CHAPTER VI - THE BURGUNDIANS IN THE MIDDLE AGES

IT will be remembered—Chapter III, pars. 7-9—that the conquest of the kingdom of the Burgundians was begun by Clovis, and was completed by his sons in 532; and that in the quadruple division of the Frankish dominion in 561 Burgundy with some additional counties in the north fell to Gontran, who fixed his capital there. When the Frankish dominions, having been united under Charles Martel, were again divided between Pepin the Short and Carloman, Burgundy fell to the share of Pepin. And when Carloman became a monk, and Pepin became king by the grace of Pope Zachary, of course Burgundy was but a province of his kingdom, as it was also of the empire of Charlemagne, the son of Pepin. In the division of the empire of Charlemagne, by the treaty of Verdun, 843, Burgundy was included in the portion of the emperor Lothair, which, it will be remembered, reached from the Mediterranean to the North Sea, and included the Italian territory.ECE 51.1

2. In the time of Charles the Fat, 877, Burgundy became again independent, under Boso, or Boson, husband of Ermangarde, the daughter of Emperor Louis II. This kingdom was called Provence as well as Burgundy, and sometimes Cis-Jurane Burgundy, or, as the real title ran, regnum Provinciae seu Burgundiae. It “included Provence, Dauphine, the southern part of Savoy, and the country between the Saone and the Jura” Mountains. There was formed another kingdom of Burgundy on the other side of the Jura Mountains. This was called the kingdom of trans-Jurane Burgundy, or by title, regnum Iurense, Burgundia Transiurensis, and was founded by Count Rudolph in A. D. 888, and was recognized by the emperor Arnulf the same year. It included the northern part of Savoy and all Switzerland between the Jura Mountains and the River Reuss.ECE 51.2

3. In 937 Rudolph’s son, Rudolph, traded for the Cis-Jurane Burgundy his rights to the Italian crown; and thus the two Burgundies— the Trans-Jurane and the Cis-Jurane—were united in the one kingdom of Burgundy or Arles, by title, regnum Burgundae, regnum Arelatense. This kingdom continued independent till A. D. 1032, when, in accordance with a treaty which had been made between the emperor Henry II and Rudolph II, its last king, the kingdom of Burgundy was received into the empire by Emperor Conrad II; Rudolph III confirming it by will, as his niece Gisela was Conrad’s wife. The emperor thus assumed the Burgundian crown, and this “beautiful kingdom,” “full of prosperous cities,” became a part of the empire.ECE 51.3

4. “The kingdom of Burgundy, or Arles, comprehended the whole mountainous region which we now call Switzerland. It was accordingly reunited to the Germanic empire by the bequest of Rodolph along with the rest of his dominions. A numerous and ancient nobility, vassals one to another, or to the empire, divided the possession with ecclesiastical lords hardly less powerful than themselves. Of the former we find the counts of Zahringen, Kyburg, Hapsburg, and Tokenburg, most conspicuous; of the latter the Bishop of Coire, the Abbot of St. Gall, and Abbess of Seckingen. Every variety of feudal rights was early found and long preserved in Helvetia; nor is there any country whose history better illustrates that ambiguous relation—half property and half dominion—in which the territorial aristocracy under the feudal system stood with respect to their dependents. In the twelfth century the Swiss towns rise into some degree of importance. Zurich was eminent for commercial activity, and seems to have had no lord but the emperor; Basel, though subject to its bishop, possessed the usual privileges of municipal government. Berne and Friburg, founded only in that century, made a rapid progress, and the latter was raised, along with Zurich, by Frederick II, in 1218, to the rank of a free imperial city.”—Hallam. ^{1[Page 52] “Middle Ages,” chap 5, sec. 20.}ECE 52.1

5. In the northern part of what is now Switzerland, between Lake Constance and Lake Luzerne, and along the left bank of the Rhine, the Alemanni had settled when they first took the country from the Romans. The castle of Hapsburg was possessed by Rudolf, the Alemannian nobleman who was made emperor in 1273. His ambitious descendants, the dukes of Austria, endeavored to enlarge their authority and possessions at the expense of the cantons.ECE 52.2

6. “Several changes in the principal Helvetian families took place in the thirteenth century before the end of which the house of Hapsburg, under the politic and enterprising Rodolph and his son Albert, became possessed, through various titles, of a great ascendency in Switzerland. Of these titles none was more tempting to an ambitious chief than that of advocate to a convent. That specious name conveyed with it a kind of indefinite guardianship, and right of interference, which frequently ended in reversing the conditions of the ecclesiastical sovereign and its vassal.... Among other advocacies, Albert obtained that of some convents which had estates in the valleys of the Schweitz and Underwald.... The people of Schweitz had made Rodolph their advocate. They distrusted Albert, whose succession to his father’s inheritance spread alarm through Helvetia. It soon appeared that their suspicions were well founded. Besides the local rights which his ecclesiastical advocacies gave him over part of the forest cantons, he pretended, after his election to the empire, to send imperial bailiffs into their valleys as administrators of criminal justice.” ^{2[Page 53] Id.}ECE 53.1

7. Some authorities make Frederick III the one who sent these bailiffs, but whether it was Frederick or Albert the facts are the same. One of these bailiffs was Gesler, whom William Tell resisted. “Their oppression of a people unused to control, whom it was plainly the design of Albert to reduce into servitude, excited those generous emotions of resentment which a brave and simple race have seldom the discretion to repress. Three men, Stauffacher of Schweitz, Furst of Uri, Melchthal of Underwald, each with ten chosen associates, met by night in a sequestered field, and swore to assert the common cause of their liberties, without bloodshed or injury to the rights of others. Their success was answerable to the justice of their undertaking; the three cantons unanimously took up arms, and expelled their oppressors without a contest. Albert’s assassination by his nephew which followed soon afterwards, fortunately gave them leisure to consolidate their union (A. D. 1308).... But Leopold, duke of Austria, resolved to humble the peasants who had rebelled against his father, led a considerable force into their country. The Swiss, commending themselves to Heaven, and determined rather to perish than undergo that yoke a second time, though ignorant of regular discipline, and unprovided with defensive armor, utterly discomfited the assailants at Morgarten (A. D. 1315).ECE 53.2

8. “This great victory, the Marathon of Switzerland, confirmed the independence of the three original cantons. After some years, Lucerne, contiguous in situation and alike in interests, was incorporated into their confederacy. It was far more materially enlarged about the middle of the fourteenth century by the accession of Zurich, Glaris, Zug, and Berne, all of which took place within two years. The first and last of these cities had already been engaged in frequent wars with the Helvetian nobility, and their internal polity was altogether republican. They acquired, not independence, which they already enjoyed, but additional security, by this union with the Swiss, properly so-called, who in deference to their power and reputation ceded to them the first rank in the league.... The eight already enumerated are called the ancient cantons, and continued, till the late reformation of the Helvetic system, to possess several distinctive privileges and even rights of sovereignty over subject territories in which the five cantons of Friburg, Soleure, Basel, Schaffhausen, and Appenzell did not participate. From this time the united cantons, but especially those of Berne and Zurich, began to extend their territories at the expense of the rural nobility.... The Helvetic cities acted with policy and moderation towards the nobles whom they overcame, admitting them to the franchises of their community as coburghers (a privilege which virtually implied a defensive alliance against any assailant), and uniformly respecting the legal rights of property. Many feudal superiorities they obtained from the owners in a more peaceable manner, through purchases or mortgage.ECE 54.1

9. “Thus the house of Austria, to which the extensive domains of the counts of Kyburg had devolved, abandoning, after repeated defeats, its hopes of subduing the forest cantons, alienated a great part of its possessions to Zurich and Berne. And the last remnant of their ancient Helvetic territories in Argovia was wrested, in 1417, from Frederick, count of Tyrol, who, imprudently supporting Pope John XXIII against the Council of Constance had been put to the ban of the empire. These conquests Berne could not be induced to restore, and thus completed the independence of the confederate republics. The other free cities, though not yet incorporated, and the few remaining nobles, whether lay or spiritual, of whom the abbot of St. Gall was the principal, entered into separate leagues with different cantons. Switzerland became, therefore, in the first part of the fifteenth century, a free country, acknowledged as such by neighboring states, and subject to no external control, though still comprehended within the nominal sovereignty of the empire....ECE 54.2

10. “The affairs of Switzerland occupy a very small space in the great chart of European history. But in some respects they are more interesting than the revolutions of mighty kingdoms.... Other nations displayed an insuperable resolution in the defense of walled towns; but the steadiness of the Swiss in the field of battle was without a parallel, unless we recall the memory of Lacedaemon. It was even established as a law that whoever returned from battle after a defeat, should forfeit his life by the hands of the executioner. Sixteen hundred men, who had been sent to oppose a predatory invasion of the French in 1444, though they might have retreated without loss, determined rather to perish on the spot, and fell amid a far greater heap of the hostile slain. At the famous battle of Sempach in 1385, the last which Austria proceeded to try against the forest cantons, the enemy’s knights, dismounted from their horses, presented an impregnable barrier of lances which disconcerted the Swiss; till Winkelried, a gentleman of Underwald, commending his wife and children to his countrymen, threw himself upon the opposing ranks, and, collecting as many lances as he could grasp, forced a passage for his followers by burying them in his bosom.ECE 55.1

11. “Though the house of Austria had ceased to menace the liberties of Helvetia, and had even been for many years its ally, the emperor Maximilian ...endeavored to revive the unextinguished supremacy of the empire. That supremacy had just been restored in Germany by the establishment of the Imperial Chamber, and of a regular pecuniary contribution for its support, as well as for other purposes, in the Diet of Worms [1495]. The Helvetic cantons were summoned to yield obedience to these imperial laws.... Their refusal to comply brought on a war, wherein the Tyrolese subjects of Maximilian, and the Suabian league, a confederacy of cities in that province lately formed under the emperor’s auspices, were principally engaged against the Swiss. But the success of the latter was decisive; and after a terrible devastation of the frontiers of Germany, peace was concluded [1499] upon terms very honorable for Switzerland. The cantons were declared free from the jurisdiction of the Imperial Chamber, and from all contributions imposed by the Diet.... Though, perhaps, in the strictest letter of public law, the Swiss cantons were not absolutely released from their subjection to the empire until the treaty of Westphalia, their real sovereignty must be dated by a historian from the year when every prerogative which a government can exercise was finally abandoned.” ^{3[Page 56] Id.}ECE 55.2

12. And thus the kingdom of the Burgundians of A. D. 407 is represented in the independent confederacy of the Switzerland of to-day.ECE 56.1