The Battle of Murten (Morat) 1476

By allowing Charles the Bold to retire from the battlefield unmolested, the Swiss gave him a breathing space in which to reorganize his forces. Setting up his headquarters in Lausanne, the Duke soon managed to raise an army of close to 18,000 men, and within two months of the disaster at Grandson he was once again ready to take the field.

For their part the Bernese discontinued their policy of retaining outposts too far forward, with the exception of the one at Murten, which is situated some 23 kilometres from Berne, blocking the northerly road from Lausanne. The southerly approach was also obstructed by the city of Fribourg. As Delbrück informs us:

Consequently, Charles was obliged first to attack one of these two places. There would have been no advantage for him to bypass them and move directly on Bern. The Bernese alone would hardly have offered battle in the open field. The duke would have been obliged to besiege the city and would then have been attacked by the relief army in the same manner but under very much more unfavourable circumstances in comparison with what he might expect at Murten or Fribourg. The duke, therefore, had first of all to turn against one of these two cities. Foreseeing this, the Council of Berne had strengthened the Fribourg citizenry with a “supplement” of 1,000 men. The city of Murten, situated on foreign territory [Savoy] and uncertain as to the attitude of its inhabitants, was provided a garrison of 1,580 men under the command of an especially experienced warrior, Adrian von Bubenberg.[1]

At the end of May Charles began to advance on Murten, which lies on the east shore of the lake of the same name, and on the 10^th June he laid siege to the city. Douglas Miller states that the garrison at Murten had been supplied with the bulk of the captured Burgundian cannon taken at Grandson, and that the walls of the city were thus covered by over 400 guns.[2] Delbrück makes no mention of this, while various Swiss sources do mention “some” captured guns being used by the defenders. The handling and management of artillery required skill and care, and to have erected firing platforms for over 400 cannon, plus having to drag or lift them up onto the walls seems to stretch credibility a little too far. Therefore I consider that no more than a few dozen guns could possibly have been used, and these would be permanently fixed in their firing positions with little chance of doing any great harm to the attackers once they were under the limited depression of the gun barrels.

Charles’s main camp near the city was not completely enclosed owing to the rising nature of the terrain, but he had constructed a further fortified camp about 2 kilometres from Murten on a wooded ridge overlooking the Wyler Field known as the Bois de Domingue (see map). Here the Burgundians were in an excellent position for receiving any approach of the Swiss from the east with their cannon and marksmen.[3] An earthwork and palisade was erected along the ditch at the side of the road that connected the villages of Burg and Salvenach, this was known as the Grünhag, and Charles ordered his forces not directly involved in the siege of Murten to occupy this position on the 15^th June, expecting the imminent arrival of the Swiss. Having failed to put in an appearance by the 21^st June Charles became puzzled concerning the exact whereabouts of the Confederate army, and rode out himself to investigate. What he actually achieved is debateable, since upon his return he ordered his troops to return to their camp, leaving only about 2,000 archers and hand gunners, supported by 1,000 cavalry to hold the Grünhag. What he probably saw on his reconnaissance was only part of the Swiss relief army, and considered that it was a ploy to draw him away from the siege of Murten. However the full weight of the Confederate army was now concentrated and numbered over 20,000 men, together with 1,500 mounted men-at-arms under the command of Duke Renatus of Lorraine.

The Battlefield of Murten. (Murten Panorama Foundation, Switzerland)

Modern map showing the battlefield of Murten

At a council of war held on the 22^nd June, the Swiss and their allies decided that rather than attacking the Burgundian position frontally, they would envelope it, thus preventing a repetition of Grandson which had allowed their enemy to escape. To this end the advance guard, or Vorhut, of 5,000 troops from Berne, Schwyzer and Fribourg would contain the Burgundians frontally, their left flank protected by the Lorraine horse. The main Swiss square, or Gewalthaufen, numbering over 10,000 men was to follow in echelon on the left; the rearguard, or Nachhut, 6,000 men, would move to the south of the Burgundian camp and cut off any line of retreat. In addition, small contingents from Neuchâtel and Le Landeron would block any attempt by the enemy to escape to the north of Lake Murten.[4]

On the damp afternoon of 22^nd June the Confederate formations began to move forward. Although only thinly held, the English archers and Burgundian men-at-arms defending the Grünhag managed to check the advance of the Swiss Vorhut square, which sustained heavy casualties from arrows and light artillery fire. It took some careful manoeuvring by the Schwyzers to outflank the earthwork, but with this done the defenders broke and fled.[5]

In the meantime Charles had been warned of the Swiss attack and gave orders for the trumpets to sound the assembly of his main army. The Burgundian troops, taken by surprise in their camp, began to move forward piecemeal, each unit arriving near the Grünhag only to be met by a stream of fugitives, whose numbers increased as more of their comrades joined the route:

The strongly superior force and aggressive attack of the Swiss, and the confusion and breakup of units among the Burgundians, doomed all efforts to failure. Only a part of the mounted men escaped; the foot troops, including the famous English archers, were overtaken by the enemy horsemen, who were, of course, very numerous and were for the most part cut down. But all the units that were in position around the town of Murten were cut off before they learned what happened. They were all slaughtered or drowned in the lake.[6]

Charles himself only just managed to escape, while a unit of Burgundians under the command of Count Romont, encamped north east of Murten,  beat a hasty but costly retreat, after running into the Swiss formations of Neuchâtel and Le Landelon.

Burgundian cannon. Grandson Museum

Swiss casualties were probably no more than 600-700, mainly killed or wounded during the advance on the Grünhag. The Burgundians lost over 10,000 men, and once again the whole of their artillery train fell into Swiss hands. Had Charles defended his entrenched forward position with the whole of his field army, plus his not inconsiderable artillery, things would have been finely balanced. The fact that the Swiss were stalled in their initial assault by the few thousand defenders, begs the question of what would have happened if the full weight of the Burgundian army had been prepared and ready? Be that as it may, as a result of the battles of Grandson and Murten Charles the Bold’s fortunes now went into a rapid decline.