58 The Swiss and Their Neighbours, 1460–1560
the loss of a Catholic enclave (albeit Habsburg) but also any disturbance to the
existing balance of power.357 The confessional divide after 1531 ensured that there
was never a suggestion the Fricktal be annexed in the manner of the Aargau and
turned into a common lordship. An accommodation between Swiss and South
Germans rested not only on the lessons of the Swiss War of 1499 and the achieve-
ment of the Hereditary Agreement of 1511, but therefore also on a modus vivendi
within the Confederation itself between Catholics and Protestants. That put a
break on risky foreign ventures or attempted expansion—the one overvaulting
exception being Bern’s conquest of the Vaud in 1536, which will be explored
in Part II.
The last word should go to Helmut Maurer. In the afterword to the second
edition of his classic essay, Schweizer und Schwaben, Maurer echoes a perspective
advanced by several recent Swiss historians, especially Roger Sablonier, Guy
Marchal, and Matthias Weishaupt, namely that in the fifteenth century the image
of an autochthonous peasant consciousness or sense of statehood which was
specifically Swiss was essentially a construct.358 However much they may have
grown apart mentally and physically, Swiss and Swabians were not separated by a
spurious distinction between feudal-hierarchical and communal-republican values
and sensibilities. After all, we now know that there were hidden republican tradi-
tions in Swabia,359 just as feudal-aristocratic patterns of lordship and sociocultural
self-perception survived in the Confederation until the end of the ancien régime.
357 Meyer, ‘Geographische Voraussetzungen’, 325–6. The V cantons also resisted Basel’s efforts to
seize the territory of its prince-bishop.
358 Maurer, Schweizer und Schwaben, 145. See Guy P. Marchal, ‘Die “alten Eidgenossen” im
Wandel der Zeiten. Das Bild der frühen Eidgenossen im Traditionsbewußtsein und in der
Identitätsvorstellung der Schweizer vom 15 bis ins 20. Jahrhundert’, in Hansjakob Achermann, Josef
Brülisauer, and Peter Hoppe (eds), Innerschweiz und frühe Eidgenossenschaft. Jubiläumsschrift 700 Jahre
Eidgenossenschaft, 2: Gesellschaft—Alltag—Geschichtsbild (Olten, 1990), 309–403; Weishaupt, Bauern,
Hirten und ‘frume edle puren’.
359 Peter Blickle (ed.), Verborgene republikanische Traditionen in Oberschwaben (Oberschwaben—
Geschichte und Kultur, 4) (Tübingen, 1998).