The transformation and decline of the political order built up by the Austrian dynasty and nobility were counterbalanced by the decisive progress in the constitution of urban territorial rule between 1370 and 1430. Compared with the situation in Savoy or Wurttemberg, the Habsburg overlordship was noticeably weak, and often failed to make its presence felt. The chief beneficiaries of this situation were the midland cities. Berne, Lucerne and Zurich were first in the rush for territories, while Solothurn and the Austrian city of Fribourg also took part, as did some smaller cities. Berne’s traditionally good relations with her powerful neighbour, Savoy, enabled her to hold her own in the Aare region against political and territorial competition from the Habsburgs, particularly under Leopold III. Zurich’s rapid succession of territorial acquisitions — the district of Greifensee (1402), the lordship of Gruningen (1408), the district of Regensberg with Bulach (1409) and, above all, the first acquisition of the lordship of Kyburg (1424) — led to the constitution of one of the largest territories in the Empire, after that of Berne.
This policy of territorial expansion was seldom pursued through military intervention. In some cases the mere threat of military force was enough; Berne and Zurich could count on getting mercenaries from central Switzerland. On the whole, however, the cities attained their aims by peaceful means, chiefly through money and skilful financial policy. They bought land and feudal rights, and often took noble ecclesiastical rulers, willing or not, under their ‘protection’ (Burgrecht or Landrecht), which led to rapid integration. Often against the will of their lords, the confederate cities also admitted people from the countryside into the urban citizenry, as ‘external citizens’ or Ausburger, a strategy for expansion that was employed throughout the Empire.
The success of this policy of acquisition was largely attributable to specific political circumstances, namely the weakness of the overlord’s policy. However, it would have been unthinkable without the sharp increase in economic prosperity enjoyed by many cities in the first half of the fifteenth century. They profited directly and indirectly from the upsurge in trade over these years (Berne, for instance, did well out of the customs dues along the Aare), and from the increased commercial activity which can be seen, for example, in Fribourg from as early as 1350. Between 1430 and 1450 the volume of trade evidently dropped off, but the cities still managed to strengthen their leading role within the Swiss Confederation.
In the long run, the cities’ territorial policy and bid for autonomy against the overlord’s attempts to centralise rule were far more successful within the Confederation than in the neighbouring regions of Savoy and southern Germany. The same period saw a consolidation and expansion of the communal movement in the rural areas which is an even more strikingly exceptional element in the development of this region.
Of immediate interest here are the communes in the valleys of central Switzerland. The rural communes of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden, which had obtained exemption from all territorial jurisdiction save that of the king about the year 1300, developed a political autonomy which was unprecedented and astonishing. The reasons for this autonomy have been long and fiercely disputed among Swiss historians and are still controversial. Were they the result of a singularly precocious and successful drive towards autonomy by a rural community, a resistance to the feudal order? Or did local groups of the political elite in a very incompletely feudalised area succeed in establishing their own forms of organisation, based mainly upon parochial units and earlier institutions regulating common agricultural exploitation? In any case, the long-term consequences of events during the so-called founding epoch (Grundungszgit, 1291—1315) in central Switzerland have often been greatly overestimated on the basis of fifteenth-century historiography. Only after the middle of the fourteenth century, or even after 1370, can a decisive consolidation of these valley communities into a ‘state’ (Land) be observed, both from within and from without. Towards the end of the century this came to include Glarus, while the hinterland of Zug was able to preserve some elements of autonomy only by connecting itself with its eponymous town. At the same time the individual valley communities, especially Schwyz and Uri, engaged in the same active policy of territorial integration being pursued by the cities:
Schwyz in the rural district of Kussnacht, in the territory of the monastery of Einsiedeln and in the March, Uri in the Urseren valley. In the course of the fifteenth century territories subject to confederate control were added.
It is this development of communal autonomy in rural areas which gives the organisation of the late medieval Confederation its special place in modern constitutional history. Various aspects of this organisation represent a development towards statehood according to a ‘model of communal solidarity’ in a time of ‘communalism’, marked by attempts to ‘construct a state on the principle of community, and the joining together of different communes’. Throughout the fourteenth century and into the fifteenth, the rural communes of central Switzerland stood their ground against both the territorial claims of the overlord (although these were seldom pressed) and the much more menacing pressures of territorial aggrandisement and consolidation coming from their own urban confederates.
Not all the rural communes were by any means so successful in their striving towards independence, especially not in competition with the confederate cities. After 1380 Lucerne blatantly hindered the independence of the Weggis community and the Entlebuch, while Berne soon brought the valley of Hasli, exempt from all jurisdiction save that of the king, under its control; it was to do the same to the Saanen district (after 1403). In the subject hinterlands and the mandated territories, the confederate states took over the role of the former rulers, even if they justified and exercised their authority in different ways.
Another good example of these complicated procedures is to be found in eastern Switzerland. Here, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, the rural population of the Appenzell region was still striving unsuccessfully to free itself from the control of the abbot of St Gallen. With military help from Schwyz and the citizens of St Gallen, the Appenzellers had defeated two armies of mounted knights from southern Germany (in 1403 and 1405); but after a defeat in 1408 by the troops of the League of Knights and from Austria, the communal movement lost its way, and by the end of 1411 Appenzell, like the town of St Gallen a year later, was more or less obliged to accept confederate invitations to place itself under the protection of the Confederation (save Berne). The abbot’s rights were acknowledged and, in 1421, the Confederation even strengthened them. In 1428, after fresh unrest, Count Frederick VII of Toggenburg staged a military invasion to restore order. The count who, by this time, had acquired, by pledge, almost all the Austrian possessions from Rheineck to Montafon, in addition to the lordship of Werdenberg from Sargans to the upper regions around the lake of Zurich, was among the major gainers from the conflict. Zurich, in open rivalry with Schwyz, also greatly increased its influence in the region at this time. Significantly, in 1436, when the peasants of Toggenburg asked the Confederation for support in their struggle for independence from the count, none was forthcoming.
The disturbances in the Appenzell were important not only for these shifts in political spheres of influence. The chronicle tradition, together with the founding of the league of nobles ‘with the shield of St George’ (St Jorgenschild) in neighbouring Swabia, proves that the nobility of this region had directed harsh polemics on the subject of class distinction against the peasantry — presumably in analogy to a phenomenon widespread in contemporary Europe. The defeats in the Appenzell war, like that of Sempach in 1386, had caused profound disquiet among the knights and nobles of southern Germany. In their fear of the communal movement they successfully demanded that their enemies be excommunicated, stigmatising them as ‘peasants’ (according to the idea of the God-given three orders of society), although they must have known that many of them were townsfolk from St Gallen and other cities. ‘The Swiss Confederation seemed a socially uniform union of “peasants” only to the lords’ fearful and hostile eye.’ As a result, ‘peasant’ strivings towards autonomy in southern Germany attracted the catchphrase ‘schweytzer werden’ or ‘turning Swiss’.
We must be very careful to distinguish between the ambitions of the political elite and politically motivated social movements among the peasants. This is important because traditional constitutional history has tended to imply that the people of Appenzell or Schwyz, for example, were acting on behalf of a national state. Only if we distinguish among the different political groups can we explain why this region, like the whole of central and western Europe, was affected by growing unrest among the rural population at the end of the fourteenth century, and why the revolt of Appenzell sometimes took on the appearance of a peasants’ revolt against the overlord. The events in the Appenzell also saw another fundamental aspect of the situation before 1450: that political solidarity among the confederate Orte against claims made by the overlord would endure only so long as it did not conflict with their particular plans for expansion. There can be no question of selfless support for ‘communalism’ as a principle from the Confederation’s political elite; nor, for that matter, did they intend to support ‘peasant’ resistance within their own spheres of influence.
In the same context we can situate the development of rural communes in the Valais and Graubunden, which also affected the Confederation. In the Valais, the seven upper valley communities or Zenden (Sitten, Siders, Leuk, Raron, Visp, Brig and Goms) had wrested a degree of independence from the bishop of Sitten and from Savoy; in 1435 they decisively strengthened this position by creating their own governmental and judicial system. Similarly, in Graubunden, rural communities had joined together in leagues. This had begun in 1367, when the cathedral chapter, officials of the bishop’s household, the citizens of Chur as well as the communes in Domleschg, Schams, Oberhalbstein, Bergell and the Lower and Upper Engadine banded together to form the nucleus of what would become the ‘League of the House of God’ (Gotteshausbund). A large number of lords and peasants from the upper Rhine valley joined in the ‘Grey’ or ‘Upper’ League (Grauer or Oberer Bund), which had been in the process of formation since 1395, up to its solemn confirmation in Truns in 1424. The ‘League of the Ten Jurisdictions’ (Zehngerichtebund) of 1436, centred on Davos, included only rural communities. On the basis of these Three Leagues, Graubunden (Grisons) embarked on an independent and original path of statehood with a strongly communal character. Both the Upper Valais and the Three Leagues would prove to be faithful partners of the Confederation.
With the exception of the League of the Ten Jurisdictions, it is clear that all fifteenth-century associations in both Graubunden and the Valais are to be understood as unions of mixed estate. Collaboration among the estates — especially the representation of the ‘common man’ and the importance assigned to the interests of townfolk and peasants — was not spelt out as precisely as it was (for example) under ducal leadership in the Tyrol or in Savoy; nevertheless, Graubunden clearly differs on this point from the rural communities of central Switzerland. Such differences should be borne in mind when sweeping references are made to a widely disseminated and specifically ‘alpine’ form of communal statehood.