How I came up with The Forest Knights

I don’t like to travel much but being married to a Swiss woman, I seem to do it an awful lot.

The very first time I was getting ready to go to Switzerland, I asked Sonja (my wife) what kind of interesting historical stuff I could read up on. I take my time machine wherever I go and turn it on whenever I find myself someplace new. It doesn’t matter whether I stand upon the walls of a castle, on an ancient battlefield, a forest, or even a farmer’s field, I can’t help but imagine the people that were there before me.

“So,” I asked. “This place called Switzerland. Did anything interesting ever happen there?”

Knowing me better than I know myself, she said, “You should read up on William Tell, though it’s mostly just a legend.”

“William Tell? The apple guy? I thought he was English.”

And, as they say, the rest is history.

The legend of William Tell dates back to the formative years of the country of Switzerland. I became particularly infatuated with the Battle of Morgarten and insisted on dragging Sonja to the shores of Lake Aegeri where it happened. Historical sources are limited on the battle itself but what we know for sure is that a small, vastly outnumbered peasant army defeated a professionally trained force of knights and men-at-arms. Pummelled them actually. In fact, a whole generation of blue-blooded young men were killed off in that battle and it would take years for their family lines to recover, if they ever did.

As I stood on the battlefield of Morgarten, something became obviously clear to me. Everything I had read about the battle, up until that point, was wrong. Anyone with a time machine could see that.

We are told that the peasants used the steep terrain and marshy ground to their advantage, rolling trees and boulders down the slopes and driving the Austrians into the lake where, because of the knights’ heavy armor, they drowned.

There were several problems with this view. The ground was not that steep. It was made up of a series of rolling hills leading down to the water’s edge. Sure, 700 years ago it was probably more forested but I doubted someone had flattened it all out with huge bulldozers since then. As someone who lives in a log house, used to peel them for money, and now spends a lot of time dragging them out of the bush for firewood, this did not strike me as prime log-rolling terrain. Something else was at work here.

Next up was the heavy armor argument. I have worn chainmail and gambeson. (Don’t look at me like that. We all pick up odds and ends of experiences in our misspent youths.) And it was not that heavy. Especially when you wear it properly with a belt. In fact, I have jackets that feel much heavier. Rolling, running, falling, getting back up: all quite doable. Almost like the stuff was designed for those things. Sure, the padded gambeson you wear underneath would get soggy and heavy if you went for a swim, but in the absence of rolling logs, what self-respecting knight is going to let a peasant push him into the drink?

And that brings me to the main problem I saw with Morgarten. Going back to my misspent youth for a moment, I come from a varied martial arts background. Now I was never a professional fighter (I’m not sure I even qualified as an amateur), but I did have the opportunity to “work out” with a few professionals. Have you ever seen the TV show “Pros vs Joes” (start at 4:04)? In it they have normal people go up against professionals in all manner of sports. Mixed martial arts was one of them.

In short, you do not know what you do not know. When you shake the hand of a professional athlete in the normal world you may not notice much, other than how fit they are. But when you place a hand on them in their arena of competence, it is shocking how inadequate you, as an amateur, truly are.

Knights were the professional athletes of their time. Most of them began their training by five or six years old, certainly no later than ten. And they continued to train, compete, or war, until the day they died or reached a position where others would do it for them.

As I stood on that flat ground at Morgarten looking toward the lake, I imagined three fully armored knights with swords charging toward me. I raised my sharpened shovel and charged into the fray. How exactly was that going to end?

Sure, I might get lucky. One of them could trip and gore himself with his own blade. Then I could finish him off with my shovel, and bury him even. But three? One hole for myself would be the best use for that shovel.

What exactly happened at Morgarten? How is it possible that an ill-equipped, outnumbered, untrained group of people beat all these odds? 

There was only one possible answer: They were trained. They were skilled. They were organized.

But by whom? That’s where I let my imagination run wild.

If knights were the professional athletes of the medieval world, the knightly orders of the Crusades were the all-stars of the league: The Knights Templar, the Teutonics, the Hospitallers. They understood the game of the time like no others. A knight from any one of these orders would have made a great player-coach.

But the Templars had been disbanded. The Teutonics wore only white and black. The Hospitallers wore black and white (there is a difference). Too dark. Depressing.

And then I recalled seeing a picture of a Hospitaller knight standing atop the walls of Acre dressed all in red with a white cross on his chest, the cross of peace upon the blood-red battlefield of war. Although historically unrelated, it was eerily reminiscent of the current flag of Switzerland.

And thus, Thomi Schwyzer was born. In short order he was joined by Seraina, Pirmin, and Gissler, versions of whom I’m sure we each have in our own lives somewhere.

Thank you for joining me on this little ride in my time machine. Watch your step on the way out. If you trip, you never know where you might end up.

all the best,

jk