Battle of Morgarten (1315): Swiss Peasants Ambush the Habsburgs

The Battle of Morgarten, fought on 15 November 1315, was an ambush in which the men of Schwyz destroyed a Habsburg army on a narrow path beside Lake Ägeri in central Switzerland. Duke Leopold I of Austria had set out to punish Schwyz, but his armoured horsemen were trapped between the slope and the water. The victory strengthened the alliance of the forest cantons that grew into the Swiss Confederacy.

Background

Around 1291 the valley communities of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden had confirmed a mutual defence alliance, recorded in the Federal Charter of 1291. The Habsburgs, who held extensive lands and rights in the region, saw such alliances as a threat to their authority.

Schwyz had also been quarrelling for generations with the wealthy Benedictine abbey of Einsiedeln over pastures and forest on their shared border, a dispute known as the Marchenstreit. The abbey was under Habsburg protection. On the night of 6 January 1314 men from Schwyz raided Einsiedeln, plundered it and held some monks captive.

The quarrel became part of a wider conflict. In October 1314 two rival kings of the Romans were elected: the Habsburg Frederick the Fair and Louis the Bavarian of the house of Wittelsbach. The forest cantons supported Louis, who confirmed their privileges, while Frederick’s brother Leopold I of Austria prepared to bring them to heel.

The ambush

In November 1315 Leopold advanced from Zug towards Schwyz with an army of knights and foot soldiers. Its size is unknown; modern estimates range from a few thousand to around 8,000 men, though the lower figures are more likely. At the same time a second force under Count Otto of Strassberg crossed the Brünig Pass towards Unterwalden.

Leopold’s route ran along the eastern shore of Lake Ägeri, where a narrow track squeezed between the water, marshy ground and the steep slope of the Morgarten. The men of Schwyz, probably joined by men from Uri, had fortified the approaches to their valley with a defensive wall, or letzi, and waited on the high ground. Their numbers were smaller, perhaps around 1,500.

According to the chronicler John of Winterthur, who wrote some decades later and as a boy had seen the defeated duke return to Winterthur, the confederates rolled down rocks and tree trunks onto the column and then charged. The knights had no room to turn their horses. Many were cut down with halberds, long axe-headed weapons, and many others drowned trying to escape into the lake.

Leopold himself escaped and fled back to Winterthur. When news of the defeat reached Otto of Strassberg, he abandoned his own advance.

Why the knights lost

Medieval knights were most effective when they could charge across open, firm ground in formation. At Morgarten they had neither space nor firm footing, and the column was stretched along a narrow track where only those at the front could fight. The confederates, by contrast, knew the terrain, chose the moment of attack and fought on foot with weapons suited to close combat.

Consequences

On 9 December 1315 Schwyz, Uri and Unterwalden renewed their alliance in the Pact of Brunnen. Written in German rather than Latin, it bound the three communities never to make separate agreements with outside lords without the consent of the others. Louis the Bavarian later confirmed their rights.

The Habsburgs agreed a truce in 1318, though their claims in the region were not settled. In the following decades Lucerne (1332), Zurich (1351), Glarus and Zug (1352) and Bern (1353) joined the alliance. Another great defeat of Habsburg knights by confederate infantry followed at Sempach in 1386.

Morgarten belonged to a wider pattern. Across Europe, foot soldiers fighting on chosen ground were beating mounted knights, as at the Battle of the Golden Spurs in 1302 and the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314.

Myths and facts

Myth: a Habsburg knight named Heinrich von Hünenberg warned the Swiss by shooting an arrow carrying the message “beware of Morgarten”. Fact: this story appears only in much later chronicles and is regarded as legend.

Myth: Morgarten was a battle between peasants and nobles fought for freedom in a modern sense. Fact: the confederates included local landholders and had their own leaders; they fought to defend rights and territory within the political order of the Holy Roman Empire, not to create a modern state.

Myth: the battlefield is known exactly. Fact: the precise site is disputed, and monuments stand on both the Zug and the Schwyz sides.

Timeline

• c. 1291: Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden confirm their alliance.
• 1314, 6 January: Men of Schwyz raid the abbey of Einsiedeln.
• 1314, October: Double election of Frederick the Fair and Louis the Bavarian.
• 1315, 15 November: Battle of Morgarten; Leopold I’s army is ambushed and routed.
• 1315, 9 December: The Pact of Brunnen renews the alliance of the three cantons.
• 1386, 9 July: Battle of Sempach, another major confederate victory over the Habsburgs.

Why it matters

Morgarten was the first great military success of the early Swiss alliance. It protected the forest cantons from Habsburg control, led directly to the Pact of Brunnen and became a founding story of Swiss independence, marked by a monument built in 1908 and by a 700th anniversary in 2015.