Forbidden History - The Skulls of Dornach: Evidence of a Forgotten Massacre

Episode Date: August 11, 2026

The team at Forbidden History examines skulls from the site of the 1499 Battle of Dornach. The battle between Maximilian I and the Old Swiss Confederacy saw Switzerland win its independence from the Holy Roman Empire. Eric Meyers: Narrator Christine Cooper: Physical Anthropologist Gerry Embleton: Author and Illustrator Susan Marti: Doctor, Bernisches Historisches Museum David Nicolle: Author and Military Historian Tim Sutherland: Archaeologist Hans Voegtli: Doctor and Curator, Heimatmuseum Schwarzbubenland Dornach Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A land of lakes and mountains, a bridge at the edge of an empire. Our perception of medieval Switzerland is probably somewhat distorted. Farmers who became soldiers, soldiers all Europe came to fear. Warriors who held back an emperor. You'd kill them as fast as you could, there's no doubt about it. Medieval war, a roll of the dice, the bones of the dead, the bones of the dead. You lose, you die, you never go home.

It was just a slaughter, it was a disaster. In the shadow of mountains, no quarter asked or given. The Skulls of Dornach. The medieval world, the 5th to the 15th century. Tim Sutherland is one of Britain's most experienced archaeologists. He and a team of specialists try to understand medieval life by exploring the realm of the medieval dead. The story of Dornach and its great battle is the story of Dornach and its skulls. It was fought in 1499 at the very end of the medieval period, and it marked the end of a very bloody war.

Yet it was also the beginning of something, a long struggle to national awareness and independence. of the country of Switzerland. The price was high in lives, born as ever by everyday people, farmers and peasants. Yet also by the men who fought, who left behind their valleys and homes to take their place in harm's way

and play the deadly game of hazard that was the soldier's life in medieval times. We'll delve into the life of the soldier in this world, whether they fought for much, money and drink, or for something greater, the remains left to us now are the same. We'll investigate why and how some of them fought. And we'll try to bring new light to the strange story of the bones of men who died fighting in a savage battle 500 years ago.

Who were these men, whose only remains now are the skulls of Dornach? The traces of the ones who went before are all around us. Our ancestors and forebears of the Middle Ages. Whether they were kings or peasants, they left their mark. The structures they built, castles and cathedrals, the things they made, the weapons they fought with, the graves in which they lay. Rarely, if ever, do we see among us in plain sight

the remains of the individuals themselves. Yet in a street, in a small town in the heart of Europe, They're a part of everyday life, the medieval dead. More than 40 human skulls believed to be some of the dead from the Battle of Dornach. Many of them bear trauma, evidence of weapon injuries, some perhaps causes of death. In itself, it's an arresting site. As a monument to a medieval battle, it's perhaps unique. Switzerland, a small landlocked country with a population of just eight months.

million people. Most of them centered on a plateau bordered by the natural frontiers of the Alps and the Jura. Its larger cities, Geneva and Zurich, are among the most important financial centers in the world. The country itself, one of the most developed. It's the home of the International Red Cross and has a long history of armed neutrality. It hasn't been at war since 1815, the time of Napoleon. It's still not. known officially as the Swiss Confederation, a title which originated in the Middle Ages. It wasn't one nation called Switzerland, as we know it today. It was a league, an alliance of

small territories known as cantons. At the time of Dornach, there were eight. Today there are 26. Our knowledge of the region is usually hazy when compared with France, Britain, or Germany in the Middle Ages. It's only when you get down to the details you realise that it's a place that was quite important in the medieval period. Our perception of medieval Switzerland is probably somewhat distorted and we don't really know much about it, or I certainly don't anyway. In the great scheme of things it's quite a small region.

It's a mountainous region but even so geographically it's a very small area. And for some reason in the later medieval period it becomes incredibly important and that's an anomaly. like to investigate. Towards the end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th centuries, the people of this small region had a disproportionate influence on many important events and battles of Central Europe. There was a strength in their character, a belief in the way they were bound together in the face of adversity. You have an echo of this in the Swiss now. I think the Swiss like the English owe a lot of their general character to geography. In England, we live in an island and we've been able to fight off

most invaders because we live on an island. And so do the Swiss. They live in a sort of island of lakes and mountains. And by being united and getting all the people together, they have fought off invaders and threats. Tim has come to Switzerland to find out more about their character, the country, and its extraordinary place in medieval history. The Battle of Dornach was the final act in a conflict that began seven months before. It was called in Germany Der Schweitzer Krieg, the Swiss War. Now it's known more commonly as Der Schwaben Krieg, the Swabian War. It was fought between the Swiss cantons and the greatest power in Europe, the Holy Roman Empire.

It was called Holy Roman, but the empire was German. Swabia was an ancient region of southwestern Germany, encompassing the areas known today as Baden-Vurttemberg and Bavaria. It was the homeland of the original Holy Roman Emperor, Charlemagne the Great, and of several historic dynasties. Among them, the Hoenzollerns and the Velfs, ancestors of the Hanoverians and the British royal family. Most powerful of all were the Habsburgs, whose King Maximilian I ruled the empire at the very end of the 15th century. In early 1499, local disputes came about over control of trade routes through the mountain passes between Swabia and the cantons. Argument turned to skirmish, raid, and counter-raid. Swabia called on the support of its Habsburg

king and emperor. The smaller canons locked arms for mutual support as the Confederacy. The inevitable outcome was war. From January to July 1499, fighting raged through the Rhine Valley to Lake Constance. But if the Habsburgs and Swabians were expecting to crush the small cantons, they were mistaken. Again and again, the Confederacy took them on and saw them off. On July 19, 1499, an imperial army of around 16,000 men attacked Zolotun, intending to besiege and capture the important frontier castle at Dornach. Instead, three days later, on July 22nd, they suffered a shocking, total defeat. No surrender was taken.

Even the imperial wounded were killed. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of bodies. lay strewn across the landscape, from the castle to the bridge and beyond. Tim's in Dornach, to examine the scene of the battle. Hans Ferkli is the curator of Dornach's Museum. He can explain some of the history. Dornach, or Dornek Castle, dominates the view over the Beers Valley for miles around. The Imperial Commander Heinrich von Furstenberg knew that Swiss cannons,

cannons could shoot down to harass his troops as they approached. Also, the bridge was a symbol of the canton of Zolitan's political autonomy. The commander of the castle was more or less the representative of the state. And here was an important meeting and commercial place with customs post. People passing with merchandise, they had to pay here. It was an official crossing from the Conton of Solotron. So it was that big? It was that important. It was important, yeah.

It was important. And basically the battle was about that castle and this bridge. Exactly. It was the will of the emperor and of Heinrich von Furstenberg to destroy that castle, which would allow the troops to go into the heart of Switzerland across the Jura. And if you could hold this bridge, you could stop the invader. Yeah, yeah, the invading community, basically. And it was the last battles between the Empire and Swiss,

but it wasn't really the end of all the struggles between the two parties. Today, Dornach is a part of the suburban sprawl, a few kilometers from the busy city of Basel. In 1499, it was a much smaller town. It was here the imperial troops crossed into the town. Some climbed the hill to establish, siege lines beneath the castle. That left many of them with time on their hands. All around they fell to drinking or gaming in the taverns and their camp. They had no idea that they were gambling

on borrowed time. Hans is an expert in coins and artifacts of the classical world, but he's always been involved with the story of Dornach and its little-known battle. So when did you first become involved with the Dornack collection or when did you first hear about it? Yeah, I mean, I was born here, I was, I grew up here. But it's the strange chain of events involving the human remains from the battle, which in a way is the most compelling part of the Dornock story. After a medieval battle, there's often a discernible pattern of events concerning the disposal of the dead. Tim knows this, from his work excavating the mass grave,

at the Battle of Toton in Northern England. Thousands of dead were buried on the battlefield in pits. Then, some years later, they were dug up again and reburied in consecrated ground with a dedicated chapel. It's a pattern he's also seen at Aljuborota in Portugal, and it's probably common in many other European battlefields of the Middle Ages. But Dornach was different. of the after-battle pattern fits,

but with one major difference, because they're still here for all to see, the battlefield dead. This is the first time that Tim's seen them. So this is really interesting for me because I've heard so many stories about collections of human remains of battlefields. And usually they're putting something like a mass grave

or they're put in something like a chapel. Yes. This is really unusual because obviously it's on display. And apparently it always has been, or for quite a long time. Yes, more or less. I mean, initially they were also in a chapel. The chapel was built in the 17th century

between the monastery and the street. And when they constructed the railroad line from Basel to Geneva in 1872, they just demolished the chapel in order to be able to construct the street up to the station. No one knows what the 17th century chapel looked like. Whatever was left is now beneath the road. At the end of the 19th century, at the time of the 400th Jubilee commemorations, a replacement was built, much smaller, little more than an elaborate ushery.

But it was only for some of the bones, a fraction, of what had been in the 17th century chapel. Before there was no monument, just the ossuary. Yeah. But if you see photographs of the old ors, it's a whole... ...theirskirts a pyramid of skulls. But then, half a century later,

the layout was redeveloped again in 1949, when the large expressionist monument was created to celebrate modern Switzerland's independence. And the unique tale of Dornock's bones continued, When they built the monument in 1949, that initial ossuary was demolished, and just a few of the skulls were integrated, presented here with the monument. The rest were stored. And these have been here ever since? Yes, since 49.

Right. It's very unusual to have these on display to the general public. For us, it's nothing unusual to see these skulls. And probably today nobody really pays attention to them even passing by. I mean, a lot of people, they probably do not even know what the monument is for and what the skulls have to do here. I think it's really fitting that people can actually come up here and contemplate, you know, the memorial, the battle, you know, their own existence and everything else.

Yes, yes. And in that respect, it's really unusual. But I think it's quite appropriate around. Life in the small, busy suburb goes on. For someone who spent years searching for the dead from medieval battles, even unearthing them with his own hands, it's taking some time to get used to the monument. It's very unusual to have a monument of this size and scale, and it's right in the center of the town. But what's more unusual is that there's a collection of skulls behind, basically, in a glass case on the side of the monument.

And these skulls are the people who died at the Battle of Dornak. I've heard the stories about the skulls of Dornak. I've read the papers, the archaeological papers. Here they are displaying how they died, basically. And what weapons kill them? You see those huge sword cuts, slashes across the skulls. And all the depressions and the stab wounds and it's unbelievable. And to have it on display.

One of the interesting questions is who these people are. They're evidently the people who fought in. in the battle, you can tell that by the skull injuries, but we don't know who these, who they are. Just who these dead represent is a question that will take some answering. As for the mystery of where the rest of them are, Hans has been able to piece together some of the evidence. The regional museum, of which he's curator, the Heimat Museum, is based in Dornock's oldest churches. After 1949, some of the surplus bones were buried in the church yard, marked now by a sculpture. Then, five years later, they were on the move yet again.

Okay, and then in 54, the bones have been removed and they have been placed in another ossuary down closer to the museum. The bones have since been removed from the sarcophagus. And it says here, wanderers stay still, here are the bones of the the heroes from the Battle of Dornach 1499. The sarcophagus hasn't been opened since, but Hans believes this is the end of the line for the bones that remained in Dornach. The 17th century chapel, 1899,

1949 and 1954. It's curious how these skeletons have moved around the town, but it is similar to how bones from many other medieval battlefields were treated. Inside, there's a clue as to who the dead were. Yeah, and now we have the frescoes on the wall, and here are buried the three commanders of the German troops, the imperial troops, Heinrich von Furstenberg, and two of his sub-commanders, Matthias von Kastelwart, and the herz, Bitsch, and to Lichtenberg.

Von Furstenberg had gone forward to check his artillery position in the siege lines before Dornach Castle. As you may know, Graf Heinrich von Furzenberg was one of the first to be killed. People warned him because he didn't put up guards, and when people warned him he just said, why should I put up guards? It will not know Swiss soldiers here.

All across Dornach and the German camp, the Empire's soldiers were at their ease. They expected a long but success siege. So when the Swiss commanders saw how careless the German troops were, they were drinking, they were eating, they had musing playing, they were enjoying their life, they were swimming in the river. So they decided to just have a fast attack. Yeah, they took advantage of the situation. They took advantage at the situation and Graf Heinrich von Furzenberg was one of the first to just be killed. And that gave a completely disaster to the, there was no organization.

anymore. That the three highest-ranking commanders of the Imperial Army were buried here in Dornach is significant. Often in medieval battle, the bodies of nobles were reclaimed by their households for burial on home soil. They sent some monks here to ask, and the commander of the Swiss canons left the decision up to the commander of the canton of Solitone, and then they said, No, the knights have to stay with the peasants. And that's the reason why Heinrich von Furstenberg and two of his subcommanders

are buried in the church of Dornach. Yeah. I think we've got a clue here as to who these individuals, who these group of people were. Some of the losing knights are obviously buried in this part of the church. They were initially taken off the battlefield, who were brought into consecrated ground, moved on several occasions through different osiris until we come to the situation today where we can see them by the side of the road on the modern memorial.

They didn't allow the high-status individuals to be taken away, and so that's definitely a clue as to who we're looking at. How did the crushing victory come about? Why was it so comprehensive? How was the 16,000 strong, highly equipped, highly motivated army of the most powerful empire in Europe, destroyed utterly by the lowly soldiers of the Swiss cantons, especially as the Imperial Army faced a Swiss force of only around 6,000 men, mostly infantry, with relatively few armored knights on horseback. Bern was one of the larger cantons in the Swiss Confederation

in 1499. Its famous bear is today used as a national symbol of the whole of modern Switzerland. The Museum of Bern houses many artifacts relating to the events of this time in the medieval period. I'm Susan Markey. I'm an art historian and responsible for the medieval collection at the Museum in Bern. And now we are in our permanent exhibition, which deals with the history of Switzerland in the late 15 and early 16th century. The leaders of the cantons which came together to fight the Swabian War, were realists. They knew they couldn't equal numerically the military might of the Holy Roman Empire, its armored cavalry and powerful siege artillery, but they knew they could count on one thing, the solidity of their own soldiers. Swiss troops of the late 15th century were regarded even at

the time as tough opponents, just as the imperial commander von Furstenberg found out to his peril. The majority of the Swiss were peasant farmers and cowherds. Soldering and campaigning came naturally to them. They were tough, self-reliant, and bound together by loyalty to family, village, or canton. Unlike knights, they weren't used to horses in jousting or fighting tournaments. They wore relatively little armor, if any. The heart of their strength was not just the weapons they used, long spears, pikes or pole arms, but in the way they fought with them.

They were organized strong together in formation in a kind of square. And in the outside, they had the pikemen with their long weapons. And in the inner part, they had the so-called normal soldiers. And they were really trained to hold always together. Always hold together, even against the best cavalry the empire could throw at them. Disciplined infantry who hold their nerve, hold their position. They can defeat cavalry if they can keep cavalry at a distance. The man on foot is not at a disadvantage merely because he's on foot.

He has many advantages. His greatest advantage is when he has numbers, discipline, holds his nerve and has a weapon which can keep the horseman, whether he's an armored horseman or not. Keep him at a distance. And if possible, kill his horse. And in the harsh economics of war, Swiss infantry armed with just spears or pikes

were vastly cheaper than armored imperial knights. Even the best infantry, with the best equipment for infantry, are cheaper than cavalry. They don't need so much armor. In fact, they don't want so much armor, because they've got to actually carry it and walk in it or fight in it, rather than sitting on a horse. Their weaponry is generally simpler and cheaper, but you need the numbers and you need the discipline.

Discipline, but also a cohesion, brought about by a shared culture, small communities in a mountainous region. Jerry Emilton is a writer and artist. In a career spanning more than half a century, he's created artwork for new, newspapers, books and magazines. Much of his work has been as a historical illustrator, and the medieval period just hooked him. It's one of the reasons why he now lives and works in Switzerland. I've worked intensively in different periods, and I tend to being a little bit mad,

go deeply into the things I do. I was commissioned to do some medieval work. I found the subject fascinating. I moved to Switzerland, and on every street corner is a castle. There's a wonderful documentation in the Swiss Chronicles, which were made by the towns to record all the events. Just a lot of very inspiring sources and a lot of arms and armor. Jerry's illustrations are renowned for their realism and historical detail. To imagine how it actually was for them, you have to step into the world of fiction, but then nearly always,

history is to a certain extent fiction. We have to imagine how these guys felt. And I've, in the figure making and in my drawings, I need to know what they're wearing, what they're eating, how well they are. Because obviously you can write a list. This man is sick. He was ill all night. He's got dysentery and he's now facing the enemy for the first time. Or He slept very well last night. He's eaten a good meal. He's with all his mates. They won a victory yesterday.

You have completely different feeling. I believe that's very important. And you can read in the contemporary accounts how a victorious army is going to win another victory usually. And once they start, there is a momentum. Jerry believes some of this momentum in the Swiss troops was due to the tough, simple background they all shared. Growing up in a mountainous land every day

can be a matter of survival. There's a lot of marching, carrying stuff and running around in the hills, in the Swiss training now. And I would guess that the young Swiss soldiers of the 15th century were having the same kind of experience. Young, active, fit Swiss, Swiss soldiers. soldiers on a good day were very high in morale, very high in confidence, and I think that has a big effect on a battlefield. Hardened by a mountain life, reliant on nobody but themselves and their comrades.

These were the troops against whom the soldiers of the empire found themselves bested. Burns' museum collection contains a number of the Dornock skulls. They arrived there in the early 20th century. after the pyramid monument was redeveloped, and the rest of the bones went into the church. Susan Mark knows from the accounts the uncompromising way the victorious Swiss did not allow the empire to recover its dead, noble or otherwise. Normally the losers could bury their own victims right after the battle,

but the Swiss did prohibit that, and so these corpses were lying out on the bottom. battlefield and could not be buried, which was a very unusual thing even for medieval behavior on the battlefield after a battle. There was more than the usual degree of enmity between opponents in a medieval battle in Europe. Usually there was at least some trace of decorum, some observance of custom and disposing of the dead. Instead, this was a war in which feelings, particularly among the Swiss cantons, ran strong. It was them against an empire. If they lost, there would likely be no more Swiss cantons.

But what of the other missing bones? The skulls left over from the pyramid and the earlier 17th century monuments. One woman has made it her business to try and find out. My name is Christine Cooper and I'm a physical anthropologist, specialized in human remains from archaeological excavations. Christine became involved with the little-known story of the doork bones through her study of victims of later battlefields. I have been examining battlefield remains from 1799 to Napoleonic Orders, but I wasn't very satisfied with the things I was able to do,

and especially with the things I was not able to do. So I wanted to take that step further. I happened to be in Dornach a long time ago, maybe 15 years ago, and I heard that a battle had taken place. And I asked, well, did I have any human remains, but nobody knew at the time. But since that point, I had them on my mind, and I wanted to get hold of them,

if they did exist, and it turned out they did. Christine was allowed access to analyze the bones at the monument and Dornock Church. But as for the rest, no one seemed to know where they all were. She had to track them down. Eventually, she located more than a hundred more individuals in museums and universities across Switzerland. It took years of work, but Christine was eventually able to bring all this research together. I wanted to know more about this Galsif Statenach, especially who these people were and what happened to them in 1499. There are many similarities between Christine's findings and Tim's at Toten.

Two archaeological contexts, two battles, hundreds of miles apart. These are some of the skulls that we've excavated at Taupin. Obviously, there are certain parallels between our assemblage and our assemblage and and the work you've been looking at, and some of them are incredibly similar. Yet the battles were fought only around 40 years apart, and many of the weapons and ways of fighting and dying were the same. We've also got a significant amount of blunt force trauma, so something like a club or a mace or even a hammer,

and that's impacted upon the, usually the skull as well. So that seems to be similar-ish to what you're getting a donor. It is very similar, except that I didn't find that much blunt force trauma. Right. At some cases, but not that many. So that would suggest that these individuals didn't, their death didn't occur by something like a mace or a hammer or something, that it was purely by either blades or stabbing. Yes, most of them. I think I had one or two with massive blunt force, but not many.

Right. Most of them had the blade wounds that you said. And that was the very biggest part of all injuries. It was mostly these trauma marks caused apparently by blades that Christine selected for a careful and ingenious study. So can you talk through some of these experiments you carried out, please? Okay, I had original weapons of this time copied by a blacksmith, and which has copied relevant parts.

like the blade of swords, halberts and points of pikes and similar things. Then we inflicted injuries on a head model, which behaves like a head of a life person, and tried to reconstruct what could have caused these injuries on the daughter's skulls. It depended on the size of the weapon. In the small ones, we were able to trap them. onto the head model. And so we had a defined weight, the mass that came down, and a defined height, so we could calculate the kinetic energy

for each of these injuries. The head model that Christine created was a hollow plastic sphere filled with gelatin to represent the brain. It was covered with a layer of skin made from thin latex. The experiments were filmed at high speed. Most of the results were extremely close in resemblance to the trauma on the skulls. In most cases, it was perfect, is exactly what we saw. The experiments give a disturbing impression of the brutality of medieval close quarter combat.

Trauma on one skull in particular intrigued Christine. She theorized that it might have been inflicted by a particular kind of weapon, known to be in use at the time of of the Battle of Dornach. It had a wavy blade, like a flame. And so it became known as a flambard or flamensvord, a fire sword. I wasn't sure what might have caused those lesions, but I saw them again when I did this experiment with one of those plates. So you carried out an experiment with a blade of that type,

and it produced the same injuries as it did on the skull. That's fantastic. I saw the monelian one skull, so I don't think they were used very commonly. That must be very rare. Yes. But it's fantastic that there's an example of it, and you manage to replicate it as well and produce the same results, which is unbelievable. If it was too deep, you'd never see that double indentation, would you? So, I presume it's under ideal circumstances, or it's just shallow enough to show the double depression and the double cut.

So it's unbelievable there really is evidence for that. I'm really impressed with them, so that's fantastic. Flamenschfurtz are often depicted in images from the period, but they were thought to be used just for display or parade. I was told it's more like a weapon to represent, but not to actually use, because it's just too big and too conversome. Much seems like they used it anyway sometimes.

I can't believe you've got evidence. of that, when you find something archaeologically, then you've reproduced the classic experiments and produced exactly the same results. But to have the osteological evidence in the first place is unbelievable. And it must be incredibly rare. It was fascinating. Every time when I saw one of these lesions appear that looked realistic, it was exciting because I knew I'd found something more to help explain on this stuff.

Of all the blade trauma on the skulls, however, only a few of the injuries were likely to have been fatal blows. Without the rest of the skeletons, it's impossible to know exactly how these men died. But one thing's for certain. Their last moments were bloody, brutal, and perhaps frenzied. The petrifying last instances of men on the losing side. Knowing surrender was impossible. These were the individuals, the men behind the anonymous masks left to us now, the skulls of Dornach, imperial soldiers, Germans, perhaps even Swiss, from cantons not yet part of the Confederation.

United in one respect. They were the losers of a battle, left unburied by the victors, and displayed for centuries ever after. At the time, it was a warning to others who might try to to follow in their footsteps. This was the very early dawning of the national identity, the independence of the region, which would one day become Switzerland. To us now, like all war memorials, it's a reminder of what havoc mankind is capable of reeking, in war, medieval, or otherwise. From the top of Dornak Castle, the defenders would have seen the imperial troops utterly routed

by the Swiss. So too would they have seen the bodies of the defeated soldiers left in their many hundreds, exposed to the elements for weeks, months and years after the battle. It's difficult not to think about the individuals that get caught up in a battle such as this. We've seen how graphically some of them were killed. We've got extensive skull trauma. The victors obviously disperse and the victims they're left behind everybody else will go back to their homes

but for these people they will be forever associated with the Battle of Dornak