The country became settled, similarly to Germany, by Germans, and especially Burgundians, a free people; but when the control of the Obermärker over the free communities began to ripen into feudal superiority, it found resistance in the forest cantons, and these formed a league to fight the duke of Hapsburg, who partly as feudal lord, partly as Reichsvogt, the emperor’s representative, claimed obnoxious rights. Through admission of neighboring lands and cities to the league, the number of confederates had by the middle of the 14th century grown to eight, and when, by the battles of Sempach (1386) and Næfels (1388), the Austrian Hapsburg supremacy had been permanently destroyed, the number of allies grew, and, by conquest and annexation and otherwise, their territory attained nearly the present size by the middle of the 15th century; the war against feudalism being the cause for this growth. These various small republics, however, always formed a part of and owed allegiance to the German Empire, although they resisted the arms of the Emperor as Archduke of Austria--until, with the peace of 1499, this connection became entirely nominal. The final separation from the German empire and acknowledgement of independence was not pronounced until the peace of Westphalia, in 1648. The league of cantons was only a very loose confederation without any central power, although a diet, to which each canton sent a delegate, had deliberative functions. Almost immediately after the alliance was formed it became fatally divided, especially when religious differences arose, and throughout the 16th and first half of the 17th century, continuous warfare existed between the different allies. It must not, however, be understood that the peasants in the different cantons were entirely free from the ancient tyrannies. With the exception of the three forest cantons, which were truly democratic republics, the majority of the Swiss peasants, free in the eyes of the outside world, were mere serfs until the beginning of the 18th century, and secured their freedom only after many revolts. After nearly 500 years of this loose federation, it was reserved to Napoleon to proclaim the Helvetian Republic one and indivisible, in 1798, after a short struggle of 74 days. This constitution fell with the fall of Napoleon, and gave place, in 1815, to a reorganized federation, in which the former sovereignty of each canton was re-established, the inviolability of the territory being guaranteed by the European powers. Finally in 1848, the seventh and last phase of reconstruction brought into existence the “Bund,” the Confederation of Switzerland, very much after the pattern of the United States, the constitution then adopted being once more revised in 1874.