Hi Alex,
Very interested in your venture; it'll be a large set-up at 28mm!
As you say, the town walls largely remain and so getting an accurate outline of Murten is straightforward. I would expect that the town walls were rendered and lime washed to protect them from the weather etc, most medieval walls would have been so. I would also expect to have wooden palisades around some or all of the walls and towers.Many are there today and you can walk around.
I'm not sure on the Panorama; personally I would use it as a reference only if all other sources fail - it was a commercial venture after all and whilst there's lots thats correct in it, somethings certainly aren't. Afraid I have no idea on the post-1476 modifications to the gate or tower.
Re the siege lines; I'm not sure that we know. The Schilling illustrations do not show them and it would be big undertaking to completely encircle the town. My understanding is that medieval besiegers usually constructed large fortified camps to stay in and protect themselves from counter attack, these would be posted around the castle/town to effectively block it off - I'm thinking of Orleans 1428 for example.
From what I read of Marten (from Vaughan's Charles the Bold), there were possibly 4 Burgundian camps:
- The Ducal headquarters on a hill south of the town, at Bois Domingue
- One south/east - at Munchenweiler, which blocked the road to Fribourg - where expected berne/Swiss relief force would have come from (and did for the battle). Near here would be the 'green hedge' - noted in the battle.
- North of the town, on a hillock near Muntelier & Burg (it maybe called Adera Hubel?), where Count of Romont had 2 large bombards with range of the walls which caused damage.
- The Bastard of Burgundy was near Avenches and again within siege range, as tunnels and ditches were dug at night and were within range of the artillery within the town.
Therefore not exactly besieged from all sides - I'm sure that pragmatically the Burgundians had to select land which either gave them the best location to set-up and to fire bombards at the walls - such as the hillocks mentioned and areas big enough and sufficiently practical to construct defensive camps for large numbers of troops and followers etc.
So I envisage these are large camps, protected by wooden palisades and wagons - from which siege activity occurred and raids on the walls and breaches happened.
hope this helps - I have a small handbook from a visit long ago to the town - I'll dig it out and see if it helps further.
Good luck with the project.
Simon.
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