Battle of Héricourt, 1474: the first battle of the Burgundian Wars

Héricourt is the least famous of the battles the Swiss fought against Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. It was won over his commanders while he was far away, it took a small town, and it is overshadowed by Grandson, Murten and Nancy. But it was the first. Its campaign began the Burgundian Wars, which in two and a half years destroyed the Burgundian state and made the Swiss Confederation a military power feared across Europe.²

A duke on the Upper Rhine

The road to Héricourt began with a pledge. From 1468, the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland explains, Duke Sigismund of Habsburg was looking for a powerful protector against the Swiss Confederates. King Louis XI of France turned him down, so he went to Louis's rival Charles the Bold, who by the Treaty of Saint-Omer of 9 May 1469 received Sigismund's lands in Alsace as security for a loan. Burgundy became the Confederation's direct neighbor.³

Charles's bailiff in the pledged lands, Peter von Hagenbach, banned the grain trade with the imperial cities of the Upper Rhine. Basel and Strasbourg turned to Bern for help, and Bern, allied with the town of Mulhouse that Hagenbach was pressing, feared that Burgundy might close the trade routes across the Swiss plateau. In the spring of 1474 the pieces came together at Constance: a settlement between Sigismund and the Confederates, an alliance of the eight Swiss cantons and Solothurn with Strasbourg, Basel, Colmar and Sélestat, and on 4 April the Lower Union of Sigismund and the Alsatian cities. Sigismund then redeemed his pledged lands.⁴

In April Hagenbach was seized by his own mutinous soldiers at Breisach, and on 9 May the Alsatian cities had him executed. In August his brother took revenge by ravaging Upper Alsace with Burgundian and Lombard mercenaries. Herodote.net adds that Louis XI paid the cantons large sums for weapons, and that on 25 October 1474, four days after their alliance with the French king, the Confederates declared war on Charles.⁵

The siege of Héricourt

Charles himself could not answer. Since August he had been besieging Neuss on the Lower Rhine, and he would stay there until June 1475. The allies marched at once. One army entered Alsace by Basel, another by Porrentruy, and on 8 November 1474 they laid siege to Héricourt, a town that controlled the road from the Sundgau into Burgundy. The force was a true league: Swiss Confederates, the Lower Union, the Austrian towns of Alsace and the imperial cities of Swabia. Herodote.net puts it at 18,000 Confederates with Austrian and Alsatian contingents. Its soldiers wore white crosses; the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland notes that the cities presented the war in their propaganda as a crusade against the evil Turk of Burgundy.⁶

Two fights on 13 November

A Burgundian army of 12,000 men under Henri de Neuchâtel-Blamont came to relieve the town. The Confederates spotted it on 13 November, broke camp and, at the initiative of the Bernese, attacked. In two separate actions they beat the Burgundian mounted knights, helped by the Austrian cavalry, and their own losses were small. The garrison of Héricourt surrendered, and Austrian troops took its place.⁷

The sources differ on the details. Herodote.net, in a summary by the Swiss military historian Hervé de Weck, dates the battle to 23 November and speaks of a surprise that cost the Burgundians at least 4,000 dead. The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland, in both its article on the battle and its article on the Burgundian Wars, gives 13 November. Herodote.net also describes the weapon that made the Confederates so feared: a pike some six meters long, deadly against cavalry, carried by peasant soldiers who took few prisoners.⁸

From Héricourt to Nancy

Héricourt ended the autumn campaign, and Charles still hoped to keep the peace with the Swiss. But Bern's war party under Niklaus von Diesbach had won the upper hand, and in 1475 Bernese and Fribourg bands overran much of Vaud, which belonged to Burgundy's ally Savoy. When Charles finally marched against them, he was defeated at Grandson on 2 March 1476 and at Murten on 22 June 1476, and he was killed after the Battle of Nancy on 5 January 1477.⁹

The wars ended the Burgundian state between France and the Empire and strengthened both the French monarchy and the Habsburgs. The Confederates gained little land; their claims on the Franche-Comté, where Héricourt had been fought, were sold to Louis XI in 1479 for 150,000 guilders. What they gained was a reputation. Princes across Europe now wanted Swiss soldiers, and mercenary service became part of Swiss life. The same date in 1642 saw the standoff at Turnham Green in the English Civil War.¹⁰