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Description: | image: A centrally placed image with hand drafted title and date below. A charge of 14th century armoured Austrian
knights; in the foreground a mounted knight crouches in his saddle upon a rearing horse in its surcoat and crennelated reins and bridle. In
the background a fellow knight urges his stumbling horse against a barrage of flying stones.
"At Morgarten...in 1315 the victory of the man on the ground over the mounted knight had made military history. At
Morgarten in the forest canton of Schwyz, the Swiss, concealed above a mountain pass, hurled down boulders and tree trunks on the knights
as they rode through the narrow defile, and then charged upon the scrambled mass and slew them 'like sheep in the hurdles'. They gave no
quarter, for they expected no ransom, and they carried the field because it was they, and not their foe, who had chosen where to fight. The
knights claimed terrain as the cause of defeat, and in fact the disadvantage of cavalry in the mountains, where it could not charge, was an
element, no less than the defiant spirit of the cantons, in the ultimate game of Swiss independence." extract from 'A Distant Mirror' by
Barbara W Tuchman, Penguin 1979. | Publisher: | http://www.iwm.org.uk | Subjects: | Animals CH.A Costume and fashion Military Personnel FR.A equestrian | Source: | Imperial War Museum | Creator: | Société Littéraire de France, Paris | Identifier: | http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/o... | Go to resource |
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