A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [183]
Coucy’s men-at-arms swept up what they could find. Dividing themselves into three groups they spread out farther and farther into the Aargau as hunger and plunder drove them. Coucy made his headquarters less than five miles east of the river in the Abbey of St. Urbain, set with its back to a crescent of pine-covered hills and looking out over a wide sweep of meadow land. According to the abbey’s records, he stayed there eighteen days. The more important cities of the Aargau had been made pledges for the unpaid portion of his mother’s dowry. Had he been able to take these cities, his personal goal might have been gained, but the scattering of his forces and the strength of walls against men prevented it. He could do no better than Edward had in France. Even the small town of Büren in the Aar valley withstood a siege he conducted in person, although its lord, the Count of Nidau, reaped the punishment of his double-dealing when he put his head out of a window and was killed by an enemy arrow.
In December’s cold the companies, hunting in small parties to spread their foraging, penetrated to the frontiers of Zürich and Lucerne. Their thinning out made them vulnerable at the same time that their crimes were arousing Swiss defiance. In Schwyz, near the lake of Sempach, in the mountain district of Entlibuch, a stalwart peasantry, proud of ancient privileges, assembled a body of several hundred for action. Stirred by their example, the young men of Lucerne, against city orders, climbed over the walls at night to join them, along with others from surrounding towns. On December 19 the group, numbering about 600, surrounded the small town of Buttisholz, where a company of “3,000” Güglers was billeted. The Swiss attacked, slew 300, and burned others alive in a church where they had taken refuge. The rest were put to flight. Triumphantly the men of Entlibuch, with captured arms and trophies, rode back to their mountains. Seeing them pass, a noble who had not fought called mockingly from his castle to a mountaineer riding the war-horse and wearing the helmet and cuirass of a dead knight, “Noble sir of noble blood, should villeins wear such arms?” The Entlibucher shouted back, “Sir, today we have so mixed the blood of nobles and horses that one cannot be told from the other.” On the site of the skirmish a monument was raised commemorating the Niederlage der Gügler.
Berne, city of the Bear, took fire from the news. Within six days a force of Bernese and citizens of nearby towns, including Nidau and Laupen, was assembled under the leadership of Berne’s chief magistrate. On Christmas night the troop surprised a company of Bretons at Jens fifteen miles away and left another 300 Güglers dead, evidently with minor loss to themselves, for they were ready to march out again the next night.
Their objective this time was the Abbey of Fraubrunnen, where no less an enemy than Owen of Wales was quartered with a large company. Carrying the banner of the Bear, the citizens marched through the night of the 26th in intense cold, and surrounded the abbey before dawn. With loud yells and flaming torches they fired the buildings and fell upon the sleeping “English,” killing many before they woke. The rest sprang to their weapons in a desperate defense: cloisters once accustomed to ceremonial silence rang with the shouts and clang of battle, the contenders fought “stab for stab and blow for blow,” smoke and flames filled every building of the abbey, Owen swung his sword with “savage rage,” the Bernese leader, Hannes Rieder, was