South Central Europe (1252–1395 CE)

Late Medieval Consolidation, City Leagues, and Intensified Alpine Trade

This subregion—Liechtenstein, most of Switzerland (excluding the far northwest), the extreme southern parts of Germany (southeastern Baden-Württemberg, southwestern Bavaria), and southwestern Austria—entered the later Middle Ages with strong city economies, expanding confederations, and heightened commercial movement through the Alpine passes.

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Environmental and Agrarian Context

By the mid-13th century, population growth and intensive farming had pushed cultivation into upper valleys. Irrigation systems, terracing, and rotational cropping sustained productivity. Alpine pastures remained central to the export economy—especially for cheese and wool—while lakes and rivers were used extensively for freight transport.

A combination of warmer medieval climate (Medieval Warm Period) and intensive clearance expanded arable land, though by the late 14th century localized overuse, soil depletion, and climatic cooling foreshadowed the Little Ice Age.

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Political and Institutional Developments

• Urban Autonomy: Key cities such as Zürich, Chur, and St. Gallen consolidated privileges, often purchased from or negotiated with imperial or episcopal authorities.

• Confederation Building: The Eidgenossenschaft (Swiss Confederation) began in 1291 with Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden; its alliances with other towns and rural districts reshaped political geography north of the Gotthard Pass.

• Habsburg Influence: The House of Habsburg asserted authority over much of the subregion, especially eastern Switzerland and the Vorarlberg, but faced resistance from both rural communities and urban leagues.

• League Formation: In the east, alliances such as the Grey League in Graubünden began forming by the late 14th century to coordinate defense and trade regulation.

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Economic and Trade Expansion

Pass traffic surged as Lombardy’s markets grew. The Gotthard Pass rose in prominence alongside older routes such as the Great St. Bernard, Julier, and Splügen. Export commodities—cheese, hides, wool, timber, and iron—moved south; imports included salt, wine, spices, fine cloth, and luxury goods.

Merchant guilds organized fairs, and fortified warehouses and customs stations secured toll revenues. The Bodensee–Rhine corridor connected with Hanseatic networks, linking the Alpine world to the North Sea.

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Cultural and Artistic Life

Late Gothic architecture began to appear, especially in urban churches and civic buildings. Monastic scriptoria persisted but were increasingly complemented by urban workshops producing legal documents, chronicles, and devotional texts. Fresco cycles in churches often drew on both Lombard painting traditions and local storytelling.

Cathedrals such as those in Chur and Konstanz became centers of both liturgical art and political ceremony.

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Security and Conflict

The region experienced intermittent local wars, including:

• The Battle of Morgarten (1315) where the Confederates defeated a Habsburg army, strengthening the confederation’s autonomy.

• Feuds between noble houses for control over toll rights and market revenues.

• Cross-border raids during wider imperial and Italian conflicts.

Despite conflicts, fortification of market towns, bridges, and passes generally kept the main trade routes secure.

The three original cantons had joined with the cantons of Glarus and Zug and the Lucerne, Zürich and Bern city states by 1353 to form the "Old Confederacy" of eight states that will exist until the end of the 15th century.

The expansion leads to increased power and wealth for the confederation.

The Old Swiss Confederacy is an alliance among the valley communities of the central Alps.

The Confederacy facilitates management of common interests and ensures peace on the important mountain trade routes.

The Federal Charter of 1291 agreed between the rural communes of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden is considered the confederacy's founding document, even though similar alliances are likely to have existed decades earlier.

William Tell, a legendary hero of Switzerland and a universal symbol of resistance to oppression, is supposedly a native of Burglen in the area of Uri, which is under the tyrannical control of the bailiffs of Austrian overlords.

Tell, who supposedly refuses in 1307 to obey the commands of Bailiff Gessler, is then forced to shoot an apple placed on the head of his son (echoing a familiar folkloric motif).

Succeeding in this, Tell goes on to lead an uprising to victory against the Austrians.

The House of Habsburg had coveted the area around the Gotthard Pass as it offers the shortest passage to Italy, but the Confederates of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden, who had formalized the Swiss Confederacy in 1291, hold imperial freedom letters from former Habsburg emperors granting them local autonomy within the empire.

Tensions between the Habsburgs and Confederates had heightened in 1314 when Duke Louis IV of Bavaria (who will become Louis IV, Holy Roman Emperor) and Frederick the Handsome, a Habsburg prince, each claimed the crown of the Holy Roman Emperor.

The Confederates support Louis IV because they fear the Habsburgs will annex their lands, which they had tried to do in the late thirteenth century.

War eventually breaks out after the Confederates of Schwyz raid the Habsburg-protected Einsiedeln Abbey, as a result of a dispute regarding access to pastures.

Frederick's brother, Leopold of Austria, leads a large army, including a small number of knights, to crush the rebellious Confederates.

He plans a surprise attack from the south via Ägerisee (also known as Lake Äegen or Lake Aegeri) and the Morgarten Pass, counting on complete victory.

Johannes von Winterthur's chronicle of the battle puts the Austrian forces at twenty thousand, although that number is now believed to be inaccurate.

Another account, by Rudolf Hanhart, states that there were nine thousand men in the Austrian army, while historian Hans Delbrück states that the Austrian army consisted of only two thousand to three thousand men, but that these were mainly well-trained and -equipped knights.

The Confederates of Schwyz, supported by the Confederates of Uri, fear for their autonomy, but are not supported by the Confederates of Unterwalden, who expect the army to approach from the west near the village of Arth, where they have erected fortifications.

The size of the Confederate army is also disputed, with estimates ranging from fifteen hundred to around three thousand or four thousand.

Nevertheless, regardless of their size, the Confederate militia lacks the training of the Habsburg knights, who are also better equipped.

According to a legend recounted in Tait's Edinburgh Magazine in 1852, one Habsburg knight, Henry Huenenberg, recognizing the superiority of his force and possibly concerned that victory over a "rabble" would be a disgrace, or in an act of chivalry, shot an arrow with a message attached into the Confederates' camp, telling them that the Austrians would advance through Morgarten on November 15 and that they should return to their homes.

In response, the Confederates prepare a roadblock and an ambush at a point between Lake Ägerisee and Morgarten Pass, where a small path leads between a steep slope and a swamp.

When the Confederates attack from above with rocks, logs and halberds, the Austrian knights have no room to defend themselves and suffer a crushing defeat, while the foot soldiers in the rear flee back to the city of Zug.

About fifteen hundred Habsburg soldiers are killed in the attack.

According to Karl von Elgger, the Confederates, unfamiliar with the customs of battles between knights, brutally butchered retreating troops and everyone unable to flee.

He records that some infantry preferred to drown themselves in the lake rather than face the brutality of the Swiss.

The defeat of the Austrians ensures independence for the Swiss Confederation.

The citizens of Zürich swear allegiance before representatives of the cantons of Lucerne, Schwyz, Uri and Unterwalden, the other members of the Swiss Confederacy.

Thus, Zürich becomes the fifth member of the Swiss Confederacy, which is at this time a loose confederation of de facto independent states.

The people of the rural commune of Unterwalden (divided in the mid-twelfth century into the communes of Obwalden and Nidwalden) had joined the rural communes of Uri and Schwyz to form an alliance on August 1, 1291.

The league, known as the Eternal Alliance or League Of The Three Forest Cantons, had been established for defense purposes against any attacker, probably prompted by the death of Rudolf I of Habsburg on July 15, 1291.

Before his death, Habsburg had attempted to reinforce his claim over Schwyz and Unterwalden which had meant a succession of military interventions.

At the time there was no Swiss state, but towards the end of the fourteenth century early forms of government are established.

This includes institutionalized assemblies and courts.

By 1353, the three original cantons had joined with the cantons of Glarus and Zug and the Lucerne, Zürich, and Berne city states, forming the "Old Confederacy" of eight states that is to exist throughout most of the fifteenth century.

The individual members, especially the cities, enlarge their territories at the cost of the local counts in the neighborhood, mostly by buying the judicial rights.

The two Swiss cantons of Uri and Unterwalden occupy the upper Ticino River valley (on the present Swiss-Italian border) in 1403 in a bid to expand southward and control the Alpine passes into northern Italy.

The Swiss cantons of Uri and Unterwalden had called on fellow members of the Swiss Confederation to support their occupation of the upper Ticino River valley in 1410, and had occupied also the Val d’Ossola at the other end of the Simplon Pass.

The Swiss lose this valley four years later to the duchy of Savoy, but regain it by the end of 1416, thereby bringing most of the Alpine passed into northern Italy under Swiss control.

The Eidgenossen, or Swiss Confederation, when asked in 1488 by Emperor Frederick to also join the Swabian League, had flatly refused: they had seen no reason to join an alliance designed to further Habsburg interests, and they are wary of this new, relatively closely knit and powerful alliance that has arisen on their northern frontier.

Furthermore, they resent the strong aristocratic element in the Swabian League, so different from their own organization, which has grown over the last two hundred years liberating themselves from precisely such an aristocratic rule.