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Updated: May 13, 2025
While the fifty returned exiles were thus at work on the height of Morgarten, the army of the Swiss, thirteen hundred in number, was posted on the summit of the Sattel Mountain opposite, waiting its opportunity. The time for action had come. The Austrian cavalry of the vanguard was in a state of frightful confusion and dismay.
After the battle of Morgarten one canton after another threw off the Austrian yoke, and joined the forest cantons, until nearly all Switzerland was joined in a confederacy. A later war waged by Albert proved disastrous to the Austrian cause, and ended by a further consolidation of the Swiss cantons.
By this battle, which took its name from the thousands of golden spurs which were torn from the French knights who fell, the victors secured for a time, at least the liberty of their country, and the memory of it was for many a day to Flanders what the memory of Bannockburn was to Scotland, or of Morgarten to Switzerland.
It was a small force, no stronger than that of Morgarten, comprising only about fourteen hundred poorly-armed men. Some carried halberds, some shorter weapons, while some among them, instead of a shield, had only a small board fastened to the left arm. It seemed like madness for such a band to dare contend with the thousands of well-equipped invaders.
Just on the other side of the range, along which we traveled, lay the little lake of Egeri and valley of Morgarten, where Tell and his followers overcame the army of the German Emperor; near the lake of Lowertz, we found a chapel by the roadside, built on the spot where the house of Werner Stauffacher, one of the "three men of Grütli," formerly stood.
Covadonga lies in the vicinity of Oviedo, in a ravine lost in the heart of the Picos de Europa; it is at once the Morgarten and Sempach of Spanish history, and though no art monuments, excepting the above named monastic church and two Byzantine-Romanesque tombs, are to be seen, there is hardly a visitor who, having come as far north as Oviedo, does not pay a visit to the cradle of Spanish history.
The flower of the Austrian chivalry perished on the field of Morgarten, beneath the halberts, arrows, and iron-headed clubs of the shepherds. Leopold, himself, though he succeeded in gaining the shattered remnant of his forces, had a narrow escape, while the Swiss, animated by victory, hastened to Unterwalden, where they defeated another body of Austrians.
The Swiss were not only few in number, but armor was scarce among them; some had only boards fastened on their arms by way of shields, some had halberts, which had been used by their fathers at the battle of Morgarten, others two-handed swords and battleaxes. They drew themselves up in the form of a wedge and
Berenger von Landenberg, a man of noble family in Thurgau and governor of Unterwald, infamous for his cruelties to the Swiss, and particularly to the venerable Henry of the Halden. He was slain at the battle of Morgarten in 1315. A cell built in the ninth century by Meinrad, Count Hohenzollern, the founder of the Convent of Einsiedlen, subsequently alluded to in the text.
"Our grand aim, my sons," said he, "as we are so inferior in numbers, must be to prevent Duke Leopold from gaining any advantage by his superior force." He then advised them to occupy the Morgarten and Sattel heights, and fall on the Austrians when entangled in the pass, cutting their force in two, and assailing it right and left. They obeyed him implicitly, with what success we have seen.
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