While the fifty returned exiles were thus at work on the height of
Morgarten, the army of the Swiss, thirteen hundred in number, was posted
on the summit of the Sattel Mountain opposite, waiting its opportunity.
The time for action had come. The Austrian cavalry of the vanguard was
in a state of frightful confusion and dismay. And now the mountaineers
descended the steep hill slopes like an avalanche, and precipitated
themselves on the flank of the invading force, dealing death with their
halberds and iron-pointed clubs until the pass ran blood.
On every side the Austrian chivalry fell. Escape was next to impossible,
resistance next to useless. Confined in that narrow passage, confused,
terrified, their ranks broken by the rearing and plunging horses,
knights and men-at-arms falling with every blow from their vigorous
assailants, it seemed as if the whole army would be annihilated, and not
a man escape to tell the tale.
Numbers of gallant knights, the flower of the Austrian, nobility, fell
under those vengeful clubs. Numbers were drowned in the lake.
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