Swabian War - Further Consequences

Further Consequences

Basel had remained studiously neutral throughout the whole war. Although allied with some cantons of the Swiss Confederacy, it also had strong economic ties in the Alsace and further down along the Rhine. But the events of the war had strengthened the pro-confederate party in the city council, and the Swiss recognized the city's strategic position as a bridgehead on the Rhine (like Schaffhausen, too). On June 9, 1501, a delegation from Basel and the Swiss cantons' representatives signed the alliance contract, which the city council of Basel ratified on July 13, 1501.

Schaffhausen had fought alongside the Eidgenossen during the Swabian War, and thus its acceptance into the Confederacy was a mere formality. The city had been an imperial city since 1415 and an associate state of the Confederacy since 1454 through a 25-year contract that had been renewed in 1479. On August 10, 1501, it became the twelfth member of the Confederacy.

With the end of the war, the Swiss troops were no longer bound along the Rhine and in the Grisons. The cantons concluded new mercenary contracts, so called capitulations, with the Duchy of Milan and soon got deeply involved in the Italian Wars, where Swiss mercenaries ended up fighting on both sides. The involvement of the Old Swiss Confederacy, acting in its own interests in these wars, was brought to an end by the defeat against French forces in the battle of Marignano in 1515 and a subsequent peace treaty with the French king in 1516, the so-called Eternal Peace. However, Swiss mercenaries from individual cantons of the federation continued to participate in the Italian Wars well beyond (until the middle of the 16th century) in the service of various parties and, following that peace with France, in particular in the service of the French king.

The Swiss Confederacy remained an independent Reichsstand of the Holy Roman Empire, but as it wasn't even obliged to participate in the Reichstag, this relation was degraded to a purely formal one that would lose significance throughout the 16th century. However, the Swiss still considered themselves as members of the empire with the status of imperial immediacy; the empire was still considered the foundation of all privileges, rights, or political identity as can be witnessed in the continued use of the imperial insignia. The relations between the Habsburgs and the Confederacy were fully normalized in the Erbeinung of 1511, a renewal of the earlier Ewige Richtung of 1474 and a first Erbeinung of 1477. In that treaty, the Habsburgs finally and officially gave up all their territorial claims of old, and even designated the Confederacy the protecting power of the County of Burgundy. In the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648, all members and associate states of the Confederacy would gain official full exemption from the empire and recognition as a national and political entity on their own right.