"1476 Murten - modeling the Grünhag defence line" Topic

I am finishing off Swiss and Burgundian armies and I am now thinking of scenery for the battlefields. At the 1476 Battle of Murten, the Burgundians made a defensive pallisade called the Grünhag. I am trying to find out what it looked like.

I commented on this in another forum and this Schilling picture was suggested.

The Schilling picture is by Diebold Schilling the Elder (c. 1445–1485) and was probably drawn in 1482 which is soon after the 1476 Battle of Murten (or Morat in French). His nephew, Diebold Schilling the Younger, wrote another chronicle in 1515.

I have visited the battle site and many of the museums with collections from the Burgundian Wars. From the museum in Murten, I bought a teacher's resource book about the Burgundian Wars in German. This morning, inspired by posts on Lead Adventure Medieval forum link I have been comparing the deployment and battle diagrams in the book with Google maps.

From the deployment diagram: – The Burgundian defences were a natural ravine (Burggraben) in woodland (Birchenwald = birch wood) at the northern end with the man-made defences forming an upside down hockey stick shape (blade facing right). The top of the hockey stick was the artillery emplacements running SW to NE. From the SE edge of the artillery the Grünhag (reinforced green hedge or green fence) runs on a long line NNW to SSE down to the village of Salvanech. This booklet does not mention a ditch, but I have seen other descriptions that say there was a ditch in front of the fence. The Burgundians were deployed on the SW side of the Grünhag with the area on the NE side a large flat killing field on the approach road from Bern.

From Google Maps: – The southern point of the Grünhag is Salvenach, a village 3km SE of Murten. From there the Grünhag ran NNW. 1200m NNW is a stream corner of the Löwenbergbach. The Löwenbergback stream lies in a steep valley (ravine) in a wood marked as Gultenholz. This stream corner is the therefore the tip of the hockey stick. On the left of the line of the Grünhag in the diagram there is a small hill behind the centre of the Burgundian forces. This is marked on Google maps as Wilerholz.

Schilling Picture: – We see artillery defences in the foreground. These are substantial woodwork with two rows of vertical posts about 2m high and chest high horizontal logs in between. From the end of the artillery position, there are sections of woodland linked by sections of wattle fence stretching into the distance.

I guess that the artillery defences must have been 150m to 200m long and the Grünhag was between 1000m and 1200m long.

Does that sound plausible?

Has anybody made anything like this?
Mick

It is my understanding that wattle fences were made in sections so they could easily be relocated or extra sections added to enlarge an area.

The area allocated for the artillery follows standard measurements for fields, so there would be a variety of means to enclose them along the defensive line; stone walls, hedges, and ditches.

This link can offer extra information.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furlong

Cheers,
Robert

Today it is snowing, so I stayed in and converted a mountain of plastic rod cut from sprue into artillery defences for the Burgundians.
These are mounted on 25x50mm Litko bases and can be arranged for one, two or three guns.

Oh, that's a neat Idea, Mick. I am so swiping that.

I have now painted the Burgundian artillery defences and added static grass.

I have also made my first attempt at the Grünhag (green fence or hedge) defence line. From research and previous posts in this thread, the consensus is that this was a strong wattle fence which reinforced a natural hedge. Some reports also describe a ditch and bank in front of the Grünhag.
This is made as four 24 cm long sections of wattle fence on 2mm Perspex bases. The groundwork is 9mm high softwood sections to give a ditch and bank. The width is 9cm.

The wattle fence worked out quite expensive as I ended up buying various materials before I found an effect that I liked. I tried 4mm and 3mm diameter beech rod for the posts. For the wattle, I tried several kinds of string and wire and also 2.5mm bamboo skewers but rejected them all as they looked too even.

In the end I used 3mm beech posts which were from cookery skewers. 3mm is about 180mm at full scale which looks about right. I drilled 3mm holes about 25mm apart. With hindsight, the start and end should have been near to the ends of each piece so that the wattle finished neatly.

In medieval times, trees were coppiced to grow thin straight stems for poles, posts and wattle. After several experiments I used 3mm beech skewers, which looked OK, but rather too large. The beech skewers needed soaking in water for 24 hours to make them pliable.

Yesterday, after I had built the wattle, I was in a hobby store and found some basket weaving material called „peddigrohr". Peddig is a material similar to ramin and is used in basket weaving. This was labelled as 1.7mm in diameter but varies slightly in size. I stripped off the beech from the upper half of the fence and replaced it with four strands of peddig. 15 minutes later, I had a very good looking result.
I painted the whole wattle in a mix of very dark brown and military green. Then I added bone to the colour to get a grey green effect, like bark.

Regards
Mick

Does anybody know where to find a 28mm church like the one in the Schilling picture at the top of the page?