Expansion and Consolidation of the Swiss Confederacy

Timeline

1. 1370Uri · SwitzerlandIn 1370 Uri issued the Pact of Priests (Pfaffenbrief), stipulating that church property and judicial authority belonged to local communes and limiting interference by foreign bishops. This document is an important text in the Swiss tradition of local autonomy, continuous with the 1291 Eternal Covenant, strengthening the forest cantons' communes' control over internal affairs.
2. 1371–1376Aargau–Lucerne border · SwitzerlandIn the 1370s confederal members and the Habsburg family repeatedly clashed over territory and rights of passage in Aargau and around Lucerne. The Habsburgs attempted to restore traditional suzerainty over the forest cantons, while city-states like Bern and Lucerne supported each other through military alliances, repeatedly frustrating Habsburg expansion as the confederacy's actual control gradually extended toward the southern German border.
3. 1375–1380Bern · SwitzerlandBy the end of the 1370s the eight-canton confederacy (Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Lucerne, Zurich, Glarus, Zug, and Bern) had formed a fairly stable mutual-aid military system. Bern, as the great western city-canton, checked Savoyard expansion toward the Vaud region. Though no new canton formally joined in the 1370s, the confederacy's pattern as a regional political force had essentially taken shape.