The three Swabian lands 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. ♦First known document of union, 1291.♦ The first known document of confederation between the three lands dates from the last years of the thirteenth century. But that document is likely to have been rather the confirmation than the actual beginning of their union. They had for their neighbours several ecclesiastical and temporal lords, some other Imperial lands and towns, and far greater than all, the Counts of the house of Kyburg and Habsburg, who had lately grown into the more dangerous character of Dukes of Austria. ♦Growth of the League.♦ 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. ♦Luzern, 1332.♦ First of all, the city of Luzern joined the League. ♦Zürich, 1351.♦ Then came the Imperial city of Zürich, which had already begun to form a little dominion in the adjoining lands. ♦Glarus and Zug, 1352.♦ Then came the land of Glarus and the town of Zug with its small territory. ♦Bern, 1353.♦ And lastly came the great city of Bern, which had already won a dominion over a considerable body of detached and outlying allies and subjects. ♦The Eight Ancient Cantons.♦ 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. ♦Their growth.♦ 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. These lesser changes and annexations cannot all be recorded here; but it must be carefully borne in mind that the process was constantly going on. ♦Dominion of Zürich and Bern.♦ Zürich, and yet more Bern, each formed, after the manner of an ancient Greek city, what in ancient Greece would have passed for an empire. ♦Conquests from Austria, 1415-1460.♦ In the fifteenth century, 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. ♦Aargau, Thurgau, &c.♦ 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 canton formed for a long time.♦
It is a fact to be specially noticed in the history of the Confederation, that, for nearly a hundred and thirty years, though the territory and the power of the Confederation were constantly increasing, 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. ♦Beginning of Italian dominions.♦ The first extension beyond the original German lands and those Burgundian lands which were practically German began in the direction of Italy. ♦Uri obtains Val Levantina, 1441.♦ Uri had, by the annexation of Urseren, become the neighbour of the Duchy of Milan, and in the middle of the fifteenth 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.♦First Savoyard conquest of Bern.
1475.♦ The war with Charles of Burgundy enabled Bern to win several detached possessions in the Savoyard lands north and east of the lake, and even on the lower course of the Rhone. ♦Savoyard conquests of Freiburg and Wallis.♦ And, while Bern advanced, some points in the same direction were gained by her allies who are not yet members of the Confederation, by the city of Freiburg and the League of Wallis. ♦Growth of Wallis.♦ This last confederation had grown up on the upper course of the Rhone, where the small free lands had gradually displaced the territorial lords. ♦Freiburg and Solothurn become Cantons, 1481.♦ Soon after this came the next admission of new cantons, those of the cities of Freiburg and Solothurn, each of them bringing with it its small following of allied and subject territory. ♦Basel and Schaffhausen, 1501.♦ Twenty years later, Basel and Schaffhausen, the latter being the only canton north of the Rhine, were admitted with their following of the like kind. ♦Appenzell, 1513.♦ Twelve years later, Appenzell, a little land which had set itself free from the rule of the abbots of Saint Gallen, after having long been in alliance with the Confederates, was admitted to the rank of a canton. ♦The Thirteen Cantons, 1513-1798.♦ Thus was made up the full number of Thirteen Cantons, which remained unchanged down to the wars of the French Revolution.
But the time when the Confederation was finally settled as regards the number of cantons was also a time of great extension of territory on the part both of the Confederation and of several of its members. ♦Graubünden.♦ At the south-east corner of the Confederate territory, on the borders of the duchy of Milan and the county of Tyrol, the League of Graubünden or the Grey Leagues had gradually arisen. A number of communities, as in Wallis, had got rid of the neighbouring lords, and had formed themselves into three leagues, the Grey League proper, the Gotteshausbund, and the League of Ten Jurisdictions, which three were again united by a further federal tie. ♦Their alliance with the Confederates.♦ At the end of the fifteenth century, the Leagues so formed entered into an alliance with the Confederates. ♦1495-1567.♦ Then began a great accession of territory towards the south on the part both of the Confederates and of their new allies. ♦Italian dominion of the Confederation, 1512;♦ The Confederates received a considerable territory within the duchy of Milan, including Bellinzona, Locarno, and Lugano, as the reward of services done to the House of Sforza. ♦of the Grey Leagues, 1513.♦ The next year their new allies of the Grey Leagues also won some Italian territory, the Valtellina and the districts of Chiavenna and Bormio. ♦Early Savoyard conquests of Bern, Freiburg, and Wallis, 1536.♦ Next came the conquest of a large part of the Savoyard lands, of all north of the Lake and a good deal to the south, by the arms of Bern, Freiburg, and Wallis. ♦Vaud.♦ Bern and Freiburg divided Vaud in very unequal proportions. ♦Lausanne.♦ Bern and Wallis divided Chablais on the south side of the lake, and Bern annexed the bishopric of Lausanne on the north. ♦Geneva in alliance with Bern and Freiburg.♦ Geneva, the ally of Bern and Freiburg, with her little territory of detached scraps, was now surrounded by the dominion of her most powerful allies at Bern. ♦Territory restored to Savoy, 1567.♦ But by a later treaty Bern and Wallis gave back to Savoy all that they had won south of the Lake, with the territory of Gex to the west of it. Geneva thus again had Savoy for a neighbour, a neighbour at whose expense she even made some conquests—Gex among them—conquests which the French ally of the free city would not allow her to keep. Later changes gave her a neighbour yet more dangerous than Savoy in the shape of France itself. ♦Gruyères divided between Bern and Freiburg, 1554.♦ Before these changes, Bern and Freiburg divided the county of Gruyères between them, the last important instance of that kind of process.
♦The Allies.♦
The Confederation was thus fully formed, with its Thirteen Cantons and their allied states. ♦Saint Gallen.
Bienne.♦ Of these the Abbot of Saint Gallen, the town of Saint Gallen, and the town of Biel or Bienne, were so closely allied with the Confederates as to have a place in their Diets. Besides relations of less close alliance which the Confederates had with various Alsatian cities, several other states had a connexion so close and lasting with the Confederation or with some of its members, as to form part of the same political system. ♦Bischofbasel.
Mühlhausen and Rottweil.
Neufchâtel passes to Prussia, 1707.♦ Such were the Leagues of Wallis and Graubünden, the Bishop of Basel, the outlying town of Mühlhausen in Elsass, and for a while that of Rottweil. Bern too, and sometimes other cantons, had relations both with the town and with the princes of Neufchâtel, which, after passing through several dynasties, was at last inherited by the Kings of Prussia. ♦Constanz.♦ Constanz, at the other end of the Confederate land, was refused admission as a canton, but for a while it was in alliance with some of the cantons. ♦Passes to Austria, 1548.♦ But this connexion was severed when Constanz, instead of a free Imperial city, became a possession of Austria. ♦The Confederation released from the allegiance to the Empire, 1658.♦ The power thus formed, a power in which a body of German Confederates was surrounded by a body of allies and subjects, German, Italian, and Burgundian, all of them originally members of the Empire, was by the Peace of Westfalia formally released from all allegiance to the Empire and its chief. ♦Date of the practical separation, 1495.♦ Their practical separation may be dated much earlier, from the time when the Confederates refused to accept the legislation of Maximilian.
♦Geographical position of the League.♦
The growth of the League into an independent power was doubtless greatly promoted by its geographical position, as occupying the natural citadel of Europe. ♦Its anomalous frontier.♦ But the piecemeal way in which it grew up was marked by the anomalous nature of its frontier on several points. On the north the Rhine would seem to be a natural boundary, but Schaffhausen beyond the Rhine formed part of the Confederation, while Constanz and other points within it did not. To the south the possession of territory on the Italian side of the Alps seems an anomaly, an anomaly which is brought out more strongly by a singularly irregular and arbitrary frontier. ♦The Confederation as a middle state.♦ But looking on the Confederation as the middle state, arising at the point of junction of the three Imperial kingdoms, it was in a manner fitting that it should spread itself into all three.
♦Wars of the French Revolution.♦