Page:The Rise of the Swiss Republic (1892).djvu/93



HE reader who has derived his ideas of the origin of the Swiss Confederation from Schiller’s play of “William Tell,” will doubtless feel disappointed at the picture here presented. Tradition would have us believe that the three states were from the very beginning independent commonwealths of freemen, leagued together from time immemorial, that they voluntarily submitted themselves to the German empire during the reign of Frederic II., and only revolted when King Albrecht of Habsburg sought to put an end to their liberties. This view is quite incompatible with contemporary evidence. Uri, Schwiz and Unterwalden were not originally independent states with fully developed republican forms of government; nor can there be a question of their having voluntarily submitted themselves to the empire, since they formed a part of it as early as we have any records. If modern research has proved anything beyond the shadow of a doubt, it is that the Forest States gained their freedom after the lapse of centuries of persistent toil, and not at one blow.

But what was the danger which prompted their final union? What the bond which held them together through all their trials and tribulations? Stated in the simplest terms it was the existence of a common enemy in the ambitious and not over-scrupulous house of Habsburg. Though these young communities had advanced thus far toward the attainment of antonomy, they were overshadowed by a power which threatened at any moment to engulf them. There was a natural, inevitable antagonism between the inhabitants of the Forest