A scene from the battle as depicted by the artist who painted the Panorama of the Battle of Murten.
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Switzerland is preparing to commemorate the 550th anniversary of what is undoubtedly its most glorious military victory: the Battle of Murten. The event has left a lasting mark on the region.
On June 22, 1476, the Confederates inflicted a crushing defeat on Charles the Bold’s Burgundian army at Murten, an army that had already been severely shaken a few weeks earlier at Grandson. This latest thrashing, meted out to one of the most powerful princes in Europe, left a lasting impression, and not just on Swiss historians.
Above all, it cemented the rise of the infantry. On the battlefield, the Swiss halberdiers demonstrated that they could shake the great princely houses to their core. The military reputation of the Swiss was thus propelled to new heights, to the point of transforming the Confederation, for a time, into a self-assured regional power, ready to expand its territory in the decades that followed.
Beyond the commemorations and the patriotic pride that this famous victory can still inspire, the Battle of Murten left a very tangible legacy.
An obelisk to replace the destroyed ossuary
A memorial now stands on the presumed site of the battle. Situated by the roadside, flanked by two trees, it takes the form of an Egyptian obelisk, though there is nothing pharaonic about it, either in its origin or its symbolism.
Unveiled in 1823, it reflects the European fashion of the time, which was fascinated by obelisks freshly unearthed and shipped to Western capitals. This slender form, intended to symbolise elevation, had by then established itself as a standard for memorials.
This obelisk replaced a far more striking monument: an ossuary, where the remains of thousands of soldiers, mostly from Burgundy, lay. The bones, carefully arranged in a chapel, offered a stark reminder of the ravages of war. The site made such an impression that some visitors left with an anatomical souvenir.
The obelisk in Murten in 1921. Today, its overall appearance remains the same.
Musée Albert-Kahn, CC BY-SA 4.0
In the 18th century, the ossuary was even included among the stops on the Grand Tour and was visited by figures such as Goethe, Casanova and Napoleon. It was destroyed during the French invasion of 1798. The revolutionary troops, whose ranks included many Burgundians, thus erased a symbol of the Ancien Régime and, incidentally, the memory of a crushing defeat.
A running race now in its 92nd edition
A soldier who survives the battle but collapses from exhaustion after running a considerable distance to announce the victory to the capital: the story is bound to ring a bell. It recalls Philippides, the Greek messenger who is said to have run from Marathon to Athens to proclaim victory over the Persians before dying on the spot. A founding narrative, largely mythologised, yet one that has become a cornerstone of the modern sporting imagination.
The Swiss, too, drew on antiquity to lend an epic dimension to the Battle of Murten. According to tradition, a messenger is said to have left the battlefield to carry the news to Fribourg, before collapsing at the foot of a lime tree immediately after completing his mission. In reality, the archives show that there were two messengers, that they survived their mission and that they received a reward. But why let facts get in the way of a heroic myth?
And as is often the case, posterity has taken it upon itself to transform these tales into sporting events. The Greek myth gave rise to the marathon, with its 42.195km and its status as the crown jewel of the Olympic Games. The 17km separating Murten from Fribourg makes the race more modest, but the glory remains intact: every year in October, thousands of people (16,489 last year) set off on this course, which was inaugurated in 1932. The fastest runners walk away with a lime tree branch – and a far more tangible prize.
A lime branch is traditionally presented to the winners of the Murten–Fribourg race, as seen here with New Zealander Jonathan Wyatt in 2004.
Keystone / Edi Engeler
The branch, however, no longer comes from the original lime tree where the messenger is said to have collapsed. The centuries-old tree, planted in the middle of a road, was felled in 1983 after being hit by a car. It was replaced by a metal sculpture, which is less fragile but far less romantic.
In Fribourg, the legendary ‘Murten lime tree’ has withstood the ravages of time, but not those of traffic.
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But botanical memory is resilient: a cutting preserved at the Fribourg Botanical Garden made it possible to plant a new lime tree on the Town Hall square in 1984. And as symbolism never really goes out of fashion, a final direct cutting was planted as part of the celebrations marking the 550th anniversary of the battle, simply to continue the lineage and remind us that, sometimes, trees have a more enduring memory than monuments.
A 100-metre panorama
One of the greatest battles in Swiss history gave rise to one of the largest paintings on display in the country. The Panorama of the Battle of Murten, created in 1893, is a huge circular canvas measuring ten metres high by 100 metres long, covering 1,000 square metres of painting. Today, the work is divided into three rolls, each weighing 700 kilos – a format that is rather impractical for impromptu exhibitions.
In fact, the panorama has been on display for only a few months in recent decades, during the 2002 National Exhibition. It was then displayed in a spectacular metal cube designed by French architect Jean Nouvel and placed directly on Lake Murten. Like most of the installations at Expo.02, the monolith was dismantled once the event was over, returning the canvas to its usual invisibility.
Designed to frame the panorama of the Battle of Murten, Jean Nouvel’s ‘monolith’ was one of the star attractions of the 2002 National Exhibition.
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However, the work has recently been fully digitised, which will finally allow every detail to be explored. As for the original painting, it is still awaiting a building capable of housing it permanently – a challenge that is as much architectural as it is financial.
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EPFL launches digitised version of Battle of Murten panorama
With their 360-degree circular design, panoramas offered the public a fully immersive experience, creating the illusion of being right at the heart of the action. Highly popular in the 19th century, they were supplanted by cinema in the early 20th century and, for the most part, destroyed. Only four remain in Switzerland. The very fact that the one in Murten has survived is therefore surprising in itself, further proof that this battle has a definite knack for defying the passage of time.
Edited by Samuel Jaberg. Translated from French by AI/ts
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