In Freedom's Cause

The LORD doth build up Jerusalem: he gathereth together the outcasts of Israel.
He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.
Psalm 147:2-3

In Freedom's Cause, A story of Wallace and Bruce.

At the end of the 13th century, the oppressed Scots rebelled against England under the leadership of William Wallace and Robert Bruce. This gripping tale of courage, loyalty, and ingenuity takes readers into heroic company with a fictional protagonist, young Archie Forbes, who fights alongside the legendary heroes.

(~462 pg)Read Online
(39 MB)PDF
(746 KB)Full Text
(11 MB)DjVu

MY DEAR LADS, 

There are few figures in history who have individually exercised so
great an influence upon events as William Wallace and Eobert Bruce.
It was to the extraordinary personal courage,indomitable perseverance,
and immense energy of these two men that Scotland owed her freedom
from English domination. So surprising were the traditions of the feats
performed by these heroes that it was at one time the fashion to
treat them as belonging as purely to legend as the feats of St.George
or King Arthur. Careful investigation, however, has shown that so
far from this being the case, almost every deed reported to have been
performed by them is verified by contemporary historians.
Sir William Wallace had the especial bad fortune of having come
down to us principally by the writings of his bitter enemies,
and even modern historians, who should have taken a fairer view
of his life, repeated the cry of the old English writers that he was
a blood-thirsty robber. Mr. W. Burns, however, in his masterly and exhaustive
work, The Scottish War of Independence, has torn these calumnies to
shreds, and has displayed Wallace as he was, a high-minded and noble patriot.
While consulting other writers, especially those who wrote at the
time of or but shortly after the events they record, I have for the
most part followed Burns in all the historical portions of the narrative.
Throughout the story, therefore, wherein it at all relates to Wallace, Bruce, and
the other historical characters, the circumstances and events can be relied
upon as strictly accurate, save only in the earlier events of the career
of Wallace, of which the details that have come down to us are somewhat conflicting,
although the main features are now settled past question.

Yours very sincerely,

G. A. HENTY.