CHAP, vn.] 



DECLINE OF FEUDALISM. 



213 



and from that period that country enjoyed a certain 

 degree of liberty. 



This action was fought between 20,000 Austrians, 

 under Duke Leopold, and 1,300 Swiss. The natural 

 features of the ground had more effect upon the result, 

 however, than any principle or system of tactics. Mont- 

 fort of Tettnang, who commanded the Austrian cavalry, 

 led them into the narrow pass of Morgarten, lying 

 between Mount Sattel and the lake. Fifty men on the 

 eminence overlooking the defile, which was filled with 

 the hostile army, raised a sudden shout, and rolled down 

 rocks and stones upon the crowded ranks. The con- 

 federate Swiss, to the number of 1,300, seeing the confu- 

 sion caused by this attack, descended the mountain 

 which bordered the defile, and charged furiously upon 

 the flank of the disordered column. With their powerful 

 maces and clubs they dashed in pieces the armour of the 

 enemy, and delivered terrible thrusts with their long 

 pikes. The narrowness of the defile admitted of no 

 evolutions, and a frost having injured the roads, the 

 horses were impeded in all their movements. Some 

 leaped into the lake, all were thrown into disorder, and 

 at last the whole mass of horsemen gave way, and fell 

 back upon the infantry, and these, cooped up in the 

 defile, could neither escape nor open their files, and so 

 were run over by the fugitives, and many of them 

 trampled to death.' A general rout ensued, in which 

 great numbers were slain. 



This battle, very difl'erent from Crecy, simply taught 

 the lesson that cavalry cannot scale precipices, or storm 

 mountains, and the generals of the age should not have 

 required so bloody an example to teach them so simple a 

 lesson. 



Crecy, fought on the open field in a fair stand-up sort 

 of way, was the pure result of a tactical system, which 

 owed no adventitious aid to any irregularities of ground, 

 or strength of position, and was therefore a far more im- 

 portant action in a tactical point of view, than any that 

 had occurred for several hundreds of years previously. 



• Borthwi(!k's Book of Battles, 204. 



