By about 1460 the Confederates had risen to be the most important political powers between the Rhine and the Alps. By this time the claims of Austrian overlordship scarcely posed any real threat, and coming events were to reveal new political directions: the southwards thrust from central Switzerland; the conquest of the Austrian Thurgau in 1460; Berne’s political and economic contacts northwards towards Basle, the Sundgau, Alsace and the Black Forest. ‘This fifteenth-century Swiss federation, or at any rate a large part of it, was dynamic, expansionist and aggressive.’ This was certainly true of the 1460s and 1470s.
For the Confederation’s political situation, even more important than the perceptible pressure for expansion from within were the shifts in the European scene, since every aspect of its political development was strongly dependent on changes in its wider environment. By 1465 or earlier, a rejuvenated France, now the greatest political power in the region, had come up against the ambitions of Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy. Whereas the Sforzas of Milan had succeeded in consolidating their power, Savoy, rent by internal dissensions, had become weaker and weaker, and greedy eyes were being turned on it from France, Burgundy and, soon afterwards, from Berne. Trouble with Burgundy was soon affecting Austria’s western dominions (the Vorlande), while the cities of the Upper Rhine and Alsace feared for their independence and became ever more open to the influence of the Confederation, in particular that of Berne.
The 1470s witnessed the fateful conflicts known in history as the Burgundian wars. These precipitated the fall of Charles the Bold and his state, thereby deeply affecting the subsequent course of European history. The policies of the emperor, Frederick III, and (intermittently) of Austria had favoured the expansion of Burgundian power along the Upper Rhine, but the cities of this area, especially Basle and Strasburg, rapidly stiffened their resistance. The situation was calmed to an extent by the so-called ‘Perpetual Accord’ (Ewige Richtung) between Austria and the Confederation signed in 1474. Berne, however, was enthusiastically in favour of war against Burgundy; recent research suggests that French bribery was not the deciding factor. As a powerful imperial city, Berne closed ranks with the cities of the Upper Rhine, fearing for its profits from free trade in central Europe. Burgundy’s growing influence on the Savoyard Vaud also aroused deep suspicion from 1472 onwards.
The ensuing events are well known. In 1476, confederate armies inflicted severe defeats upon Charles the Bold before Grandson and then, even more spectacularly, at Morat (Murten). In January 1477 a great number of confederate mercenaries were in the army which defeated Charles outside Nancy, a battle at which the duke himself was killed. Shortly before this, Berne had made incursions into the Savoyard Vaud (and the Bas-Valais), a first sign of her ambitions in this area which were fulfilled when she conquered it in 1536. But the real fruits of victory after Charles’s fall were reaped by others: by Louis XI of France and by Maximilian, son of Frederick III, who was to marry Mary of Burgundy, and so prepared the rise of the Habsburgs (and, later, of the Netherlands) as a world power.
In 1499, local territorial and political disputes led to open war between the Confederation and Maximilian, allied with the Swabian League of south German lords and cities. This ‘Swabian’ or ‘Swiss’ war was fought out on various battlefields from Graubunden to the Sundgau, but was resolved before the year’s end by the Peace of Basle. One of its direct consequences was the entry of Basle and Schaffhausen into the Confederation in 1501. This detached the two free imperial cities, which had previously enjoyed a high degree of independence, from the structural order uniting the cities of southern Germany. The old view of the Swabian war as a struggle for independence against the Empire is no longer tenable; events in the south of the Empire played only a secondary role in Maximilian’s wide-ranging political ambitions. The association of the Confederation with the Empire continued to act as a fundamental basis of its legitimation, especially in view of the growing particularism of the Swiss union of communal states when contrasted to the other parts of the Empire. This special position had now become more evident at the constitutional level as well. In an almost paradoxical manner, the ideological weight of the Confederation’s association with the Empire was coming to correspond to a progressive loosening of ties between them.
In the decade up to 1500, Italy had taken centre stage in European politics. The cast consisted of the French crown, ambitious to capture Milan and to oust the Aragonese from Naples; Maximilian, now defending former Habsburg claims in the name of the Empire; together with the papal states, Venice, Genoa and Savoy. The Confederation’s political interests were involved particularly in the political destabilisation of the duchy of Milan, which was only hastened, not begun, by Louis XII’s attack in 1499. In that same year another contract to supply France with mercenaries was signed. This involvement in the struggle between major powers in Italy and, above all, its ability to supply mercenaries, made the Confederation (or, often, particular Orte) into a political factor of some importance.
Confederate mercenaries had been serving in Italy since the fourteenth century, more frequently since the Burgundian wars. The fortunes of war between 1495 and 1503 brought the whole of today’s southern Switzerland and, after 1500, the important county of Bellinzona, under the control of Uri. However, the renewed and massive incursions by confederate troops after 1512 had no lasting effect. Except for Uri’s claims on Bellinzona, and at times beyond into the southern Ticino and the neighbouring valleys (Val d’Ossola, Valle Maggia and Val Blenio), the Confederation had scarcely any discernible political objectives. This is true even though confederate troops were more than once in a position to establish a temporary military protectorate over the duchy of Milan. At no time were the confederates in agreement over which side they should support; seldom had disputes and open contradictions been as much in evidence as now. Mercenaries and commanders pitched into the war where wages were highest and the booty richest. In the upshot, the Confederation’s political gains were extremely modest.
A number of factors explain the importance of the confederate mercenary. All the parties embroiled in Italy needed mercenaries, and, since the Burgundian wars, the military prestige of the Confederation had been high. Furthermore, this confederate military potential was subject to only a very modest degree of state control, and only in so far as the oligarchies’ financial interests were involved. This is basically true of official mercenary contracts and pension agreements made with either particular Orte or with the Confederation as a whole, although it is in this context that important early stages of state supervision can be detected. The hire and broking of mercenaries had developed into an important business undertaking for many of the leading confederates, who profited both directly and indirectly. It seems that military careerism and the mercenary business were a growth sector which closely paralleled the developing livestock trade to the south. As regards the common mercenary, a real labour market for his services was to develop, probably involving a high proportion of poor people, most from the rural population, but including many from the towns. Since the Burgundian wars there had been a perceptible mobility among large sectors of the population, among whom were many rootless young people, a factor remarked upon by contemporaries, and which was connected with the rural uprisings described above.
By the turn of the century the mercenaries had become quite professional. It was becoming ever harder to put a brake either on the greedy business dealings of rulers or on the work-hungry and self-perpetuating zest for battle of the increasingly professional mercenaries; the state had great difficulty in directing them into at least partly controllable channels. This restless mobility was further increased by the multifarious contracts, broken as often as they were respected, which were signed (with France in particular) and by the unscrupulous and unrestrained dealings of the recruiting officers from France, the Empire, the Papacy and Milan.
Mercenary potential, and military strength and prestige, were generally not a state concern, even though mercenary contracts always involved an element of state intervention. Hence the bloody defeat of a confederate army before Marignano, near Milan, on 13—14 September 1515, although prominent in European military history, was not a ‘national catastrophe’. It was, however, an incontrovertible demonstration of French military superiority. The defeat laid the psychological foundations for the acceptance of existing political realities. The peace terms of 1515—16, dictated by France to the confederates following their withdrawal from Milan, were simple. France strengthened her hold over the Confederation’s mercenary potential by the contract of 1521. This was the temporary conclusion to a development which had been in progress since the mid-fifteenth century. Henceforward France, with her economic strength and her rank as Europe’s foremost power, would be the Confederation’s protector and partner par excellence.
External factors were thus important in maintaining cohesion among the diverse partners in the network of confederate alliances. It has already been stressed that the evolution towards nationhood within these territories, and the degree of cohesion in the entire confederate system at the end of the fifteenth century, should not be overestimated. State control, even over the Confederation’s military potential, although so important in terms of foreign policy, was only in its infancy. The prohibition of individual acts of belligerency contained in the Compact of Stans (1481) and the Pensionenbrief (1503), which aimed at preventing private recruitment and payment (Pensionen), expresses no more than a tendency. Nevertheless, after the Italian wars the consolidated political oligarchies tightened their control over the mercenary business with startling rapidity.
What happened to the Confederation in the second half of the fifteenth century had a great deal to do with wars and mercenaries. Hence any survey of the political history of the confederate ‘state’ must take these factors into account. But there must be no idea that this unusual state of affairs was created by a group of Zapoletes, the efficient ‘Venalians’ of Thomas More’s Utopia. The confederate oligarchies did make attempts at political and social integration in the fifteenth century, and these should be placed on a par with the fostering of trade and specialisation in stock rearing. And in the cultural domain we should not fail to mention at least the importance of Basle, of the great ecclesiastical councils which met at Constance and Basle, and of the humanist movement. One important aspect of the cultural outlook connected with the peculiarities of the development of the Swiss state now deserves consideration: the development of a particular tradition of state evolution.