Dissension and the Burgundian Wars

Zurich vs the rest of the Confederation

After the death of the last Count of Toggenburg in 1436, conflict broke out between Zurich and Schwyz over his inheritance. Zurich refused to accept the verdict of a tribunal and appealed to Austria for support. For this support, it even ceded part of its territory to Austria. In 1444 Austria convinced French mercenaries to fight on the side of Zurich. The French army defeated the Confederates at the Battle of St Jakob on the Birs. It was only in 1450 that a peace agreement was made: Zurich gave up its alliance with Austria and agreed not to make such alliances in future.

Cities vs rural areas

A second threat to the survival of the Confederation was the result of simmering political and social tensions. The individual Confederate members had always had the right to make their own alliances, but after the conclusion of the Burgundian War in 1477 the city members made so many new alliances with other cities, that the rural members feared that the balance within the Confederation would be upset. One particular bone of contention with the rural cantons was the desire of the city cantons to upgrade the status of the associated cities of Solothurn and Fribourg to full membership of the Confederation.
After the Burgundian Wars, an external threat which once again welded the Confederation more closely together, a compromise agreement was finally reached at the Council of Stans in 1481. It was mediated by the hermit Nikolaus of Flüe, popularly known as Bruder Klaus, and, among other things, allowed for the inclusion of Solothurn and Fribourg as full members.

The Burgundian Wars

The Confederation was not the only power in Europe which was in the process of expansion. The 14th and 15th centuries saw the rapid rise of the dukedom of Burgundy, which in the space of less than a century became one of the wealthiest and most ambitious powers in western Europe.
By the mid-15th century, Burgundian territory stretched from the Netherlands in the north to the Franche-Comté in the French Jura, which is west of what is now Switzerland. Duke Charles the Bold, who came to power in 1467, undertook to link up his lands, but Bern saw this as a threat to itself.
In 1476-7 at the battles of Grandson, Murten (Morat) and Nancy, the Bernese, with help from the other Confederates, defeated the Burgundian army.
The relationship between Charles the Bold and the Confederates had always been tense. Before the battle of Murten, Charles had announced that any Confederates who fell into his hands would fight at his side in order that this brutish people would be wiped out once and for all. The victorious Swiss responded in kind: fleeing Burgundian soldiers were "skewered like Christmas geese," their skulls cracked open "as men crack nuts," if contemporary accounts are to be believed. The expression "as cruel as a Murten" passed into the local language. A type of algae which sometimes appears in the lake, turning its water red, is commonly known as "blood of the Burgundians". Charles the Bold himself died in the Battle of Nancy against the Confederates.
The spectacular Confederate victory over Burgundy under Charles the Bold established the excellent reputation of the Swiss mercenaries. From that time, the legendary "Reislaufen", military service with foreign pay, formed an important part of the economy of the Old Confederacy, especially in central Switzerland.

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