Gregory A. Fossedal, Direct Democracy in Switzerland, 2002.Part 2
History2
1291
"Switzerland is a product of both creation, in its constitution of 1848, and evolution, in hundreds of years of people in sovereign states, learning to get along. You must understand both elements to understand Switzerland today." -- Edgar BrunnerIf you look at a relief map -- which is almost essential to understand Switzerland -- you can see the logic of Switzerland's development in a series of quasi-independent villages, towns, and cities. If you were to place a group of marbles at the center of the map, among some of the highest peaks of the Alps, they would eventually meander to the long, Norway-shaped plain of the northwest, and the lakes of Como and Maggiore to the southeast. But the route the marbles would travel would bounce down around the Lake of Luzern, and of course the Saint Bernard and Gotthard Passes routes.
This imaginary route of the marbles more or less defines the outer border of the three original cantons of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden, as well as those that soon became part of the Swiss confederation: Luzern, Ziirich, Bern, Zug, Appenzell, and the lands of what was later Aargau. The main grooves, some six or seven, are chopped up into dozens of smaller rivulets. They form semi-isolated units suitable for similarly independent human communities. A town planner setting up Switzerland from scratch today would probably follow this design, toward which the country was evolving naturally from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries.
To extend on our analogy above, if you were to sprinkle small ball bear-mgs on our relief map, they would bump and nudge their way down to settle into these nooks and crannies very much where the actual towns are today. Even the "great plain" of Switzerland, stretching from Geneva in the southwest across Lausanne, Bern, Basel, and Zurich up to the Bodensee ln the northeast, is diced into a hundred or more natural towns -- of which there are more than 3,000 in Switzerland today, for an average population Per unit of only some 2,000 people, and a median of perhaps 1,500 or less.
These relatively low-lying areas have the climate to support high-altitude farming, and the river transport to export its products. By the late thirteenth century, they had even developed some reputation for producing quality woven textiles and other products that could benefit from their access to large and wealthy markets all around the region, including France, Germany, Italy, and Austria.
As the calendar pushed on toward the year 1300, outside forces began to attack the independence of these communities. This happened for several reasons. First, the nations around Switzerland -- the kingdoms of Lombardy, Burgundy, and Savoy; the emerging empires of France, Germany, and Austria -- were expanding. By tradition, most of the cantons that formed the original Swiss confederation, located in what is now central-northern and eastern Switzerland, were possessions or protectorates of Austria or of the Hapsburg family, which later ruled Austria, but originated in the present-day Swiss canton of Aargau. The Habsburgs, however, were never popular in their own place of origin, and grew less popular as some of the Habsburg nobles became more arrogant over the years 1200 to 1350. The Swiss, for their part, complained of high tax rates and arbitrary judgments from the local courts run by Habsburg nobles.
With Austrian and Habsburg influence waning, and popular affiliation with Austria weak at best, France, Burgundy, Germany, and the lords of Lombardy looked to fill the void. Switzerland, situated in the middle of these competing states, became a battleground as the borders of these emerging empires crept toward one another.
A second factor, stronger in the centuries that followed but present even in 1291, was the mild rebuke to top-down rule posed by the very existence of Swiss communities with their mixed democratic practices and traditions. We cannot document the exact shape of the politics of those local villages, which in any case varied widely, because most of what we know about them either comes from less reliable oral history or must be inferred from the small number of documents. But it is generally accepted that even in the thirteenth century, the Swiss -- particularly in such fiercely independent cantons as Uri and Schwyz -- made use of local, popular assemblies to decide many broader and nearly all local questions of policy. These certainly were more democratic than any of the nearby empires. Naturally, not everyone "voted," but in some communities, landowners and even burgers probably did.
The Swiss, even in the midst of the Middle Ages, also offered something of a demographic haven. Uri, one of the three original cantons, had its origins, as historian J. Murray Luck has written, as "a kind of Siberia" to which mountain farmers, too rough for the tribes of Germany and Alsace, were banished. If there were few or no formal individual rights, there was an ethos of independence and political equality, and the right to speak your piece. "From even these early times," as former Senator Franz Muheim impressed on me during long discussions of Switzerland's animating principles, "there has been a code of, 'I mind my own business, you mind yours.' It is easiest to understand if you start by trying to assume that someone wanted to go against this principle, such as the Habsburgs. Then you look at a map, and you see all these valleys, lakes, rivers, and steep hills and mountains, breaking the country up into a tapestry of thousands of natural villages. If you wanted to impose your will even on your neighbor, how would you do it? It would take a large army just to conquer a few such communities. How would you then take over dozens or hundreds of them?"
This haven naturally had an impact on the surrounding aristocracies. It put ideas into the heads of peasants and laborers bound to service in the more feudal communities around Switzerland. In Uri and Schwyz, the grant of rights had been made directly from the emperor to the people at large, making the Swiss example especially dangerous for the neighboring aristocracies.
Finally, as is common when we find human competition and conflict, there were economic elements. Sometime shortly before or after the year 1200, the freemen of canton Uri opened a small bridge across the river Reuss. The bridge wobbled several hundred feet above the torrent during low periods, precariously close to it when the river rose, and connected two sides of a deep gulch not far from the Gotthard Pass.
It was called Teufelsbriicke, or devil's bridge. Some attributed this to a large bulge of rock above that appeared suspended by occult forces. Others note the bridge itself stood somewhat athwart nature and normalcy. Man seemed to issue to the rocks, like Satan to God, his own defiant non serviam.
Crossing was no exercise for the meek. Even riding over today's modern, concrete bridge, not far from the original, in a four-door sedan, the winds are enough to bounce your car around a little, and the occult shadows thrown off by the high and jutting cliffs menace. The combination of height, galloping waters, howling air currents, and sharp rocks stabbing out from tall cliffs all around creates a feeling of great precariousness.
Nevertheless, the bridge became a transportation jugular, and a catalyst for a rapid increase in economic exchange for all the surrounding countries. Before, there had been no economical way to transport cattle and other products from the dairy farms of Uri and its neighbors to the wealthy regions surrounding Milan to the south. Now these products could make it through, and more developed products from north and south could be exchanged more efficiently, spurring trade between Germany, Italy, and France.
No one kept elaborate output or trade statistics in those days, but we can infer the impact of the Teufelsbriicke from related measures. For example, as Swiss historian Werner Meyer has noted in his fine history {1291: L'Histoire), there was one major chateau in the central Swiss region in the year 1000: Rotzberg in Nidwald. This grew to four by the year 1100, and stood at five at turn of the century in 1200, roughly the completion of the bridge. By the year 1250, however, this number tripled, to sixteen, with nine of the eleven new structures in Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden. These figures suggest a rapid expansion of economic activity during the period.
The population of many existing towns in Uri, Schwyz, Luzern, Unterwalden, and the region around Zurich more than doubled between 1200 and 1300 -- a time of relatively slow rises in life expectancy, and many conflicts in Switzerland. This was much faster than the surrounding towns, many of which saw flat population growth.
As one direct measure of the economic impact of the bridge, in 1359, Uri paid approximately 100,000 francs for lands in its district held by the Fraumiinster cloister of Zurich. This was only a fraction of Uri's collection of tolls from the bridge, since the canton made similar purchases from the Habsburgs, individual lords, and other abbeys during the same decade.
On May 26,1231, Emperor Friedrich II sent a Freibrief, or freedom charter, to "the people of the Uri valley," recognizing and formalizing in law the independence from the Habsburgs that they had gradually won in fact. It is worth noting that this letter was addressed to "the people," not a particular official, institution, or lord. The Swiss cantons asserted, and the emperor recognized, not merely a set of terms for a set of nobles and their king to agree on privileges, but of rights enjoyed in common by the inhabitants of the Uri valley.
Friedrich was succeeded by several emperors of lesser note and by an "interregnum" (1256-1273) between emperors. In 1273, the nobles selected no populist to head the empire, but one of their own in spirit: Rudolf I.
Rudolf was a Habsburg, the first in a long line to serve as emperor for much of the next 500 years. Rudolf was interested in recovering his family's holdings and influence in Switzerland, now all but crumbled, as a long-term guarantee of Habsburg rule. In this, he may have been shrewd, but his methods made enemies both in the Waldstatte and the empire at large. He attempted to raise taxes and to exploit many feudal obligations. For example, he called upon his subjects to send troops for sham or at best uncertain battles, then negotiated with them to waive his rights in return for cash payment. Rudolf appointed family members and foreigners as judges and other officials to the Swiss cantons.
The simple Swiss villagers resented these bureaucrats not only as economic dead weight, but as arrogant overlords. Several of the Habsburgs apparently used their position to seduce or compel women in their districts to convey sexual favors and join them in what the Bundesbrief itself alludes to as "unnatural" perversions.2
By the end of his life, the excesses of Rudolf and his family had alienated most of Switzerland. Close to the end he tried to recoup popular support by offering to reconfirm the essence of the freedoms of the Waldstatte in a slightly repackaged form. Rudolf promised to appoint judges only from among the
Swiss. But this was only a promise not to assert his right to appoint other judges, not a limitation of his own power per se. And his description of who would be covered by these rights was ambiguous -- clearly including the nobility, not so clearly the general population. Gone was the clear-cut universis hominibus of Friedrich, to be replaced by an elitist and unprincipled game of divide and conquer.
Rudolf's death on July 15, 1291, was preceded by two years of obviously declining health. Even so, the Swiss rebels moved with surprising speed, considering the state of communications in those days -- suggesting that such moves had been orchestrated in anticipation of his death. Within two weeks -- August 1, 1291 -- they had sealed a pact for "everlasting cooperation," the Bundesbrief.
We have no recorded debates or newspaper accounts of the actual event. In this sense, almost anything said about the drafting and approval of the Bundesbrief is speculative. But there is intelligent speculation based on evidence. From this, without making too many leaps, we can ascribe a number of features to the event.
The text of the agreement refers to a renewal of the "ancient" cooperation between the cantons, suggesting that no dramatic departures were needed and the requirement for popular oversight was light. On the other hand, this was a dramatic time, and the declaration of a perpetual alliance at a time of possible war. The very fact that something was being put on paper suggests a heightened solemnity.
The Bundesbrief describes itself as a pact between "the people of Uri, the community of Schwyz, and representatives of the people of Underwalden." Read literally, this sounds like a meeting, probably in Schwyz, at which the "communitas" (community) of Schwyz was largely in attendance, a large popular assembly of Uri, and a group from Unterwalden more in the character of a chosen assembly or group of representatives. We need not read it so literally, of course, but we have no strong reason to prefer a different interpretation, especially given the broader context. Whatever combination of leaders and common farmers joined together, they met, in all likelihood, in some village along the Lake of Luzern or of one of the rivers nearby. Such a choice would have made for a central location, and would have made broader participation possible by allowing for use of the rivers, lakes, and nearby roads that were much of the transportation network. The author Schiller, among others, placed the events on the banks of Rutli, certainly one possible location. Another is the town of Schwyz itself, where the Bundesbrief is now kept.
The composite scene that emerges is not necessarily far from the legendary paintings, tapestries, and operatic versions -- an indication that either the artists did their historical homework, or that the Muse that moved them did so in emulation of the fact. The men stood out along one of the gentle hills that have formed a backdrop to so many popular deliberative assemblies over the last 1,000 years and, looking forward as well as back, sealed a solemn "and perpetual" oath. Even in this setting, at Rtitli or nearby, Switzerland seems almost designed to be a democracy. The slopes make for a natural stadium or amphitheater, allowing a large number of citizens to participate in a discussion and then vote.
That there was some kind of democratic assent is implied not merely by the political system of the villages in the cantons, but by the document itself. The Bundesbrief notes, for example, that there was near unanimity, but not total unanimity, of the participants -- suggesting some sort of measurement or discussion or both. It refers several times to the document as an "oath," renewing, solidifying, and perfecting an "ancient alliance." This suggests, particularly in the Middle Ages when oaths were taken seriously, an actual oath of some sort. Yet the Bundesbrief is also self-consciously a document, referring to the statutes and promises "above," and those "now written." Hence it was not merely a pro-forma repetition of whatever old oath of alliance may have existed.
Here again, Schiller and the artists may be saluted for either happily or artfully conforming their representations to the likely facts. And Tschudi, Gagliardi, and other historians sometimes taken to task for their credulity may turn out to have greater skeptical acumen -- refusing to judge a thing wrong just because it is deemed true by the oral tradition -- than some revisionists who are merely contrarian. Aspects of the Bundesbrief's content are worth noting. The document contains no "signatures," unlike the Declaration of Independence or Magna Carta. In this sense, it is highly populist, almost corporatist. At the bottom are the community seals of Uri and Unterwalden, and on the left, a mark where the corporate seal of Schwyz once was.
In some ways, this anonymous character is appropriately Swiss, the product of a politics of consensus by a group of equal citizens.
The new agreement did not set up a mechanism of government; it did not proclaim itself a new republic or even promise one. In this sense, the Bundesbrief is indeed a limited document. It is, however, a social contract as well, albeit a focused one. And because the participating communities were already significantly democratic in form and practice and assumption, it set up a very important experiment, and proclaimed the legitimacy of doctrines implicitly contrary to monarchy and feudalism.
For the most part, the empire was much too absorbed in wider and more immediate problems to deal with the Swiss. It took nearly a year for the bitterly divided electors of the Holy Roman Empire to select a successor to Rudolf, whose own holdings had to be divided among his sons. Adolf of Nassau (1292-1298) was killed in battle trying to keep his empire stitched together. Albrecht I (1298-1308), the son of Rudolf I, tried to create trouble by encouraging the Habsburg nobles in Austria and Aargau to re-assert their ancient rights, but the lords, as noted above, were expelled rudely. Not until
Friedrich the Beautiful (1314-1326) was the empire sufficiently stable for the Habsburgs to mount a serious effort to overturn the upstart confederation.
The Swiss founders, by luck or shrewd design, took advantage of this confusion to consolidate their own internal relations and to add allies. The powerful surrounding cities of Bern, Zurich, and Luzern were natural allies, and longed to free themselves from the Habsburg influence. But they would be more inclined to take part in an alliance that seemed solid than to gamble their prosperity on a mere chance coalition of farming communes. The Bundesbrief served not only an internal function, but an external one, projecting a picture of solidarity to potential friends and enemies. This was a touchy game to play: Too brazen a rebuke of the nobles might have focused the counter-revolution in Switzerland. Instead, the royals fell out among themselves -- the German princes versus France versus Burgundy; Saxony against Austria for influence in Bern, Fribourg, and Aargau; and others.
If this account does not overcredit, then the founders of the Riitli emerge as not only effective nation-builders, but shrewd strategists. The Bundesbrief, in combination with economic boom and a citizen's army of growing effectiveness, helped shelter the Swiss from foreign intervention for a generation -- roughly from 1291 until the Battle of Morgarten in 1315.
Morgarten added the seal of military history to the Bundesbrief. Some 15,000 Habsburg troops from Austria -- noble, well-armed, mounted, and skilled -- marched toward the central cantons. Through a clever series of roadblocks, the outnumbered Swiss farmers and village craftsmen drew the attackers into a narrow passage between the Aegerisee and Mount Morgarten. With perhaps only 100 troops, and certainly no more than 250, the farmers fell upon the Austrians in the narrow pass, suffering little disadvantage from numbers under the cramped quarters, and surpassing the Habsburg contingent with their courage and resourcefulness. Many Austrians were slaughtered in the "bloody rocks" just west of what is now a nearby town; the Swiss rolled boulders, logs, and (in some accounts) wild animals onto them. Other Austrians were driven into the water and reportedly drowned. About 2,000 Austrian and twelve Swiss troops died.
"Morgarten," as one military historian put it, "shocked the world," much as the success of the American Revolution over the British Empire. The Swiss had proven, in their first great test, that a popular, citizen army could hold its own against elite forces from one of the great European powers.
Indeed, "Switzerland," though not yet existing, was an attractive political economy and an attractive idea even early in the fourteenth century. Before and after Morgarten, the Swiss managed to form important agreements with Glarus, Arth, Milan, and Luzern. Even the ill-fated first alliance with Zurich, which ended when besieging Habsburg troops crushed the town in 1292, rebounded in favor of the Swiss. After the sacking, the resentment of the people of Zurich for the Habsburg dominance was, like the Bundesbrief, "in perpetuity."
It was only a matter of time -- and a few more victories like Morgarten -- before the forest cantons convinced Ziirich, Bern, and other great cities of the region decided that this was a confederation worth joining. Morgarten was the material manifestation of a long policy of intelligent statecraft by the central Swiss, a combination of internal political justice and equality with prudent external alliances.
Notes 1. The diffusion of wealth and breakdown of feudal privileges seen in Uri and in Switzerland generally went against the trend of the times. Danish peasants and private farmers, for example, owned more than half of the land in the year 1250; by 1650, this figure had declined to just more than 10 percent. For most of Europe, the transition enjoyed by Switzerland came only in the 16th Century, and in some cases, later still.
2. See for example Jiirg Stussi-Lauterburg, and R.Gysler-Schoni, Helvetias Tochter, Huber, Zurich, 1999.