Орта ғасырлық Швейцария Конфедерациясының қалыптасуы

Aspect of Swiss history in the late Middle Ages

The Old Swiss Confederacy began as a late medieval alliance between the communities of the valleys in the Central Alps, at the time part of the Holy Roman Empire, to facilitate the management of common interests such as free trade and to ensure the peace along the important trade routes through the mountains. The Hohenstaufen emperors had granted these valleys reichsfrei status in the early 13th century. As reichsfrei regions, the cantons (or regions) of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden were under the direct authority of the emperor without any intermediate liege lords and thus were largely autonomous. With the rise of the Habsburg dynasty, the kings and dukes of Habsburg sought to extend their influence over this region and to bring it under their rule; as a consequence, a conflict ensued between the Habsburgs and these mountain communities who tried to defend their privileged status as reichsfrei regions. The three founding cantons of the Schweizerische Eidgenossenschaft, as the confederacy was called, were joined in the early 14th century by the city states of Lucerne, Zürich, and Bern, and they managed to defeat Habsburg armies on several occasions. They also profited from the fact that the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire, for most of the 14th century, came from the House of Luxembourg and regarded them as potential useful allies against the rival Habsburgs. By 1460, the confederates controlled most of the territory south and west of the Rhine to the Alps and the Jura mountains. At the end of the 15th century, two wars resulted in an expansion to thirteen cantons (Dreizehn Orte): in the Burgundian Wars of the 1470s, the confederates asserted their hegemony on the western border, and their victory in the Swabian War in 1499 against the forces of the Habsburg emperor Maximilian I ensured a de facto independence from the empire. During their involvement in the Italian Wars, the Swiss brought the Ticino under their control. Two similar federations sprang up in neighboring areas in the Alps in the 14th century: in the Grisons, the federation of the Three Leagues (Drei Bünde) was founded, and in the Valais, the Seven Tithings (Sieben Zenden) were formed as a result of the conflicts with the Dukes of Savoy. Neither federation was part of the medieval Eidgenossenschaft but both maintained very close connections with it.

Under the Hohenstaufen dynasty of the Holy Roman Empire, the three regions of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden (the [[Federal Charter of 1291 or "forest communities") had gained Imperial immediacy (Reichsfreiheit), the first two because the emperors wanted to place the strategically important St. Gotthard Pass under their direct control, the latter because most of its territory belonged to immediate monasteries. The cities of Bern and Zürich had also become immediate when the dynasty of their patrons, the Zähringer, had died out. When Rudolph I of Habsburg was elected "King of the Germans" in 1273, he also became the direct liege lord of these reichsfrei regions. He instituted a strict rule and raised the taxes to finance wars and further territorial acquisitions. When he died in 1291, his son Albert I got involved in a power struggle with Adolf of Nassau for the German throne, and the Habsburg rule over the alpine territories weakened temporarily. Anti Habsburg insurgences sprang up in Swabia and Austria, but were quashed quickly by Albert in 1292. Zürich had participated in this uprising. Albert besieged the city, which had to accept him as its patron. This time of turmoil prompted the Waldstätten to cooperate more closely, trying to preserve or regain their immediacy. The first alliance started in 1291 when Rudolph bought all the rights over the town of Lucerne and the abbey estates in Unterwalden from Murbach Abbey in Alsace. The Waldstätten saw their trade route over Lake Lucerne cut off and feared losing their independence. When Rudolph died on July 15, 1291, the Communities prepared to defend themselves. On August 1, 1291, an Everlasting League was made between the Forest Communities for mutual defense against a common enemy. Uri and Schwyz got their status reconfirmed by Adolf of Nassau in 1297, but to no avail, for Albert finally won the power struggle and became King of Germany in 1298 after Adolf was killed in the Battle of Göllheim.

The Federal Charter of 1291 is one of the oldest surviving written documents of an alliance between Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden, the founding cantons of the Old Swiss Confederacy. It is possible that it was written a few decades later than the given date of 1291, which would put it in the same date range as the pact of Brunnen of 1315. The traditional date given for the foundation of the Swiss Confederacy in Swiss historiography of the 16th century (Aegidius Tschudi and others) is 1307. King Rudolf I died in 1291, and 1307 falls into the reign of King Albert I, both members of the House of Habsburg ruling in a time of political instability, when the Holy Roman Empire had been without an emperor for several decades. The politically weak kings of this period had to make frequent concessions to their subjects and vassals in order to remain in power. The founding cantons received confirmations of the Freibriefe establishing their immediate status. Even Unterwalden was finally properly granted this status by Albert's successor Henry VII in 1309. This did not prevent the dukes of Habsburg, who originally had had their homelands in the Aargau, from trying to reassert their sovereignty over the territories south of the Rhine. In the struggle for the crown of the Holy Roman Empire in 1314 between duke Frederick I of Austria and the Bavarian king Louis IV, the Waldstätten sided with Louis for fear of the Habsburgs trying to annex their counties again, like Rudolph I had done. When a long simmering conflict between Schwyz and the abbey of Einsiedeln escalated once more, the Habsburgs responded by sending a strong army of knights against these peasants to subdue their insurrection, but the Austrian army of Frederick's brother Leopold I was utterly defeated in the Battle of Morgarten in 1315. The three cantons renewed their alliance in the pact of Brunnen, and Louis IV reconfirmed their Imperial immediacy. The Swiss chronicles of the Burgundy Wars period (1470s) refer to a rebellion against the local bailiffs, with a coordinated destruction of their forts or castles, known as the Burgenbruch ("slighting") in Swiss historiography. The earliest reference for this is the White Book of Sarnen (1470), which records that

The text names Zwing Uri at Amsteg as the first castle slighted, followed by castle Schwandau in Schwyz, Rötzberg in Stans, and finally the castle at Sarnen, the storming of which is told in a graphic manner. The Burgenbruch was long seen as historical, substantiated by the numerous ruined castles in Central Switzerland, but archaeological excavations have shown that these castles were abandoned gradually, not during a sudden uprising, during the period of roughly 1200 to 1350. By the 1970s, the "demythologization" of the foundational period of the Confederacy was at its peak, and the default view was to regard the reports of the late 15th century chronists as essentially legendary. Since the late 1970s, systematic surveys of medieval castles in Central Switzerland have shown that a number of castles were indeed destroyed during the early 14th century, so that a possible historical nucleus of the Burgenbruch accounts may be granted, even though the destruction of these forts in itself was of limited military import and could not have resulted in a lasting political change.

Subsequently, the three communities (their territories did not yet correspond to the areas of the modern day cantons) followed a slow policy of expansion. Uri entered a pact with the previously Habsburg valley of Urseren in 1317. In 1332,

In the west, the Vier Waldstätten had already formed an alliance with the city of Bern in 1323, and even sent a detachment to help the Bernese forces in their territorial expansion against the dukes of Savoy and the Habsburgs in the Battle of Laupen in 1339. Bern's position after that battle was strong enough that such alliances often ended with the other party becoming a Bernese dependency, as happened with e. g. Burgdorf or Payerne. An external threat during this time arose in the form of the Guglers, marauding mercenary knights from France who were beaten back under the leadership of Bern in December 1375.

In 1364, Schwyz reconquered the city and land of Zug and renewed the alliance the following year. In the 1380s, Lucerne expanded its territory aggressively, conquering Wolhusen, claiming sovereignty over the valley of the Entlebuch and the formerly Habsburg city of Sempach. As a consequence, Leopold III of Austria assembled an army and met the confederate army near Sempach in 1386, where his troops were defeated decisively in the Battle of Sempach and he himself was killed. A large part became Bernese, while the County of Baden was subsequently administered by the confederation as a common property until 1798. Only the Fricktal remained a Habsburg possession. In the Valais, the conflict between the Bishop of Sion and the Duchy of Savoy, which had led to a separation in 1301 (the bishop controlling the upper Valais and the Savoyards the lower part), broke out again. Twice the Savoyards temporarily occupied the whole Valais, but both times they were ultimately defeated. Both peace treaties from 1361 and 1391 restored the status quo of 1301. As a result of these struggles, the villages in the upper Valais organized themselves in the Sieben Zenden ("seven tenths") around 1355, emerging after these wars as largely independent small states, much like the cantons of the Confederacy. In the Grisons, then called Churwalchen, the bishop of Chur and numerous local noble families competed for the control of the region with its many alpine passes. Throughout the 14th century, three leagues of free communities appeared. The Gotteshausbund ("League of the House of God"), covering the area around Chur and the Engadin, was founded when in 1367 the bishop, Jean de Vienne, planned to hand over the administration of his diocese to the Austrian Habsburgs. It bought its freedom by paying the bishop's debt and in the following decades increased its control over the secular administration of the prince bishopric, until the bishop's regent was deposed in 1452. In the upper valley of the Rhine, the Grauer Bund ("Gray League") was founded in 1395 under the direction of the abbot of Disentis and including not only the peasant communities but also the local nobles to end the permanent feuds of the latter. By 1424 the Gray League was dominated by the free communities and gave itself a more democratic charter. The third league, the League of the Ten Jurisdictions (Zehngerichtenbund), would not be formed until later.

The relationships between the individual cantons of the confederation were not without tensions, though. A first clash between Bern and the four Waldstätten over the Raron conflict (Bern supported the barons of Raron, while the forest cantons sided with the Sieben Zenden) in the upper Valais was barely avoided. The local noble barons of Raron established themselves as the leading family in the upper Valais in the late 14th century and competed with the bishop of Sion for the control of the valley. When emperor Sigismund designated them counts in 1413 and ordered the bishop to hand over his territories to the von Raron, a revolt broke out in 1414. The following year, both rulers had lost: the von Raron had not succeeded in ousting the bishop, who in turn had to concede far reaching rights to the Sieben Zenden in the treaty of Seta in 1415. The Old Zürich War, which began as a dispute over the succession to the count of Toggenburg, was a more serious test of the unity of the Eight Cantons. Zürich did not accept the claims of Schwyz and Glarus, which were supported by the rest of the cantons, and in 1438 declared an embargo. The other members of the confederation expelled Zürich from the confederation in 1440 and declared war. In retaliation Zürich made a pact with the Habsburgs in 1442. The other cantons invaded the canton of Zürich and besieged the city, but were unable to capture it. By 1446, both sides were exhausted, and a preliminary peace was concluded. In 1450, the parties made a definitive peace and Zürich was admitted into the confederation again, but had to dissolve its alliance with the Habsburgs. The confederation had grown into a political alliance so close that it no longer tolerated separatist tendencies of its members. The end of the dynasty of the counts of Toggenburg in 1436 also had effects on the Grisons. In their former territories in the Prättigau and Davos, the (initially eleven, after a merger only ten) villages founded the League of the Ten Jurisdictions (Zehngerichtebund).

In the second half of the 15th century, the confederation expanded its territory further. In the north, the formerly Habsburg cities of Schaffhausen and Stein am Rhein had become immediate in 1415, with the ban of Frederick IV. The two strategically important cities—they offered the only two fortified bridges over the river Rhine between Constance and Basel—not only struggled with the robber barons from the neighbouring Hegau region but also were under pressure from the Habsburg dukes, who sought to re integrate the cities into their domain. On June 1, 1454, Schaffhausen became an associate (Zugewandter Ort) of the confederacy by entering an alliance with six of the eight cantons (Uri and Unterwalden did not participate). With the help of the confederates, a Habsburg army of about 2,000 men was warded off east of Thayngen. Stein am Rhein concluded a similar alliance on 6 December 1459. The city of St. Gallen had also become free in 1415, but was in a conflict with its abbot, who tried to bring it under his influence. But as the Habsburg dukes were unable to support him in any way, he was forced to seek help from the confederates, and the abbey became a protectorate of the confederacy on 17 August 1451. The city was accepted as an associate state on 13 June 1454. Fribourg, another Habsburg city, came under the rule of the Duke of Savoy during the 1440s and had to accept the duke as its lord in 1452. Nevertheless, it also entered an alliance with Bern in 1454, becoming an associate state, too. Two other cities also sought help from the confederates against the Habsburgs: Rottweil became an associate on 18 June 1463, and Mülhausen on 17 June 1466, through an alliance with Bern (and Solothurn). In Rapperswil, a Habsburg enclave on Lake Zürich within confederate territory, a pro confederate coup d'état in 1458 led to the city becoming a protectorate of the confederacy in 1464. Duke Sigismund of Austria got involved in a power struggle with Pope Pius II over the nomination of a bishop in Tyrol in 1460. When the duke was excommunicated by the pope, a situation similar to that of 1415 arose. The confederates took advantage of the problems of the Habsburgs and conquered the Habsburg Thurgau and the region of Sargans in the autumn of 1460, which became both commonly administered property. In a peace treaty from 1 June 1461, the duke had no choice but to accept the new situation. The Swiss also had an interest in extending their influence south of the Alps to secure the trade route across the St. Gotthard Pass to Milan. Beginning in 1331, they initially exerted their influence through peaceful trade agreements, but in the 15th century, their involvement turned military. In 1403 the upper Leventina, as the valley south of the pass is called, became a protectorate of Uri. The Swiss and the Duchy of Milan were in conflict over this region throughout much of the 15th century. In 1439, Uri assumed full control of the upper Leventina; the Duchy of Milan gave up its claims there two years later, and so did the chapter of Milan in 1477. Twice the Swiss conquered roughly the whole territory of the modern canton of Ticino and also the Ossola valley. Twice, the Milanese reconquered all these territories except the Leventina. Both times, the Swiss managed, despite their defeats, to negotiate peace treaties that were actually favorable for them.

The Burgundian Wars were an involvement of confederate forces in the conflict between the Valois dynasty and the Habsburgs. The aggressive expansionism of the Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Bold, brought him in conflict with both the French king Louis XI and emperor Frederick III of the House of Habsburg. His embargo politics against the cities of Basel, Strasbourg and Mulhouse prompted these to turn to Bern for help. The conflicts culminated in 1474, after duke Sigismund of Austria had concluded a peace agreement with the confederates in Constance (later called the Perpetual Accord, Ewige Richtung). The confederates, united with the Alsatian cities and Sigismund in an "anti burgundian league", conquered part of the Burgundian Jura (Franche Comté), and the next year, Bernese forces conquered and ravaged the Vaud, which belonged to the Duchy of Savoy, which in turn was allied with Charles the Bold. The Sieben Zenden, with the help of Bernese and other confederate forces, drove the Savoyards out of the lower Valais after a victory in the Battle on the Planta in November 1475. In 1476, Charles retaliated and marched to Grandson with his army, but suffered three devastating defeats in a row, first in the Battle of Grandson, then in the Battle of Murten, until he was killed in the Battle of Nancy in 1477, where the confederates fought alongside an army of René II, Duke of Lorraine. There is a proverbial saying in Switzerland summarizing these events as italic=unset ("[Charles the Bold lost] his goods at Grandson, his boldness at Murten and his blood at Nancy"). As a result of the Burgundian Wars, the dynasty of the dukes of Burgundy had died out. Bern returned the Vaud to the duchy of Savoy against a ransom of 50,000 guilders in 1476, and sold its claims on the Franche Comté to Louis XI for 150,000 guilders in 1479. The confederates only kept small territories east of the Jura mountains, especially Grandson and Murten, as common dependencies of Bern and Fribourg. The whole Valais, however, would henceforth be independent, and Bern would reconquer the Vaud in 1536. While the territorial effects of the Burgundian Wars on the confederation were minor, they marked the beginning of the rise of Swiss mercenaries on the battlefields of Europe.

In the Burgundian Wars, the Swiss soldiers had gained a reputation of near invincibility, and their mercenary services became increasingly sought after by the great European political powers of the time. Shortly after the Burgundy Wars, individual cantons concluded mercenary contracts, so called "capitulations", with many parties, including the Pope—the papal Swiss Guard was founded in 1505 and became operational the next year. More contracts were made with France (a Swiss Guard of mercenaries would be destroyed in the storming of the Tuileries Palace in Paris in 1792), the Duchy of Savoy, Austria, and still others. Swiss mercenaries would play an initially important, but later minor, role on European battlefields until well into the 18th century. Swiss forces soon got involved in the Italian Wars between the Valois and the Habsburgs over the control of northern Italy. When the power of the Duchy of Milan perished in these wars, the Swiss finally managed to bring the whole Ticino under their control. In 1500, they occupied the strategically important fortress of Bellinzona, which the French king Louis XII, who ruled Milan at that time, ceded definitively in 1503. From 1512 on, the confederates fought on the side of Pope Julius II and his Holy League against the French in territories south of the Alps. After initial successes and having conquered large parts of the territory of Milan, they were utterly defeated by a French army in the Battle of Marignano in 1515, which put an end to military territorial interventions of the confederation, mercenary services under the flags of foreign armies excepted. The results of this short intermezzo were the gain of Ticino as a common administrative region of the confederacy and the occupation of the valley of the Adda river (Veltlin, Bormio, and Chiavenna) by the Three Leagues, which would remain a dependency of the Grisons until 1797 with a brief interruption during the Thirty Years' War.

The events told in the saga of William Tell, which are purported to have occurred around 1307, are not substantiated by historical evidence. This story, like the related story of the Rütlischwur (the oath on the Rütli, a meadow above Lake Lucerne), seems to have its origins in the late 15th century White Book of Sarnen, a collection of folk tales from 1470, and is generally considered a fictitious glorification of the independence struggles of the Waldstätten. The legend of Arnold von Winkelried likewise is first recorded in the 16th century; earlier accounts of the Battle of Sempach do not mention him. Winkelried is said to have opened a breach in the lines of the Austrian footsoldiers by throwing himself into their lances, taking them down with his body such that the confederates could attack through the opening.

The developments beginning in about the 13th century had profound effects on the society. Gradually the population of serfs changed into one of free peasants and citizens. In the cities—which were small by modern standards; Basel had about 10,000 inhabitants, Zürich, Bern, Lausanne, and Fribourg about 5,000 each—the development was a natural one, for the liege lords very soon gave the cities a certain autonomy, in particular over their internal administration. The number of cities also grew during this period. In 1200 there were about 30 cities. A century later, in 1300, there were over 190 interconnected cities. At the beginning of the 14th century, the artisans in the cities began forming guilds and increasingly took over political control, especially in the cities along the Rhine, e. g. in the Alsace, in Basel, Schaffhausen, Zürich, or Chur. (But not, for instance, in Bern or Lucerne—or, in Germany, Frankfurt—where a stronger aristocracy seems to have inhibited such a development.) The guild cities had a relatively democratic structure, with a city council elected by the citizens. In the rural areas, people generally had less freedom, but some lords furthered the colonization of remote areas by granting some privileges to the colonists. The cities followed an expansionist territorial politics to gain control over the surrounding rural areas, on which they were dependent, using military powers or more often more subtle means such as buying out, or accepting as citizens the subjects (and thereby freeing them: "Stadtluft macht frei"—"city air liberates") of a liege lord. It was the cities, now, that instituted reeves to manage the administration, but this only sometimes and slowly led to a restriction of the communal autonomy of the villages. The peasants owned their land, the villages kept administering their commons; and the villagers participated in the jury of the city reeve's court. They had, however, to provide military service for the city, which on the other hand included the right to own and carry weapons. Basel became the center of higher education and science in the second half of the 15th century. The city had hosted the Council of Basel from 1431 to 1447, and, in 1460, a university was founded, which eventually would attract many notable thinkers, such as Erasmus or Paracelsus.

The population of the cantons numbered about 600,000 in the 15th century and grew to about 800,000 by the 16th century. The grain production sufficed only in some of the lower regions; most areas were dependent on imports of oats, barley, or wheat. In the Alps, where the yield of grains had always been particularly low due to the climatic conditions, a transition from farming to the production of cheese and butter from cow milk occurred. As the roads got better and safer, a lively trade with the cities developed. The cities were the marketplaces and important trading centers, being located on the major roads through the Alps. Textile manufacture, where St. Gallen was the leading center, developed. Cheese (esp. Emmentaler and Gruyère) also was a major export item. The exports of the Swiss cities went far, into the Levant or to Poland. In the late 15th century, the mercenary services became also an important economic factor. The Reisläuferei, as the mercenary service was called, attracted many young adventurous Swiss who saw in it a way to escape the relative poverty of their homes. Not only the mercenaries themselves were paid, but also their home cantons, and the Reisläuferei, while being heavily criticized already at that time as a heavy drain on the human resources of the confederation, became popular in particular among the young peasants from the rural cantons.

Initially, the Eidgenossenschaft was not united by one single pact, but rather by a whole set of overlapping pacts and separate bilateral treaties between various members, with only minimum liabilities. The parties generally agreed to preserve the peace in their territories, help each other in military endeavours, and defined some arbitration in case of disputes. The Sempacherbrief from 1393 was the first treaty uniting all eight cantons, and subsequently, a kind of federal diet, the Tagsatzung developed in the 15th century. The second unifying treaty later became the Stanser Verkommnis in 1481. The Tagsatzung typically met several times a year. Each canton delegated two representatives; typically this also included the associate states. Initially, the canton where the delegates met chaired the gathering, but in the 16th century, Zürich permanently assumed the chair (Vorort), and Baden became the sessional seat. The Tagsatzung dealt with all inter cantonal affairs and also served as the final arbitral court to settle disputes between member states, or to decide on sanctions against dissenting members, as happened in the Old Zürich War. It also organized and oversaw the administration of the commons such as the County of Baden and the neighbouring Freiamt, the Thurgau, in the Rhine valley between Lake Constance and Chur, or those in the Ticino. The reeves for these commons were delegated for two years, each time by a different canton. Despite its informal character (there was no formal legal base describing its competencies), the Tagsatzung was an important instrument of the eight, later thirteen cantons to decide inter cantonal matters. It also proved instrumental in the development of a sense of unity among these sometimes highly individual cantons. Slowly, they defined themselves as the Eidgenossenschaft and considered themselves less as thirteen separate states with only loose bonds between.