SEMPACH  , a small

town in the Swiss canton of Lucerne, built above the eastern shore of the lake of the same name, and about 1 z m. by road north of the Sempach railway station (9 M . N.W. of Lucerne) on the main line between Lucerne and Olten . In 1900 it had 2592 inhabitants, German-speaking and Romanists . It has retained some traces of its medieval appearance, especially the main gateway, beneath a watch tower, and reached by a bridge over the old moat . About half an hour distant to the north-east, on the hillside, is the site of the famous battle of Sempach (9th July 1386), in which the Swiss defeated the Austrians, whose leader, Duke Leopold, lost his life . The legendary deed of Arnold of Winkelried (q.v.) is associated with this victory . The spot is now marked by an ancient and picturesque Battle Chapel (restored in 1886) and by a modern monument to Winkelried . Some miles north of Sempach is the quaint village of Munster or Beromunster (973 inhabitants in 1900), with a collegiate church founded in the loth century and dating, in parts, from the 1 nth and 12th centuries (fine 17th-century choir stalls and altar frontals), the chapter of secular canons now consisting of invalided priests of the canton of Lucerne: it was in Beromunster that the first dated book was printed (1470) in Switzerland, by care of the canons, while thence came Gering who introduced printing into France . See Th. von Liebenau . Die Schlacht bei Sempach (Lucerne, 1886) . (W . A .

B .