Late Middle Ages · Europe · War

1315

Swiss Confederates win at Morgarten

November 1315

Habsburg knights trying to discipline the forest cantons rode into a defile beside Lake Aegeri and were crushed by cowherds hurling logs and rocks from above. The Austrian column had no room to deploy its cavalry on the narrow lakeside path. The three cantons of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden renewed their league at Brunnen and discovered that mountaineers could humiliate European nobility.