Now began the letting out of Swiss, Grisons, and Valaisians to foreign military service, by their governments.  The first treaty of this nature was made by the King of France, 1479-1480, with the Confederates in Lucerne.  Next the house of Austria hired mercenaries, 1499; the princes of Italy did the same, as did others afterward.  Even the popes themselves wanted a lifeguard of Swiss; the first, 1503, was Pope Julius II, who was often engaged in war.

Switzerland suffered much from this course.  Many a field remained untilled, many a plough stood still, because the husbandman had taken mercenary arms.  And, if he returned alive, he brought back foreign diseases and vices, and corrupted the innocent by evil example, for he had acquired but little virtue in the wars.  Only the sons of the patricians and council lords obtained captaincies, commands, and riches, by which they increased their influence and consideration in the land, and could oppress others.  They prided themselves on the titles of nobility and decorations conferred by kings, and imagined these to be of value, and that they themselves were more than other Swiss.

When the kings perceived the cupidity and folly of the Swiss, they took advantage of them for their own profit, sent ambassadors into Switzerland, distributed presents, granted gratifications and pensions to their partisans in the councils, and for these the council lords became willing servants of foreign princes.  Then one canton was French, another Milanese; one Venetian, another Spanish; but rarely was one Swiss.  This redounded greatly to the shame of the Swiss.  When the German Emperor and the King of France were, at the same time, canvassing the favor of the cantons and bargaining in competition for troops, so great was the contempt or insolence of the French ambassador at Bern, 1516, that he distributed the royal pensions to the lords by sound of trumpet.  At Freiburg he poured out silver crowns upon the ground, and, while he heaped them up with a shovel, said to the bystanders, “Does not this silver jingle better than the Emperor’s empty words?” So much had love of money debased the Swiss.

The twelve cantons, Appenzell being the only exception, were at one moment allied with Milan against France, at the next with France against Milan.  Milan was rightly called the Schwyzer’s grave.  It was not unusual for Confederates to fight against Confederates on foreign soil, and to kill each other for hire.  The ecclesiastical lord, Matthew Schinner, Bishop of Sion in Valais, a very deceitful man, helped greatly to occasion this.  According as he was hired, he intrigued in Switzerland, sometimes for the King of France, sometimes against France for the Pope, who, in payment, even made him cardinal and ambassador to the Confederacy.