Late Swiss reinforcements break the imperial army

The infantry struggle remains closely balanced until the expected Lucerne and Zug contingents enter loudly at dusk. Their horns and shouting make a thousand fresh troops feel like an even larger change in the balance. Their arrival raises Swiss morale and enables a renewed push that breaks the Landsknechts; once the professional core runs, the rest of the imperial army follows. The retreat into darkness becomes a pursuit with severe losses, exactly as Conrad's timing anticipated. Confusion also leads Swiss contingents to fight one another and may have caused more Swiss casualties than the Imperial troops inflicted during the battle. The final toll is given as roughly 3,000 imperial dead against about 500 Swiss. The Swiss arrange proper burials for their own dead, while most imperial dead are left unburied.