Battle of the gray wood
Lengnau · Grenchen · Ruhsel · Büren · Col de la Croix · St. Niklaus · Fraubrunnen · Neuenegg · Grauholz · Hägglingen · Wollerau · Stucketen-Chäppeli · Schindellegi · Rothenthurm · Morgarten · Pfyn I · Nidwalden · Pfyn II
In the Battle of the Grauholz on March 5, 1798, Bernese troops under the command of Karl Ludwig von Erlach surrendered to the French army of General Balthasar Alexis Henri Antoine von Schauenburg , although the Bern government had already capitulated at this point.
The defenders of Bern offered bitter resistance in an initial meeting near Fraubrunnen and then in Grauholz , a wooded range of hills not far from the city of Bern . Many women, old men and sometimes even children from the rural population joined the fighting Bernese troops and tried to save their city from the French invasion.
The overwhelming power of the French was overwhelming, the Bernese were defeated both in Fraubrunnen and in Grauholz. Von Erlach took back the remnants of his army and tried unsuccessfully to face the French again on the Schosshalde at the gates of Bern (near the entrance to the Untertorbrücke ).
The government of Bern under the mayor Niklaus Friedrich von Steiger had already capitulated at this point and the entire Bern resistance collapsed - despite the victory of General Johann Rudolf von Graffenried near Neuenegg .
Believing that General Karl Ludwig von Erlach had betrayed Bern, he was slain by desperate farmers near Wichtrach . Von Erlach was on his way to the Bernese Oberland , from where he wanted to reform the resistance against the French.
The Grauholz monument inaugurated in 1886 commemorates the battle of the Grauholz .
During the battle, Schauenburg was able to confiscate a collection of strategic maps of Bern's sovereign territory, which later became known as the Schauenburg collection .