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Thank you. It's August 23rd, 1305 in London, England. The city bakes in the summer sun.

Crowd's watch as a horse trudges slowly through the filth of the streets.

It drags a crude wooden sled carrying the naked,

chained body of Scottish leader William Wallace. The on-looking Londoners pelt the 35-year-old

Scotsman with stones and rotting vegetables. Wallace turns his head away from their mockery,

but the crowd just laughs. The bleak parade winds through the streets of London for four miles

until it reaches a large open field just beyond the city walls.

There, an even larger crowd awaits.

From the sled behind the horse, Wallace stares up at the sky

and the grim silhouette of the gallows above him.

A bird perches on its beam. Soon Wallace knows it will

be him hanging there instead. He can hear the crackle of a fire burning nearby. It's there,

his entrails will be burned after they've been cut out and shown to him. And only then will

the executioner finally end Wallace's suffering by cutting off his head. A great crowd has

come to watch Wallace die. They roar with excitement as the Scotsman is dragged from the sled

and shoved toward the gallows. His execution is about to begin. England and Scotland were once completely separate countries, with their own kings, churches, and laws.

But in the late 1200s, the Scottish throne fell vacant, and England invaded.

The English king, Edward I, was obsessed with controlling Scotland.

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