Braveheart is a very beautiful film and definitely worth seeing!
The film is indeed based on the life of William Wallace, a very famous Scottish hero. I will explain something more.
William Wallace was a Scottish nobleman, which means he was from the higher classes. (He was the son of an obscure knight). At this point, the film was wrong, because in the film he was said to be a peasant (a farmer, a member of the lower classes).
At the moment that William Wallace lived, Scotland was ruled by the English king Edward I. King Edward was not kind towards the Scottish people, and they began to hate him more and more. They wanted Scotland to be independent. People wanted to fight against king Edward, but they needed a leader. This leader was William Wallace. He started to revolt against Edward I, and more and more people joined him. (`to revolt´ means `to stand up against´)
The curious thing was that it were not other noblemen that joined him, but people from the lower classes: peasants, humble folk. William Wallace did not have a lot of knowledge about war tactics, but he was very smart and he knew how to fight. He trained `his army´ and started to get ready to fight the English King.
The first battle, The Battle of Stirling Bridge on 11th september 1297, was won by Wallace.
This pictures shows stirling bridge, where the fight took place.
This gave the Scottish people more hope and turned Wallace into a hero. Of course the English king was very upset about this (his army was defeated by an army of the lower classes!). He tried to invade Scotland again.
Eventually, both armies stood facing each other again, on the 1st of april 1298 at Falkirk. Unfortunately, this time the English king Edward won. The only thing the English king wanted was to capture William Wallace. He was hunted down and eventually he was betrayed.
William Wallace had to appear in Westminster’s Hall for a trial, where he was sentenced to death. He was killed in a very cruel way, on 23rd of august 1305, and 4 parts of his body were sent to the 4 different sides of England. His head was put on a stick. This had to show the people of England, Scotland and Wales what would happen to people who stood up against the king.
This is a very brief (!) explanation of who William Wallace was. Up till today the people of Scotland see him as on of the most important freedom fighters in the history (although he actually failed).
If you want to learn more about William Wallace, or other parts of the history of Scotland, click on this link:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/history/
This website is made by the bbc, and has a lot of information about Scottish history.
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