraordinary

measures to stop Bothwell being used against them again.

We can see here the mighty remains of the great donjon,

the Scots did this themselves.

They cast down this part of the donjon

to deny it to the English, so they could never reoccupy it.

NARRATOR: But there is one castle more important

to Braveheart than all others.

Sterling, the symbol of Scotland's independence.

Centuries of war have destroyed the original structure,

but now we can reveal how it may have looked 700 years ago.

The 13th century was the golden age of Scottish castles.

A new generation of buildings was characterized

by formidable defenses and grand residences.

Above the site of Braveheart's famous victory at Stirling

Bridge stands the most important of them all.

AMANDA BEAM: Stirling Castle was strategically

the most important castle, because whoever controlled

that one controlled the north of Scotland.

NARRATOR: If Braveheart is to expel the English

from Scotland, this is the one castle he must take.

But so far, the Scots have been unable to breach Stirling's

awesome natural defenses.

RICHARD FAWCETT: It's probably the best location

for a castle in Scotland.

And you can see here just why it was so good.

This is the edge of volcanic sill

that probably began to take shape,

what, 350 million years ago, something like that.

NARRATOR: The castle rock's sheer sides drop

250 feet to the plane below.

They make Stirling a superb military base.

But it is much more than just a fortress.

Sterling represents Scotland's independence.

To understand this symbolic power,

we have to find out how it looked in Braveheart's time.

And by doing that, we will discover, perhaps,

the most surprising purpose behind the building

of these castles.

Sterling's physical qualities made it the perfect residence

for Scotland's kings.

RICHARD FAWCETT: This was an extremely important royal

castle.

You can see how the buildings perch right on the very edge

of the castle rock.

That was probably the most prestigious part

of the whole castle.

So we think that it must always have been the site

for the royal lodgings.

NARRATOR: The royal family had lived here for over 200 years.

RICHARD FAWCETT: And it was very important to the kings

to make sure that the buildings were absolutely

in the height of fashion.

NARRATOR: We now know that the fashion of Braveheart's time

meant Stirling looked very different from how it does

today.

RICHARD FAWCETT: Masonry was never meant

to be seen as naked masonry.

It was always covered over with a lime render.

And it's very likely that several of the elements

would have been picked out in quite rich colors.

NARRATOR: It was a fashion that can be seen from miles around.

This is what castles were for.

As a royal castle, Stirling demonstrates

it better than anywhere else.

We've got a tendency to think about castles

as great fortresses.

You're constantly in a state of armed preparedness for siege,

but these places are status symbols.

It's a way of demonstrating your wealth and your sophistication.

And you're proclaiming that you are somebody that matters.

NARRATOR: When Braveheart comes to take the castle,

he has already struck the crucial blow.

Almost the entire English garrison

had been cut down by his army at Stirling Bridge.

The few soldiers that remain are short of supplies

and so terrified by Braveheart's unexpected victory

that they surrender within days.

Now, Braveheart controlled Stirling.

He is able to chase the rest of the English out of Scotland.

And yet within the year, stung by defeat,

King Edward of England brings his forces back to fight.

Less than 10 miles from Stirling,

near the town of Falkirk, he comes face

to face with Braveheart.

This time it is the English king's radical new weapon

that determines the outcome of the battle.

FIONA WATSON: To be fair to him, for the first time,

I think, really, in British history,

it's the long bow, the English longbow that defeats the Scots.

But it was this hail of arrows that the Scots could do nothing

about.

NARRATOR: Braveheart survives, but his fall from power

is as rapid as his dramatic ascent the year before.

AMANDA BEAM: After the defeat of Falkirk,

Wallace let go of the guardianship.

His leadership rested on his military success,

and obviously, he didn't feel that he could lead the country

if he couldn't win Falkirk.

NARRATOR: But Braveheart doesn't give up his fight.

He goes overseas to seek support for Scotland's independence.

AMANDA BEAM: The following year, he went into France,

trying to get help from the French and also from the pope.

NARRATOR: But by 1304, the Scottish

castles he had fought so hard for were falling back

into English hands.

Braveheart returns home to fight on the front line.

But within months, he suffers betrayal by a friend

and is captured by the English.

A court in London finds him guilty of treason.

Wallace is dragged through the streets

to Smithfield, where he is hung, drawn, and quartered.

It is a slow and agonizing death.

FIONA WATSON: Where Wallace really scores, I think,

is after his death, his terrible, gruesome, and awful

death.

And that undying spirit of freedom

that he never, ever gave up on.

NARRATOR: It would take another 42 years for the Scots

to finally win the Wars of Independence.

But Braveheart's example had inspired a nation.

You can't compare anyone else in Scottish history to him.

He's someone who rises from obscurity

and becomes this national symbol of patriotism, of survival,

and of Scotland.

NARRATOR: William Wallace lost world was the birthplace

of Scottish independence.

As Braveheart, he gave everything

to preserve his nation's identity.

700 years on, that nation still honors his name.

[music playing]