Slashing is a decorative technique that involved making small cuts on the outer fabric of a garment in order to reveal the sometimes brightly colored inner garment or lining. It was performed on all varieties of clothing, both men's and women's. Contemporary chroniclers identify the source of the fashion for slashing garments to the actions of Swiss soldiers in the aftermath of the Battle of Grandson in 1476. Supposedly the Swiss plundered the rich fabrics of the Burgundian nobles and used the scraps to patch their tattered clothes. In reality, images appear of sleeves with a single slashed opening as early as the mid-15th century, although the German fashion for "many small all-over slits" may have begun here. Whatever its origin, the fad for multiple slashings spread to German Landsknechts and thence to France, Italy, and England, where it was to remain a potent current in fashionable attire into the mid-17th century.