The Confederation undoubtedly represents an exceptional case of state development within the territory of the German Empire, and even in late medieval Europe as a whole. By 1550, this uniqueness was clearly recognised from the outside. At a constitutional level, all separate territories — both urban and rural communes — have to be regarded as states, in spite of the many differences between them. They were communally organised republics with oligarchies of self-styled aristocrats — political, social and economic in origin. In contrast with the rest of Europe, with its central, sovereign authorities, the confederate alliance had no such power. Its political system was characterised by a very limited degree of state integration, as is shown clearly in the military domain and in the great importance of local, communal autonomy even in the subject regions. These institutional characteristics go hand in hand with the distinct character of the political elites: instead of an aristocracy of officials of noble or bourgeois birth in the employ of the sovereign, there were local, rural potentates and urban aristocratic councils who showed increasing social similarity, and whose political and social cohesion was steadily growing.
Overall, the growth of a common foreign policy was fostered less by internal consensus than by political developments in the wider European environment. The mercenary contracts with neighbouring powers were, in part, an expression of this tendency to act in concert. At the same time, a military career was a very good way to improve social status, and ‘foreign’ (mercenary) service long remained an important field of activity for members of the confederate upper classes, the distinguishing mark of a confederate oligarch. So important was this fact that it induced local rural potentates to make common cause with the ruling urban aristocracy in a far closer way than ever happened in the monarchies. Careers like that of Hans Waldmann of Zurich — ironmonger, notorious ruffian and guild-master who rose to be a sought-after mercenary captain with a European reputation, burgomaster of Zurich and the town’s richest citizen — were certainly not the rule, but they throw a revealing light on the peculiar political culture of the Confederation about 1480.
A further vital contribution to the specific character of this political culture was made by the construction and propagation of a unique and wholly individual tradition of statehood, an expression of the political self-consciousness of the elites. Political opponents often alleged that this non-ducal, non-noble state lacked legitimacy, for it exercised power in defiance of the God-given order of estates. One aspect of this polemic was, initially, the well-known, graphic and unflattering description of the confederates as ‘Cow Swiss’ (Kuhschweizei). This referred not so much to their alleged immorality in the modern sense as to their supposed identity as heretics. Confederate publicists retorted that it was legitimate to place power in the hands of the ‘peasant’, the ‘pious, noble and pure peasant’ as he appeared in so-called historical folk songs; in any case, their military successes proved that they were a Chosen People. The idea of a legitimate ‘peasant state’ was part of a way of thinking which probably remained confined to the political elite; it is hard to prove that it promoted solidarity among the common people.
On this level, alongside political propaganda, the rise of confederate historiography was also highly important. It had to justify the existence of the Confederation as a state. Not until shortly after 1470 were tales of the ‘original’ freedom, legitimate resistance to wicked Habsburg bailiffs and the battles of the Chosen People woven into the first mythical narrative of early confederate history, the ‘White Book of Sarnen’. The portrayal of William Tell and other heroes echoed notions widely held among the population at large.
Too little is still known about the popular dissemination of these legends at the beginning of the sixteenth century. The ties which bound together the ‘common people’ within the Confederation were almost certainly dependent less on notions of history and conscious statehood than on shared forms of social life, similar ideas about society and politics and the power of visible symbols; apart from a few points, this, too, has received too little attention. Research into military history has indicated that among the common soldiers from the Confederation a fierce rivalry with the German Landsknechte may have fostered a certain popular solidarity. But in times of war the ordinary people would have found much more meaning in the simple expressions of piety, such as the special prayer ‘with outstretched arms’ and the annual commemorative services in honour of the fallen. Such traditions were already significant in the fifteenth century, and were to reach their zenith in the sixteenth.
The developments in culture and mentality towards the end of the fifteenth century are vitally important to any later understanding of the rise of the confederate state. The building of an independent tradition of statehood, subordinate to a wider process of construction of a specific political culture, must be seen as an important factor in the creation of a consciousness of political unity and communal uniqueness which became firmly anchored in the confederate mind.
Thus it was possible to talk about the construction of an independent political culture in the Confederation; and in the nineteenth century (in Switzerland, as elsewhere in Europe) such a concept could scarcely be understood other than as the birth of a ‘nation’. In a country like Switzerland, lacking a common language or tradition, this meant a nation built on the will to freedom and on unique geographical and geopolitical circumstances. In the final analysis, it seemed to be a political destiny chosen by nature and by the people themselves. Since the eighteenth century, bourgeois and Enlightenment ideas of natural freedom and democracy had been particularly strongly associated with the ‘mountain herdsmen’ of the Alps. When this was coupled to a romantic and nationalistic harking back to medieval history, it was inevitable that Switzerland would soon be seen as the cradle of democracy and freedom in Europe. Not only was this the conscious message of liberal bourgeois historians in Switzerland itself; it was also the picture projected upon Switzerland from without.
Nineteenth-and twentieth-century notions of a medieval ‘heroic age’, which were strongly encouraged by national Swiss historians, contributed to a historical picture which found its way into socio-political discourse, and so strongly affected the national consciousness of wider sections of the population. Concepts drawn from this nationalistic and patriotic environment, and dating back to the time of nationalist upsurge, still have some influence on popular notions of the fifteenth century. Indeed, quite patently nationalistic admiration of the ‘warlike strength’ and ‘glorious military achievement’ of the early Confederation, and even the belief in the innate inclination of those ‘peasants’ towards ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ are still widespread — and not simply in ageing history books in Swiss schools. Against this background it is easier to explain the unusual prominence, unparalleled elsewhere in Europe, of the ‘heroic age’ of medieval history in modern Swiss state ideology. The so-called foundation of the Confederation in 1291, whose anniversary was first celebrated on a large scale in 1891, then in 1941 and again in 1991, is a metaphor of political discourse, not a figure of historical argumentation. To the historian it is clear, to the point of cliche, that the building of the Swiss state was a long-drawn-out, complex process in which the overthrow of the ancien regime in 1798, and the federal constitution of 1848, were incomparably more important than anything which happened in 1291.
In conclusion, we must turn away from these features of the emerging Swiss tradition and ask the fundamental question: what were the real reasons for the unique state development which began here in the late Middle Ages?
Without doubt there was an interplay of very varied factors, political, social and ideological; but these cannot be assembled systematically, since so much happened by chance. However, some political factors can be considered to have been particularly important. First and foremost, the often aimless and sadly discontinuous policy of the Habsburg monarchy. This left the field clear for the developing communes, a field in which the imperial free cities of Berne and Zurich operated with deliberate purposefulness. The assertion of political autonomy by the valley communities of central Switzerland was basically due to the fragmentary feudal penetration of the area, its southward facing economic orientation and its early integration into a supra-regional context. At all times, and particularly in the fifteenth century, the changing political relationships among the Confederation’s nearest neighbours, especially the rivalry over the German crown, the French incursions eastwards after the end of the Hundred Years War and the fall of Burgundy, had a decisive influence. The peripheral location of the Confederation within the Empire was also an important factor. Because its statehood was not yet highly developed, the Confederation posed no threat to the great powers, and its military potential, which achieved enormous prestige after the Burgundian wars, was and remained for hire. It was the French who first realised the significance of this, so that the link with France, firmly established in 1521, was to remain a decisive political element of Swiss statehood.