The Battle of Laupen was fought in June 1339,[6] 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.
This is also the first battle that the white cross was documented as being used as a field sign worn by Swiss combatants.
Background
Prior to hostilities the free imperial city of Bern had undergone heavy expansion, however this expansion came at high expense to the feudal lords in the area and led to increasing competition with the neighbouring city of Fribourg. Bern had been allied with Fribourg since 1241, but Fribourg had been sold to the House of Habsburg in 1277.
Fribourg entered a league with neighbouring feudal lords, including the County of Neuchâtel, the County of Savoy and the Prince-Bishop of Basel, raising a force of some 17,000 men, including a force of some 1,000 heavy cavalry under the command of Rudolf von Nidau and Gérard de Valengin. While the cavalry were a powerful force, much of the infantry, with the exception of the Freiburg contingent, were poorly equipped and unmotivated[7]
This force set out to confront Bern by besieging Laupen Castle. To raise the siege, Bern raised a force of 6,000, consisting of Bernese, supported by Forest Cantons of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden (who had entered a military alliance with Bern in 1323), and other allies (Simmental, Weissenburg, Oberhasli).
The Habsburg Duke of Austria and the Count of Kyburg assembled a force in Aargau and threatened Bern from the east. This is likely the reason that the relief force sent to Laupen was not led by the Bernese Schultheiss, Johann II von Bubenberg, who would have remained in the city preparing for a possible siege.
The battle
The Bernese army marched to the relief of Laupen, arriving in the afternoon of 21 June. Rather than attempt an attack on the Freiburger siege lines, they drew up their army on a hill called the Bramberg, some 3km east-northeast of Laupen Castle, as a challenge to their enemies to come and fight. The formation of the Bernese consisted of one or more haufen, deep bodies of infantry.[8] To one flank, probably the left,[9] stood the troops of the Forest Cantons. The arrival of the Bernese was noted by the Freiburgers and they rapidly armed and arrayed themselves for battle. Late in the afternoon, they launched their attack.
Prayer of the Bernese before the battle. Rudolf von Erlach is shown with his coat of arms, kneeling next to the altar.
The Freiburg force was led by their cavalry, followed by the larger body of infantry. An unknown number of troops were left in the siege camp, to protect the equipment and prevent a sally by the 600 strong Bernese garrison.[10] The cavalry vanguard moved to threaten the Bernese, with a number of newly dubbed knights riding close to the Bernese lines waving their swords, but the Bernese force held its position. When the Freiburg infantry formed up, the cavalry launched an assault which brought them into contact with the Forest Canton contingent, who rapidly formed an all-round defensive formation known as a hedgehog (Igel). Away from this flank action, the Freiburger infantry advanced up the hill. The Bernese threw forward a screen of crossbowmen and stone-throwers to harass this advance but these quickly fell back as the Freiburgers closed. This seems to have caused a panic in the rear ranks of the Bernese army and a large number (up to 2,000) men fled into the forest behind the Bramberg.[11] Remarkably, the rest of the army held firm. The two infantry lines then clashed. Despite their numerical advantage, the Freiburgers were quickly broken and fled away towards Laupen, the flight being led by the feudal contingent from Vaud.[12] The contingent from Freiburg suffered particularly heavily, losing their Burgomeister and the City standard bearer.[13] Showing great control, a part of the Bernese army reordered itself and marched to relieve the Forest Cantons, who were still surrounded by the Freiburger's cavalry. The action here was possibly the fiercest of the day, with the horsemen now fighting on two fronts themselves. After a short bloody struggle, the cavalry were routed and suffered heavy casualties. At least 80 nobles fell, including the Counts of Nidau, Valengin and Aarburg[14] and the son of Louis II of Vaud.[15] The evening was now drawing on, which limited pursuit, but the Bernese forces marched into Laupen, where celebrations and services of thanksgiving for the victory were held.[16]
Aftermath
Monument to the battle on Bramberg, Neuenegg municipality, design by Karl Marcell Heigelin (1798–1833), inscribed In memoriam proelii Laupensis e quo Bernenses cum sociis die 21 junii 1339 victore discessere, with the coat of arms of Erlach, Hic lapis positus est 1853.
The Habsburg force in the east could not reach Laupen in time for joining the battle and dispersed upon receiving news of the defeat. The victory of the Bernese/Swiss against all odds, outnumbered two-to-one by an army containing such a force of mounted chivalry, came as a surprise, and chroniclers record that comments like "God himself must have become a Bernese citizen" were heard among the retreating Habsburg troops.
The rivalry between Bern and Fribourg continued throughout the 14th century but did not erupt into military conflict again. Fribourg acquired substantial territories in the vicinity of Bern, but these were all lost again in the wake of the Battle of Sempach, with the 1389 peace treaty between Habsburg and the Swiss Confederacy. Fribourg renewed its alliance with Bern in 1403 and abandoned its expansionist policies, focusing on the acquisition of territories in its immediate neighbourhood. This permitted the rise of Bern as the most powerful city republic north of the alps by the early modern period, and paved the way for the accession of Fribourg as an associate of the Swiss Confederacy by 1454 and as a full member in 1481.
The battle is also the first occasion for which use of the Swiss cross as a badge to identify confederate troops is attested;[17] it was shown on combatants' clothing as two stripes of textile. Diebold Schilling the Elder in the 1480s makes a point of showing this field sign as worn by troops of the Forest Cantons as a white cross in a red field, while it is not yet attached to the cantonal banners. In the same illustrations, the attacking Savoyard cavalry displays the white-on-red cross of Savoy both in its banner and on cavalry shields.
The battle has an important position in Swiss military history as the first victory in open battle of the Swiss Confederacy over Habsburg. The Swiss had already routed a Habsburg army in the Battle of Morgarten in 1315, but this had been an ambush on a marching army and not an open field battle. The drawn-out conflict with Habsburg was one of the main driving forces of the foundation and growth of the Confederacy, lasting for full two centuries, from the death of Habsburg king Rudolf I of Germany in 1291 until the peace treaty of 1511 in the aftermath of the Swabian War.[18] It was the continued conflict with Albert II of Habsburg that prompted the accession of Zürich, Glarus, Zug and Bern to the confederacy, forming the Eight Cantons. After a brief Habsburg-Confederate alliance against an external threat in the so-called Gugler war of 1375, the conflict re-emerged in the 1380s, culminating in the Habsburg defeat in the Battle of Sempach in 1386.
The Battle of Morgarten took place on 15 November 1315, when troops of Schwyz, supported by their allies of Uri and Unterwalden, ambushed an Austrian army under the command of Leopold I, Duke of Austria on the shores of Lake Ägeri, in the territory of Schwyz.
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 Battle of Sempach was fought on 9 July 1386, between Leopold III, Duke of Austria and the Old Swiss Confederacy. The battle was a decisive Swiss victory in which Duke Leopold and numerous Austrian nobles died. The victory helped turn the loosely allied Swiss Confederation into a more unified nation and is seen as a turning point in the growth of Switzerland.
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.
During the French Revolutionary Wars, the revolutionary armies marched eastward, enveloping Switzerland in their battles against Austria. In 1798, Switzerland was completely overrun by the French and was renamed the Helvetic Republic. The Helvetic Republic encountered severe economic and political problems. In 1798 the country became a battlefield of the Revolutionary Wars, culminating in the Battles of Zürich in 1799.
The Second War of Kappel was an armed conflict in 1531 between the Catholic and the Protestant cantons of the Old Swiss Confederacy during the Reformation in Switzerland.
Léman was the name of a canton of the Helvetic Republic from 1798 to 1803, corresponding to the territory of modern Vaud. A former subject territory of Bern, Vaud had been independent for only four months in 1798 as the Lemanic Republic before it was incorporated into the centralist Helvetic Republic. Léman comprised all of the territory of Vaud detached from Bernese occupation, apart from the Avenches and the Payerne which, after 16 October 1802, were annexed by the canton of Fribourg until the Napoleonic Act of Mediation the following year when they were restored to the newly established and newly sovereign canton of Vaud.
Neuenegg is a municipality in the Bern-Mittelland administrative district in the canton of Bern in Switzerland.
The city of Bern is one of the Zähringer foundations of the late 12th century. By the end of the 13th century, it had acquired de facto imperial immediacy. It became a full member of the Old Swiss Confederacy in 1353, and during the 15th century managed to significantly expand its sphere of influence, notably with the conquest of Aargau in 1415. With the acquisition of Vaud in 1536, Bern became the most powerful city-republic north of the Alps, and one of the leading Protestant cities in early modern Switzerland. The canton of Bern in the Restored Confederacy of 1815 even after the loss of Aargau and Vaud remained the largest Swiss canton, relegated to second rank only with the secession of Jura in 1979. Since 1848 Bern has served as the federal city (capital) of Switzerland.
Laupen is a municipality in the Bern-Mittelland administrative district and its district capital, situated in the canton of Bern in Switzerland.
The Old Swiss Confederacy, also known as Switzerland or the Swiss Confederacy, was a loose confederation of independent small states, initially within the Holy Roman Empire. It is the precursor of the modern state of Switzerland.
Jacques of Savoy, Count of Romont was a member of the House of Savoy and military commander during the Burgundian Wars.
Rudolf von Erlach was a knight and commander of the Swiss Confederation forces at the Battle of Laupen.
The French invasion of Switzerland occurred from January to May 1798 as part of the French Revolutionary Wars. The independent Old Swiss Confederacy collapsed from the invasion and simultaneous internal revolts called the "Helvetic Revolution". The Swiss ancien régime institutions were abolished and replaced by the centralised Helvetic Republic, one of the sister republics of the French First Republic.
The Burgdorferkrieg or Kyburgerkrieg was a war in 1383-84 between the counts of Neu-Kyburg and the city of Bern for supremacy in the County of Burgundy in what is now Switzerland.
The Gümmenenkrieg was a war between the emergent city-states of Bern and Fribourg in 1331-33 in what is now Switzerland. The war pitted Bern and the new Swiss Confederation against the Habsburg-supported city of Fribourg and local nobles. It was also the first in a series of battles that brought the Habsburgs and Fribourg into prominence in the County of Burgundy. The war ended without resolving anything and led to other wars between Bern and Fribourg.
The Battle of Grauholz on 5 March 1798 was a battle between a Bernese army under Karl Ludwig von Erlach against the French Revolutionary Army under Balthazar Alexis Henri Schauenburg. The battle took place at Grauholz, a wooded hill in what is now the municipalities of Urtenen-Schönbühl and Moosseedorf in the canton of Bern in Switzerland. The government of Bern had already surrendered the previous day, and the Bernese defeat at Grauholz ended their resistance to the French in the north of the canton.
The Battle of Schosshalde was fought between the imperial city of Bern and the House of Habsburg on 27 April 1289 just outside Bern. Though the premise of the battle was over Bern's refusal to pay imperial taxes, the battle represented the growing power struggle between the many states in Swabia. It allowed King Rudolf I to further expand Habsburg influence in Swabia, but it preserved Bern's status as an imperial city, and likely was a factor in the formation of the Old Swiss Confederacy in 1291, as multiple Swiss states grew worried at the growing encroachment of the Habsburgs.
Oberer Mannenberg Castle is a ruined castle in the municipality of Zweisimmen of the canton of Bern in Switzerland. It is a Swiss heritage site of national significance.
De Vries, Kelly (1996). Infantry Warfare in the Early Fourteenth Century. Woodbridge: Boydell Press. pp.129–136. ISBN0-85115-567-7.
Oman, Charles (1991) [1924]. A History of the Art of War in the Middle Ages Vol.2. London: Greenhill. pp.241–5. ISBN1-85367-105-3.
Delbrück, Hans (1990) [1923]. History of the Art of War Vol III: The Middle Ages. trans. W.J. Renfroe. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN978-0-8032-6585-1.
Heath, Ian (1982). Armies of the Middle Ages, volume 1: The Hundred Years' War, the Wars of the Roses and the Burgundian Wars, 1300-1487. Wargames Research Group. pp.58–9.
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County of Kyburg 
