Page 24 RAIN Winter/Spring 1991 These communal ideals were as far removed as they could be from the interests of the very powerful in 16th century Europe. Yet the peasants felt that their cause was far from hopeless - they were much inspired by the radical and successful example of the Swiss Confederation. The princes of the House of Hapsburg, who were rulers of Austria and occasionally Holy Roman Emperors, tried vainly for two centuries, from 1315, to defeat Swiss self-rule, and to keep a growing number of villages and districts from chucking their nobility and "turning Swiss". The Swiss Confederation had no single leader, and was held together loosely by regular negotiation among many small rural, town and church interests. By 1525, joining the Swiss confederation ensured self-rule and withdrawal from the Empire. The German elites widely believed, with some justice, that the Swiss gave more than just ideological support to the 1525 armed common revolts. This suspicion reflected in part the Swiss historical propensity for setting free the serfs and peasants from principalities along their growing borders. But the suspicion also reflected anxiety about Swiss military skill, sharpened by wars against Austria and Burgundy, and by extensive service as mercenary infantry. The Swiss were counted among the best soldiers in Europe. Because of their militant support for the commoner, the Swiss psychological impact on medieval political discussion was completely out of proportion to the country's size. Niccolo Machiavelli regularly cautioned political leaders about what he felt was an alarming Swiss potential for expansion. In distaste for nobility, the Swiss had no equals. Machiavelli wrote: "To the lords and gentlemen who live in that region they are entirely hostile, and if by chance any come into their hands, they put them to death as the beginning of corruption and the causes of all evil." This was an age of royal and noble families solidifying power in Europe, especially the Hapsburgs, who long held a bitter dynastic grudge against the Swiss. The Confederation, whose very existence was in part due to Hapsburg hostility, always won their battles with the family. Even the region with the castle the Hapsburgs were named after turned Swiss. In 1499 one Hapsburg Emperor, Maximilian, organized the entire Holy Roman Empire against the Swiss. The Confederation won that war, and even more cities and regions joined it as a result. How did a loose, uneasy alliance of small cities and rural districts come to win their freedom and maintain it decisively against the most powerful European dynasty of this millennium? The answer lies in part with 3: broadening of the idealogy of independence. The bulk of the German peasant revolutionaries of 1525 promoted the common values of small, rural village associations. But many of their political demands can be traced back, in part through Switzerland, to the popular A noble family with properties all over Europe, the Hapsburgs took their name from this castle, sitting in a particularly strategic spot overseeing rivers and valleys in what is today northern Switzerland. The Hapsburgs were humiliated by the loss of this property to the rebellious Swiss. movement in Italy- in particular to the flrst success of working and middle class interests in Milan, in 1198, on the Lombard plain of Northern Italy. The Swiss Confederation might have never formed but for the explosion of commerce South of the Alps, an explosion that was also responsible for the rise of the Italian popular city republics. Th'e Italian Popolo and The Growth of Popular Dissent When the ancient Roman Empire collapsed in 456 upon reaching the limits of its own expansion, its intercontinental system of trade collapsed with it. The next 500 years might be called Europe's Golden Age of SelfReliance. Export-oriented regions could no longer rely on Roman commerce for basic needs, so after some severe hardship people began producing for themselves. In the area that is now Switzerland the cities broke up and the people distributed themselves more evenly throughout the region. When Roman domination ended, so did most of the pastoral keeping of cattle for milk, cheese and meat. In areas of scarcity, cattle could not be raised without the Roman trade, since the animals consumed more than they produced and had to be fed in the winter. A greater diversity of crops were raised instead.
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