The chronicle is an impressive volume containing 443 colourful full-page miniature illustrations and 237 text pages, which cover the whole history of the Confederation, but with more space given to events of the previous forty years.
Diebold, through his father and his uncle Diebold Schilling the Elder, came into contact with the art of chronicle book illustration as it had evolved in Alsace under the influence of Burgundy, in works like the Froissart of Louis of Gruuthuse (BnF Fr 2643-6). Both the illustrations and the accompanying narratives are remarkably lively and realistic. Two painters can be distinguished, one keeping in the more traditional gothic style of manuscript illumination - this is believed to be Schilling himself - while the other develops a new, specifically Swiss artistic style that culminates in the works of Niklaus Manuel Deutsch and Hans Holbein the Younger in the mid-16th century.
A reproduction was published in 1932 on the occasion of the 600th anniversary of the accession of Lucerne to the Swiss Confederacy, and a full colour facsimile by the Faksimile Verlag of Lucerne in 1981.
fol. 61v; disasters in connection with two comets sighted in 1456
fol. 206r; Gian Maria Sforza of Milano, bishop of Genoa, travels to Zurich to hire mercenaries; Jörg Supersaxo, a traitor bribed by the Milanese, is arrested at the fish market of Lucerne.
fol. 259r; Carnival dance on the Landmatte of Schwyz
Since 1848 the Swiss Confederation has been a federal republic of relatively autonomous cantons, some of which have a history of federation that goes back more than 700 years, putting them among the world's oldest surviving republics.
The Battle of Sempach was fought on 9 July 1386, between Leopold III, Duke of Austria and the Old Swiss Confederacy. The battle was a decisive Swiss victory in which Duke Leopold and numerous Austrian nobles died. The victory helped turn the loosely allied Swiss Confederation into a more unified nation and is seen as a turning point in the growth of Switzerland.
The Old Zurich War was a conflict between the canton of Zurich and the other seven cantons of the Old Swiss Confederacy over the succession to the Count of Toggenburg.
The Old Swiss Confederacy began as a late medieval alliance between the communities of the valleys in the Central Alps, at the time part of the Holy Roman Empire, to facilitate the management of common interests such as free trade and to ensure the peace along the important trade routes through the mountains. The Hohenstaufen emperors had granted these valleys reichsfrei status in the early 13th century. As reichsfrei regions, the cantons of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden were under the direct authority of the emperor without any intermediate liege lords and thus were largely autonomous.
The Protestant Reformation in Switzerland was promoted initially by Huldrych Zwingli, who gained the support of the magistrate, Mark Reust, and the population of Zürich in the 1520s. It led to significant changes in civil life and state matters in Zürich and spread to several other cantons of the Old Swiss Confederacy. Seven cantons remained Catholic, however, which led to intercantonal wars known as the Wars of Kappel. After the victory of the Catholic cantons in 1531, they proceeded to institute Counter-Reformation policies in some regions. The schism and distrust between the Catholic and the Protestant cantons defined their interior politics and paralysed any common foreign policy until well into the 18th century.
The early modern history of the Old Swiss Confederacy and its constituent Thirteen Cantons encompasses the time of the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) until the French invasion of 1798.
Arnold von Winkelried or Arnold Winkelried is a legendary hero of Swiss history. According to 16th-century Swiss historiography, Winkelried's sacrifice brought about the victory of the Old Swiss Confederacy in the Battle of Sempach (1386) over the army of the Habsburg Duke Leopold III of Austria.
Several illustrated chronicles were created in the Old Swiss Confederacy in the 15th and 16th centuries. They were luxurious illuminated manuscripts produced for the urban elite of Bern and Lucerne, and their copious detailed illustrations allow a unique insight into the politics and daily life of late medieval Switzerland on the eve of the Reformation. The most important of these chronicles are the works of the two Diebold Schillings, their luxurious execution, as well as their content reflecting the growing confidence and self-esteem of the leaders of the confederacy after their spectacular successes in the Burgundian Wars.
Diebold Schilling the Elder was the author of several of the Swiss illustrated chronicles, the Berner Schilling of 1483, the Zürcher Schilling of 1484, and the Spiezer Schilling (1480s).
Diebold Schilling the Younger was the author of the "Luzerner Schilling", one of the Swiss illustrated chronicles, which he presented to the city council of Lucerne on 15 January 1513. He was the nephew of Diebold Schilling the Elder of Bern. The younger Diebold was a somewhat scandalous figure, not unlike his father Hans, brother to the elder Diebold, an adventurer who had sought his fortune at the court of Matthias Corvinus, and returned destitute in 1488. Diebold was a secretary in Lucerne from 1479, and received the priesthood in 1481. His behaviour was so unpriestly, however, that the city council locked him into the tower in 1487, where he remained imprisoned for two years before he was released on parole of exhibiting more appropriate behaviour in the future. After his release he was soon back to his old ways, and after he had killed a man after a tavern brawl, he was fined and obliged to read a mass for his victim every year. Diebold was fiercely anti-French, and he accused the Bernese in particular, as well as his fellow chronicler Petermann Etterlin because of their friendly attitude towards France. Diebold's own sympathies lay with the German emperor Maximilian I, who personally invited him to the Reichstag in Konstanz in 1507. As an author, Diebold's most important contribution to the historiography of his times is his account of the years 1507–1509, the events of which he tells in his own words as an eye-witness.
The family of the two Swiss chroniclers called Diebold Schilling was originally from Solothurn. Klewi Schilling was a somewhat dubious character, and he was banned from the city, settling in Hagenau (Alsace), and probably died in Kaysersberg.
The Berner Schilling is a chronicle of Diebold Schilling the Elder of Berne (1480s), covering the history of the Old Swiss Confederacy up to the Burgundian Wars.
The Swabian War of 1499 was the last major armed conflict between the Old Swiss Confederacy and the House of Habsburg. What had begun as a local conflict over the control of the Val Müstair and the Umbrail Pass in the Grisons soon got out of hand when both parties called upon their allies for help; the Habsburgs demanding the support of the Swabian League, while the Federation of the Three Leagues of the Grisons turning to the Swiss Eidgenossenschaft. Hostilities quickly spread from the Grisons through the Rhine valley to Lake Constance and even to the Sundgau in southern Alsace, the westernmost part of the Habsburg region of Further Austria.
The Battle of Dornach was fought on 22 July 1499 between the troops of Emperor Maximilian I and the Old Swiss Confederacy, close to the Swiss village of Dornach. The battle ended in a decisive defeat for Maximilian, and concluded the Swabian War between the Swiss and the Swabian League.
The Battle of Héricourt was fought on 13 November 1474 near Héricourt, Burgundy, as part of the Burgundian Wars. It resulted in victory for the Swiss Confederacy and its allies over the Burgundian State.
The Old Swiss Confederacy or Swiss Confederacy was a loose confederation of independent small states, initially within the Holy Roman Empire. It is the precursor of the modern state of Switzerland.
The Battle of Arbedo was fought on 30 June 1422 between the Duchy of Milan and the Swiss Confederation, and ended with a Milanese victory.
The Saubannerzug was a military campaign of irregular Swiss forces during the Fasnacht period of the year 1477, in the aftermath of the Battle of Nancy. It consisted of disgruntled men-at-arms from Central Switzerland who moved towards Geneva to enforce the payment of a sum of 24,000 Gulden owed to the Old Swiss Confederacy as ransom to escape looting.
Johannes Salat was a Swiss chronicler, dramatist and mercenary.
Ital Reding the Elder was Landammann of Schwyz and the leader of the forces of Schwyz during the Old Zürich War (1440–1450).
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fol. 61v; disasters in connection with two comets sighted in 1456
fol. 206r; Gian Maria Sforza of Milano, bishop of Genoa, travels to Zurich to hire mercenaries; Jörg Supersaxo, a traitor bribed by the Milanese, is arrested at the fish market of Lucerne.
fol. 259r; Carnival dance on the Landmatte of Schwyz
fol. 327v; Reisläufer crossing the Alps
Schilling mercenaries training.
fol. 339v; the duchess of Monfort frees a condemned prisoner on his way to the gallows
Jews (identified by the mandatory Jewish badge and Jewish hat) being burned during the Black Death in 1348
Zürich joins the Swiss Confederacy in 1351
Battle of Grunwald (15 July 1410)
After the Battle of Triboltingen (Swabian War)
Storm of Thayngen (Swabian War)
Battle of Giornico (28 December 1478)
