Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/820

 784 SWITZERLAND [HISTORY. Austrian duke against Zurich, which was ended by the Brandenburg peace of 1352, by which Glarus and Zug were to. be restored to the Hapsburgs, who also regained their rights over Lucerne ; Zug was won for good by a bold stroke of the men of Schwyz in 1364, but it was not till the day of Nafels (1388) that Glarus recovered its lost freedom. These temporary losses and the treaty made by Brun of Zurich with Austria in 1356 were, how- ever, far outweighed by the entrance into the League in 1353 of the famous tovn of Bern, which, founded in 1191 by Berthold V. of Zaringen, and endowed with great privileges, had become a free imperial city in 1218 on the extinction of the Za'ringen dynasty. Founded for the purpose of bridling the turbulent feudal nobles around, many of whom had become citizens, Bern beat them back at Dornbiihl (1298), and made a treaty with the Forest districts as early as 1323. In 1339, at the bloody fight of Laupen, she had broken the power of the nobles for ever, and in 1352 had been forced by a treaty with Austria to take part in the war against Zurich, but soon after the conclusion of peace entered the League as the ally of the three Forest districts, being thus only indirectly joined to Lucerne and Zurich. The special importance of the accession of Bern was that the League now began to spread to the west, and was thus brought into con- nexion for the first time with the French-speaking land of Savoy. The League thus numbered eight members, the fruits of Morgarten, and no further members were admitted till 1481, after the Burgundian war. But, in order to thoroughly understand the nature of the League, it must be remembered that, while each of the five new members was allied with the original nucleus, the three Forest districts, these five were not directly allied to one another : Lucerne was allied with Zurich and Zug ; Zurich with Lucerne, Zug, and Glarus ; Glarus with Zurich ; Zug with Lucerne and Zurich ; Bern with no one except the three original members. The circumstances under which each entered the League can alone explain the very intri- cate relations at this time of its eight members. Serapach. After a short interval of peace the quarrels with Austria broke out afresh ; all the members of the League, save the three Forest districts and Glarus, joined the great union of the South German cities; but their attention was soon called to events nearer home. Lucerne fretted much .under the Austrian rule, received many Austrian subjects among her citizens, and refused 'to pay custom duties to the Austrian bailiff at Rothenburg, on the ground that she had the right of free traffic. An attack on the custom-house at Rothenburg, and the gift of the privileges of burghership to the discontented inhabitants of the little town of Sempach a short way off, so irritated Leopold III. (who then held all the possessions of his house out- side Austria) that, unmindful of the defeat of his uncle at Morgarten in 1315, he collected a great army, with the intention of crushing his rebellious town. Lucerne mean- while had summoned the other members of the League to her aid, and, though Leopold's feint of attacking Zurich caused the troops of the League to march at first in that direction, they discovered their mistake in time to turn back and check his advance on Lucerne. From 1500 to 1600 men of Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, and Lucerne opposed the 6000 which made up the Austrian army. The decisive fight took place on July 9, 1386, near Sempach, on a bit of sloping meadow-land, cut up by streams and hedges, which forced the Austrian knights to dismount. The great heat of the day, which rendered it impossible to fight in armour, and the furious attacks of the Con- federates, finally broke the Austrian line after more than one repulse and turned the day (see WINKELRIED). Leopold, with a large number of his followers, was slain, and the Hapsburg power within the borders of the Con- federation finally broken. Glarus at once rose in arms against Austria, but it was not till the expiration of the truce made after Sempach that Leopold's brother, Albert of Austria, brought an army against Glarus, and was signally defeated at Nafels (not far from Glarus) on April 9, 1388, by a handful of Glarus and Schwyz men, the troops of the other Confederates arriving too late. In 1389 a peace for seven years was made, the Confed- Freedom erates being secured in all their conquests ; an attempt from the made in 1393 by Austria by means of Schono, the^V^^ chief magistrate of Zurich and leader of the patrician the Haps- party, to stir up a fresh attack failed owing to a rising burgs. of the burghers, who sympathized with the Confederates, and on July 16, 1394, the peace was prolonged for twenty years (and again in 1412 for fifty years), various stipula- tions being made by which the hundred years' struggle of the League to throw off all political dependence on the Hapsburgs was finally crowned with success. Glarus was freed on payment of 200 pounds annually (in 1389-1395 it bought up all the rights of Sackingen) ; Zug too was released from Austrian rule. Schwyz was given the town of Einsiedeln (the " advocatia " of the great abbey following in 1397) ; Lucerne got the Entlibuch, Sempach, and Rothenburg, the last-named being mortgaged only ; Bern and Solothurn were confirmed in their conquests. Above all, the Confederation as a whole was relieved from the overlordship of the Hapsburgs, to whom, however, all their rights and dues as landed proprietors were expressly reserved, Bern, Zurich, and Solothurn guaranteeing the maintenance of these rights and dues, with power in case of need to call on the other Confederates to support them by arms. Thus the distinction always made by the Con- federates between the Hapsburgs as rulers and as land- owners was once more upheld ; and, though that powerful family entertained hopes of recovering its former rights, so that technically the treaties of 1389, 1394, and 1412 were but truces, it finally and for ever renounced all its feudal rights and privileges within the Confederation by the "Everlasting Compact" of 1474. It is probable that Bern did not take any active share in the Sempach war because she was bound by the treaty of peace made with the Austrians in 1368 ; and Solothurn, allied with Bern, was doubtless a party to the treaty of 1394 (though not yet in the League), because of its suf- ferings in 1382 at the hands of the Kyburg line of the Hapsburgs, whose possessions (Thun, Burgdorf, &c.) in 1384 fell into the hands of the two allies. We may mention here the foray (known as the English or Gugler war) made in 1374-75 by Enguerrand de Coucy (husband of Isabella, daughter of Edward III. of England) and his freebooters (many of them Englishmen and Welshmen), called " Gugler " from their pointed steel caps, with the object of obtaining possession of certain towns in the Aargau (including Sempach), which he claimed as the dowry of his mother Catherine, daughter of the Leopold who was defeated at Morgarten. He was put to rout in the Entlibuch by the men of Bern, Frei- burg, Schwyz, and Unterwalden in December 1375. This victory, which gave rise to the first great Swiss war song, was commemorated with great rejoicings as lately as 1875. III. The great victory at Sempach not merely vastly Straggles increased the fame of the Everlasting League but also * n Appen- enabled it to extend both its influence and its territory. ^| ^ The 15th century is the period when both the League and Vala'is. its several members took the aggressive, and the expan- sion of their power and lands cannot be better seen than by comparing the state of things at the beginning and at the end of this century. The pastoral highlands of Appenzell (Abbatis Cella) and the town of St Gall had