After Diane and I recently watched Mel Gibson’s movie Braveheart I was intrigued to find out the real history behind William Wallace and the war between Scotland and England in the 1200-1300s. Fortunately, I stumbled upon Ronald McNair Scott’s excellent 1982 history, Robert the Bruce, King of Scots.

Not surprisingly, I learned that William Wallace played a relatively minor role in the effort of the Scots to break free from English rule than implied by the movie. The movie was reasonably accurate overall, but the real leader of that long battle was Robert the Bruce, who was descended from previous rulers and fought a long guerilla war against multiple English kings over more than three decades to establish his nation’s independence and his right to rule as king.

That fight began after the death of Scotland’s previous king, Alexander III in 1286. Alexander had for years maintained a peaceful alliance with England, as two separate nations. The problem was that when he died, his heir was still a child. His regents signed a deal with the English king, Edward I, allowing them to rule an independent Scotland as allies with England, but Edward soon realized the power vacuum in Scotland provided him an opportunity. He repudiated the treaty and began a long violent effort to conquer these northern provinces.

The result was thirty years of endless war, ravaging the countryside both in Scotland and northern England. Eventually Robert the Bruce won, getting England to acknowledge the independence of Scotland. Thus Bruce in many ways is seen as Scotland’s own version of George Washington.

What struck me as I read this book however was the plunder and devastation this long war visited upon the ordinary people in both England and Scotland. Edward would invade Scotland, wrecking havoc on local villages and castles. Bruce would respond with repeated raids into northern England, where he would destroy villages and farms, leaving the surviving inhabitants to starve.

And what was the war about?

These local villagers really didn’t care. In this one sense Gibson’s Braveheart was quite accurate. In the movie Wallace was portrayed like those villagers, a simple peasant farmer man in love with his wife and only desiring to build a family and a farm. He cared not for the efforts of Bruce and Edward to control Scotland. In this aspect Braveheart captured the fundamentals of this ugly war quite nicely.

In reality Wallace wasn’t a farmer. He “was the son of a knightly family,” making him part of the Scottish royal class, even if a relatively minor member. He also was also part of Bruce’s rebellion against Edward from the beginning, though the murder of his wife and family by the English served to radicalize him even more.

Nonetheless, I was struck by the evil this war visited upon ordinary people uninvolved in the fight with actually no interest in it at all. Farmers and villagers would be minding their own business when out of nowhere an army of knights would arrive to plunder, kill, rape, and loot. Their goal: Send a message to the leader of the other side, even though the only ones to suffer were these poor villagers.

In essence, this is the nature of almost all wars. They are started by power-hungry political leaders for their own gain, with a remarkably detached and disinterested view of the harm that ambition imposes on innocent third parties. On one side the cry was “I want to unify England and Scotland! Destroy those who oppose me!” while on the other side the chant was “I want a free and independent Scotland! Destroy those who oppose me!” In neither case is this effort productive for either nation, in any way. Instead, it caused death and destruction in both Scotland and England, for decades.

Vladimir Putin

Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine is a wonderful modern example. Before Putin’s invasion the two nations were living in peace, both prospering from the free trade now possible after the fall of the Soviet Union. Ordinary people in both nations were benefiting from this sane and practical situation.

For Putin this wasn’t good enough. For his own aggrandizement he invaded a peaceful neighbor, in the hope he could reconquer it and make it part of a new Russian empire, with him in charge, a hero and the new George Washington of Russia!

In a sense, Putin’s effort is no different than all the political battles by those seeking power, even if those seeking nothing more votes and election victories. Politicians want power, and to win elections they always ramp up the rhetoric to demonize their opponents and make their supporters mad with outrage.

The real problem is when ordinary people ally themselves blindly with those politicians, allowing themselves to be driven by that rhetoric. Rather than put their own lives and concerns first, they let themselves to be manipulated by their leaders to fight for the benefit of those leaders, not for themselves.

And when the public becomes too much enamored and consumed by that rhetoric and the factions they support, elections soon devolve into war.

Washington himself was different, which is why neither Bruce nor Putin could never be a George Washington. Washington didn’t want power. He intentionally refused a kingship, and after serving two terms as president he voluntarily stepped down, so that power could be peaceable passed on to others.

In his farewell address in 1796 he also quite specifically warned Americans against this emotional factional warfare instigated by power-hungry leaders:

Let me now … warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.

This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.

Washington leading the writing of the Constitution,
designed to limit his power

In that last paragraph Washington could have been describing the entire war between Bruce and Edward, as I myself saw it as I read Ronald McNair Scott’s book.

Washington wanted the free sovereign citizens of America to divorce themselves from these factional wars brought on by power-hungry leaders. He wanted us to view these leaders as nothing more than a necessary evil, that we should all view at all times with great skepticism. No matter what they claim or promise or demand, we must question them and repeatedly reject them, so that we don’t end up their pawns used to make them powerful.

Washington’s warning needs to be repeated again and again. It seems to me that too many Americans on both sides of the political aisle have forgotten that warning. Neither Trump nor Biden nor Harris nor Vance nor Newsom nor any other politician should be viewed as your hero. They are always a threat against your own future, and should looked at with great doubt, at all times.