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Updated: June 24, 2025
Felix Hammerlin, of Zurich, in 1450, tells of a Hapsburg governor being on the little island of Schwanan, in the lake of Lowerz, who seduced a maid of Schwyz, and was killed by her brothers.
Not only were the lawful claims of the two cantons, Luzern and Schwyz, to a share in the deliberations on the affairs of St. Gall, wholly set aside, but Glarus also was not to be heard, except in so far as she agreed with Zurich in the fundamental principle laid down by him.
At that period, the thirteen cantons of the Swiss Confederacy were not yet, as now, equal in virtue of the bond, nor bound together directly by one and the same covenant. They were properly united only with the three cantons of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden, as with a common centre, but among themselves by special treaties.
But priestly cunning triumphed, and German afterward succeeded in obtaining an acknowledgment, first from two cantons of the protectorate, Luzern and Schwyz, and then with much trouble from Glarus also. Three months later, the election was ratified by Pope Clement the VII., and proofs of consideration and offers of any amount of help received from Austria.
But he was hateful to them, nevertheless; and although we know nothing of the way in which he administered his office, we conjecture that it was partly because the Emperor who appointed him was not of the House of Hohenstaufen, to which they were attached, and partly because he claimed that the office of Bailiff was hereditary in his family, whereas the men of Schwyz preferred to offer it of their own free will to whom they would.
The fifty men who had so efficiently begun the fray had been banished from Schwyz through some dispute, but on learning their country's danger had hastily returned to sacrifice their lives, if need be, for their native land.
This plan was certainly radical, but not evangelical. It was not possible that Luzern and Schwyz; not possible that the Catholic cantons generally, could suffer these violations of Confederate faith, and of sealed treaties to pass by unheeded.
At the head of a numerous army he passed into Switzerland, and encamped near the lake of Constance; when, under the banner of Count von Lenzburg, the inhabitants of the three "cents" or cantons of Schwyz, Uri, and Unterwalden came to do homage and offer their feudal service in the field.
To us it is rather an unwritten poem which each age repeats to the next, melodious sometimes, as when the blind old mythic bard of Chios sang it under the olive-trees, by the blue Aegean, to the listening Greeks, thirsty for beauty, drinking it ever with their eyes, and with their lips lisping it, or rough and more full of meaning, as when, with the men of Schwyz and Uri and Unterwalden, the great idea of freedom, majestic as their mountains, utters itself, composed and stern, in deeds which for all time make Switzerland honored and free.
This letter alone, or in connection with other reasons, which may have brought it about, actually prevailed at Schwyz, after a stormy meeting, over the national inclination toward the French, and it was resolved for the next 25 years to reject foreign alliances and pensions; Nidwalden also joined in the resolution. As may easily be imagined, this greatly strengthened the hatred against Zwingli.
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