The Burgundian Wars, Switzerland and Academic Anachronism
16 May 2026
Coincidence or not, the fact is that the renovated Grandson Castle and Museum in the canton of Vaud have been opened to the public, as well as the exhibition ‘The Battle of Murten’ (Murten ausgeschlachtet) at the Bernisches Historisches Museum. The year 2026 marks the 550th anniversary of the battles of Grandson (2 March 1476) and Murten (22 June 1476).
The Burgundian territories around 1474. Image: Wikipedia
The warring parties were the Duke of Burgundy and his allies, including Savoy, against the eight cantons of the Confederation, the free Imperial cities of Basel and Strasbourg, Colmar, Schlettstadt, Mühlhausen, Duke Sigismund of Austria with his territories in Outer Austria, the Duke of Lorraine, and with support from the ailing Kingdom of France, just out of the Hundred Years’ War (1335-1453).
The Duchy of Burgundy in 1476. Image: Bernisches Historisches Museum
The anti-Burgundian alliance versus the Duke of Burgundy
The museum in Grandson Castle, the Musée d’Yverdon et région, the Musée Saint-Imier and the Bernisches Historisches Museum highlight the period of conflict from 1474 to 1477, which saw the formation of this anti-Burgundian alliance.
In June, the Swiss Spectator will publish an extensive article on this period, which was so important for European and Swiss history. The first conquests by Bern and Fribourg in 1475 in the Pays de Vaud will then also be addressed.
The divided Duchy of Burgundy after 1477. Image: Bernisches Historisches Museum
The Confederation after 1477
Militarily, the Swiss Confederation, thanks in part to its allies’ support, emerged as the victor in this conflict; however, France and Austria ultimately carried off the territorial spoils. Nevertheless, the Confederation confirmed its military, political, and diplomatic prestige (having previously defeated the Habsburgs on several occasions).
The Confederation of Eight expanded into an alliance of ten sovereign cantons in 1481 (the Stanser Verkommnis), and after the Swabian War and the Peace of Basel (1499), into thirteen cantons in 1513.
Although Swiss academics fill books and journals with discussions of the alleged “nonsense,” or fake news, surrounding 1291 and the myth of the medieval roots of the present-day Swiss Confederation, even they cannot deny that the peasant villages of Central Switzerland—already recognized as Reichsunmittelbar of free villages in the 13th century by the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire, u unicum in Europa! —eventually gave rise to the Confederation of 1848.
Coat of arms of the Dukes of Burgundy, Scheiblersches Wappenbuch (Scheibler’s Book of Arms), Southern Germany, c. 1450. Collection: Munich, Bavarian State Library, Cod. Icon. 312c
It is irrelevant whether William Tell ever existed, just as it is irrelevant whether the “Orte” or cantons prior to 1798 envisaged the present Confederation. The Netherlands has its legendary Batavians, France its Gauls and Marianne, Italy its Romulus and Remus, and Greece, for example, the goddess Athena. The claim that history “could have turned out differently” is equally irrelevant to history.
What matters are the facts: the formal recognition of the Confederation as an independent alliance of sovereign cantons in 1648, its recognition in 1815, and its present constitutional form established in 1848.
Louis Braun (1836–1916), detail from the panorama (1894) of the Battle of Murten.
Academics and other highly educated individuals who speak of “Neidgenossen” instead of “Eidgenossen,” and who deny, trivialise, and systematically diminish this factual history of origin—as well as its economic, democratic, monetary, and scientific achievements and centuries-old European and global networks—live too much in their studies and in ideology. Other countries, too, consisted solely of “Neidgenossen” until the formation of nation-states in the 19th and 20th centuries, including Germany, Italy, Poland, France, Spain, the United Kingdom and many others.
No ‘Neidgenossen’, but the Eidgenossen of Bern and Fribourg. Collectie: Musée d’Yverdon et région
In the Netherlands as well, the sovereign provinces up to 1795 were nothing more than “Neidgenossen,” yet no academic would dream of filling books and articles about this. Nor do they date the emergence of the current kingdom exclusively to the Napoleonic era 1795-1813) and 1815 (the Congress of Vienna), but primarily to the Union of Utrecht (1579), the Act of Abjuration, the break with Spanish-Habsburg rule (1581) and the formal recognition as a sovereign republic of the seven sovereign provinces in 1648.
Diebold Schilling the Younger (1460–1515), Luzerner Bilderchronik (1513), the Battle of Grandson. Facsimile, Bern Historical Museum, Library
Conclusion
The current exhibitions in Bern and Murten fit well into today’s climate of nuance and critical reflection regarding the old Confederation. While historians well into the twentieth century indeed presented one-sided accounts, contemporary historians now tend to interpret this period somewhat anachronistically and politically motivated, which is not the discipline’s intended purpose.