Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/592

 542 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE walden. Both these emperors were hostile to the Hapsburgs and glad to encourage their foes. Although supposedly a league for defense only, the three forest cantons speedily attacked and plundered neighboring Hapsburg possessions. In 131 5 the Hapsburgs medieval led an army against them but were defeated in expansion the battle of Morgarten. Other rural districts and towns which desired to escape from Hapsburg control joined the three forest cantons during the next half-cen- tury. Some of them were temporarily recovered by the Hapsburgs, but at Sempach in 1386 and at Nafels in 1388 the Austrians were defeated. They then recognized the independence of eight cantons, including the three original ones, Lucerne, Glarus, Zug, and the towns of Berne and Zurich. In 1403 the Bishop of Sion and the peasants of the Valais were brought under the protection of the league, in 141 1 Appenzell, in 1412 the town of St. Gall. By aggression the Swiss also added to the territory under their control a region to the south of the St. Gotthard Pass, and to the north- east of the Lake of Lucerne the Aargau together with the original Hapsburg castle. The confederates now reached from the Italian Lakes to the Jura Mountains and the Lake of Constance. Jealousy and dissension broke out, however, between the rural and urban members of the confederation, and when Zurich was worsted in a local war with Schwyz it allied with Austria against the Forest Cantons. But they again proved unconquerable, and in 1450 Zurich returned to the league and Austria gave up its hopes of recovering the Aargau. Like Rudolf of Hapsburg, most of his successors in the Empire had very slight authority in the north of Germany The Hanse- and paid little attention to that region. There- ,eague fore the towns, deprived of imperial protection and free from imperial interference, formed leagues among themselves for mutual protection and trade. Gradually these smaller local unions became merged in one extensive Hanseatic League, so called from the word "hanse" mean- ing a gild or union for trade. The traders of northern Ger-