on Germany’s southern margins in the alpine valleys of Swabia, where
there was a different balance between an independent peasantry,
their lords, and the towns. The peace sworn there in 1291 amid the
uncertainties following the death of King Rudolf of Swabia, and the
Electors’ rejection of his son Albert, duke of Austria, as his successor,
was similar in substance and tone to the Baltic alliance. The public
utility, the charter declared, was served when a due state of peace was
consolidated. Everyone should know that for this reason the men of the
valley of Uri and the whole body (universitas) of the valley of Schwyz
and the communitas of the men of Unterwalden (Intramontanorum
Vallis Inferioris), knowing the evil of the time, had sworn an oath of
mutual assistance, so that they and their possessions might be better
defended and kept in a proper state (in statu debito). Renewing its oath
to the ancient confederation of the valleys, each universitaspromised
that in any emergency it would hasten to support another at its own
expense, every man serving under his lord according to his condition.
Within their communities they would have no judges who judged for
money or came from outside the province. Dissension amongst the sub-
scribers to the oath (conspiratos) should be settled by the more prudent
among them. The killer of an innocent person should lose his own
life and any who protected him suffer exile; arsonists also should be
excluded from the community. The goods of those who plundered or
damaged others’ property might be seized to compensate the victims,
but nothing should be taken as a pledge except for the repayment of an
acknowledged debt and with the permission of a judge. All the iurati
must aid the enforcement of judicial decisions, and protect the other
litigants if one party refused to accept a judgment in a dispute. The
deed, authenticated by the seals of the three communities and valleys,
ordered that the above statutes, soundly made for the common utility,
should endure for ever, under God’s will.^119
The oath of 1291, which is generally taken to have been the found-
ing act of the Swiss polity, stands in the long tradition of peace-making
and the settlement of feuds. On Swiss resistance to Habsburg attempts
to reassert their rights as landlords and stewards of monasteries in this
part of Swabia, and on the Emperor Lewis of Bavaria’s enlistment of ‘all
his men of the valleys of Schwyz’ against his Austrian rivals, writers
from the fifteenth century onwards built the myth of a political struggle
for freedom stretching back to the death of the good King Rudolf and
the heroics of William Tell. The reality was a piecemeal linking of the
The territorial states of Germany 105(^119) Ibid.443–8 for the German peace of 1291; for the text of the Swiss oath in the same
year, see Peter Blickle, ‘Friede und Verfassung: Voraussetzungen und Folgen der Eidgenossen-
schaft von 1291’, in Innerschweiz und frühe Eidgenossenschaft: Jubiläumsschrift 700
Eidgenossenschaft(Olten, 1990), i. 28–9.