On 22 June 1941 Germany invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa, sending more than three million soldiers in three army groups across a broad front and achieving almost complete tactical surprise. On the same date in 1476 the Swiss Confederates routed the army of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, at Morat (Murten).
Operation Barbarossa
On 22 June 1941 Germany invaded the Soviet Union under the codename Operation Barbarossa, attacking on a broad front that ran south from the Baltic Sea. A 1955 US Army study dates the start to 0300 and says "The Germans achieved complete tactical surprise"; the US Holocaust Memorial Museum writes of almost complete tactical surprise, and the German Historical Museum of a Soviet Union evidently taken by surprise.1
The counts of the invading force differ a little. The Holocaust Memorial Museum gives more than three million German soldiers in three army groups, supported by 650,000 troops from Finland and Romania; the German Historical Museum gives 153 divisions with just over three million soldiers, 3,600 tanks and 600,000 motor vehicles, and 600,000 men from Germany's allies; the US Army's history Moscow to Stalingrad says the German army high command assigned 3,050,000 men and 148 divisions, with 600,000 motor vehicles.2
Army Group North attacked out of East Prussia through the Baltic states toward Leningrad, Army Group Center toward Minsk, Smolensk and Moscow, and Army Group South toward Kiev. Much of the first fighting took place in the eastern lands of prewar Poland, which the Soviet Union had seized in 1939 and where part of the Red Army was stationed: Army Group Center assembled east of Warsaw, and by the end of June its panzer groups had closed a ring around the Soviet forces between Białystok and Minsk.3
Behind the front, Einsatzgruppen of the SS and police began mass shootings of Jews and Communist officials. The German advance reached the outskirts of Moscow, where the attack came to a halt in early December 1941, and a Soviet counteroffensive drove the Germans back. Our ranking of the greatest battles of the Eastern Front takes its battles one by one.4
Morat, 1476: revenge for Grandson
In March 1476 the Swiss had routed Charles at Grandson. He rebuilt his army at Lausanne. According to the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland, he meant to take revenge for Grandson and to win in Murten a fortified base for further thrusts against Bern and Fribourg. The Historical Dictionary puts his army at more than 20,000 fighting men with a large baggage train, and the historian Charles Oman at something like 20,000.5
In April 1476, the Historical Dictionary says, Bern and Fribourg reinforced their garrison in Murten with 1,500 men under Adrian von Bubenberg and 100 under Wilhelm von Affry. Oman also counts 1,500 Bernese shut up in the town, which he places only thirty miles from Bern. The siege began on 9 June, by the Historical Dictionary's date, and the garrison held out against repeated attacks, among them an assault on 17 June prepared by heavy fire from the newly arrived guns.6
Attack on a feast day
A relief army of about 24,000 men gathered, by the Historical Dictionary's count; Oman writes of twenty-five thousand Swiss pikes. Allies came too: the Lucerne captains name the Duke of Lorraine in person and the Austrian bailiff with his knights, and Oman writes of several hundred lances brought by René of Lorraine and Austrian nobles. The Historical Dictionary counts more than 1,400 horsemen in all.7
The Historical Dictionary says the captains fixed the attack for 22 June, the feast of the Ten Thousand Knights, a date that recalled for the Bernese their victory at Laupen on 21 June 1339. The Basel town clerk Nicolaus Rüsch also dated the battle to the day of the ten thousand knights, while the Lucerne captains thanked the "marterenn der zechen tusent" (the ten thousand martyrs).8
Accounts of the hour differ. The Historical Dictionary says the attack came around midday, after heavy rain had stopped, and Rüsch wrote "umb mittag zyt" (about midday); the Scandalous Chronicle, printed in English with the memoirs of Philip de Commines, puts it between ten and eleven in the morning. Oman writes that Charles had waited in battle order for six hours, then, the day being rainy and dark, sent his main body back to camp, leaving a few thousand men in the entrenchments, just before the Confederate vanguard appeared. The Historical Dictionary says that Charles, though warned days before, was completely surprised.9
Through the palisade
The Historical Dictionary describes the Confederates advancing in three bodies of pikemen, halberdiers and handgunners. The Milanese ambassador Panigarola, who was with the Burgundians, saw two large bodies of foot with a squadron of horse between them. The Confederate vanguard came out of the wood of Murten against the palisaded line where the Burgundian guns stood, overran the gun positions and beat off scattered counterattacks. The Burgundian army broke and fled.10
Panigarola wrote to the Duke of Milan from Salins on 8 July that he could vouch for his account "perche propriis oculis vidi e foi al facto, e tanto ananzi che mi sepe costare caro e la vita" ("because I saw it with my own eyes and was at the action, and so far forward that it might have cost me dear, my life too"; our translation). His explanation of the defeat was short: "per essere cola improvisti, si perse il campo" ("through being caught there unprepared, the field was lost"; our translation).11
A lake full of the dead
The victors gave no quarter. Oman writes that the rear of the Confederate army trod down or pushed into the lake the mostly Italian infantry besieging the town from the south, scarcely a man escaping out of a force of six thousand. The Savoyard corps of the Count of Romont, north of the town, got away by a march round the rear of the Confederates, Oman writes.12
At seven in the evening the Lucerne captains wrote home from the Burgundian camp at Murten that they had fallen on the duke, who by their reckoning had more than fifty thousand men, "vnd haben Im da die flucht angewonnen, vnd so lang bestritten, damit wir Im so uil Lüten erslagen vnd ertrenckt haben, daz von ir vile wegen die zal so bald noch nieman wissen mag, biß morn sondag, dz wir die walstatt witer erschouwen werden" ("and put him to flight there, and fought him so long that we have slain and drowned so many of his people that, for their great number, no one can yet know the count, until tomorrow, Sunday, when we will survey the battlefield further"; our translation).13
Estimates differ. The Historical Dictionary cites 8,000 to 20,000 Burgundian dead against a few hundred Confederates killed and wounded. The Glarus captains wrote that some estimated about 10,000 killed and drowned and very few Confederates killed or wounded; Rüsch counted more than 17,000 slain and fewer than a hundred dead on the Confederate side, though more wounded. Panigarola put the loss at 8,000 to 10,000 men, counting every sort of person who follows a camp. The Scandalous Chronicle says the heralds counted 22,500 Burgundians killed on the spot, besides a vast number in the rout. The Historical Dictionary adds that the reports agree that most of the Burgundian foot died while most of the horsemen escaped.14
Spoils and memory
All of Charles's guns and his camp fell to the victors. The Historical Dictionary says the more than 3,000 women of the baggage train were shared out like human booty, a scene the Bernese chronicles dwell on, and little is known of their fate. According to the Historical Dictionary, Charles fled to Franche-Comté and then turned against Lorraine. He was killed in the Battle of Nancy in January 1477, on the 5th by the Historical Dictionary's date.15
The Historical Dictionary writes that contemporaries saw at once that Burgundian power had been broken. According to the Historical Dictionary, Fribourg and Bern built an ossuary with a chapel for the Burgundian dead in 1486; enlarged in 1506, it was destroyed by French troops in 1798, and in 1822 the Fribourg government decreed a memorial in the form of an obelisk. Grandson is told on our 2 March page, and the wider age in the greatest battles of the Middle Ages.16
