The Confederation was thus fully formed, with its Thirteen Cantons and their allied states. ♦Saint Gallen. | Bienne.♦ Of these the _Abbot of Saint Gallen_, the _town of Saint Gallen_, and the town of _Biel_ or _Bienne_, were so closely allied with the Confederates as to have a place in their Diets. Besides relations of less close alliance which the Confederates had with various Alsatian cities, several other states had a connexion so close and lasting with the Confederation or with some of its members, as to form part of the same political system. ♦_Bischofbasel._ | Mühlhausen and Rottweil. | Neufchâtel passes to Prussia, 1707.♦ Such were the Leagues of Wallis and Graubünden, the Bishop of _Basel_, the outlying town of _Mühlhausen_ in Elsass, and for a while that of _Rottweil_. Bern too, and sometimes other cantons, had relations both with the town and with the princes of _Neufchâtel_, which, after passing through several dynasties, was at last inherited by the Kings of Prussia. ♦Constanz.♦ _Constanz_, at the other end of the Confederate land, was refused admission as a canton, but for a while it was in alliance with some of the cantons. ♦Passes to Austria, 1548.♦ But this connexion was severed when Constanz, instead of a free Imperial city, became a possession of Austria. ♦The Confederation released from the allegiance to the Empire, 1658.♦ The power thus formed, a power in which a body of German Confederates was surrounded by a body of allies and subjects, German, Italian, and Burgundian, all of them originally members of the Empire, was by the Peace of Westfalia formally released from all allegiance to the Empire and its chief. ♦Date of the practical separation, 1495.♦ Their practical separation may be dated much earlier, from the time when the Confederates refused to accept the legislation of Maximilian. ♦Geographical position of the League.♦ The growth of the League into an independent power was doubtless greatly promoted by its geographical position, as occupying the natural citadel of Europe. ♦Its anomalous frontier.♦ But the piecemeal way in which it grew up was marked by the anomalous nature of its frontier on several points. On the north the Rhine would seem to be a natural boundary, but Schaffhausen beyond the Rhine formed part of the Confederation, while Constanz and other points within it did not. To the south the possession of territory on the Italian side of the Alps seems an anomaly, an anomaly which is brought out more strongly by a singularly irregular and arbitrary frontier. ♦The Confederation as a middle state.♦ But looking on the Confederation as the middle state, arising at the point of junction of the three Imperial kingdoms, it was in a manner fitting that it should spread itself into all three. * * * * * ♦Wars of the French Revolution.♦