The Swiss army (left) and the Burgundian army (right) at the Battle of Grandson. Illustration from the Berner Chronik by Diebold Schilling the Elder (1483), who was present at the battle.
In 1475, the town of Grandson in Vaud, which belonged to Charles the Bold's ally Jacques of Savoy, had been brutally taken by the Old Swiss Confederacy, led by the Canton of Bern.[1] After negotiations for the restitution of Vaud failed in January 1476, Charles left Lorraine with the bulk of his army, consisting of about 12,000 men, and advanced through the Jura Mountains towards Vaud.[1] After seizing Yverdon, his army on 21 February captured the town of Grandson and laid siege to Grandson Castle, which surrendered on 28 February.[1]
Execution of Grandson Castle garrison
The siege of Grandson and the execution of the Swiss garrison, illustration by Johann Stumpf (1548)
After the surrender of Grandson Castle, Charles had its garrison executed by drowning in Lake Neuchâtel or hanging.[1] Swiss sources are unanimous in stating that the men gave up only when Charles assured them that they would be spared. The historian Panigarola, who was with Charles, claimed that the garrison had thrown themselves on the mercy of the duke, and it was up to his discretion what to do with them. He ordered all 412 men of the garrison to be executed. In a scene Panigarola described as "shocking and horrible" and sure to fill the Swiss with dread, all the victims were led past Charles' tent and hanged from trees or drowned in the lake in an execution that lasted four hours.[2]
Battle
After taking Grandson, Charles set up his camp north of the town and protected it by establishing two garrisons nearby.[1] The first occupied Vaumarcus Castle and blocked the main axis leading to Neuchâtel, and the second entrenched itself further north.[1] The opposition of the other Swiss cantons to the Bernese operations of 1475 in Vaud made the Confederate reinforcements arrive too late to retake Grandson.[1] The Swiss had no news of the fate of the Grandson garrison and assembled their forces in the hope of lifting the siege. Their army, consisting of 18,000 troops from the eight cantons and numerous allies, established itself at Bevaix on 1 March and attacked Vaumarcus Castle.[1] With about 20,000 men, Charles began to establish himself near the town of Concise on 2 March in an unfavourable position.[1]
Advancing on two routes, the Swiss had halted near the forest and awaited their main army to arrive when they encountered Charles's forces near Concise.[1] In the ensuing skirmish, the Burgundian cavalry was unable to hold the enemy vanguard, and Charles ordered his troops to pull back to a more favorable ground.[1] During the delicate maneuver, the bulk of the Swiss army arrived, and the Burgundian army, already pulling back, soon became confused when the second and larger body of Swiss troops appeared.[1] The speed of the Swiss advance did not give the Burgundians time to make much use of their artillery. The withdrawal soon turned into a rout when the Burgundian troops panicked and fled.[1] For a time, Charles rode among them shouting orders, but once started, the rout was unstoppable, and he was forced to flee as well.
Pillage of the Burgundian camp after the Battle of Grandson, illustration by Diebold Schilling the Elder (1483)The booty of Grandson put on display in Lucerne, illustration by Diebold Schilling the Younger (1513)
Few casualties were suffered on either side since the Swiss did not have the cavalry necessary to chase the Burgundians far.[1] At little cost to themselves, the Swiss had defeated one of the most feared armies in Europe and taken an impressive amount of treasure.[1] Charles had the habit of travelling to battles with an array of priceless artifacts as talismans, from carpets belonging to Alexander the Great to the 55-carat Sancy diamond and the Three Brothers jewel. All of them were looted from his tent by the Confederate army, together with his silver bath and ducal seal.[3] The Swiss initially had little idea of the value of their loot. A small surviving part of this fantastic booty is on display in various Swiss museums today, and a few remaining artillery pieces can be seen in the museum of La Neuveville, near Neuchâtel, Switzerland.[4]
Aftermath
After the battle, the Swiss troops came upon the bodies of their countrymen still hanging from trees in Grandson. An eyewitness, Peterman Etterlin, described the scene:
There were found sadly the honorable men still freshly hanging on the trees in front of the castle whom the tyrant had hanged. It was a wretched, pitiable sight. There were hung ten or twenty men on one bough. The trees were bent down and were completely full. [H]ere hanged a father and a son next to each other, there two brothers or other friends. And there came the honorable men who knew them; who were their friends, cousins and brothers, who found them miserably hanging. There was first anger and distress in crying and bewailing.
Charles had attempted to break the will of the Swiss by killing any of their countrymen whom he could apprehend. Instead, he united them as never before. When the Burgundians met the Swiss at the Battle of Morat (Murten in German) in June 1476, the Swiss annihilated his army.
Petterlin Etterlin, Kronika von der loblichen Eidgnoschaft, (Basel: Eckenstien, 1752), pp.89–91.
Johannes Knebel, Chronik aus den Zeiten des Burgunderkriegs, (Basel: Bahnmaier, 1851) 2: 357–360.
"Panigarola and den Herzog (Galeazzo Maria Sforza) von Orbe," 4 March 1476 as cited in Wilhelm Oechsli ed. Quellenbuch zur Schweizergeschichte, (Zurich: Schulthess, 1901), pp.232–234.
Alberto Winkler, The Swiss and War: the Impact of Society on the Swiss Military in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, unpublished PhD dissertation, Brigham Young University, 1982, pp.73–76.
Richard Vaughan, Charles the Bold: The Last Valois Duke of Burgundy. London, Longman Group Ltd., 1973. [ISBNmissing]
Florens Deuchler, Die Burgunderbeute: Inventar der Beutestücke aus den Schlachten von Grandson, Murten und Nancy 1476/1477, Verlag Stämpfli & Cie, Bern 1963. [ISBNmissing]
Charles I, nicknamed the Bold, was Duke of Burgundy from 1467 to 1477.
The canton of Bern, or Berne, is one of the 26 cantons forming the Swiss Confederation. Its capital city, Bern, is also the de facto capital of Switzerland. The bear is the heraldic symbol of the canton, displayed on a red-yellow background.
The Old Swiss Confederacy began as a late medieval alliance between the communities of the valleys in the Central Alps, at the time part of the Holy Roman Empire, to facilitate the management of common interests such as free trade and to ensure the peace along the important trade routes through the mountains. The Hohenstaufen emperors had granted these valleys reichsfrei status in the early 13th century. As reichsfrei regions, the cantons of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden were under the direct authority of the emperor without any intermediate liege lords and thus were largely autonomous.
The Burgundian Wars (1474–1477) were a conflict between the Burgundian State and the Old Swiss Confederacy and its allies. Open war broke out in 1474, and the Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Bold, was defeated three times on the battlefield in the following years and was killed at the Battle of Nancy in 1477. The Duchy of Burgundy and several other Burgundian lands then became part of France, and the Burgundian Netherlands and Franche-Comté were inherited by Charles's daughter, Mary of Burgundy, and eventually passed to the House of Habsburg upon her death because of her marriage to Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor.
Murten or Morat is a bilingual municipality and a city in the See district of the canton of Fribourg in Switzerland.
Grandson is a municipality in the district of Jura-Nord Vaudois in the canton of Vaud in Switzerland. It is situated on the south-west tip of Lake Neuchâtel, about 25 km north of Lausanne. It was part of the Kingdom of Upper Burgundy until the death of Rudolph III of Burgundy (993-1032), also King of Lower Burgundy, the last in the male line, when it was united with the Holy Roman Empire. On 2 March 1476, during the Burgundian Wars, Charles the Bold was defeated here in the Battle of Grandson.
The Battle of Morat took place during the Burgundian Wars (1474–1477) that was fought on 22 June 1476 between Charles the Bold, the Duke of Burgundy, and a Swiss Confederate army at Morat (Murten), about 30 kilometres from Bern. The result was a crushing defeat for the Burgundians at the hands of the Swiss.
The Swabian War of 1499 (Alemannic German: Schwoobechrieg, called Schwabenkrieg or Schweizerkrieg in Germany and Engadiner Krieg was the last major armed conflict between the Old Swiss Confederacy and the House of Habsburg. What had begun as a local conflict over the control of the Val Müstair and the Umbrail Pass in the Grisons soon got out of hand when both parties called upon their allies for help; the Habsburgs demanding the support of the Swabian League, while the Federation of the Three Leagues of the Grisons turning to the Swiss Eidgenossenschaft. Hostilities quickly spread from the Grisons through the Rhine valley to Lake Constance and even to the Sundgau in southern Alsace, the westernmost part of the Habsburg region of Further Austria.
The Battle of Héricourt was fought on 13 November 1474 near Héricourt, Burgundy, as part of the Burgundian Wars. It resulted in victory for the Swiss Confederacy and its allies over the Burgundian State.
The Battle of Laupen was fought in June 1339, between Bern and its allies on one side, and Freiburg together with feudal landholders from the County of Burgundy and Habsburg territories on the other. Bern was victorious, consolidating its position in the region. As a consequence of the conflict, the relations of Bern and the Swiss Confederacy tightened, resulting in Bern's permanent accession in 1353.
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Jacques of Savoy, Count of Romont was a member of the House of Savoy and military commander during the Burgundian Wars.
The Battle of Nancy was the final and decisive battle of the Burgundian Wars, fought outside the walls of Nancy on 5 January 1477 by Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, against René II, Duke of Lorraine, and the Swiss Confederacy.
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The Bundeslied or Tellenlied is a patriotic song of the Old Swiss Confederacy. Its original composition dates to the Burgundian Wars period (1470s). The oldest extant manuscript text was written in 1501, the first publication in print dates to 1545. It consists of stanzas of six lines each, with a rhyming scheme of A-A-B-C-C-B. It is one of the oldest existing records of the legend of Swiss national hero William Tell.
Petermann Etterlin was born in Lucerne, Switzerland, as the son of Egloff Etterlin, who served as chronicler of the city of Lucerne from 1427 to 1453. Although his parents had destined him for an ecclesiastical career, Etterlin never became a clergyman. In 1464, Etterlin was appointed copyist of the city of Lucerne.
The Revolt of Ghent was a rebellion by the city of Ghent against the Burgundian State. It lasted from 1449 to 1453. The rebellion was eventually suppressed by the Burgundians.
Grandson Castle is a medieval castle in the Swiss municipality of Grandson in the canton of Vaud. It is a Swiss heritage site of national significance.
Margrave Philip of Hachberg-Sausenberg was the son of the Margrave Rudolf IV of Hachberg-Sausenberg and Margaret of Vienne. Philip reigned in 1487–1503 as Margrave of Hachberg-Sausenberg and Count of Neuchâtel. From 1466 he called himself Lord of Badenweiler.
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