Gideon – The Scottish Freedom Fighter

Can you tell which parts are fact, and which are fiction?

The ancient Hebrews had this weird relationship with Jehovah and with Baal. When things were going well they would all stop worshiping Jehovah and start worshiping Baal. Then when things were bad they would switch back to Jehovah.

Well, in one of these Baal-inspired downturns the Children of Israel, who we will call the Scotts, were conquered by the Midianites, who we will call the English. One of these Israelites (Scotts) was named Gideon and he was still a huge fan of Jehovah. To simplify things for this story though, we’re just going to call him William Wallace, or Wallace for short.

Wallace had this conversation with Jehovah one day about freeing the Scotts from English rule and was instructed to lead the insurrection (they just made up that stuff about his wife for the movie). Wallace started destroying holy sites of Baal and making altars to Jehovah where he would sacrifice animals. This got some attention as did Wallace’s recruitment efforts and hundreds of Scotts from surrounding clans joined Wallace’s army at Falkirk. Wallace was starting to think things would turn out when Jehovah visited him again and said, “Look, this just isn’t working out. You have WAY too many clansmen here. If you win with an army this size Scotland will claim they were able to drive out the English through their own might rather than with my strength. You need to get rid of most of them.”

So Wallace stood up before his army of 30,000 and told them they needed to go home if they were afraid to die. 20,000 left but 10,000 remained. Jehovah said this was still too many so Wallace told the remaining force to go drink from the river. Everyone who got down on their knees to drink was sent home and those who drank by bringing their hand to their mouth were allowed to stay. This left Wallace with a force of 300 Scotsmen.

When the English arrived at Falkirk “as the sand by the seaside for multitude,” Wallace’s 300 men got a little nervous so Wallace gave them this speech:

William Wallace: Sons of Scotland! I am William Wallace. Young Soldier: William Wallace is seven feet tall! William Wallace: Yes, I've heard. Kills men by the hundreds. And if HE were here, he'd consume the English with fireballs from his eyes, and bolts of lightning from his arse.
[Scottish army laughs] William Wallace: I *am* William Wallace! And I see [an] army of my countrymen, here in defiance of tyranny. You've come to fight as free men... and free men you are. What will you do with that freedom? Will you fight? Veteran: Fight? Against that? No! We will run. And we will live. William Wallace: Aye, fight and you may die. Run, and you'll live... at least a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willin' to trade ALL the days, from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they'll never take... OUR FREEDOM!

After this touching moment, Wallace and his 300 men took their trumpets and hooded lanterns and approached the English from the direction of Callender Wood in the middle of the night. When they reached the edge of the English camp they unhooded their lanterns, blew their trumpets, and shouted, “The sword of the Lord, and of Gideon.” The English who woke up to this ruckus were incredibly confused and started killing each other because they couldn’t tell who was friend and who was foe. Eventually what was left of the English army fled Falkirk.

Not wanting the English to get away, Wallace sent out messengers to collect a huge force of Scotts again. They pursued the remnant of the English army and killed every single last one of them. Then they embarked upon a successful campaign to destroy all the English strongholds within their country.

The Scotts were super excited about not being under English rule anymore and they offered to make Wallace their king. Wallace didn’t accept though and said instead of having a King to rule over them, the Scotts should instead allow Jehovah to rule. This actually worked for a while. The Scotts worshiped Jehovah and Wallace became super rich and had tons of wives who gave him seventy sons.

Then, after Wallace died of old age, the Scotts predictably returned to their worship of Baal. Morons.

“Braveheart” quote taken from IMDB.

Ref: Judges 6-8