The Battle of Grandson 1476

Charles was well aware that by advancing directly on Berne he would in all probability be faced by the whole weight of the united Confederate cantons against him. He also knew that, although they would not leave Berne in the lurch if attacked directly, the other cantons might not move swiftly to her assistance if he only attempted to regain Grandson, as they were not all in agreement with Bernese policy.[1]

Charles laid siege to Grandson in late February 1476 and after a brief resistance the garrison capitulated under the false impression that Charles would show clemency. This was not forthcoming, and every one of the 500 defenders was either hung or drowned in the lake, possibly as an example of Charles’s displeasure for the Swiss treatment of the victims at Stäffis.

The slow build up of the Swiss relief forces allowed the Burgundians to set up a formidable defensive position around their camp, well protected on all sides and amply supplied with artillery. Charles had an army of over 14,000 men, including 3,000 mounted troops, back-up by 100 cannon; although the Swiss army outnumbered him by some 5,000, his position and firepower would have made this superiority in numbers negligible. But this was not Charles’s style, and he choose to move out of Grandson to the village of Concise, about 7.5 kilometres north east, where, on 2^st March, his forward units collided with a Confederate foraging  party of 2,500 men while setting up camp. The engagement now escalated as Charles arrived at the front and ordered his hand gunners and archers, the latter containing English long bowmen in Burgundian service, to scale the vineyard covered slope and drive back the Swiss skirmishers:

From a theoretical viewpoint, the situation was as favourable as possible for the Burgundian army. Both armies were still in the approach march, but the Burgundians were crossing a plain, while the Swiss were passing through a difficult pass. We must therefore assume that the Burgundian army could be assembled and deployed faster than the Swiss. It could then attack the Swiss, who were still involved in their deployment, and if it succeeded in throwing them back, they would necessarily have been pressed together and held up at the entrance of the defile, suffering heavy losses.

But the characteristic composition and tactics of the two armies made this manoeuvre, quite logical in itself, impossible for the Burgundians. The road along which the Swiss were moving up did not emerge directly from the wooded mountains onto the plain, but gradually sloped downwards across hill planted with vineyards. On this terrain it was hardly possible for Charles to bring into action the two arms on which he relied the most, his knights and his artillery. If he had had only the powerful mass of his marksmen move forward in the attack, they would perhaps have obliged the Swiss to move back into the pass, but alone they could not inflict a real defeat on them, since they could not trust themselves to move up very close to the enemy or to allow a hand –to – hand fight to develop.[2]

Unfortunately for the Burgundians, Charles decided to allow the Swiss time to gather their forward units, amounting to close on 10,000 men, into a solid square formation which now began to descend onto the plain.

In all probability Charles imagined that he had the whole Confederate army to his front when, in fact, a further 9,000 Swiss were still approaching the defile. Undaunted Charles ordered several detachments of men-at-arms to attack the flanks of the Swiss column, while he drew back his forward troops so as to unmask his artillery. The fire from the Burgundian cannon, although not accurate, nevertheless caused a number of casualties in the tight packed Swiss formation, while the flank attacks made by the Burgundian men-at-arms forced their skirmishers to fall back into the square. Taking this as a sign of wavering on the part of the Swiss, Charles himself now led his mounted lancers against the front and right flank of the pike brisling Swiss square, while the Burgundian horse under Château-Guyon also attempted to attack it from the rear:

‘Twice Château-Guyon attempted to wrench the banner of Schwyz from the hands of the ensign before being forced back. His horse was slain under him, and he was himself felled by a Bernese horseman named Hans von der Grub. A man from Lucerne, Heinrich Elsner, succeeded in seizing the banner bearing the golden cross of St Andrew.’[3]

Charles the Bold also had his horse killed during this engagement, but managed to extricate himself from the fighting, and now ordered a re-grouping of his knights so as to allow his artillery to soften up the Swiss square. This proved to be a costly mistake, as just at this particular moment the other columns of Swiss began to arrive on the field, and mistaking the withdrawal of their knights as a retreat rather than a tactical manoeuvre, the remaining Burgundian forces broke in panic. Soon the whole army, with the exception of the knights under Charles’s immediate command, was in full flight from the battlefield, and although he tried desperately to stave off disaster, he was eventually forced to quit the field and follow in the wake of his shattered forces. The Swiss did not follow-up their victory with a full blown pursuit, but contented themselves with collecting the enormous amount of stores and booty left behind by their routed foes, which included over 100 cannon.[4]* The Swiss lost some 200 men killed and wounded, while the Burgundian casualties were also light and amounted to no more than 300-400.

What the battle of Grandson proved was the ineffectiveness of mounted knights when pitted against the massive pike square, which became gradually honed into a highly manoeuvrable unit on the battlefield.