Part 982

"It is pretty clear that among those Helvetii with whom Cæsar had his cruel struggle [see HELVETII, TUE ARRESTED MIGRATION OF THE], and who subsequently became an integral portion of the empire, there were no people from the Forest Cantons of Schwytz, Uri, and Unterwalden. The men who defied the Roman eagles were inhabitants of the mountain slopes between the lakes of Geneva and Constance. On the North, the authority of the Romans penetrated no farther in the direction of the mountainous Oberland than to Zurich or Turicum. They, no doubt, ascended far up the valley of the Rhone, where they have left their mark in the speech of the people to this day; but they did not climb the mountain passes leading across the great chain of the Alps. It may be questioned if the higher valleys of Switzerland were then, or for centuries after the fall of the Western Empire, inhabited. … In the district of these Forest Cantons no remains of lake inhabitancy have yet been found. … Yet none of the places where they are met with could have been more naturally suited for lake-dwellings than these. The three Forest Cantons began the political history of Switzerland, having established among themselves that political centre round which the other Cantons clustered. In ethnological history, they were the latest members of the Swiss family, since their territory remained without occupants after the more accessible portions of the country had been peopled. In the same sense, the canton from which the confederation derived its name—that of Schwytz—is the youngest of all. When the Irish monk, afterwards canonised as St. Gall, settled near the Lake of Constance in the 7th century, he had gone as completely to the one extreme of the inhabited world, as his brother Columba had gone to the other when he sailed to Iona. If the districts of Thurgau, Appenzell, and St. Gall were at that period becoming gradually inhabited, it is supposed that Schwytz was not occupied by a permanent population until the latter half of the 9th century. … M. Rilliet [in 'Les Origines de la Confederation Suisse,' par Albert Rilliet) is one of the first writers who has applied himself to the study of … original documents [title-deeds of property, the chartularies of religious houses, records of litigation, etc.] as they are still preserved in Switzerland, for the purpose of tracing the character and progress of the Swiss people and of their free institutions. It was among the accidents propitious to the efforts of the Forest Cantons, that, among the high feudal or manorial rights existing within their territory, a large proportion was in the hands of monastic bodies. Throughout Europe the estates of the ecclesiastics were the best husbanded, and inhabited by the most prosperous vassals. These bodies ruled their vassals through the aid of a secular officer, a Vogt or advocate, who sometimes was the master, sometimes the servant, of the community. {3042} In either case there was to some extent a division of rule, and it was not the less so that in these Cantons the larger estates were held by nuns. The various struggles for supremacy in which emperors and competitors for empire, the successive popes, and the potentates struggling for dominion, severally figured, gave many opportunities to a brave and sagacious people, ever on the watch for the protection of their liberties; but the predominant feature in their policy—that, indeed, which secured their final triumph—was their steady adherence in such contests to the Empire, and their acknowledgment of its supremacy. This is the more worthy of notice since popular notions of Swiss history take the opposite direction, and introduce us to the Emperor and his ministers as the oppressors who drove an exasperated people to arms. In fact, there still lurk in popular history many fallacies and mistakes about the nature of the 'Holy Roman Empire' as an institution of the middle ages [see ROMAN EMPIRE, THE HOLY]. … It is not natural or easy indeed to associate that mighty central organisation with popular liberty and power; and yet in the feudal ages it was a strong and effective protector of freedom. … Small republics and free cities were scattered over central Europe and protected in the heart of feudalism. … M. Rilliet aptly remarks, that in the Swiss valleys, with their isolating mountains, and their narrow strips of valuable pasture, political and local conditions existed in some degree resembling those of a walled city." The election, in 1273, of Rudolph of Hapsburg, as King of the Romans, was an event of great importance in the history of the Swiss Cantons, owing to their previous connexion with the House of Hapsburg (see AUSTRIA: A. D. 1246-1282), "a connexion geographically so close that the paternal domains, whence that great family takes its ancient name, are part of the Swiss territory at the present day." Such agencies as belonged naturally to the most powerful family in the district fell to the House of Hapsburg. Its chiefs were the chosen advocates or champions of the religious communities neighbor to them; and "under such imperial offices as are known by the title Bailiff, Procurator, or Reichsvogt, they occasionally exercised what power the Empire retained over its free communities. Such offices conferred authority which easily ripened into feudal superiorities, or other forms of sovereignty. M. Rilliet attributes considerable, but not, it seems to us, too much importance to a rescript bearing date the 26th May, 1231. It is granted by Henry VII., King of the Romans, or more properly of the aggregated German communities, as acting for his father, the Emperor Frederic II. This instrument revokes certain powers over the people of the community of Uri, which had been granted at a previous time by Frederic himself to the Count of Hapsburg. It addresses the people of Uri by the term Universitas—high in class among the enfranchised communities of the Empire—and promises to them that they shall no more under any pretext be withdrawn from the direct jurisdiction of the Empire. … The great point reached through this piece of evidence, and corroborated by others, is, that at this remote period the district which is now the Canton of Uri was dealt with as a Roman Universitas—as one of the communities of the Empire, exempt from the immediate authority of any feudal chief. … M. Rilliet's researches show that Uri is the Canton in which the character of a free imperial community was first established, perhaps we should rather say it was the Canton in which the privilege was most completely preserved from the dangers that assailed it. The Hapsburgs and their rivals had a stronger hold on Schwytz. … In many of the documents relating to the rights of Rudolph over this district, bearing date after he became Cæsar, it is uncertain whether he acts as emperor or as immediate feudal lord. … Rudolph, however, found it, from whatever cause, his policy to attach the people of Schwytz to his interests as emperor rather than as feudal lord; and he gave them charters of franchise which seem ultimately to have made them, like their neighbours of Uri, a free community of the Empire, or to have certified their right to that character. In the fragmentary records of the three Cantons, Unterwalden does not hold rank as a free community of the Empire at so early a time even as Schwytz. It is only known that in 1291 Unterwalden acted with the other two as an independent community. In the disputes for supremacy between the Empire and the Church all three had been loyal to the Empire. There are some indications that Rudolph had discovered the signal capacity of these mountaineers for war, and that already there were bands of Swiss among the imperial troops. The reign of Rudolph lasted for 18 years. … During his 18 years of possession he changed the character of the Cæsarship, and the change was felt by the Swiss. In the early part of his reign he wooed them to the Empire—before its end he was strengthening the territorial power of his dynasty. … When Rudolph died in 1201, the imperial crown was no longer a disputable prize for a chance candidate. There was a conflict on the question whether his descendants should take it as a hereditary right, or the electors should show that they retained their power by another choice. The three Cantons felt that there was danger to their interests in the coming contest, and took a great step for their own protection. They formed a league or confederacy [Eidgenossenschaft] for mutual co-operation and protection. Not only has it been handed down to us in literature, but the very parchment has been preserved as a testimony to the early independence of the Forest Cantons, the Magna Charter of Switzerland. This document reveals the existence of unexplained antecedents by calling itself a renewal of the old league—the Antique Confederatio. … Thus we have a Confederation of the Three Cantons, dated in 1201, and referring to earlier alliances; while popular history sets down the subsequent Confederation of 1314 as the earliest, for the purpose of making the whole history of Swiss independence arise out of the tragic events attributed to that period. If this leads the way to the extinction of the story on which the Confederation is based, there is compensation in finding the Confederation in active existence a quarter of a century earlier. But the reader will observe that the mere fact of the existence of this anterior league overturns the whole received history of Switzerland, and changes the character of the alleged struggle with the House of Austria, prior to the battle of Morgarten. There is nothing in this document or in contemporary events breathing of disloyalty to the Empire. {3043} The two parties whom the Swiss held in fear were the Church, endeavouring to usurp the old prerogatives of the Empire in their fullness; and the feudal barons, who were encroaching on the imperial authority. Among the three the Swiss chose the chief who would be least of a master. … Two years before the end of the 13th century [by the election of Albert, son of Rudolph, the Hapsburg family] … again got possession of the Empire, and retained it for ten years. It passed from them by the well-known murder of the Emperor Albert. The Swiss and that prince were ill-disposed to each other at the time of the occurrence, and indeed the murder itself was perpetrated on Swiss ground; yet it had no connexion with the cause of the quarrel which was deepening between the House of Hapsburg and the Cantons. … There exist in contemporary records no instances of wanton outrage and insolence on the Hapsburg side. It was the object of that power to obtain political ascendancy, not to indulge its representatives in lust or wanton insult. … There are plentiful records of disputes in which the interests of the two powers were mixed up with those of particular persons. Some of these were trifling and local, relating to the patronage of benefices, the boundaries of parishes, the use of meadows, the amount of toll duties, and the like; others related to larger questions, as to the commerce of the lake of the Four Cantons, or the transit of goods across the Alps. But in these discussions the symptoms of violence, as is natural enough, appear rather on the side of the Swiss communities than on that of the aggrandising imperial house. The Canton of Schwytz, indeed, appears to have obtained by acts of violence and rapacity the notoriety which made its name supreme among the Cantons. … We are now at a critical point, the outbreak of the long War of Swiss Independence, and it would be pleasant if we had more distinct light than either history or record preserves of the immediate motives which brought Austria to the point of invading the Cantons. … The war was no doubt connected with the struggle for the Empire [between Frederic of Austria and Louis of Bavaria—see GERMANY: A. D. 1314-1347]; yet it is not clear how Frederic, even had he been victorious over the three Cantons, could have gained enough to repay him for so costly an expedition. … We are simply told by one party among historical writers that his army was sent against his rebellious subjects to reduce them to obedience, and by the other that it was sent to conquer for the House of Hapsburg the free Cantons. That a magnificent army did march against them, and that it was scattered and ruined by a small body of the Swiss at Morgarten, on the 15th November, 1315, is an historical event too clearly attested in all its grandeur to stand open to dispute. After the battle, the victorious Cantons renewed their Confederation of 1291, with some alterations appropriate to the change of conditions. The first bond or confederation comes to us in Latin, the second is in German. … Such was the base around which the Cantons of the later Swiss Confederation were gradually grouped. … To this conclusion we have followed M. Rilliet without encountering William Tell, or the triumvirate of the meadow of Rütli, and yet with no consciousness that the part of Hamlet has been left out of the play." According to the popular tradition, the people of the Three Cantons were maddened by wanton outrages and insolences on the part of the Austrian Dukes, until three bold leaders, Werner Stauffacher, Arnold of the Melkthal, and Walter Fürst, assembled them in nightly meetings on the little meadow of Grütli or Rütli, in 1307, and bound them by oaths in a league against Austria, which was the beginning of the Swiss Confederation. This story, and the famous legend of William Tell, connected with it, are fading out of authentic history under the light which modern investigation has brought to bear on it.

_The Legend of Tell and Rütli (Edinburg Review, January, 1869)._

ALSO IN: _O. Delepierre, Historical Difficulties._

_J. Heywood, The Establishment of Swiss Freedom, and the Scandinavian Origin of the Legend of William Tell (Royal Historical Society Transactions, volume 5)._

SWITZERLAND: 4-11th Centuries.

See BURGUNDY.

SWITZERLAND: A. D. 1207-1401. Extension of the dominions of the House of Savoy beyond Lake Geneva. The city of Geneva surrounded.

See SAVOY: 11-15TH CENTURIES.

SWITZERLAND: A. D. 1332-1460. The extension of the old Confederation, or "Old League of High Germany." The Three Cantons increased to Eight.

"All the original cantons were German in speech and feeling, and the formal style of their union was 'the Old League of High Germany.' But in strict geographical accuracy there was … a small Burgundian element in the Confederation, if not from the beginning, at least from its aggrandizement in the 13th and 14th centuries. That is to say, part of the territory of the states which formed the old Confederation lay geographically within the kingdom of Burgundy, and a further part lay within the Lesser Burgundy of the Dukes of Zähringen. But, by the time when the history of the Confederation begins, the kingdom of Burgundy was pretty well forgotten, and the small German-speaking territory which it took in at its extreme northeast corner may be looked on as practically German ground. … It is specially needful to bear in mind, first, that, till the last years of the 13th century, not even the germ of modern Switzerland had appeared on the map of Europe; secondly, that the Confederation did not formally become an independent power till the 17th century; lastly, that, though the Swiss name had been in common use for ages, it did not become the formal style of the Confederation till the 19th century. Nothing in the whole study of historical geography is more necessary than to root out the notion that there has always been a country of Switzerland, as there has always been a country of Germany, Gaul, or Italy. And it is no less needful to root out the notion that the Swiss of the original cantons in any way represent the Helvetii of Cæsar. The points to be borne in mind are that the Swiss Confederation is simply one of many German Leagues, which was more lasting and became more closely united than other German Leagues—that it gradually split off from the German Kingdom—that in the course of this process, the League and its members obtained a large body of Italian and Burgundian allies and subjects —lastly, that these allies and subjects have in modern times been joined into one Federal body with the original German Confederates. {3044} The three Swabian lands [the Three Forest Cantons] which formed the kernel of the Old League lay at the point of union of the three Imperial kingdoms, parts of all of which were to become members of the Confederation in its later form. … The Confederation grew for a while by the admission of neighbouring lands and cities as members of a free German Confederation, owning no superior but the Emperor. First of all [1332], the city of Luzern joined the League. Then came the Imperial city of Zurich [1351], which had already begun to form a little dominion in the adjoining lands. Then [1352] came the land of Glarus and the town of Zug with its small territory. And lastly came the great city of Bern [1353], which had already won a dominion over a considerable body of detached and outlying allies and subjects. These confederate lands and towns formed the Eight Ancient Cantons. Their close alliance with each other helped the growth of each canton separately, as well as that of the League as a whole. Those cantons whose geographical position allowed them to do so, were thus able to extend their power, in the form of various shades of dominion and alliance, over the smaller lands and towns in their neighbourhood. … Zurich, and yet more Bern, each formed, after the manner of an ancient Greek city, what in ancient Greece would have passed for an empire. In the 15th century [1415-1460], large conquests were made at the expense of the House of Austria, of which the earlier ones were made by direct Imperial sanction. The Confederation, or some or other of its members, had now extended its territory to the Rhine and the Lake of Constanz. The lands thus won, Aargau, Thurgau, and some other districts, were held as subject territories in the hands of some or other of the Confederate States. … No new states were admitted to the rank of confederate cantons. Before the next group of cantons was admitted, the general state of the Confederation and its European position had greatly changed. It had ceased to be a purely German power. The first extension beyond the original German lands and those Burgundian lands which were practically German began in the direction of Italy. Uri had, by the annexation of Urseren, become the neighbour of the Duchy of Milan, and in the middle of the 15th century, this canton acquired some rights in the Val Levantina on the Italian side of the Alps. This was the beginning of the extension of the Confederation on Italian ground. But far more important than this was the advance of the Confederates over the Burgundian lands to the west."

_E. A. Freeman, Historical Geography of Europe, chapter 8, section 6._

SWITZERLAND: A. D. 1386-1388. Austrian defeats at Sempach and Naefels.