The burly Swiss farmers and woodsmen from the forest cantons Unterwalden, Uri and Schwytz fell upon the close-packed Austrian knights and men-at-arms, using long pikes or deadly pole axes known as halbards, and massacred them without quarter.

Two years later, a second Austrian expeditionary force was caught by the Swiss peasant infantry near Lucerne at Sempach and crushed.

These fierce battles were the first time in modern history that foot soldiers had withstood heavily armored mounted knights.  These epochal encounters marked the beginning of the end of European feudalism and the rise of infantry armies.  They also freed Switzerland's forest cantons of Austrian rule, creating Europe's first independent democratic state, the Swiss Confederation.