A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [181]
In the face of invasion, Leopold adopted the same strategy as had Charles V: he ordered the Alsatians to destroy everything that could aid, shelter, or feed the enemy and to retreat with their goods and provisions within walled towns and castles. Like Charles, he ordered the fortifying of towns and castles capable of defense, the razing of others, and the burning of outlying villages. On paper such orders are easily assumed; in practice, it would have been agony for a peasant to destroy or see destroyed the product of his labor, the slim margin of his life for another year. To what extent these drastic measures were actually carried out is hard to judge.
Lacking sufficient force to confront Coucy’s numbers, Leopold withdrew into the fortress of Breisach across the Rhine and counted on exciting the resistance of the self-reliant Swiss to repel the enemy from further advance. He had painful reason to know the capacity for combat of his Swiss subjects.
Whether real or legendary, William Tell’s defiance of the Austrian bailiff Gessler at the start of the century personified the struggle against Hapsburg tyranny. Twice thereafter in the last sixty years the Swiss had humiliated the Hapsburg cavalry. At Morgarten and Laupen in 1315 and 1339 the victories of the man on the ground over the mounted knight had made military history. At Morgarten in the forest Canton of Schwyz, the Swiss, concealed above a mountain pass, hurled down boulders and tree trunks on the knights as they rode through the narrow defile, and then charged upon the scrambled mass and slew them “like sheep in the hurdles.” They gave no quarter, for they expected no ransom, and they carried the field because it was they and not their foe who had chosen where to fight. The knights claimed terrain as the cause of defeat, and in fact the disadvantage of cavalry in the mountains, where it could not charge, was an element, no less than the defiant spirit of the cantons, in the ultimate gain of Swiss independence.
At Laupen on an open hillside, no excuse of terrain could explain away the result. There the city levy of Berne, joined by mountain men of the Forest Cantons, advanced under the command of a local knight and took their position upon a hill requiring ascent by the Hapsburg knights. In the clash the Swiss, though surrounded, formed a “hedgehog” phalanx that stood its ground and withstood penetration. While they engaged the knights in hand-to-hand combat, inflicting terrible wounds with their halberds—a combination of ax and pike—their reserve fell upon the nobles from behind and crushed them. Seventy crested helms and 27 noble banners were carried from the field. Though a generation had passed since then, the Güglers might have taken warning.
The Swiss responded meagerly to Leopold’s summons for defense against Coucy. They hated the Hapsburg more than they feared the invaders. The three Forest Cantons in the center of the country refused action. Led by Schwyz, boldest of the three and patronym of the future nation, they said they had no interest in sacrificing themselves to defend Leopold’s territory against the Sire de Coucy, who had never offended them. They would remain “spectators of this war,” except to defend themselves against the victor if he pushed his enterprises too far. Zürich, however, along with Berne, Lucerne, and Solothurn agreed to defend the Aargau, the region adjoining Alsace along the river Aar, because it touched their borders and was their “boulevard.”
On or about St. Martin’s Day, November 11, Coucy with 1,500 men arrived in Alsace to take command. By now, with winter approaching, the area had been thoroughly ravaged until no more provisions or forage were to be found. At this juncture a startling distortion of events occurs in the record which, coming from Froissart, who was to learn much of Coucy’s history