Battle of Dornach
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At the Battle of Dornach on 22 July 1499, the troops of Emperor Maximilian I were decisively beaten by the Old Swiss Confederacy close to the Swiss village of Dornach (). This concluded the Swabian War, between the Swiss and the Swabian League, and amounted to de-facto independence of Switzerland from the Holy Roman Empire, acknowledged by Maximilian in the Treaty of Basel on 22 September (the independence was however not formally recognized until the Peace of Westphalia of 1648).
On 19 July, Imperial troops marching on Dorneck castle were sighted, and Solothurn called Berne for help. Berne sent 5000 troops, Zurich 400, and smaller contingents from Uri, Unterwalden and Zug also started to move to Dornach. On 20 July 600 troops left Lucerne. The first attacks on July 22 were executed by the troops of Berne, Zurich and Solothurn, but they were beaten back. Only with the arrival of the reinforcements from Lucerne and Zug, which suddenly broke out of the woods "with horns and shouting" would the Imperial troops be turned to flight after several hours' fighting.
The commander of the Imperial troops, Heinrich von Fürstenberg, was killed at the early stages of fighting. When Maximilian in Überlingen heard about the lost battle, he was reportedly devastated by the news.
The battle of Dornach was the last armed conflict between the Swiss and the Holy Roman Empire.
[edit] References
- Riezler, S.: Die Grafen von Fürstenberg im Schweizerkriege 1499; Tübingen 1883. In German. Detailed chronological account of the events of the Swabian war.
[edit] Further reading
- Kurz, H.R.: Schweizerschlachten, 2nd ed; Francke, Bern 1977; pp. 165 – 171, ISBN 3-7720-1369-4.
