The Bond of the Three Cantons

The Bond of the Three Cantons is a compact of mutual defense and local justice that gives institutional shape to the play’s account of Swiss liberty. Reproduced in an explanatory note as a translation of a document dated August 1291, it binds communities in Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden to aid one another while setting rules for judges, disputes, punishment, and enforcement. Its political force lies in that combination: the communities promise solidarity against violence, but also accept obligations and a common process for resolving conflicts among themselves.

Origin and Historical Framing

The play’s explanatory note describes the League, or Bond, of the Three Cantons as ancient and says that its members met and renewed it from time to time, especially when their liberties were endangered. It connects a significant renewal to the end of the thirteenth century, when Albert I became emperor, and cautiously suggests that the bond may then, perhaps for the first time, have been reduced to writing. The note thus distinguishes a tradition of recurring alliance from the surviving written document it presents: the compact is framed as both an inherited practice and a text preserved at a moment of political danger.

The document is dated August 1291 and is described as bearing the seals of the whole community of Schwyz, the commonalty of Uri, and the people of the upper and lower valleys of Unterwalden. Those details give the agreement a collective rather than merely personal basis. Its parties are represented as communities acting together, and the seals make that joint commitment legible as a formal undertaking. The title in the note, The Bond, emphasizes the tie created by mutual promise; the full title, The Bond of the Three Cantons, identifies the three participating territories.

This documentary framing meets the play’s dramatic account of political identity. In the play, speakers associate the people with a shared ancestral origin and describe themselves as one community, while the compact records practical duties that make solidarity more than a claim of common descent. The note therefore supplies a legal and historical counterpart to the drama’s language of common belonging: the communities are joined not only by remembered origins, but by commitments to defend one another and administer justice.

Mutual Defense and the Limits of Resistance

The opening provision explains the agreement in response to dangerous times. The communities bind themselves by oath to help one another with all their power and might, property, and people against anyone who uses violence against them or any one of them. The scope of assistance is deliberately broad: the promise concerns resources and human support, and it protects each member through the commitment of all. An attack on one is made a matter for the confederates collectively, rather than a private danger that the victim must face alone.

The play’s political discussion echoes the principle of collective protection while locating it within a layered structure of authority. The cantons are said to have preserved their freedom and to have sought the protection of the Empire freely; the play invokes Emperor Frederick’s charter as confirmation that this protection was granted. Stauffacher’s observation that even the freest people may still have a feudal lord recognizes that liberty does not necessarily mean the absence of every superior authority. The stated duty of the freeman is to aid the Empire in war, while the Empire in turn guards him.

The same distinction appears in the play’s account of local government. The communities are described as ruling themselves at home according to their own laws and ancient usages. The emperor’s stated right is restricted to adjudging the penalty of death, for which he appoints a powerful noble as delegate. The arrangement represented in the drama is therefore neither complete political separation nor unlimited obedience to appointed rulers: imperial protection and military duty coexist with local jurisdiction and custom.

When the characters consider resisting the oppressive officials, their stated aim is to recover ancient rights and remove the tyrants and their agents, not to cast off every bond of authority. The position that they will do what necessity requires, but no more, corresponds to the compact’s reciprocal structure: collective action is directed against violence, while obligations and lawful judgment remain binding. The agreement does not itself narrate the later revolt, but its terms help explain why the play can present resistance as defense of a community’s order rather than the abandonment of order altogether.

Courts, Judges, and Internal Disputes

The compact regulates who may judge within the valleys. The communities agree not to admit a judge who is neither a local countryman and resident nor someone who has bought the office. This rule makes local belonging and residence qualifications for judicial authority, while rejecting the purchase of a judgeship as a sufficient claim to govern. It connects jurisdiction to the community subject to it, rather than treating judicial office as an external appointment available to the highest bidder.

For disputes among the sworn confederates, the agreement assigns judgment to some of the wisest members of their own number. If a party challenges their decision, the others are to compel that party to obey. The provision combines communal participation in judgment with an enforcement mechanism: the decision is not simply advice that a dissatisfied party may ignore. At the same time, authority is lodged in selected members of the confederacy, not in an outsider imposed on the valleys.

The document also addresses divisions within the alliance. If one side in an internal dispute refuses to accept justice, the rest are to help the side that does accept it. This is a consequential qualification to solidarity. The confederates do not promise unconditional support to whichever member claims their aid; they distinguish between a party willing to submit to adjudication and one refusing it. The bond’s collective power is therefore tied to a standard of justice as well as to common defense.

Its rules on debt reinforce that concern with procedure. No one may seize a debtor’s property without a judge, and seizure is not permitted against someone who is neither the debtor nor the debtor’s surety. The compact restricts private self-help by requiring judicial involvement and by limiting whose property may answer for a debt. Together with the provisions for local judges and binding decisions, this clause presents justice as an ordered communal process, not simply the exercise of force by a creditor or a powerful official.

Offenses, Remedies, and Enforcement

The agreement sets out distinct consequences for several kinds of wrongdoing. Whoever intentionally or deceitfully kills another is to be executed, while anyone who shelters the killer is to be banished. The text thus makes both the deliberate offense and the protection of its perpetrator matters for the community. It distinguishes the principal offender’s punishment from the consequence imposed on an accomplice who gives shelter.

Arson receives a different pair of sanctions. A person who burns another’s property is no longer to be regarded as a countryman; anyone who shelters that person must make good the damage. The first consequence removes the offender from the community’s standing, while the second assigns a material obligation to the person who provides refuge. For injury or robbery, the offender who has property in the country must make satisfaction from that property. These provisions connect punishment or compensation to the nature of the offense and, where relevant, to resources available within the valleys.

Enforcement also applies to refusal to obey a judge. Everyone in the valleys is required to submit to the judge; if someone persists in defiance, the sworn confederates collectively undertake to obtain satisfaction for the injury caused by that contumacy. This makes obedience a shared responsibility, not merely a matter between an individual litigant and the person who ruled against them. The compact consequently links judicial authority to mutual enforcement, while its restriction on seizure without a judge prevents that enforcement principle from becoming a general license for private coercion.

The closing commitment asks that the decrees endure, with God’s will, for the common advantage. That ending gives the provisions a future-facing purpose: they are meant to preserve a continuing order, not merely settle the emergency that prompted their adoption. The note’s account of repeated renewals when liberties were threatened further presents the compact as a durable framework whose terms could be recalled and reaffirmed in later danger.

Significance in the Play

The Bond’s importance is both constitutional and dramatic. It makes communal freedom concrete through rules: who may judge, how disputes are settled, when property may be taken, which offenses bring death, banishment, exclusion, or compensation, and how the confederates enforce judgments. These particulars prevent liberty from appearing as independence without duties. Members owe aid to one another, submit disputes to judgment, and accept the collective authority needed to uphold decisions.

The compact also clarifies the tension between local self-government and higher allegiance in the play. The characters’ account of freely sought imperial protection and military service exists alongside their insistence on local laws and customary rule. When they resolve to drive out tyrannical agents and destroy their strongholds, the action is framed as a bounded response to oppression, not a claim that every superior authority is illegitimate. The Bond’s language of defense, procedure, and reciprocal responsibility helps articulate that distinction.

Finally, the document bridges political memory and present action. The play invokes shared ancestry and collective identity; the appended historical note supplies an old written pledge, its date, its participating communities, and its detailed terms. By placing the compact beside the drama, the book presents solidarity as something remembered and renewed, but also administered through institutions. The Bond is therefore more than a declaration that the cantons belong together: it is a model of how their common defense and internal justice are meant to work.