Murten Castle, Switzerland
On 1 August the Swiss celebrate their National Day, commemorating the “Oath of Rutli” in 1291 when the leaders of the Cantons of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden met to pledge their mutual cooperation to form what became the Swiss Confederation. Many shops and stores have a supply of Swiss flags and items decorated with the Swiss insignia, the white cross on a red field, much as shops in the USA stock “Stars and Stripes” flags prior to 4th of July.
Gruyères Castle
With over 800 years of history,
one may think the formation of the Swiss Confederation was a relatively
peaceful endeavor. Far from it. The
Swiss have had to fight for their independence every step of the way, engaging
in wars over the centuries with the Kingdoms of Savoy and France, the Habsburgs
of Austria, and the Duchy of Burgundy.
The Burgundian Wars, in particular,
were quite dramatic, and in the end the defeat of Charles the Bold, Duke of
Burgundy by the Swiss changed the course of European history, as cliché as that
sounds. Of the three last crucial battles of the Burgundian Wars, two of the
battlefields are in Switzerland, and I decided to visit one, the site of the
Battle of Morat (or Murten in German), fought on 22 June 1476.
After an easy 2-hour drive from Zürich,
I reached the medieval walled city of Murten, surrounded by modern industrial
zones, which I tried to ignore. I walked through the gravel gardens outside the
city walls by the Schloss, past a large chessboard, to look out at the lovely
Lake Murten, a view enjoyed by other visitors eating their lunch. The courtyard
of the Schloss Murten was open, but the interiors, used as city offices, were
not accessible.
I was able to climb the rampart walls to stare out to the landscape southwest of the town that had been the battlefields in 1476, where the sight of Burgundian tents, the infantry, and artillery were now replaced with green fields and leafy forests against the hills.
After wandering through the city,
I visited the Murten Museum, which contained exhibits of 6,000 years of life in
this region, starting with the La Tène culture pile-dwellings found on the Murten
lakeshore. However, my focus was on the Battle of Murten, and I studied the
display cases of weapons, armor, and cannon from the battle, along with a skull
showing a clear slash-mark from a sword.
The 17-minute video explaining the
battle was given in French and German (this being a bi-lingual city), and I was
almost able to follow it. As I was
leaving, I purchased a book about the battle, and chatted with the young student
at the entrance desk, speculating how European history would have been altered
had the battle been a victory for Charles.
For example, I don’t think the marriage of his daughter Mary the Rich
(Charles’s only heir) to Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian would have taken place,
thus the Burgundian Netherlands would never have become part of the Habsburg Austrian
Empire, nor would the Order of the Golden Fleece been taken over by the
Habsburgs. The loss of Swiss territory to Charles, along with the combined
dominance of Burgundy and Savoy over the Swiss cantons, may have eroded the
strength of the Swiss Confederation, perhaps even ending the dream of a
federated Switzerland. There might not be a country called Switzerland today.
And, in Charles’s quest to enlarge and unite his Burgundian territories, he may
have succeeded in creating a kingdom for himself, which may have survived to
the modern age -- a nation called Burgundy? Imagine, the name Burgundy would be
more today than just a fine French wine.
Cape of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy
15th Century Burgundian armor
I took a detour to visit Gruyères,
the Swiss city famous for the cheese, which was about an hour’s drive east. My
goal was not so much the cheese as to visit the Castle of Gruyères, which holds
some of the booty from the Battle of Murten. In my tour of the castle, I entered
a large room containing four display cases, one with suits of armor, and three
that held large black velvet capes with gold-embroidered coats of arms of
Charles the Bold and his father Philip the Good, the last two Valois Dukes of
Burgundy. Amazing, these cloaks were
almost six hundred years old, and still attested to the elegance, culture and
wealth of the Burgundian court, the most splendid in Europe.
But Charles was vanquished at
Murten, losing almost 10,000 of his army to the 400 Swiss causalities, and at
the Battle of Nancy in January 1477, finally lost his life. The young man in the Murten museum told me a doggerel
verse all Swiss schoolchildren learn: “Karl
der Kühne velor, bei Grandson das Gut, bei Murten den Mut, bei Nancy das Blut”
meaning "Charles the Bold lost at Grandson his goods, at Murten his courage, at
Nancy his blood." Whoa.
Street scene in Murten
The defeat at Murten and eventual
failure of Charles the Bold to make himself king had far-reaching
consequences. In the land-grab that
followed, France and Germany (the Holy Roman Empire) embarked on centuries of
warfare for control of the of the Burgundian territories, from the wars of
French King Louis XIV, to the Franco-Prussian War, to the First and Second
World Wars. In addition, the Netherlands fought the Eighty-Years War against
the Spanish Habsburg kings for independence. However, with their victory over the
Burgundians and Charles the Bold, among many other military victories in their
800 years of history, the Swiss can celebrate their National Day this 1 August.
