On 2 March 1476, near Grandson on Lake Neuchâtel, the army of the Swiss Confederates and their allies put Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, to flight and took his camp and artillery. Days earlier Charles had put the surrendered garrison of Grandson castle to death. On 2 March 1943 American bombers opened the Battle of the Bismarck Sea.
Battle of Grandson
2 March 1476 · 550 years ago
The road to Grandson
In January 1476 Charles the Bold marched from Lorraine with the greater part of his army, crossed the Jougne pass and took Yverdon, in Vaud. He stormed the town of Grandson on 21 February, and the castle was given up on 28 February.1 › Battle of Héricourt, 1474
Charles had the garrison put to death: some 400 men or more were hanged on the trees around Grandson, and Diebold Schilling's Bern chronicle adds that some were drowned in the lake. The sources disagree on the terms. Schilling and the Basel chaplain Johann Knebel write that the men had been promised their lives, while the Milanese envoy Jean-Pierre Panigarola, writing from the duke's camp, says that they surrendered at his discretion.2
A battle that was over before it began
The Confederate relief came too late to save the garrison. The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland (HLS) puts its army at about 18,000 men from eight cantons and their allies; Knebel writes of no more than 24,000.3
On Saturday 2 March Charles moved out of his camp toward the Swiss. The banners of the Swiss vanguard came on ahead of the main army, and a strong body of Burgundian horse rode at them but could not break their long pikes. Its commander, the lord of Château-Guyon, was killed. Before the clash the Swiss knelt and prayed, and the Burgundians took it for a plea for mercy, Schilling and Knebel write.4
Charles then drew back part of his army, and as the main Swiss army arrived, the troops behind took the movement for a defeat and ran: the HLS, Panigarola and Philippe de Commynes all tell it this way. The whole Burgundian army fled, the duke with it.5
The Burgundian booty
Losses were light: Commynes writes that the duke lost only seven men-at-arms, and Panigarola names about seven men of rank killed. The Swiss, short of horsemen, chased the fugitives only a short way on foot, to Montagny, and then plundered the duke's camp.6
All the Burgundian artillery was left behind. The number of captured guns is given as 420 by Schilling and more than 600 by Knebel, and Schilling's editor notes that the records of the Confederate diet count only 300. Commynes, Knebel and the HLS write that the duke's treasure and precious possessions were lost as well.7
After Grandson
The HLS historian Claudius Sieber-Lehmann sees in the Burgundian Wars of 1474 to 1477 the end of the Burgundian state between France and the Empire and the rise of the Swiss Confederacy to a European military power. More battles of the age are in our guide to the greatest battles of the Middle Ages.8
Battle of Napue, 1714: the battle that began Finland's Great Wrath
2 March 1714 · 312 years ago
A Swedish force made up almost entirely of Finns fought a larger Russian army at Napue, in today's Finland, in the last land battle of the Finnish campaign of the Great Northern War. The Russians won, and Finland was occupied until the war's end, the hard era of the Great Wrath.
Read the full story of Battle of Napue, 1714: the battle that began Finland's Great Wrath ›
