The Federal Charter
Uri, Schwyz, Nidwalden, Rütli, Sarnen
Key figures: Aegidius Tschudi, Henri Guisan; in the legend William Tell and Werner Stauffacher
HLS (German): Federal charters, Founding myths
The document (beginning of August 1291). The pact, written in Latin on parchment, is dated “at the beginning of the month of August” 1291 and was sealed by Uri, Schwyz and the community of the lower valley of Unterwalden, Nidwalden. The three communities declare that they are renewing an older alliance and promise each other help “against anyone” who does them violence or wrong. The lords keep their rights, but no judge will be accepted who has bought his office or is not a native. The rest of the text is a small peace code: death for murderers, banishment for arsonists, distraint only with a judge’s permission, disputes between allies settled by arbitration. The alliance is to last “for ever”. It is concluded a few weeks after the death of King Rudolf of Habsburg on 15 July 1291, at a time of uncertainty for the whole region.
One alliance among many. The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland warns against reading into the pact what is not there. In the late Middle Ages towns, lords and rural communities often make similar alliances to defend the peace and their rights, and none of them founds a state: the Confederation takes concrete shape only at the end of the fifteenth century. For centuries the document of 1291 is hardly mentioned. The Pact of Brunnen of 9 December 1315, written in German after the victory of Morgarten, will long be considered more important. A radiocarbon analysis published in 1992 dated the parchment to about 1252–1314: a result compatible with 1291, but one that gives the age of the skin, not of the writing.
The legend: the White Book of Sarnen (around 1470). The story everyone knows was born almost two centuries later. Around 1470 the Obwalden chancellor Hans Schriber writes it down in the White Book of Sarnen. The Habsburg bailiffs oppress the Forest Cantons: Landenberg’s servants blind a peasant of the Melchtal, Konrad von Baumgarten kills the bailiff Wolfenschiessen, Gessler threatens Werner Stauffacher over his stone house. On his wife’s advice Stauffacher seeks allies; with Walter Fürst of Uri and Arnold von Melchtal he swears a secret alliance on the Rütli. Meanwhile Gessler sets a hat on a pole in Altdorf and demands that it be saluted: Tell refuses, is forced to shoot an apple off his son’s head with his crossbow, then kills the bailiff. The castles are destroyed. No research has ever found evidence of these episodes in the records of around 1300, and the apple shot has a forerunner in the Gesta Danorum of the Dane Saxo Grammaticus, from the thirteenth century. Petermann Etterlin’s chronicle, printed in Basel in 1507, contains the first illustration of the scene.
1307 or 1291? In the mid-sixteenth century Aegidius Tschudi, in his Chronicon Helveticum, gives the legend a precise chronology: the Rütli oath supposedly took place on the Wednesday before St Martin’s Day, 8 November 1307, and the storming of the castles on New Year’s Day 1308. For three centuries Switzerland dates its birth to 1307. The document of 1291 is found in the Schwyz archives in 1758 and published in 1760, but nobody yet sees it as a founding charter. From 1845 source criticism casts doubt on the tradition and a long debate between 1291 and 1307 begins. It is effectively settled by the Federal Council: in 1891 it celebrates the six hundredth anniversary of the Confederation (see the 1891 stage), partly because the bourgeoisie of the time prefers a legal act to a conspiracy. From 1899 the bells ring every year on 1 August, and with the vote of 26 September 1993, approved by 83.8% of voters, 1 August becomes a public holiday throughout Switzerland.
The Rütli, a place of memory. The Rütli, or Grütli, is a meadow in the woods above Lake Uri, on the slope of the Seelisberg. As early as 1674 and 1713 the people of central Switzerland gather there; at the end of the eighteenth century the men of the Enlightenment associate it with freedom, and in 1780 the French philosopher Raynal proposes building a monument there. In 1804 Friedrich Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell makes it famous throughout Europe. In 1859, to prevent a hotel being built there, the Swiss Society for the Public Good buys it with a national collection, to which young people in particular contribute, and in 1860 gives it to the Confederation as an “inalienable national property”. Since 1936 the document of 1291 has been on display in Schwyz, in the building now called the Museum of the Federal Charters.
The Rütli Report (25 July 1940). The Rütli returns to the centre of history in the summer of 1940, when Switzerland is surrounded by the Axis powers. On 25 July General Henri Guisan summons there all troop commanders from the rank of major upwards, who arrive by steamer from Lucerne. Speaking without notes, he explains the army’s withdrawal into the Alpine redoubt and calls for unconditional resistance. Germany and Italy protest. For contemporaries the Rütli Report becomes the symbol of the will to defend the country; more recent historiography has played down its real weight, but not its symbolic force. Thus the pact of 1291, the legend of the Rütli and the history of the twentieth century end up intertwined in the same place.
The Federal Charter of 1291, Museum of the Federal Charters, Schwyz
Wikimedia Commons, public domain
The White Book of Sarnen, around 1470, p. 447: the story of Gessler setting his hat on the pole in Altdorf begins here, the oldest written version of the Tell story
Obwalden State Archives, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain
Johann Heinrich Füssli, Die drei Eidgenossen beim Schwur auf dem Rütli, 1780, Kunsthaus Zürich
Wikimedia Commons, public domain
Ferdinand Hodler, Wilhelm Tell, 1897, Kunstmuseum Solothurn
Wikimedia Commons, public domain
Daniel Schwegler, the apple shot in Petermann Etterlin’s chronicle, Basel 1507: the first printed image of the scene
Swiss National Library, Gugelmann Collection, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain
Caspar Wolf and Charles Melchior Descourtis, Hic libertatem nostri posuere parentes, view of the Rütli from the Vues remarquables des montagnes de la Suisse, 1785–1794
Swiss National Library, Gugelmann Collection, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain
The Rütli meadow above Lake Uri, 2021
Photo Daniel Reust, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0