One by one the Swiss lands were reached by the breeze of freedom blowing from the Forest Cantons after the great victory of Morgarten. Yet it was only very gradually and in small groups that the other districts entered within the pale of the Eidgenossenschaft. Eight states made up the nucleus for some time; indeed, till after the Burgundian wars, in 1481, they jealously kept out all intruders. In fact, the confederate states looked on outsiders merely as "connections," or subjects, and associated with them on no other footing. It is a somewhat startling and unusual thing to find republics ruling over subject lands, yet in this case the result was to knit the whole more closely together in after centuries. In the fourteenth century the union was of the loosest kind; alliances wavered, and politics were swayed by separate ends. The other commonwealths, in joining themselves with the Forest states, had no notion of giving up their individual life, but were wishful to create a body powerful enough to secure independence against the aggressions of Austria; and at the price of continued struggle, and steady perseverance no less admirable, they achieved that object. Attracted by common interests as a near neighbour, and being moreover the mart of the Forest Cantons, Lucerne was the first to be drawn into the union. This town had acquired great independence under the mild rule of the famous Murbach Abbey. But in 1291 the convent, having got into financial straits, had sold the town to the Habsburgs. Finding but little liberty under their new rulers, the men of Lucerne formed in 1332 with the Forest the union of the four Waldstätten,[27] with the view of shaking off the Austrian yoke. Lucerne was bound by treaty not to league herself with outsiders without the consent of the Forest Cantons.