But the princes of the empire delayed to send auxiliaries, and the Emperor then learned, with increasing horror, that his army sent over the Engadine mountains to suppress the Grison League had been destroyed in midsummer by avalanches, famine, and the masses of rock which the Grisons threw down from the mountains; then that on the woody height of Bruderholz, not far from Basel, one thousand Swiss had vanquished more than four thousand of their enemies; that, shortly after, in the same region near Dornach, six thousand Confederates had obtained a brilliant victory over fifteen thousand Austrians, killing three thousand men, with their general, Henry of Furstenberg.  Then the Emperor reflected that within eight months the Swiss had been eight times victorious in eight battles.  And he decided to end a war in which more than twenty thousand men had already fallen, and nearly two thousand villages, hamlets, castles, and cities been destroyed.

Peace was negotiated and concluded on September 22, 1499, in the city of Basel.  The Emperor acknowledged the ancient rights and the conquests of the Confederates, and granted to them, moreover, the ordinary jurisdiction over Thurgau, which, with the criminal jurisdiction and other sovereign rights, had, until then, belonged to the city of Constance.  Thenceforward the emperors thought no more of dissolving the Confederacy, or of incorporating it with the German empire.  In the fields of Frastenz, of Malserhaide, and Dornach were laid the first foundation-stones of Swiss independence of foreign power.

The confederated cantons thankfully acknowledged what Basel and Schaffhausen had constantly done in these heroic days for the whole Confederacy, and that warlike Appenzell had never been backward at the call of glory and liberty.  Therefore Basel, June 9, 1501, and flourishing Schaffhausen, August 9, 1501, were received into the perpetual Swiss bond, and finally, 1513, Appenzell, already united in perpetual alliance with most of the cantons, was acknowledged as coequal with all the Confederates.

Thus, in the two hundred fifth year after the deed of William Tell, the Confederacy of the Thirteen Cantons was completed.  But Valais and Grisons were considered as cantons allied to the Confederacy, as were St. Gallen, Muhlhausen, Rothweil in Swabia, and other cities—­all free places, subject to no prince—­united with the Swiss by a defensive alliance.

At that period, the thirteen cantons of the Swiss Confederacy were not yet, as now, equal in virtue of the bond, nor bound together directly by one and the same covenant.  They were properly united only with the three cantons of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden, as with a common centre, but among themselves by special treaties.  Each canton was attentive to its own interests and glory, seldom to those of the others or to the welfare of the whole Confederacy.  Fear of the ambition and power of neighboring lords and princes had drawn them together more and more.  So long as this fear lasted, their union was strong.