Sempach, Battle of

▪ Swiss history

      (July 9, 1386), decisive victory won by the Swiss Confederation in its struggle with the Austrian Habsburgs (Habsburg, House of). At Meiersholz, near Sempach, Swiss confederate forces from Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, and Lucern met an Austrian army led by the Habsburg duke Leopold III of Tirol and his commander in chief, Johann von Ochsenstein. The Habsburg forces were retaliating against Lucern, which had recently invaded adjacent Habsburg territories. Estimates of the number of combatants on either side vary from 6,000 Austrians against 1,500 or 1,600 Swiss to 4,000 against 4,000; in any case the Austrians were routed, and Leopold himself was killed. According to legend, the Swiss owed their victory to the personal heroism of a certain Arnold Winkelried, who was said to have deliberately gathered into his own body the lances of the vanguard of Austrian knights. The Battle of Sempach showed that an army of Swiss eidgenossen (“oath brothers”) armed primarily with the pike could defeat chivalric elites in the open field, whether mounted or dismounted.

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