Battle of Murten
| date | June 22, 1476 |
|---|---|
| place | Murten in the canton of Friborg , Switzerland |
| output | Victory of the Confederation |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
|
Duke Charles the Bold of Burgundy, Duchy of Savoy |
|
| Commander | |
|
Duke of Afry · Prince of Taranto · Count of Marle · Jacob of Savoy · Anton Bastard of Burgundy |
Wilhelm Herter von Hertneck , steward and field captain · Hans von Hallwyl , vanguard · Hans Waldmann , heap of violence · Oswald von Thierstein , cavalry · Kaspar von Hertenstein , rearguard |
| Troop strength | |
| approx. 22,500 men, including 5,700 archers, 5,000 infantrymen and 2,100 heavy riders | approx. 22–24,000 men, including 1,800 horsemen; 2,000 men crew in Murten; 3,000 men of the lower union; and 50 men from Rottweil under Boley the Rued |
| losses | |
|
10,000 men |
|
The Battle of Murten was fought on June 22, 1476 between troops of the Confederation and the Burgundian Duke Charles the Bold as part of the Burgundian Wars .
prehistory
Charles the Bold had been Duke of Burgundy since 1467 and ruled an extensive empire between France and the Holy Roman Empire. In 1474 Charles got involved in a series of wars with France, the House of Habsburg and the old Confederation, which went down in history as the Burgundian Wars and which led to his death and the fall of his empire.
In 1473 Karl negotiated with Emperor Friedrich III in Trier . about increasing his enlarged duchy into a new kingdom of Burgundy. He also strove for the title of Rex Romanorum, which would have recommended him as his successor as emperor. In return, Friedrich demanded the marriage of Karl's only heiress, daughter Maria, to his son Maximilian , which Karl refused. As a result, he attacked Neuss on the Rhine, with the aim of conquering the important episcopal city of Cologne and from there to taking the cities of the Rhine southwards.
Under the influence of the French King Louis XI. In 1474 , Duke Siegmund redeemed the areas in Alsace and Breisgau pledged to the Burgundian court with a loan from the cities around Basel. The Swiss Confederation concluded a permanent alliance with Siegmund, the so-called Eternal Direction . As a result, the Confederates declared war on Burgundy and expanded it to include the Duchy of Savoy, when the latter refused to open war on Burgundy under pressure from the allies in Bern and Friborg. In order to prevent reinforcements of the Burgundians from Lombardy, Bern and Freiburg subsequently occupied the Burgundian Free County and the Savoy Vaud, while the Bishop of Sion, who was allied with Bern, occupied the Lower Valais.
In 1476 Charles undertook a campaign against the Confederate territory from the Free County of Burgundy . The main aim was to subjugate the cities of Bern and Freiburg. Karl's roster included numerous archers , and his army also had hundreds of cannons . There were also crossbowmen , heavy cavalry and some soldiers who were equipped with early arquebuses . At first Karl planned to take action against Bern, which he rightly recognized as the driving force behind the anti-Burgundian league. On February 28, 1476, after a brief siege, he took the town of Grandson on Lake Neuchâtel and had the federal garrison of 412 men, who had surrendered on the assurance of safe conduct, tied to the trees. Bern had used the short time of the siege to put together a larger contingent and to draw Karl against them. On March 2, 1476, the battle of Grandson saw the first major meeting, at which Charles's troops suffered their first defeat in the battle against the federal infantry.
The confederates managed to capture over 400 Burgundian guns . In the absence of cavalry, however, the Confederates were unable to pursue the fleeing Burgundians, which allowed Karl to get out of this battle with "only" around 1,000 casualties (from an army of around 20,000 men). Karl was able to regroup and reorganize his defeated but not destroyed troops, which made another battle necessary to decide the war.
Bern, as the driving force behind the anti-Burgundian alliance, tried in vain to persuade the Confederation to pursue the defeated Burgundians after the Battle of Grandson and occupy Vaud. Even when Charles gathered a new army in Lausanne and was obviously preparing for a new campaign against Bern, the Confederates refused to support any preventive action. As a symbolic measure, around 1000 men were placed in the city of Freiburg under the captain and later mayor of Zurich, Hans Waldmann . In the event that the Duke of Burgundy should invade their territory, the city of Bern was assured that further federal troops would come to their aid. On October 14, 1475, Freiburg i. Ue. at the insistence of the Bernese (against the advice of the confederates) to occupy the city of Murten together with Bern. The very next day, Bern and Freiburg were already in front of Murten. Bern asked Murten to surrender voluntarily and become a "Berner". Otherwise, “sy darumb suffer that you don't feel bad about lib and good”. When Freiburg promised that Murten would be allowed to remain independent if it came up, the Murten residents gave up their resistance, but demanded that only a crew of Freiburgers be stationed under the command of Wilhelm Perrotet. After the Battle of Grandson, Bern stationed a garrison of 1,500 men under Adrian I von Bubenberg in the well-fortified city to support the Freiburg garrison stationed there. This meant that both routes to Bern, via Freiburg and Murten, were temporarily closed to Karl. Without a siege of one of the two cities, Bern could not be reached. This ensured that in the event of an attack on Bern there would be enough time for the Confederates to move in to defend the city.
The battle of Murten
The armies of Charles the Bold and the Confederates
Charles the Bold owned the most modern army in Europe at that time. It was a mercenary army consisting of infantry, cavalry and artillery . Among the infantry, the English archers should be mentioned, who enjoyed an excellent reputation. Karl also had the most modern artillery in Europe. In May 1476, Duke Charles issued a military order in Lausanne to reorganize his army into four active and one reserve corps. The commanders of the four active corps were the Duke of Afry, the Prince of Taranto, the Count of Marle and Jacob of Savoy, Count of Romont . The reserve corps was led by Anton Bastard of Burgundy .
The confederates and their allies had their own fighting tactics , which had developed since the first battles against the Habsburgs in the 14th century. In the fight against heavy cavalry and armored fighters, they formed into violence . As an important innovation, they were able to create a kind of "hedgehog wall" for the first time in Grandson with about 5 m long spikes made of ash wood, which the cavalry could not break through. Machiavelli compared this Swiss combat tactic with the Greek phalanx , at that time a similar weapon, the sarissa , was used at times . An important weapon of the Confederates was the half-arrows , which had been tried and tested since Morgarten , a shorter polearm with a powerful effect. Small arms were used on both sides, but were of minor importance due to the immaturity of the ignition mechanism and the inaccuracy of the aiming.
After the Battle of Grandson, the Federal Diet on March 18, 1476 re- enacted a War Code . The aim was to strengthen the cohesion of the troops in the field in order to achieve an increased concentration of all forces on the main goal of a battle, namely the complete annihilation of the opposing force. In particular, it was forbidden to take prisoners of war to receive ransom. It had been shown that the fighters were greatly distracted as a result and the bulk of the enemy was therefore able to escape. The main weakness of the Confederates remained the lack of supreme command. Each troop had its own leaders, there was just a gathering of captains who decided on strategy and tactics .
The siege of Murten
After losing at Grandson , Karl fled to Lausanne. The Prince-Bishop of Lausanne was influenced by the Dukes of Savoy, who were allied with Charles. In Lausanne, Karl quickly gathered a new army on the Plaine du Loup . In particular, he had to rebuild all of his artillery that he had lost at Grandson.
In June he advanced through the Vaud towards Bern. The route via Grandson-Neuchâtel was out of the question, which is why he let his army advance south of Lake Neuchâtel. Basically there were two ways by which a large army could get to Bern with baggage train and artillery: Either via Payerne - Murten or via Romont - Freiburg . Both cities were provided with garrisons. Why Karl finally decided to go via Murten is unclear. A clash of his vanguard with a delegation of the crew from Murten near Avenches was probably decisive for this.
On June 9th, Karl arrived in front of Murten. On the following two days he had the city surrounded by his slowly arriving army and set up a siege. In order to get to Bern, this siege was not absolutely necessary - the road was a little south of the city - but it would have been too risky to have the 2000 Bernese from Murten in the rear if Bern had been sieged. The formation of the Burgundian troops is precisely recorded. Three corps lay around Murten, two corps as reserves in the Burgundian camp south and east of the Bois Domingue, a dominant hill on the plain in front of Murten, on which the headquarters of Charles the Bold lay. “Bodemünzi”, the later name of the hill, does not come from the Swiss German “ z 'bode müend si / to the ground they must ”, as is widely assumed , it is just a modification of the French “Bois Domingue”. To the east, Karl had an obstacle equipped with artillery erected, which in Swiss history has been called "Grünhag". This was to protect the siege army from a surprise attack from Bern.
On June 12, the Duke of Burgundy also had advance troops march towards Bern in order to conquer the Laupen bridgeheads over the Sense and Gümmenen over the Saane . These attempts were bloodily rejected by Bern. With the advance on Bernese territory, the aid agreements with the Swiss Confederation came into force.
In the meantime the siege of the city had begun and the artillery had already destroyed some of the towers. Under the energetic leadership of Adrian I. von Bubenberg, the besieged resisted violently. Bern had brought practically all of the captured artillery from Grandson to Murten, which is why the siege developed into a loss-making enterprise for the Burgundians. The continuing will to resist was also supported by the example of the fate of the occupation of Grandson - it was clear from the start that the occupation forces would not survive a defeat. Nevertheless, given the strong siege guns, the situation was hopeless in the long term. The heaviest attack occurred on the evening of June 18th. The connection with Bern could be maintained by sea, however, and Adrian von Bubenberg wrote to Bern that such an attack would be difficult to avert again.
The Bernese camp of 5,000–6,000 men was near Ulmiz , where, from June 19, troops gradually came from the Bernese territory, from the Confederation and from the allies, e.g. B. arrived from Thun . As a thank you from Bern, the city of Thun received a gold star in its coat of arms instead of the black one. These newcomers are often forgotten by Swiss historiography. In addition to the Count of Gruyères and Duke René II of Lorraine , contingents from the cities of Strasbourg, Colmar, Schlettstadt and Rottweil as well as the contingent from the four forest towns in the western part of Austria and the county of Hauenstein were drawn. The Lorraine cavalry was particularly valuable to the Confederates, as they themselves had no cavalry worth mentioning. Most recently, around 2000 people from Zurich, led by Hans von Breiten-Landenberg, arrived in Ulmiz on the night of June 22nd after a legendary three-day forced march.
The Confederates planned to fight the battle on Ten Thousand Knights Day, June 22nd, because their inadequate food supply prevented them from waiting. Their army comprised around 22–24,000 men with the allies, around 1,800 of whom were mounted. With around 22,500 men, the Burgundian army was somewhat smaller and more inhomogeneous, also because there were many non-combatants among them. In return, Charles's troops were armed much better.
In the woods east of Murten, the Confederates gathered with Lorraine riders under the command of Hans von Hallwyl and Hans Waldmann .
The battle
The Burgundian reconnaissance troops had noticed the approach of the Confederates, but Karl ignored all warnings after personally inspecting the federal camp on June 21 and had it deployed several times in vain in the rainy positions. So the Confederates had the advantage of the element of surprise on their side.
On the morning of June 22nd, a 1,300-strong mounted scouting party under Wilhelm Herter, Friedrich von Fleckenstein and Veltin von Neuenstein explored the terrain and the Burgundian positions very early. The patrol was noticed, but returned to the wood unmolested from the Burgundian side, one of the mistakes that Galeatto , one of Karl's officers, later listed.
Petermann Etterlin, as an eyewitness, reported the further procedure: “Because when you came to the wood, you began to make the order; there was a strict, stable knight, called Herr Wilhelm Herter , who at that time (1475–1476) was a servant to both lords of Austria and Lorraine, he was appointed a supreme captain, who began and made and ordered the order ”.
Then Oswald von Thierstein knighted a number of leaders. The time lag aroused such persistent displeasure that several of those knighted in this way later did not claim their title. Hans Waldmann, on the other hand, was not knighted by Wilhelm Herter until after the battle , according to Gerold Edlibach .
At 12:00 noon on June 22nd, 1476, the Confederates assembled in battle order and began the advance through the Birchenwald, which connects the Galmwald and the Murtenholz. The slaughter prayer was offered in the face of the enemy. According to several reports, the all-night rain stopped around this time and the sun was taken as a good sign. At this time only the artillery and three orderly companies were in the Burgundian position .
The full-page illustration of the battle in the Zurich Schilling shows the battle over several points in time and from the perspective of both parties.
The church tower clock in Murten shows the start of the battle: 12:00 p.m. As “Houptsecher”, the Lower Association, recognizable by its banners, is at the center. The confederates involved in the alliance, also recognizable by their banners, join them from the top left. The main people of the large departments can be recognized by their red jackets. The confederates (top left) are led by Hans Waldmann, pulling the spit after him. Kaspar von Hertenstein runs to his right, shouldering a half-length . Hans von Hallwyl strides underneath in armor with the crossbow . Further to the left, at the lower edge of the Lower Association, Wilhelm Herter fights with a spit, dressed entirely in red and wearing a feather-adorned hat. Wilhelm Herter can be identified by the black uniformed guardsman who followed him. At the top right of the group, Oswald von Thierstein, recognizable by his plume, leads the cavalry. The fleeing Burgundians and the siege troops of the Duke of Savoy are not shown differentiated.
On the most recent illustration of the Battle of Murten, the woodcut by Master B. in Pfettisheim's rhyming chronicle from 1477 , Wilhelm Herter , recognizable by the hat feather, is to the right of the Bernese standard bearer.
The fight began with a cannonade and a gunfight. According to the chronicler Petermann Etterlin , the cavalry pushed forward through the thick powder smoke, but had to wait for the vanguard that marched along the road. Since the fire was too high, only a few riders were hit. Initially, the vanguard did not manage to break through the Grünhag - a palisade - as the around 2,000 Burgundians stationed there vehemently defended themselves. According to several reports, the first attack failed.
While the Burgundian cavalry attacked despite the majority of the Confederates, the Schwyzers managed to bypass the Grünhage under the leadership of their Landammann Dietrich in the Halden. Presumably they had broken out of the vanguard of the first wave of attacks on the right and fell through the deep so-called moat of the artillery in the rear. At the same time the alarm was raised in the Burgundian camp. Troylo da Rossano was able to gather around 4,000 troops to throw them into battle. But the confederate crowd had already run towards the Grünhag and weighed it down. In panic, the Burgundians fired their rifles far too early. Now the bulk of the Halpartiere (around 15,000) could attack the Burgundian camp. The advance guard went south of Murten against the 2nd Corps of the Lombards and pushed them into the lake. The garrison of the city of Murten also made a sortie against the Lombards and tried to kill the swimming refugees with two ships. The cavalry attacked the duke's positions on the Bodemünzi while the gang of violence was attacking the camp near Meyriez. The English archers and the archers of the Guard tried to offer resistance here, but they were taken by surprise by the cavalry and their captains, Grimberghe and Georges de Rosimbois, were also killed.
In the meantime, Charles the Bold gathered the rest of his troops, probably the mounted soldiers of I. and III. Corps, to escape. The booty in Murten was far lower than in Grandson, but it still seems to have been considerable. The impressive remains of the so-called Burgundy booty can still be seen scattered today, especially in historical museums in Switzerland, Austria and Germany. The most important bundle can be found in the Historical Museum in Bern .
The ossuary in Murten was built in 1485 for the mortal remains of the dead soldiers, and existed until 1798.
Consequences / meaning
With the victory in the decisive battle of the Burgundian Wars , the Confederates prepared the end of the Burgundian state. They paved France's way to supremacy in Western Europe, and as a result the House of Austria was able to acquire its possessions in the Netherlands.
Thanks to the superiority of their foot troops, the confederates established themselves as a European military power and from then on were often recruited into foreign services as mercenaries . The history of the Swiss mercenaries began at this time and lasted until the Crimean War .
To commemorate this victory, June 22nd was established as a battle holiday in many federal locations .
The legend of the Murtenlaufer
A legend tells of a Swiss runner who, like the legendary Pheidippides , ran the distance from Murten to Freiburg (around 17 km) without interruption with a linden branch in hand to announce the outcome of the battle. After his arrival he was able to announce the words “Victory, Victory!” And then collapsed dead. At this point a tree was planted, the so-called "Murtenlinde", which was replaced by a memorial in front of the town hall after it died in 1985. Seventeen descendants could be bred from the Murten linden tree, one of which can be seen today in Murten and one in Freiburg on Rathausplatz. In honor of the runner, the Murtenlauf has been held every year since 1933 .
See also
literature
- Gerrit Himmelsbach: 'Je lay emprins - I tried it'. Murten, June 22, 1476 . In: Stig Förster, Markus Pöhlmann , Dierk Walter (ed.): Battles of world history. From Salamis to Sinai . Munich 2001, pp. 109–122.
- Georges Grosjean: The Battle of Murten. Analysis of an event . In: The Battle of Murten. A Swiss event in Europe's history between the Middle Ages and the modern age 1476–1976. International colloquium for the 500th anniversary of the Battle of Murten. Murten 23-25 April 1976 (Archives of the Historical Association of the Canton of Bern 60). Bern 1976, pp. 35-90.
- Hans Rudolf Kurz: Swiss battles . Second, revised and expanded edition. Francke, Bern 1977, ISBN 3-7720-1369-4 .
- Gottlieb Friedrich Ochsenbein: The documents of the siege and battle of Murten , 1876, digitized in the Internet archive
- Theodor Schön: Wilhelm Herter von Herteneck . In: Reutlinger Geschichtsblätter 5, 1894, p. 96
- Franz Ludwig Haller von Königsfelden , depiction of the strangest Swiss battles from 1298 to 1499: according to the principles of strategy and tactics , 1820, p.331ff
Web links
- Christian Folini: Murten, battle at. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
- murtenpanorama.ch - The panorama of the Battle of Murten
- Battle of Murten (Virtual Zealand Museum)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Klaus Schelle: Karl the Bold, Burgundy between Lilienbanner u. Imperial eagle . Magnus-Verlag, Essen 1981, ISBN 3-88400-103-5 , p. 206 .
- ↑ Sisters of new Murten Linde , Freiburg News on June 21, 2014. Retrieved on May 1, 2017