Sempacher letter
The Sempacherbrief of 1393 was mainly an order of war of the Old Confederation . It was closed after the successful battles of Sempach in 1386 and Näfels in 1388 and comprised the contracting parties to the Pfaffenbrief , i.e. the places Uri , Schwyz and Unterwalden , Lucerne , Zurich , Zug , as well as Bern and Solothurn and Glarus .
The Sempacher letter regulated the peace between the contracting parties, stipulated the banner order, forbade looting without the prior permission of the captains and demanded that the booty be divided up proportionally. He also called for consideration for monasteries and churches and for women who are not involved in acts of war to be protected. The last article prohibited the adversaries, city and country, from starting a war in disregard of the formalities provided for in the federal letters.
Historically, the Sempacher letter represents a milestone, as rules for the conduct of troops in war were drawn up for the first time.
literature
- Andreas Heusler : Swiss constitutional history. Frobenius, Basel 1920.
- Karl Stehlin: The Sempacher Letter. In: Basler Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Altertumskunde , Vol. 23, 1925, pp. 166–178. ( Digitized version )
- Norbert Domeisen: Swiss constitutional history, philosophy of history and ideology. A study of the interpretation of the constitutional history of the Swiss Confederation from the end of the 15th to the end of the 18th century through national historiography (= European university publications. Series 3: History and its auxiliary sciences 103). Lang, Bern et al. 1978, ISBN 3-261-03089-5 , p. 43 ff.
See also
Web links
- Bernhard Stettler: Sempacher letter. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .